The Empirical Manifesto

I dreamed I reenlisted. It was all at once unbelievable yet wholly satisfying. I was the only one smiling on the buys full of recruits as we made our way to Goodfellow Air Force Base. I was downright giddy. I was ready for this. This change, this return to the familiar. I was surprised that I was willing to do it again to be sure, but it felt like it would be a marvelously fulfilling endeavor.

I was sitting on the porch swing with my father, entirely content, when I made the decision.

We arrived late at night, the barracks were like a mostly deserted airport terminal - desks with brochures, vending machines, soldiers and airman lounging around in fatigues. I made my way to a lady behind a desk marked, "INFORMATION" and cheerfully asked where I was supposed to go next. She was very discouraging and rude so I asked her why. She explained that while all this was obviously new to me and I was excited, she did the same thing day in and day out and we all just looked alike to her.

Undaunted I found my room at the end of a lime-green painted cinderblock hallway - I was at the end on the left - and met two of my three roommates for the night; we'd be separated into our flights once in-processing was concluded tomorrow morning. I wasn't at all sleepy though I found out we were to get up and ready for formation at 0445 despite the bus not arriving until well after midnight, so I wandered the halls, taking it all in. The excitement, the challenges, the rewards.

Then I started freaking out.

I didn't have my duffle bag. I didn't have my uniform. I remember moving my wife and baby son into my folks house, but I didn't remember telling them I was going to enlist. I decided to call her, but was so excited about heading out I'd forgotten to pack my cell phone. That was really unusual. Then I remembered where I got my cell phone - my employer! I'D FORGOTTEN TO TELL MY EMPLOYER I WAS ENLISTING AGAIN!

I was going to lose my paycheck and start making...$800 a month again. A sinking feeling hit me as I desperately tried to find a bank of AT&T overseas phones to call my wife. My swearing-in ceremony was in just a few hours and was completely panicked about how to proceed. At least I had my wallet. I did run into Jim Worley, my old neighbor and coworker, who was a Master Sergeant, dressed in blues, doing early-morning administrative work there.

I went outside and was in Korea again.

I was standing on the same corner I traverse in all my dreams of Korea, and was aware this might not be real, rather a dream. The word, "surreal" came to mind and I marveled at the knowledge that I was where I was and how I got here and how it felt being here knowing I was only dreaming. I was going to take a picture for my livejournal friends with my fisheye lens so I could show them once and for all everything I see and feel when I discuss being in Korea. Not the real Korea perhaps, but the subconscious facsimile as I create it. It was overwhelming and magnificent.

And it was real. A visceral experience I alone was able to relish. Not just a place, but a construct. Like opening my mind to fantastic destinations without having to travel.

When I signed my name on the dotted line to sacrifice life and limb in servitude to my country I weighed 204 pounds and was 20-years old. They gave my start-date as 30-days out and told me to lose 4 pounds before I got to Basic Training.

30-days of racquetball, Nautilus equipment, ALL-U-CAN-EAT salad bars, and doing pull-ups on the tree outside our house, I arrived in San Antonio, Texas a lean, fit 185-pound monster who breezed through the rigors of Basic Training.

I left the Air Force in 1997, got a job in IT, and have been sitting ever since.

I don't remember when I gave up snuff this last time, or why, but it was a couple of months before Christmas. I remember this because when I became ill with strep throat and went to see the doctor, I weighed in at a whopping 270 pounds. That's about 20-lbs more than I usually carry, and I went into a blind panic wondering why the hell I was so fat.

I decided it was the cessation of tobacco, as that was the only thing which had changed.

I paired up with nicetwins at work on her "ideal" diet:

1. NOT TOO COMPLICATED


2. NO WEIRD/EXPENSIVE/FANCY FOOD


3. EASY AND CONVENIENT


4. SIMPLE RULES (AND FEW OF THEM TO FOLLOW)


5. SIMPLE TO STICK WITH FOR LIFE

And have now lost that 20-lbs over the last two months. Sadly, that means I'm down to 'Lardy Bastard' because 250 isn't exactly 'thin' or healthy.

For reasons too complicated to get into here, I'm now learning Taekwondo and practicing three times a week. Let me tell you - its like Basic Training all over again.

Except this time around I'm 40.

And not 185.

And out of shape.

This may kill me.

The way I remember Korea in my dreams often differs from its reality, yet its recurring in its difference. Why is that? Why are these differences always there?

I had just arrived on base - at my dorm. A massive, multi-level structure. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of us. It was akin to a collegiate registration day. My bags were in my hands and we were filing through a single narrrow door. I was surprised to find a right-hand-drive military Jeep greeting us as we entered the small anteroom in, but then noticed a flight of Royal Air Force senior NCO's and young officers. They were making a handful of USAF personnel do push-ups, a long-lost practice in the States.

I realized that these few Airmen were assigned to the RAF flight. Two green-behind-the-ears butterbar lieutenants were holding their position on the floor, and two of the younger Airman had been relieved and told to sit. I leaned over and whispered to them, one an attractive blond girl who seemed completely overwhelmed, the other a Puerto Rican male with a Day One haircut who seemed equally surprised. I told them that I'd worked with the RAF before, and it was a blast, but they had to remember two things. Always be polite, and always be polite - that the RAF was a lot of fun, but they sure enjoyed their protocol. The Puerto Rican asked when I served, and I replied, "Seven years, 1990 through 1997."

The two lieutenants were relived, and wore matching white bathrobes over their Marine Blue Dress Class-C's. They joined the noisy throng trying to get through the narrow doors into the inner building and I caught up with them, wanting to tell them the same thing I told the others. An older woman, perhaps from my childhood church was several people behind us, and she was trying to get my attention - trying to tell me something, but I pretended I didn't see her.

I had my arm around one of the lieutenants shoulder, the other had been fast-walking and was out of auditory range. We made it to the main hallway - long, and ill lit, lined with inner facing doors - and realized I was back. Cue heavy sigh.

Someone running down the hall approached me in alarm - one of my present day coworkers had been found dead outside! "Where?" I asked, suddenly in a panic. I was told out front, and as I ran down four-levels of stairwells I knew it was impossible, that they had the wrong person because I had *just* been talking with her.

I burst out the front door, surprised to see snow on the ground. Standing completely naked in an icy pond was a girl, pointing at the seemingly lifeless body of another girl. I jumped into the pond and cradled the cold body of a girl wearing nothing but a bikini. I saw the stab wound, turned the body over and...it wasn't her! It was someone else. The naked girl was hysterical, screaming something about the medics being on their way, so I started rubbing the cold out of the bikini-clad girl who ultimately regained her consciousness, thanked me, and I started flirting with her.

The medics showed, along with everyone else in the building. We were still in the freezing pond and the girl's boyfriend was amongst those who arrived. It was Claude (Alec Mapa) from You Don't Mess with the Zohan. He handed me a baby and replaced me by the stabbed girl's side. The baby belonged to my real-life friend and ex-Air Force comrade who was stationed in Korea several years before me, but I knew his room would be on 3rd floor on the left, as it was in Germany where we met.

The elevator was barely accessible, being around a narrow corner in the far end of the building, and I had to slide a thin, cheaply gilded access panel to call it. Two large black people exited the elevator, dressed to the nines in prom wear. I moved out of the way best I could, but it was difficult to get out of the large couple's way while holding a baby in the narrow hallway. When I finally entered the small elevator, I was surprised to find an old leather desk chair at a small paper covered desk on which a an aging workstation was running. The buttons for the floor were once again through a side-sliding access panel, this one on the side of the car, and I had just opened it - reading the names of the different levels - each indicated through a different era of marking (white text on red labeltape, black permanent marker on cellophane tape) when the car began to move up on its own. It had been called from a higher floor.

The aircraft in my avatar is the Lockheed U2 which made two very important insertions into my life during my Air Force career, the last of which was in Korea in 1996 - I was the imagery analyst mission supervisor, trudging up a slippery mud hill in full Mission Oriented Protective Posturing (MOPP) gear designed against nuclear, chemical, and biological attack at three in the morning with only a red-tinted 90-degree flashlight strapped to my Load-Bearing Equipment (LBE) and dodging concertina wire embarkments during full exercises.

Good times.

But it was my first encounter with this gawkish wonder of flight which has made its most lasting impression on me. And while I'm sure I've related this story several times throughout my blog (perhaps not as its own post), it was only the other night that I was reminded of it once again. You see, a storm ripped through Anna overnight. Act of God level thunder, crashing all around the house, howling wind the likes we haven't seen around these parts in ages. The emergency sirens blared at a such tremendous volume, that for the first time in recent history every neighborhood in the city heard it. Roused the entire city from their deep slumber.

Of course I didn't find out about it until the next morning. There was chatter on the forum, my neighbor told me all about the storm the next morning as we were standing with our children waiting for the school bus, and it was on the news.

I slept through the entire thing.

It used to amaze my wife that when the children would hiccup in their cribs she'd hear it and bolt upright in bed, but laying a screaming baby between us in the dead of night would never rouse me.


6 Det "Black Cats", Osan AB, Korea (That patch is on my jacket.)

You see, when I was stationed in England, I worked 12-hour overnight shifts, sleeping during the day. My dorm faced the flightline. Did you know the U2 could perform a vertical takeoff? Neither did I! These planes were so difficult to land, that the pilots practiced ceaselessly. And believe me, when you only have a few hours sleep before another 12-hour overnight shift and your dorm faces the flightline, you tend to notice these things.

Designed for standoff tactical reconnaissance in Europe, the TR-1A was structurally identical to the U-2R. The 17th Reconnaissance Wing, Royal Air Force Station Alconbury, England used operational TR-1As from 1983 until 1991.

Because landing was so cumbersome - requiring speeding chase cars to run down the runway talking the pilot down, and because the long wingtips landed on skids, which were folded up into the wings to be replaced by long, thin 'pogo' sticks with wheels on the end which detached once the plane was airborne, the pilots performed a 'touch & go' - that is, wheels down on the runway, simulate landing, then - full throttle, straight up!

Rinse, wash, repeat.

It looks like an unassuming enough aircraft. But full throttle on that Pratt & Whitney J75 engine, especially under the strain of what is basically a glider, being forced vertical, sounded like a rocket being launched outside my bedroom door, at 20-minute intervals, eight times a day, for two full years.

Yeah, I got used to it. I had to.

And these days? Nothing rouses me from my sleep.

I dreamed that I ran into an old friend from my childhood (who really wasn't an old friend from my childhood except for the purposes of this dream - I have no idea who it was in r/l, unlike most of my other dreams) who used to make things, specifically amps and speakers. As we're reminiscing, I show him some plans I had drawn up for one long ago which never materialized. He gets serious about these plans and begins putting it together right in front of me. But he needs some specific architectural drawings, so we go visit some nuns at this research facility, but their plans are locked down pretty tight, which requires they badge me. I end up following this other guy around who's in a wheelchair and he makes his way in and out of document rooms, checking out manuscripts and drawings. It's all feeling very Stargate (the movie) what with the scrolls and trying to decipher symbols and running around this facility. The nuns are all a titter and most of them are now naked. How odd - at first they were concerned with my whereabouts because I was wearing a visitor badge, and now they seem self-absorbed in their quest.

I run into the Base Exchange (I almost always end up at the Base Exchange in my dreams, I have no idea why) where I see my mother coming in from the parking lot through the windows (its dark outside) but I realize the nuns took my all my clothes. Rather than be ashamed at my nakedness, I grab a purple Indian blanket and wrap it around my shoulders - unfortunately it was too short to cover anything, but that was okay since an expensive pair of shoes caught eye on sale, I'm ogling those. I thought they were marked down from $139.99 to $3.99 (a hell of a deal) - but a second look shows they were only marked down to $19.99, and that wasn't such a good price (for whatever reason). They were very narrow cycling shoes, but made of out of various colored space-age translucent rubber, and hadn't been fitted with pedal clips yet, allowing them to be used as a walking shoe. Somehow I'm clothed again, and walking down the Macintosh isle. The isle is filled with what looks like gift cards. One of the gift cards show the 'PC' guy from the "Mac & PC" commercials, only there is actually video embedded in this gift card, the entire face of the gift card is in fact, a moving video. It's a pretty humorous card, but since its suddenly 1984 I wonder how they know who the 'PC' guy is since the commercial is a fairly recent development. At the automated checkout, I start pushing buttons to order a Burger King Whopper, and one of the options is to pay by Base Exchange Macintosh Account. I no longer live on base, so I slink away at this point, forgo my burger and something else catches my eye. But jaceman comes up to the counter to pay for his wares (and by this time the checkout is staffed) and as Jace gives his items to the man to scan, he's given a chit for his Whopper. "Cool, I get a free Whopper!" Jace tells his pals, he thinks its free, but because I was there before him and failed to cancel it out, he accidentally paid for it and does not know it. I consider telling him this, but its just too damn funny to see him brag about his free Whopper, so I remain quiet.

I'm now at USSTRATCOM. Generally I dream I'm outside the inner sanctum of United States Strategic Command because I no longer have my clearance, but today I'm inside. All my old friends are there, and it's dark, and everyone is busy. USSTRATCOM was my worst two-year stretch in the military, and the reason I left the service. I always dream about USSSTRATCOM with great apprehension. The hum of light-tables and video displays is visible from the low, dark cubes. I see Brinkmeyer's cube, and across from it, Joel Winjen, USMC has an office. How ironic, I think (another story altogether). I'm allowed free-reign despite my visitor badge (something which in real life would never happen) and get bored waiting on the nuns & the guy in the wheelchair to finish the discovery phase of their quest. I have to urinate. I start around the maze-like complex looking for a restroom (always the maze & restroom!) All the ones I find are either filthy, occupied, or otherwise unobtainable. I usually go in one door down a hallway, and come out another, adding to my confusion about where I am at any given time, though I do continue to run into the two nuns and the guy in the wheelchair. They think I'm still helping them, and I do actually pick up and carry two old 16mm portable projector screens and carry them back to the second house I lived in Rhome, TX when I was in High School. The guy in the wheelchair is now driving around the outside of my house in this very small car which gives one the impression that his entire body is under the surface of the earth, and only his head and hands are visible in this tiny vehicle which appeared to be more like a miniature golf cart.

I'm back at STRATCOM and still looking for a bathroom. I go a little further out and see a couple of people in uniform chatting outside a German bistro-style food stand which is closed. One of the men is a marine in the new camouflaged utilities and it looks like he's drinking Soju. I wonder if he just returned from Korea. Nah, it's probably German apfel-wine. I go a little further and there's a large black lady interviewing with someone in the hall which opens to the theater. No bathrooms! I'm at these tall, tall, doors, three of them, which are the exits to the wing. I turn back around and there are door everywhere, but none of them marked restroom. I pass the theater, I pass the black lady having the interview, and just as I'm approaching the German bistro-style stand, it dawns on me that there should be a restroom in the eating area! I turn to find it, and the Marine stands to go as well, as does the man he's been talking to. Great - this always happens in my dreams - company at the last minute! There is indeed a restroom there, and there are many stalls. Because the marine is right behind me (in fact, holding the door open behind me, waiting for me to enter) I take the first, middle stall, just as you enter the door. The marine takes the stall to my right, and the other gentleman takes the door to my left. The toilets are filthy, as if some drunk has thrown up in them. I notice under the partition that the marines toilet is in the same condition, and he's on his knees vigorously cleaning it with toilet paper. I begin to clean my bowl as well. I ask the marine, "So is that soju you're drinking?" Before he can answer, the guy in the left stall says, "Ahhh.... you like sojo? You love this soju! Here - you try!" I look under the left stall, and the marine looks under the stall and the guy he was talking to outside (who is now to my left) is a ROKAF Korean Air Force officer in his blues. He hands me his bottle of soju - "Very good, top of the line." he says to me. He makes a 'drinking a shot' motion and says, "You say, 'Ho Jo'" when you drink. Korean custom." He repeats the gesture and the saying. "Means, "Holy Smoke"" I uncap the soju and try to mimic his movements and words. The stuff comes out like honey. I try to snap the cap back on, but cannot, more soju-honey oozes from the opening. I wipe it off the bottle with my hand and eat it. Every time I try to close the bottle, it oozes more, and I repeat the process. Finally, I get the lid back on and try to tell him, "I couldn't get it closed." Only thing is, I slur my words - badly. I try to tell him, "Damn, this is some strong shit." since I've already begun slurring, but that too, comes out slurred. He's not laughing, or smiling now, and he's holding a sign. I have to tilt my head to read it, and it's scrawled in red ink on a yellow legal pad. It says, "My sin is enjoying watching you die from a heart-attack." It wasn't soju - it was laced honey! I begin to panic, my heart races, I turn to the marine who's' still kneeling in the stall watching all this play out from under the partitions, only he can't see the legal pad to read it, and I can no longer talk. My heart is racing and my body is tingling - I'm going to die and can't do anything about it. I wake up with my heart still racing and my body still tingling from the rush of dream-inducing adrenaline.