I remember my old Taekwondo instructor David Judkins. The man was a 3rd degree black belt, owner of his own heating and cooling company, and the sensei to well over 70 students. Sensei J was the one who taught me meditation in the first place. He taught me that you didn’t have to be sitting in a lotus position to meditate, it was more of a place of mind, a mindset that you use when you really concentrate…I still use those techniques today whenever I feel my temper is about to go overboard. It calms me, and allows me to look at things in an almost logical sense, without the added pressure of the emotions… that is not to say that I don’t always use those emotions, oh no I do I was just taught how to use them in a positive manner. Sensei J’s one rule was that whatever happened in the outside world was to be left there, and if you couldn’t do that he was more than happy to help…usually by going against you in a sparring match…which you loss, every time, he was a third degree black belt after all… and yes I do know this from personal experience. But that is another story.
o’brien 1-50
Mostly the beginning of the book is about lieutenant cross and the “things they carried”. Appropriate name for the book at least so far. Now for the first thirty pages or so the author goes into detail about what the soldiers of his platoon carried with them on the long marches through the rice patties of Vietnam. But throughout the narration you get a sense of almost surrealism to the whole thing, as if the soldiers don’t even know what’s going on around them and it’s all a dream. That is till it came crashing down all around them with the death of one Ted Lavender…and the realization came to cross that the unhealthy obsession he had with that woman Martha may have cost one of his men’s life’s…boom down. There’s a scene in the writing where some soldier draws the unlucky 17 and has to crawl into the tunnel with just a flashlight, and the man does it with a smile…either the author is exaggerating or all the men are so far gone into their own daydreams that it doesn’t quite register with them that their friend maybe crawling to his death. To illustrate the point of all of them daydreaming the author explains the daydream of one of the soldiers acting as guard this is a good paragraph in which the soldier is taken by a giant bird and is okay with that. After the death of Lavender, Lieutenant Cross burns the pictures of Martha that he has been carrying and discards the pebble she sent to him. Cross vows to himself that he will act as an officer should and not as a homesick teenager any more. Afterwards is another description of the inventory that the soldiers carried on their backs. The author tries to stick in some humor on page 15, at least in a morbid sense. Toward the end of the section the perspective changes form that of a flashback to two old war buddy’s Lt. Cross and the author sitting around telling war stories and drinking gin. Lt. Cross never did get back with Martha but was given a larger photo of her, for memories he said. This lead into another flashback to the author’s life before the army and the time he got his draft card. He thought about going to Canada, to college, of all the things that he was going to miss out. And he did go to Canada… but what he did there I’ll save for next time
today is September 12
does this work
the power of story
The power of story is the ability to take a person to your own version of reality. It is accidentally the power of truth, but therein lies the problem doesn’t it. What is truth??? We learn from a very young age not to tell a lie, well we also remember our parents grounding us for some lie that we thought was not a lie at all. You see truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Which means that to me the best pizza in the world are from a little country store in northern Michigan called McGregor’s. But to you that would be a lie, you have different views, likes, and tastes than me. And I’m okay with your liking a different pizza than me. You see like I said before it’s all in perspective. Now the premise of this post is to talk about the power of story/narrative…and I think that I’ve pretty much nailed it, it’s the power to transport the reader to a version of the world that you see, hear and feel. To take them on a ride though the turbulent storms of your minds to the place where your truth is. You can take them to the place where all your thoughts, feelings, and experiences collide into a glorious mismatch of existence. You take your readers on that trip every time you tell a story about your hometown, you siblings, or even what just happened a few seconds ago. Now as your reading this I know it’s pretty jumbled but these are my ideas and my truth about truth that is my version of truth.
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