War Wounds, Art Heals

My dearest friends,

I visited an art exhibit, composed entirely of art made by veterans or their families.  I was so inspired by the art and by the conversations I had with the other attendees.  It brought some things into focus for me, and I sat down and wrote the poem, below.  It has much meaning to me and I will only say that this poem is part 1.  It is sort of like an opening act.  However, I have no idea how many acts, or how it will end!  I find myself looking forward to finding out, and I think that is the difference in me.

The art exhibit is called Core Values=Identity.  It will be on display at TMCC near Meadowood in the Veteran's Upward Bound Gallery.  It was sponsored by the David J Drakulich Art Foundation: For Freedom of Expression.  The foundation teaches are to veterans under the premise that War Wounds, Art Heals.  They a non-profit organizaiton and you can visit their website here:  http://davidsartmemorial.org/

 

Truly yours,

Jo

These Truths

I open the portal

The truths come

They are chaotic and colorful

They shoot out at angles

They come at me from all sides

The color hurts

I close the portal

I seal it shut

My room is dark

My room is light

My room is dark

My room is light

.

.

.

I begin to think about the portal

I remember the pain and I think in black and white

My room is black

My room is white

My room is comfortable

My room is safe

Black and white are my sentinel

The portal fades away; I can no longer see it

My sentinel is my anchor

My sentinel shows the way and I go

It’s about who I am now...not about who I was then.

June 5, 2011

I ran into a teenage party buddy today. We didn't exactly part as friends, but we weren't enemies either. Because of her...I learned how to forgive. Well maybe I just learned that I am capable of forgiving. At 17 that is a valuable lesson. I blamed her for some things that went wrong in our shared house (with our boyfriends). We parted with me angry and resentful. Then I bumped into her a year or so later on the street and in an instant all the anger and resentment departed...I realized that I was only harming myself. She was still living the same kind of life as we did when we lived together and it made me sad...and glad that I had made the decision to not live that way anymore.  At that moment in time, I still had a long way to go to pull my head out of my ass, but seeing her that way was an important step in my recovery.  

I have thought of her often in the many years since and am grateful for the life lesson I learned through her. I have always wondered how things affected her...and if she knew how mad I was...I did not ask her today. I wasn’t ready to go there, but we “clicked” and I will be seeing her again, and I will get a chance to ask her.  I told her about the journey I am embarking on and I have a feeling that she has a part to play in my journey.

She does Chakra balancing, and our discussion during the massage she was giving me (yes, she was giving me a massage because my regular guy was off and she was randomly assigned) leads me to believe some Chakra work might be a worth a shot.  I never believed in this stuff before, but I don’t believe in coincidences either, so I’m going to give it a try.  

A Miracle

I was on my way to Montgomery Alabama for an Air Force 4 day class on Emergency Management. We taxied to the end of the runway, ready for takeoff…then we taxied back to the gate for a maintenance issue. After a while, they announced that the flight was cancelled due to maintenance and we had to de-plane, collect our checked baggage and get in line to be booked on another flight. There were a half a dozen flights to various cities that had connecting flights to Montgomery, but all of them were already over sold. They checked other airlines. They could have gotten me out at 8:00 pm, but there was no connecting flight to Montgomery. After two hours of searching and pleading (both on the phone and in person at the counter), I learned that they could not get me out of Reno until the following day. So, I called the school and they said “don’t bother”. You just can’t miss a full day of a four day class.

I found myself at home by noon, wondering “now what”? My work calendar was empty, as I had blocked myself as out of the office months ago and I couldn’t stay on orders, so I knew that it was back to work I go.

As the full weight of this turn of events sunk in, I realized another point: I would be in town on Friday night, the very night that my dad would be honored at the UNR Boxing home opener. The Air Force Academy would be there, and they were going to make it the first annual Vern Rockswold Memorial boxing tournament.

I only learned that he would be honored on that day just a week before. The class had been booked for months, and there was no way to get out of it without my unit getting a black eye. I had to do my duty…Dad would have been mortified if I didn’t. So, with regret and much gnashing of teeth, I resigned myself to missing it. It took me a few more days to concede that I was supposed to miss it and that this was God’s plan to protect me from the pain, and I thanked Him.

As I pulled up to the airport the morning of departure, I wondered why I wasn’t booked in a more direct fashion. I was scheduled to LA, then Dallas, then Montgomery. There was a flight directly to Dallas that I could have been on and I wondered why SATO booked me this way…

Now, I know. I know that God can do whatever he wants to do. I do wonder if I hadn’t ‘conceded’ to his plan, and thanked Him, would the plane still have broke?

Flashback

I'm at a workshop with builders and the flood project over the need to protect this community from flooding and where in the hell are we going to get the $525M to $1.6B project. Tension is high, making me feel closer to the "action" here than I was in Kabul.  Here I sit, clicking and typing, killing the Taliban one click at a time...wait!...who is the enemy here?

Forever Moment

I've been sort of hiding out, trying to pretend like time is not passing, and trying to stay frozen in the moments when I arrived home from my deployment, but before I found out about my dad.  It was about 30 minutes of heaven, and I want to stay in that moment forever.  It was the small amount of time that I got to revel in the successful completion of the hardest 6 months of my life, and in the jaw dropping experience that it was.

I saw an old friend Friday night and as we chatted, he realized that I am "fragile" (his words), and he chastised me for not reaching out.  I told him that I can't talk about my deployment because all I can think of is the jaw dropping moment when my husband told me he was gone.  It is almost as if these two jaw dropping experiences canceled each other out.  If I deny one, the other is automatically denied.  

Somehow, I've got to separate them in my mind.  I need to revel in the deployment.  I need to share those experiences and I need to find a way to do it.  I wonder if this is my ego talking?  Why such need?  This brings me to the meaningful moment--perhaps 30 minutes or so--I had with Sarah and Jessica at the Bagram Air terminal when I first arrived in Afghanistan.  The two women provided me with personal resolve to accept the fact that I was in Afghanistan and that I needed to pull it together and get a job done, for them, for the women of Afghanistan, for the women at home.  I was probably "fragile" at that moment in time because I had not planned on going to Afghanistan when I left home, and it brought about a certain amount of anxiety.

The need to tell the story about the tragedy in Afghanistan is real.  The need to tell the story about the tragedy that is happening in our world is real (terrorism).  The true story of Afghanistan is not being told in western media.  Stories from people who have been there are the truth.  And it must be told.

Thus, my new blog is started.