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 Sunday, November 20, 2022

In bed @ 9, lay awake for awhile, woke up at 2;30, out of bed by 2:50, 4 pss, no vino.  12 degrees out, wind chill 1 below zero.  Geri let Lilly out at 3, I let her in about 4 minutes later.

Packaging Neurosis

Geri told me long ago that I am eccentric.  I had to agree, not least in the sense that everyone is eccentric, off-center, precisely because of his or her uniqueness, 'singularity.'  I suspect my hobbies of drawing and painting and reading poetry are not terribly common among men.  My political leanings are decidedly left-of-center.  A lot of eccentricities to acknowledge.  But Geri was kind enough not to tell me that I am neurotic, but I am that too.  Some of it I attribute to growing up in a home beset with PTSD, first with my father, then my mother and both of them.  Some of it I attribute to having been "raised in the bosom of the [Irish Catholic] Church."  I doubt that I've ever had a healthy relationship with sexuality because of it, 'temple of the Holy Ghost,' impure thoughts and deeds, proximate occasion of sin, and all that.  You can take the boy out of the Church but you'll never take the Church out of the boy.  Pernicious influences take their toll.

My latest neurosis is with packaging and containers.  I'm resistant to discarding the 'stuff' that purchased 'stuff' comes in.  Maybe it started when I minded how much cardboard moving/storage boxes cost at U-Haul.  Now when I received something from Amazon or another supplier of 'stuff,' I notice what a nice box it came in and am loathe to just toss it.  My favorite booze is Costco's Kirkland Cognac, which comes in a very heavy bottle.  I can't get myself to just trash them when I finish a bottle.  Alone or filled with water they make great weights to flatten things that need flattening, but how many thing need flattening and with how many bottles.  Neurotic!  I suppose part of this compulsive hoarding of containers started with needing jars to use when engaged in painting, jars for water for gouache or acrylics, jars for turpentine or mineral spirits for oils, jars to hold paint brushes, palette knives, Sharpies,  or other terribly important stuff,  "Ooh, that's a great jar, Geri, please don't throw it away."  Most recently it came to me that plastic lids on containers can serve as little disposable palettes. Thus it was that I spent a portion of this afternoon cutting apart a collection of 'great boxes' I had hoarded next to the doorway to the garage, throwing away the unusable pieces, but saving nice clean flat surfaces that I can use to paint on instead of canvases.  Now I have a stack of nice flat cardboard downstairs waiting for inspiration to hit me.💥😎😳

I had no sooner finished typing the last paragraph than an Amazon delivery guy brought Geri's squirrel baffle to the back door notably in a lovely, unsoiled, uncrushed, cardboard box.  O frabjous day . . .

Burns & Novik, Vietnam War, Con Thien

John Musgrave & Roger Harris, U.S. Marines at Con Thien.  Musgrave:  "Time at Con Thien was time in the barrel.   We were the fish, they had the shotguns they stuck in the barrel and blasted away.  And they were going to hit something every shot because Con Thien was such a small area and they pounded it with that artillery from North Vietnam.  They couldn't miss.  I sat in water, I slept in water, and I ate in water, because our holes were full.  I mean a flooded foxhole can drown a wounded man."  People get blown to bits, literally blown to bits."  Harris: "A lot of mud, blood, and artillery.  Like almost every hour there would be a barrage.  People get blown to bits, literally blown to bits.  You find a boot with a leg in it, and so is the leg white or black?  Like, who was the white Marine who was here?  Who was the black?  So you try to remember and you tag it and you put that in the green bag.  And that's what goes back as Marine lance corporal so and so.  And so, but sometimes you're not even sure because the body has literally been blown to bits, and the only thing that's left is a foot or a piece of an arm."

I can't watch these programs without reliving feelings of survivor's guilt and shame.  When it came time to pick an MOS, I shied away from the killing jobs, or at least the direct killing jobs, O3 Infantry and 08, Artillery.  My friends and roommates, Jerry Nugent and Tom Devitt did the opposite.  Jerry became an infantry officer, Tom an artillery officer.  I became an air defense control officer, a job that turned out to be an anachronism in Vietnam.  There were no enemy aircraft to defend against; I just kept track of all the A4 and A6 attack aircraft and the F4 and F8 fighter jets used as attack aircraft.  I was a Marine but I didn't want to shoot anybody and I didn't want to be shot at by anybody.  It worked.  I never had to shoot my Colt .45 at anyone and came under fire - of sorts - only once on January 25, 1966, when the airbase received VC 120mm mortar fire at night.  My most vivid memories: (1) having a snootful of booze from drinking at the "O" club before lights out; (2) running with my .45 and my helmet to my 'battle station' at 'the Bubble', or TACC, and (3) fear of being shot in the dark not by the VC but by another Marine.  I wore the same uniform as the thousands of other Marines who served in RVN but I hardly had similar experiences as the Marines 'in the bush.'  I worked at Wing Headquarters.  I was what later came to be called a 'REMF,' one of the 80% or so of Vietnam vets who served in support roles, not direct combat roles.

The Bubble