My year, part 1 of many.
I thought 2005 was bad.
There was Katrina and while it happened in the last days of 2004, the Tsunami disaster permeated the opening months of this year.
This year was no better.
The wars just keep coming, and they keep getting worse. Iraq is turning into the exact opposite of what I thought it could be. Instead of becoming a beacon of hope in the region, it’s now host to a civil war, where the formerly oppressed majority is getting 30 odd years of pent up aggression out on their old thumb, and while it’s not wrong to blame the US as the fall of the Hussein regime were to happen in 2010 organically instead of in the 2003 chemical destruction, the US certainly has blood on it’s hand.
My worst moment of the year is as follows. The hotel I work at has a Starbucks in the lobby, and it attracts a huge amount of outside business (from people who don’t stay or work or attend meetings in the hotel).
One day a silver jeep pulls up with two guys my age, mid to late 20’s, in it. Both of them were in great psychical shape. I moved their car over to the curb and noticed a picture of the driver on the console. It was his body face down with puncture wounds on it.
When they came out a few minutes later, I asked the driver about the picture. I asked “the picture? Was that an IED?”
He responded, “No, that’s me on CSI: Miami. I was a corpse.” His friend asked him what I had said.
The second guy walked over and showed me his arm, which looked like in belonged on Frankenstien’s monster; layers of grafted skin covered a hollowed out elbow and the arm itself looked 90% the size of his other. He said, “But this was.”
They both smiled and got into the car and walked away. One guy had his dream start to come true through a bloody injury and no doubt made a tidy sum. The other had his arm destroyed in the line of duty. Both my age, and the two of them friends.
Months earlier at the hotel a group called project for peace had their annual meeting where Martin Sheen, Oliver Stone and many others came not to decry the war, but to push for hope and human brotherhood.
I was called over to help get a car out of a Handicapped spot. Having been a valet and valet manager for the last 4 years, I have learned how to drive any car and have written the book for a few of the companies I have worked for. I get into the van and notice there is no driver’s seat, only a metal arm connected to the pedal and brake. I moved the car out of the spot and began to help the man move his wheelchair up the ramp and into the driver’s area. While we talked small during the event, I will remember this event because when it was over, he shook my hand and said “Thanks David. It was nice to meet you, my name’s Ron,” or something to that extent. I knew immediately that it was Ron Kovic, of Born on the 4th of July fame.
Walking away I felt as if my heart had been lifted to a splendid plane. For the first time I truly understood what it is to truly care about peace and why it’s worth living for. I can’t really explain why I had this release, or more accurately how I felt because it was a simple, fleeting high of human goodness.
Walking away from the actor and the former soldier, I felt shocked. I was somewhat jesting about the situation, in part because the pictures weren’t all that horrific, and when I asked, I was almost certain that was the situation. To be relived that he was never really hurt, only to have his friend be the one who suffered an explosion to his arm came like a gut punch following a handshake.
Even if the news nets were to focus solely on the war 24 hours a day, and the newspapers ran only stories on the front page that concerned Iraq, it still seems like fiction. I have family 2000 miles away that I talk to maybe once a week. I know of zero people who are fighting in the wars now. It’s just a world away, and even the videos on CNN or Youtube seem staged, as much as I know newsfilm is a media which captures life, it’s a life I’ll never know. I will always watch footage of the towers collapsing rather than turn my head; I wasn’t there, and while I know it happened, it’s all too impossible to believe it actually happened, to see the events of 9/11 unfold like a most grand Hollywood action film elicits the same impulse as movies like The Day After Tomorrow, The Sum of All Fears, or Saving Private Ryan. It’s almost human nature to marvel at our ability to destroy things, whether it’s an ape using a bone to strike a zebra or a 4th of July Fireworks display, watching violence is our way of self-asserting our dominance. Fake or real, it’s always a display hard to tune out, and sometimes hard not to revel in, perhaps even enjoy.
These two guys going to Starbucks was my first contact with the images on TV. Ironically it wasn’t the film actor who got my attention, but the solider who probably is on film somewhere in the archives of the news footage. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that moment, even if I’ve already lost his face. For the first time since it started in 2003, I knew the war in Iraq was real.
There was Katrina and while it happened in the last days of 2004, the Tsunami disaster permeated the opening months of this year.
This year was no better.
The wars just keep coming, and they keep getting worse. Iraq is turning into the exact opposite of what I thought it could be. Instead of becoming a beacon of hope in the region, it’s now host to a civil war, where the formerly oppressed majority is getting 30 odd years of pent up aggression out on their old thumb, and while it’s not wrong to blame the US as the fall of the Hussein regime were to happen in 2010 organically instead of in the 2003 chemical destruction, the US certainly has blood on it’s hand.
My worst moment of the year is as follows. The hotel I work at has a Starbucks in the lobby, and it attracts a huge amount of outside business (from people who don’t stay or work or attend meetings in the hotel).
One day a silver jeep pulls up with two guys my age, mid to late 20’s, in it. Both of them were in great psychical shape. I moved their car over to the curb and noticed a picture of the driver on the console. It was his body face down with puncture wounds on it.
When they came out a few minutes later, I asked the driver about the picture. I asked “the picture? Was that an IED?”
He responded, “No, that’s me on CSI: Miami. I was a corpse.” His friend asked him what I had said.
The second guy walked over and showed me his arm, which looked like in belonged on Frankenstien’s monster; layers of grafted skin covered a hollowed out elbow and the arm itself looked 90% the size of his other. He said, “But this was.”
They both smiled and got into the car and walked away. One guy had his dream start to come true through a bloody injury and no doubt made a tidy sum. The other had his arm destroyed in the line of duty. Both my age, and the two of them friends.
Months earlier at the hotel a group called project for peace had their annual meeting where Martin Sheen, Oliver Stone and many others came not to decry the war, but to push for hope and human brotherhood.
I was called over to help get a car out of a Handicapped spot. Having been a valet and valet manager for the last 4 years, I have learned how to drive any car and have written the book for a few of the companies I have worked for. I get into the van and notice there is no driver’s seat, only a metal arm connected to the pedal and brake. I moved the car out of the spot and began to help the man move his wheelchair up the ramp and into the driver’s area. While we talked small during the event, I will remember this event because when it was over, he shook my hand and said “Thanks David. It was nice to meet you, my name’s Ron,” or something to that extent. I knew immediately that it was Ron Kovic, of Born on the 4th of July fame.
Walking away I felt as if my heart had been lifted to a splendid plane. For the first time I truly understood what it is to truly care about peace and why it’s worth living for. I can’t really explain why I had this release, or more accurately how I felt because it was a simple, fleeting high of human goodness.
Walking away from the actor and the former soldier, I felt shocked. I was somewhat jesting about the situation, in part because the pictures weren’t all that horrific, and when I asked, I was almost certain that was the situation. To be relived that he was never really hurt, only to have his friend be the one who suffered an explosion to his arm came like a gut punch following a handshake.
Even if the news nets were to focus solely on the war 24 hours a day, and the newspapers ran only stories on the front page that concerned Iraq, it still seems like fiction. I have family 2000 miles away that I talk to maybe once a week. I know of zero people who are fighting in the wars now. It’s just a world away, and even the videos on CNN or Youtube seem staged, as much as I know newsfilm is a media which captures life, it’s a life I’ll never know. I will always watch footage of the towers collapsing rather than turn my head; I wasn’t there, and while I know it happened, it’s all too impossible to believe it actually happened, to see the events of 9/11 unfold like a most grand Hollywood action film elicits the same impulse as movies like The Day After Tomorrow, The Sum of All Fears, or Saving Private Ryan. It’s almost human nature to marvel at our ability to destroy things, whether it’s an ape using a bone to strike a zebra or a 4th of July Fireworks display, watching violence is our way of self-asserting our dominance. Fake or real, it’s always a display hard to tune out, and sometimes hard not to revel in, perhaps even enjoy.
These two guys going to Starbucks was my first contact with the images on TV. Ironically it wasn’t the film actor who got my attention, but the solider who probably is on film somewhere in the archives of the news footage. I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that moment, even if I’ve already lost his face. For the first time since it started in 2003, I knew the war in Iraq was real.
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