Saturday, September 27, 2003
Another night on call.
This week, I learnt :
that time has stopped. Other blogs appear suspended in stasis, as the blur of nights and days on call passes hazily by. Comments on my own, already rare enough due to the mere handfull of people who read this one, have dwindled, where once before, on a far more public website they arrived daily. emails, where once so bountiful have ceased entirely. Friends appear to have evaporated, lost to marital bliss or career stress. And on another of my blogs, far better and more thoughtfully written than this, far more sophisticated and eloquent, nobody dares comment. Perhaps it is too personal, perhaps it is too sad. Perhaps it is too far to the extreme, to merit more than a shocked perusal, and a determined click to another URL somewhere else. Perhaps it is best put out of mind, and existence.
that there are stars in the sky. so, so many stars. Colchester isn't a large city, and the glow it casts into the heavens doesn't eclipse the constellations and galaxies above, and so unfamiliar to me. There's a bright orange glow that hangs low on the horizon, far larger and brighter than even mars, and it is with some fondness that I remember my host in Scotland telling me that that was the new international space station in-progress, which switched on suddenly one evening as she was looking out the window.
that ducks sleep afloat, bills carefully tucked under their wings, and wholly unconcerned by the frigid waters below them, as I walked home at midnight under a starlit sky.
Pearl Harbour is showing on the mess television. It's all flash bang razzmatazz with a lot of soppy angsty romance thrown in. It doesn't bug me much, I think I've got a really low thresh-hold for movies. I like almost all of them, just watching them and trying to See. Not to See the mechanics, or the screenplay, or the depth of character portrayal, but to see the storyline.
And it does make me wonder if the Americans were really so unprepared, caught pants-down in the middle of hawaiian revelry. If indeed there weren't any wings standing by - but of course, the Japs played dirty and struck without warning minutes after peacetalks broke down. The whole movie centres about the horrific, and almost dishonourable loss of life, the angsty Japanese General pausing to examine his conscience, blah blah blah.
And yet, today. Afghanistan, and now Iraq torn to shreds to avert loss of life, and monthly reports about Saddam's sons being blown up, death from above every time each one of them picks up his mobile, Saddam's dynasty being whittled ever closer to the bone. Honour?
War is dishonour it seems. Winning a war isn't about playing fair, it's about hitting hard and fast. Gone are the days armies stood in ranks and beheld each other before the final charge. Gone are the days when there is time for a last handshake before the massacre starts. Now the first kick under the table is the norm. And the Japanese, as always, pioneered that.
Watching the movie, the dully patriotic flag of human outrage was kindled in myself as well, for a while. The screen-writers poured their hearts and souls into trying to achieve that effect, and it started, just a little, for me. But then, no. I am not that kind of warrior. I do not want to remember fighting with a rifle and a magazine at my belt. I don't even want to remember fighting with a rubber tourniquet at my side pocket on my slacks, and two litres of Hartmann's at my belt. I've been trained to kill.
I've been trained to heal.
I'd prefer my weapons to be my stethoscope, and my mind. And my armour my white coat, and not my grubby camo helmet.
Watching the cliched girl loses boy, girl finds boy, girl find old lost boy, blah blah love scenes also kindled outrage in me. I remember too much, and I refuse. I will not mourn. I will not let my eyebrows gravitate towards each other on furrowed forehead, and my eyes narrow bewilderdly at the corners as vision dims.
I will not grieve.
Damn You.
This week, I learnt :
that time has stopped. Other blogs appear suspended in stasis, as the blur of nights and days on call passes hazily by. Comments on my own, already rare enough due to the mere handfull of people who read this one, have dwindled, where once before, on a far more public website they arrived daily. emails, where once so bountiful have ceased entirely. Friends appear to have evaporated, lost to marital bliss or career stress. And on another of my blogs, far better and more thoughtfully written than this, far more sophisticated and eloquent, nobody dares comment. Perhaps it is too personal, perhaps it is too sad. Perhaps it is too far to the extreme, to merit more than a shocked perusal, and a determined click to another URL somewhere else. Perhaps it is best put out of mind, and existence.
that there are stars in the sky. so, so many stars. Colchester isn't a large city, and the glow it casts into the heavens doesn't eclipse the constellations and galaxies above, and so unfamiliar to me. There's a bright orange glow that hangs low on the horizon, far larger and brighter than even mars, and it is with some fondness that I remember my host in Scotland telling me that that was the new international space station in-progress, which switched on suddenly one evening as she was looking out the window.
that ducks sleep afloat, bills carefully tucked under their wings, and wholly unconcerned by the frigid waters below them, as I walked home at midnight under a starlit sky.
Pearl Harbour is showing on the mess television. It's all flash bang razzmatazz with a lot of soppy angsty romance thrown in. It doesn't bug me much, I think I've got a really low thresh-hold for movies. I like almost all of them, just watching them and trying to See. Not to See the mechanics, or the screenplay, or the depth of character portrayal, but to see the storyline.
And it does make me wonder if the Americans were really so unprepared, caught pants-down in the middle of hawaiian revelry. If indeed there weren't any wings standing by - but of course, the Japs played dirty and struck without warning minutes after peacetalks broke down. The whole movie centres about the horrific, and almost dishonourable loss of life, the angsty Japanese General pausing to examine his conscience, blah blah blah.
And yet, today. Afghanistan, and now Iraq torn to shreds to avert loss of life, and monthly reports about Saddam's sons being blown up, death from above every time each one of them picks up his mobile, Saddam's dynasty being whittled ever closer to the bone. Honour?
War is dishonour it seems. Winning a war isn't about playing fair, it's about hitting hard and fast. Gone are the days armies stood in ranks and beheld each other before the final charge. Gone are the days when there is time for a last handshake before the massacre starts. Now the first kick under the table is the norm. And the Japanese, as always, pioneered that.
Watching the movie, the dully patriotic flag of human outrage was kindled in myself as well, for a while. The screen-writers poured their hearts and souls into trying to achieve that effect, and it started, just a little, for me. But then, no. I am not that kind of warrior. I do not want to remember fighting with a rifle and a magazine at my belt. I don't even want to remember fighting with a rubber tourniquet at my side pocket on my slacks, and two litres of Hartmann's at my belt. I've been trained to kill.
I've been trained to heal.
I'd prefer my weapons to be my stethoscope, and my mind. And my armour my white coat, and not my grubby camo helmet.
Watching the cliched girl loses boy, girl finds boy, girl find old lost boy, blah blah love scenes also kindled outrage in me. I remember too much, and I refuse. I will not mourn. I will not let my eyebrows gravitate towards each other on furrowed forehead, and my eyes narrow bewilderdly at the corners as vision dims.
I will not grieve.
Damn You.
