The Empirical Manifesto

Its been a long while since I've dreamed I was back in the military, but it happened last night. I had been recalled. We were all in uniform and it was very bright and vibrant - new recruits, active duty, and the occasional old timer like me who'd been recalled were all bustling around the dorms while drill instructors unloaded parking lots filled with buses. I was actually surprised to see they'd brought back Buck Sergeant; E4 NCO. Had a nice long conversation with a Captain about IT while I was there. But soon enough we were deployed and before I could get to my quarters, I was pulled out of formation for being out-of-uniform, and I couldn't even imagine why. Then it hit me - the recall had happened so quickly, I hadn't had an opportunity to shave. So there I am, running around in my old BDU's, with a full beard and moustache, entirely unkempt.

Intelligence is a relatively small field; "incestuous" as photogoot once so aptly put it (where all applicable definitions most certainly applied), and as there are only so few places one can be stationed, those of us who served, often ran into each other time and again. It was during one of these random assignments photogoot and I shared a townhouse in Hampton Roads, VA. On display in our foyer was my grandmother's cabinet, which held our collective military-brandished coffee mugs, unique beer and wine glasses from numerous continents, and our not insignificant German stein collection, the centerpiece of which was my father's old stein when he was stationed at Sembach Air Base outside Kaiserslaughtern in the early 60s, and photogoot's dad's old stein from the same era. That's just how we were.

Both our fathers are now deceased, but both men had their impact upon me. One of his dad's most prominent, was introducing me to fine cigars. In that same vein, I had recently pulled out my Duca Carlo pipe and photographed it, enjoying a bowl on the front porch as the weather started warming. This got me reminiscing, and when I called photogoot to ask about one of his father's Meerschaum pipes (he had two, both displayed with the steins), I didn't even get to finish my query as he had seen the picture of the Duca Carlo and jumped to the same conclusion. Of course he did.

I don't know that I deserve such an heirloom, but it was generously gifted to me nonetheless, and his father's memory lives on just a little longer, in me.

Dreamed I was attending a fast-paced Noom physical assessment/boot-camp for people in high-stress jobs. There was an impressive panel of celebrity instructors on the stage, but they were the ones acting as if they'd seen a famous idol - my senior manager! He was sitting in the first row taking notes in his leather-bound planner, being attended to by The Architect who always attended all the training events. Curiously, my senior manager was wearing a purple K-State polo in place of his usual Texas A & M. He must have been trying to go incognito, but it wasn't working.

Everyone was already seated and filling out paperwork as the first celebrity instructor was at the podium giving everyone one of those rapid-fire, nonsensical motivational screeches. I was late, trying to find a seat, and had no paperwork to fill out. In fact, I was still standing in the middle of the aisle when they announced a surprise celebrity instructor for the duration of our week-long physical conditioning course, straight from Lufkin, TX, CHUCK FREAKING NORRIS! As he pushes past me down the aisle with his entourage, my heart swelled because it was good to see my uncle Pat again. I was surprised more people didn't know my uncle Pat was Chuck Norris. He was wearing his signature olive drab uniform with matching cadet-style flat-top cap. He looked good, I'd missed him of late.

I noticed my old boss DRP and his gaggle of geese were also there. Good. Lots of ex-military and some active duty which according to their uniform specialty badges all looked like they were working in the intelligence field; this was absolutely my group of people and I felt right at home. I keep looking for a seat while the introductions are being made on stage and spy some hot chick I'd like to get to know better, so make my way to her row. Just as I sit down, however, a heavier-set chick wearing...county jail attire? sits in the empty seat between us. Ugh. No matter, I'm already so far behind on whatever it was I was supposed to have done ahead of time.

The first assessment exercise starts with a targeted stretch - sitting straight up in the (now pews), hands on knees, and feet flat on floor. Its not bad, not at all. In fact, its so comfortable I look down and notice while everyone else's feet are flat, mine are pointed out straight. I'm doing it wrong. I'm the only one doing it wrong and discover its because I'm laying down, not sitting in a pew. I decide that makes it an excellent opportunity for a nap, and take a little snooze.

When I awake everyone is mingling in the aisles on a short break. I try to catch up with old friends and co-workers. I overhear some of the celebrity instructors talking amongst themselves and ask if I can assist. They were less impressed I was related to Chuck Norris and more impressed I knew our senior manager. Apparently he was well-known for being strict on security and access, causing the celebrity instructors to revamp their intelligence protocols - he was something of a legend, and they were geeking out he was attending their boot-camp only they didn't know which attendee he was - no one has ever seen my senior manager, so I gladly pointed him out, still curious why he was wearing K-State garb.

With the break over, absolutely everyone else returned to their seats and began meditating. I couldn't find my seat, and I didn't know why we were supposed to meditate, or even how everyone knew it was meditation time. I sat down somewhere else when I get a call. I pull out my little flip phone - it was a loaner - my iPhone had broken so I turned in for a replacement. IT showed up with that replacement and retrieved the loaner flip phone as I was on it speaking to them still. They handed me two bibles, one written in Hebrew, the other an abridged King James Version. I looked at them in what could only possibly have been abject astonishment. What the actual fuck was I supposed to even do with these? As it turns out, employees at my level don't actually get iPhones (long story), we don't even get flip phones. We get an untranslated Tanakh, and an abridged KJV. I couldn't even. People were starting to furtively peek over at the commotion.

I never got with the hot chick, but the other girl turned out to be totally cool, her choice of garb notwithstanding.

After conference, Dorian and I went to live with my daughter's boyfriend's parents. The mom was working some long-game elaborate money-making scheme which may or may not have involved circumventing either current narcotics laws, current security and exchange commission laws, or both. I agreed to take over the cable bill to help with the short term pinch. We all agreed cable was a necessity. Except Dorian. She didn't think we needed cable. The dad had just purchased a classic BMW for a restore project - it was pretty sweet. So sweet in fact, he often stood outside, barefoot in the snow, beer in hand, just to admire it. I don't know why the mom and I were conspiring in this money-making scheme without him, but I wanted to admire the rusty yellow BMW also. I tried to get Dorian to conspire with the mom but she was still going on about the cable not being a necessity, no one knows why. I had the cable in my pocket - it was on a thumbdrive - everything was fine.

It was bright in my room when I awoke, and I was thrilled the dream's conclusion coincided with daylight, indicating another full night's sleep. Immediately thereafter I woke up in r/l and it was dark in the room, momentarily clouding my reality. I asked Alexa the time, and it was far earlier than I would have liked, but having already woke up twice, back-to-back, I assumed it a harbinger of my day and simply got out of bed, slinking to the coffee maker.

Think I'll cut back on the melatonin before bed.

Dreamed I was a pilot of experimental fighter jets. I had two, at my house; one-fifth sized F-16's which could take off and land on their own. Often, I would call them, like Alexa, into my wrist-communicator: "Jets, meet me outside." Often they would try to take the quickest path - out the front door, but the frame was too narrow to accommodate their wings, so they'd have to back their nose out, open the automatic roof to the house, vertical STOL up and over, and land adjacent one another on the front lawn so I could get into the cockpit. They were awfully fun to fly, but there always seemed to be some national emergency I had to take care of.

At one point I was in the house with my father, who was perplexingly Scott Bakula, and in an identical olive drab flight uniform when there were a pair of sonic booms over the house which startled us both. That's when Dad's wrist-communicator went off - it was headquarters wanting him to report to base immediately so he could ascertain the threat level in his alert fighter. I knew he didn't have that kind of time, so I offered one of my two fighters: "Jets, meet me outside." They tried to get through the front door again *facepalm*

Once on the lawn, the cockpits slid open like a colonial Viper Mark II, but with the jagged edges of an F-117 Nighthawk, so that was pretty cool. I leaned into the cockpit of the second plane and announced, "Follow the voice commands of...Doctor...Brahmen...en...son?" I couldn't remember Scott Bakula's character name or why I didn't just say Dad's name, but he seemed unconcerned and I was wondering if I had placed him in a Clint Eastwood's FIREFOX type situation (...think in Russian). I dunno, I'm pretty sure I woke up just as we were streaking through the sky at classified supersonic speeds toward the bogeys.

Dreamed Joe was a high-ranking officer in the Air Force, and needed to save his wife, which was going to require stealing some items from the General. We arrived on base, showed proper identification to enter, and proceeded to the hanger where the stuff we needed was being kept. In the supply office, Joe approached a diminutive man in uniform with large round spectacles for the paperwork required to remove items from supply, but once back in inventory placed something else - presumably far more valuable - in my briefcase.

Then it was time to complete this subterfuge by reporting to the General. I'd put on my old uniform, and while dated, was at least impressive with the number of ribbons I had for my low enlisted rank. Joe flirted appropriately with the General's aging secretary, as he always did, while she asked about his wife until the General strode in, where I snapped to attention as was befitting my rank. The General ordered me at ease, and while he was unaccustomed to Joe having an adjunct, didn't otherwise find the addition even remotely suspicions.

As Joe and the general chatted casually while I silently stood at ease behind Joe, an alarm sounded throughout the area indicating our exit. The General excused himself to discover the cause for alarm, and we quick-walked to Joe's blue 1990 Buick Century. He directed me to place the briefcase over three remote controls which were visible in the front seat to hide their presence while he quickly buckled into the passenger seat, imploring me to hurry, as the diminutive man from the supply office was approaching us rather determinedly. I quickly swung myself into the driver's seat but the diminutive man had reached the car and was fighting the door being closed. I finally won that battle, slamming the door shut, and speeding away though the base while all the gates started their auto-lockdown sequence.

A very calm Joe pointed at a specific gate we were to crash through, providing an exit from the base, and we were soon back in...Augusta, Kansas? Yep. We even drove by Joe's old house while he reminisced about the earlier days regretting absolutely nothing knowing he was going to spend the rest of his days behind bars due to the theft, but doing so at the credit of saving his wife.

And that's why I am up early.

Emporia, KS, the "Birthplace of Veterans Day" also had, according to an internet search of military aircraft static displays, a single Phantom F4-D. Since creating an actually awesome Facebook frame for us USAF veterans, and subsequently, one for those in relationships with us at the behest of GF, I'd had the idea to shoot her pin-up style against the backdrop of military aircraft. Coupled with GF's enthusiasm for fulfilling an (unbeknownst to me at the time) lifelong dream of pin-up modeling, we both set off on our separate paths to make this shoot a reality.

Though it was very late Friday night when she concluded her first makeup test, the results were so spectacular, I didn't want to waste the effort, so I shot her against the green screen and pasted her in photos I had taken of random static displays I'd found during our trip to Colorado earlier in the month. Alas, while fun, they were but facsimiles of what I'd hoped to accomplish. We'd planned to hit Emporia the next day, Sunday, and even arose early to accomplish this task, but the weather had not cooperated, being overcast and rainy the entirety of the day. Not waiting to again waste the effort of the second day of makeup, I followed her around the local shops in town grabbing shots where I could. This was cut short due to scheduled production maintenance which kept me up late again as well, which is why Sunday's trip to Emporia was such a madhouse.

We'd slept in. We'd had to in order to have the energy for the trip. But there were also kids to attend to, breakfast to make, and all the other things which go along with a Sunday morning ritual - most of which I performed solo while GF was working on her third and final day of victory rolls and pin-up makeup, which honestly went way over time, but only because we'd just changed over to Daylight Savings Time. It was going to get dark fast once we arrived at our destination, and with that, plummeting temperatures.

First the good news - the static display was completely open to the public - it was not behind an unsightly fence; we had unfettered access to the aircraft. Secondly, it was an actual USAF variant, which I wasn't expecting as the McConnell-Douglas F4 (Phantom) was initially produced as a Naval aircraft and eventually flown by the Marine Corps and Air Force as well. I will add here as well that seven years of Air Force Intelligence studying, among other things, Air Order of Battle and I had no idea the AF variant had a tailhook - so there's that - learning something new every day.

As for the bad, once I'd hauled my gear to the site from the vehicle, I'd found I'd once again left my memory card at home, attached to the computer. Not a problem, I learned early on to carry a hardpack with no fewer than 11 occupied slots. Only, somewhere in the confusion of the weekend, and the quickly approaching darkness, I'd left the hardpack at home. I had no memory cards. Resigning myself to losing light while backtracking into town in hopes of procuring some poorly performing generic card at one of the small-town country stores I remembered placing my backup camera in my tote just in case, which was sitting in the back of the car. I was saved!

I ended up not shooting with fill flash, utilizing the soft, ambient light filtered from the heavy cloud cover, but somehow disabled bracketing halfway through my shoot, and (beyond me) discovered I had my Sigma 50mm F/1.4 Art lens set to (gasp) f/5.6. WTAF? Once I correct that to f/1.4 everything magically fell into place and we had a successful (albeit short) shoot. Happy Veteran's Day!

Dreamed I was back in Germany. There I was, working in an underground bunker, and as it turned out, a handful of Latina women were trying to get with me. It was rather awkward for a number of reasons - one, they were competing against one another quite openly - some involving nudity and touching - in front of not only me, but those they considered competition, as well as their boyfriends, who were NOT taking it well - not that I blamed them! I was being actively pursued while trying to dodge the boyfriends who were of course blaming me, not them. I will admit I was tempted from time to time, but I had a two-fold problem in accepting the tender gestures of any one of them. First, they were all so lovely, I both didn't want to exclude any of them, and didn't want to harm my chances with the other girls by choosing the wrong one - I simply wanted them all. Secondly, I was most certainly already spoken for, and while I had NO IDEA where my GF was, I kept trying to find her, assuming she was in Germany with me. But this wasn't the weird part of my dream. No, the weird part was the old Sun hardware I was expected to work on once I escaped the Latinas. Hardware like the Sun SPARCStation-10 and the Enterprise 250. Funny enough, I dreamed the latter had externally accessible hot-swappable CPU modules. I think my old boss Jane was there in Germany too.

My daughter has been leaning toward this neo-Goth look for awhile now, and I was explaining to her I knew a little about the "OG" (Original Goth, I claimed) having had the movement as I understand it mutate from Punk and get its footing in the 80s. So I introduced her to Robert Smith, Siouxsie, Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting, and Carter Burwell's score to the first Twilight. Yeah, I totally threw that last one in.

Then I gave her my combat boots. Not my jungle ones, the original leather they gave us during basic training. She loves them. And I was surprised to find the toes still had a hint of a shine on them after all these years. Surprisingly, at 11-years old, they fit her. I have tiny feet.

Sanctions versus "Preemptive Nuclear Attack":

Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind. I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.

Kim Jong Il: Or else what?

Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you...and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.

ehowton @ The Freedom Building, Panmunjeom, South Korea

I wouldn't say that I "relive" the experience nor confuse it with reality, but I do have very strong associations between instant coffee and my time in Saudi Arabia. I keep expecting a certain amount of time to pass which will nullify this. To date, however, this has not been the case. Its as strong as it ever was.

I was in the unique position to be attached to Her Majesty's Royal Air Force - which came with many perks not seen in the US Armed Services, one of which was an allotment of tea and instant coffee - something I had not had in any quantity before or since, but somehow managed to survive on the 5-months I was in country. Given the stressful mission and circumstances, somehow an association was formed between the two.

I enjoy good, strong coffee and purchase fairly expensive coffee makers. Given my routine, I rarely require instant. On occasion, however, it is unavoidable. And I am always immediately transported back.

Its unnerving as hell, though I have grown accustomed to it.

In my 30s I used to tell people the best thing I ever did was join the Air Force.
And the best thing I ever did was leave the Air Force.

I only now just understood why that was true, and a better way to phrase it;

I left the Air Force when it was no longer mutually beneficial.

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 was a pre-teen my younger brother had set the bottom of my mattress on our bunk beds on fire with a lighter and it had smoldered until we discovered it as the source of the smoke and threw it in the front yard where it was completely consumed in two days time. As my brother refused to confess to the act, my parents had us interrogated by two arson investigators from the Fire Department. "I know you did it." One of them told me when we were alone. I stifled a laugh. "Do you think this is funny?" He nearly yelled. Yes. Yes I did. Because his conviction of my guilt wasn't based on any factual evidence, and because I knew I had in fact NOT done it, completely destroyed his credibility. By speaking to me in the way he had, he'd admitted he knew absolutely nothing. Of course my brother and I are different people. My brother didn't care what they thought or what they could prove. He was quite adept at both lying, and being entirely unconcerned with consequences. Their interrogation yielded nothing.


In junior high I'd somehow lost one of my textbooks and reported it as missing. Later, I was called into the vice-principal's office where my book was sitting, but not all was as it seemed. The vice-principle wanted to discipline me. You see, it had been found in a restricted hallway, and he'd concocted the theory that I had been carrying this heavy book on the way to lunch, decided that I no longer wished to be burdened by its weight, and therefore slid it down the restricted hallway where I could later retrieve it after the lunch hour, and when it wasn't there when I'd returned, reported it missing. It took me a full hour to convince him that his fabrication was nothing more than that. In the end, I got my book back, was not disciplined, and had lost all respect for the man.


I was pulled over Monday in Junction City for doing 65 in a 55. When the officer asked, "Why were you going so fast?" I replied that since I had my cruise control on at the time, I was going to go with assuming it was the posted speed limit. When he returned from his cruiser with my warning I had a question for him: "How is that you found yourself parked on the side of the road at the bottom of the rise right before the 65 miles-per-hour sign?" His reply? That he had clocked me at the top of the hill. "Yes," I continued, "But why were you sitting there?" He could only repeat to me that I had exceeded the speed limit, and to reiterate, explained that the speed limit was 55 for the trucks pulling out of the plant. I thanked him and left. Did he really misunderstand, or were his woefully inadequate answers just a feint? Where's the honor in that?


At Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, the back gate was always a bustle of activity in the mornings as everyone, civilian and military alike arrived for work. There were two lanes in - two guards checking identification - but the left lane was always stacked with more cars because that was where the primary glut of personnel were assigned - headquarters and the administrations buildings at the "left turn only" lane, whereas the right lane wen straight t to the airfield. Oftentimes, because many people are distracted with their coffee, and the radio, and rolling up their window, and putting their ID back in their purse and whatnot, I would simply speed up in the right-hand lane, turn on my blinker, move over, then turn left. My Master Sergeant friend Fred Bohne once said to me after I relayed this story, "Heh, I don't let people over, they should wait in line like everyone else." I looked at him incredulously and asked how he would stop me from coming over. He explained that he simply didn't slow down enough to allow the time needed for the other car to move over until the road forked. I said, "Fred, your truck can't out-accelerate my car. No matter what you do, I'll always be able to overtake you, and change lanes. There's nothing you can do to prevent that." We just stared at each other.


The first time I'd heard the word, "queue" I asked a Mounted Royal Army vet who'd served in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) what it meant. He was the driver of the shuttle bus between RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth in the months before I purchased my Jaguar and we had just passed a sign which read, "Queues May Form." When I asked what a queue was, his answer both confounded and fascinated me - he explained to me that a queue, was these things, which formed. Well, I was just beside myself! I wanted to know the circumstances surrounding their formation - what were they? How did they form? He went on to explain they formed most often around roundabouts. You cannot imagine my fascination with this...unknown... was it a lifeform? Did lifeforms form? Or was it sand? Did the wind cause these queues to form? What the hell was a queue? It was simply, that which formed. This is how I feel about most answers I get from people when I ask them questions.


When I was stationed in Virginia, O.J. Simpson was big news, and every dependent wife (the best source of gossip and information on an USAF base) told me unabashedly that they knew he was guilty! I was downright amazed, for though I wasn't exactly "following" the story, it was on every television, radio and newspaper at the time - I remember half a dozen books at the bookstore arguing the case, and my roommate photogoot would watch the trial with his dad on the phone. I was as eager as could be to know how they knew - they, above all the judges and lawyers and authors and news people - how did they know? Their answer 100% of the time? "I just know." It was myself this time who lost the respect of others as I very carefully explained how that was not a real answer.


I don't expect to have philosophical conversations with many people. My neighbors in Anna and I could touch on it when we were drinking, but I think they were mostly frightened of me in the light of day - I've seen many people use alcohol as an excuse to act out-of-character and I applaud them for their ingenuity, but being ashamed the next morning lessens my respect of their intoxicated fortitude. But I do enjoy the conversations. I prefer the sober ones, but I'll take what I can get. And usually everything is fine, even my shocking open-mindedness about damn near everything. The rub? Asking them why they feel the way they do. "That's just the way I feel," they say with conviction, yet without any quantification whatsoever.


The first Terminator had it right. If you want to blend in, and not stick your neck out or get noticed - if you want to live just enough to be accepted but not questioned - if you simply want to go about your business without the hassle of friends or family or inquiry, all you really have to do is memorize the following seven possible responses:





Its just that simple. You, and everyone else.

Bravo.

A fastidious packer, I. My car, a bento box filled with bento boxes. Smaller versions of themselves in infinite regress, like Russian nesting dolls. Babooshka. Kate Bush. One 8GB iPod Touch (movies & games), one 16GB iPod (music), one 3G Blackberry Bold 9700 (connectivity). Watched the original Fun with Dick and Jane last night. Funny thing to put on television during a recession, no? I was familiar with the opera they used in the unemployment bit of course. Bizet's "Carmen." I have a favorite recording of it. Where though? Not found. 404. Carmen Jones - did for Carmen what The Wiz did for The Wizard of Oz. As a child, seeing The Wiz on the big screen was...confusing.



Electric shaver: charging. Above mentioned devices: syncing. Mobile computing in my hand. Found CD. Wrong label - EMI Classics. Gheorghiu Alagna with the Orchestre National Du Capitole de Toulouse. Michel Plasson conducting. But what I really want, is Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker. I am ready. I am a racecar. Maybe stop for some brekky along the way. West bound and down. More or less. Mostly down. Interstate 35 for 5 hours. Like going to Kansas, but the other direction. Texas. Big state. Open road once I bust outta Big D. Like going through the planet's core.



Photographs are pensieves - reservoirs of memory. Bookmarks. I've just traveled a lifetime and back, from the contents of a box. Got lost a few times along the way. Funny thing, time - so many constructs in which the theory doesn't fit no matter how hard we want it to. I have no idea how much time passed, if any, while I was away. And ghosts reside there too. Caution is always prudent. Photographs can inadvertently unlock memories we've hidden away. Even those which should remain forgotten.



Summer of 1990. Two years out of High School and my best friend and I enlist in the Air Force. He's three months behind me going in, and I encourage him to join Intelligence so we could have assignments together. Outside of Tech School though, we never did. I left after 7 years; His retirement ceremony as an E8/Senior Master Sergeant is Friday in San Antonio.

I'll be there.

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO


I was serving in the United Kingdom when Clinton's historic Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy was enacted, allowing, for the first time, a lift on the ban of homosexuals to serve in the Armed Forces. This was met, as you may be able to imagine, with derision and mockery from within the ranks, but it paled in comparison to the editorial cartoons reprinted in the Stars and Stripes overseas newspaper, the only forum we had in which to gauge U.S. reaction.

I was home on leave later the next year and had mentioned to my gay friends that I never understood why gays were so hell-bent on getting in the military what with it being forbidden and all. I asked them if it was a sort of rite-of-passage or a thrill to do something they weren't allowed to. One of them asked me if I figured out the answer. I had not and I'm ashamed to admit that once he told me, it still took me many years to understand it: They wanted to serve.

My Air Force sister-in-arms kat_rowe recently asked for signatures repealing the law on its anniversary, and I must admit, I'd not thought much about it. Fortunately, the link she posted provided a wealth of information for me to consider my options, and these are my findings.

• And yet issues with implementation – such as a vague and widely varied interpretation on what qualifies as a gay or lesbian ‘act’ – still exist.¹


• No one has to define for me what is, or is not, a homosexual act. There are many things I instinctively understand and this is one of them. Furthermore, the US Code is *crystal clear* to me: "any bodily contact, actively undertaken or passively permitted, between members of the same sex for the purpose of satisfying sexual desires;"²


• Sixty-seven percent of civilians support allowing gays to serve openly³


• That's fantastic! However, those civilians are not currently serving. I read your blogs - your biggest complaint on a bad day is what so-and-so said about you or the traffic. People living in prison have more rights and freedoms than I experienced while in Saudi Arabia. Frankly, your vote means nothing to me.


• Nearly three in four troops (73 percent) say they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.⁴


• And here's always the way it is. "Nearly" means its not, and is used only when trying to inflate something, and "comfortable" isn't exactly a rousing recommendation. To me, not seeing any difference whatsoever is key to its success. Obviously we're not there yet.


• More than 20 of the 26 NATO nations, including Great Britain, Australia, Canada and Israel, already allow open service by gays and lesbians, and none of the countries reports morale or recruitment problems.⁵


• How many of those services are manned by conscripts? You want to impress me with facts, compare our career infantrymen with theirs.

Sadly, these points I disagree with were gleaned from the anti-DADT website and the links they provided. At least they were thorough. Also linked is the 2009 winner of the Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition, "The Efficacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”" which very succinctly outlines how complex this law is from several different legal viewpoints, but does challenge the stated "unit cohesion" verbiage of the law as being without scientific evidence⁶, but unfortunately does not back up his claim by providing scientific evidence to the contrary.

One last aspect I would like to touch on is religious beliefs. This one is hard even for me, because I was taught that homosexuality was a sin. Its difficult to unlearn a lifetime of lessons.

I have two books at my bedside, Lieutenant: the Marine Corps Code of Conduct and the King James Bible. The only proper authorities I am aware of are my commanding officer, Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, and the Lord our God.

~ Lt. Kendrick, "A Few Good Men"

The statement that "societal views have grown far more accommodating in the last 16 years..."⁷ I realized applied to me. I am part of that dynamic and undulating society and have learned and experienced much in that time. I've also learned that your sacred religious doctrine is nothing more than a societal tool itself, evolving as we do. It therefore no longer holds power over me.





If I was sitting on the fence throughout all of this, there was one notation from an Office of the Secretary of Defense memorandum which was quoted in Attitudes of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans toward Gay and Lesbian Service Members which I kept coming back to:

The Department of Defense has long held that, as a general rule, homosexuality is incompatible with military service because it interferes with the factors critical to combat effectiveness, including unit morale, unit cohesion, and individual privacy. Nevertheless, the Department of Defense also recognizes that individuals with a homosexual orientation have served with distinction in the armed services of the United States.⁸

Yes, they have. And they're no different from me.

[Poll #1493282]

Repeal DADT: http://www.hrc.org/sites/voicesofhonor/index.asp^*

---

<sup>1 - http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2009/11/announcing-the-voices-of-honor-campaign ¶ 3.
2 - US Code Title 10, Subtitle A, Part II, Chapter 37 §654, ¶ F, Subcategory 3A.
3 - http://www.hrc.org/sites/voicesofhonor/dadt.asp ¶ 9.
4 - Ibid ¶ 10.
5 - Ibid ¶ 11.
6 - http://wilddamntexan.com/kids/EfficacyofDADT.pdf Page 94, ¶ 1.
7 - Ibid Page 89, ¶ 3.
8 - http://www.palmcenter.org/files/active/0/randstudy.pdf Page 2, ¶4.

*Thanks to kat_rowe</sup>

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.

When I was stationed at the 480th Intelligence Group attached to the 36th Tactical Intelligence Squadron at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia there was a young airman who showed up from Tech School who was assigned to our sister squadron, the 27th. Though I rarely interacted with him directly, you cannot be in a tactical environment holed away from the rest of the base because of your mission without knowing everything about everyone else around you. photogoot once quipped about us Imagery Analysts that we were ...the most incestuous, adulterous, tight-knit group... he'd ever run across. That being said, though he and I rarely talked, we were still a team. He preceded me to US Central Command during the Mogadishu conflict, but I lost contact with nearly everyone at Langley when I left for Korea.

I found today that that young man had been a hostage in Columbia since February 2003, and was rescued six days ago during a Colombian military rescue operation.





I'm not going to complain today. About anything.

A couple of weekends ago I met a couple of USAF Academy grads. Both were still in Active Duty. One was an F-16 pilot trainer who had turned down flying F-22's because his Active Duty wife was pregnant with their first child. One of the first things he asked me upon finding I had separated was, "Do you miss it?"

"It permeates my subconscious." I told him.

I dream about it. Often. Sometime more often than others. And I haven't had one of those dreams for a very long time.

Perhaps it was the glimpse of North Korea during the video-preview execution of the fatal "Iron Lotus" maneuver in Blades of Glory I stayed up late to watch with my wife. Perhaps it was a guy trying to sell me military duffel bags at a garage sale yesterday. Perhaps it was the gentleman Friday who, after it had somehow come up, asked me, "What were you doing in Korea?" I responded, "Combating communism."
"You don't look old enough." He said.
"I wasn't in the war!" I exclaimed.

I don't know. What I do know, is that I had one of my famous dreams - the ones where even though I may awake in the night (as I did twice last night) the moment I fall back asleep, I pick right back up where I was in the dream. Seamless.

I was in Korea again. For my third tour. And three tours of Korea gets old...

Unlike when I was 25 and had volunteered for Korea to complete my worldwide tour, this time I was 38. And tired of moving and traveling. I was back at the dormitory - everyone there was much younger than I was, and all I wanted to do was sleep. As has been a recent recurrence, I was busy unpacking my 1968 Dodge Coronet 440 which was loaded from top-to-bottom, left-to-right, front-to-back with my kit. I made many trips back and forth. Those of you familiar with my dreams will recognize instantly that the dormitory was maze-like, taking hours to traverse the inner hallways, dead-ends, stairs and in the case of last night, an elevator which actually didn't stop at the floor you needed to be on. And it moved fast. I threw my bag and leapt up to the landing as it flew past my floor. As I hang there struggling, hoping I make it up before the elevator comes screaming back up, I'm thinking, "I'm too old for this." I finally make it to my room, and discover that drax0r is my roommate. That's cool. There was only one bed, so he left that for me (probably because I'm 8 years older than he is) and set up his cot for himself. Very sweet of him. The other door in the room leads to a common room, where a group of people are lounging around watching television loudly, and I can't get the door to close properly. This also, is no surprise.

Later, a group of us (including drax0r) are walking around East Dallas where I grew up (except its Korea) taking in the shops and activities. Korea is where I started chewing, and I haven't chewed in three weeks or so and I'm thinking it sure would be easy to start again now that I was here - but what would I tell the wife? I mean, she'd understand, but aren't I stronger than that now? I'm thinking I'll pick up a bunch of stuff that I'd like since Korea is fantastic for shopping. I chose a ballcap which read "Korea -07" and had my name embroidered on it, but it looked more like a NASCAR hat than the one I currently have. This one had red and orange flames on a black background. Mine felt...old. Outdated. Then I thought I'd get one with each of my tour dates on them. I think that's when I realized that I didn't actually already serve two tours. I knew that I'd really only been there once, and that it must've been a previous dream in which was so lifelike and real I thought it was my second tour. Still and all - this one felt like three. I was exhausted.

We get back to the dorm and drax0r helps me unload the rest of my car. There was a girl we'd met online that came over to go out with us - it was the first time we'd met her in r/l and how much fun is that? Of course it seemed like we already knew each other.

At that point, and in a surprising twist, we were all in Saudi Arabia. Now I think I know how this happened (the pictures I recently took while wearing my keffiyeh notwithstanding). My son spent twenty minutes on the phone last night with his best friend in Saint Louis, Sami - the youngest son of our Palestinian neighbors, and yes, they were there. We're at a a gigantic square structure (which honestly resembled their malls) and there were men and women sitting outside under umbrellaed tables dining and drinking. As we wait to get in, a 1967 Pontiac Tempest GTO pulled in. I couldn't believe it. Someone said, "Look, a '67 GTO!" As I studied it, I realized it was a 1965 Buick Riviera. But as I said this, we noticed it was actually a low-slung watercraft, which had just pulled up to the docks. It was the arrival of a Saud princess. We all looked down and averted our eyes as she disembarked, but I snuck a peek anyway, and she was gorgeous! Very royal. They party continued on, and we were next. We were there to eat Pizza Hut (isn't globalization a scary thing?) but we'd lost Sami! So...We all split-up trying to find him. drax0r and I kept running into each other, but couldn't find Sami anywhere in the giant complex. Deciding to regroup outside, I find Sami outside, sitting at one of the outdoor tables, with a Pizza Hut to-go box, eating. I helped myself to a slice.