C R O N O P O E T I C A

Sisyphus Today...
Es el nombre del Blog de un soldado norteamericano en la Guerra de Irak. Atención: no es cualquier blogger, ni cualquier gringo, pero tampoco es cualquier soldado ... es Sisyphus Today. Otra prueba de que la realidad es más compleja y paradojica de lo que estamos preparados para aceptar y es a la vez la ocasión de apreciar una vivencia, una escritura, un proceso mental y una tecnología de comunicación en pleno "Teatro de Operaciones" como ahora pretenden llamar a los escenarios de horror y violencia que produce una guerra.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
An Excerpt from My Journal.....Part 2

Earlier that day we had to stop because of a truck breakdown. We were in another town which had similar amounts of traffic. We all had to exit the vehicles to pull security around the convoy to prevent suicide bombers, or anyone throwing bombs, into our area. I stood there fully armed and fully geared. My face covered by my gator neck and my goggles, my machine gun in hand fully loaded and ready to use. Some people crossed by on foot, mostly those that lived in houses along our convoy. Then there was a group of women approaching; adults dressed in black, and a little girl dressed in a beautiful red dress. She must have been only 3 years old or so. Understand that it had just rained for days so the streets were covered in slick mud and inches of standing water. Everyone had mud on them, at least their feet. But these women and the little girl were spotless. I had just been tense about some vehicles near me at the end of the convoy getting restless when I saw them. There I stood, a 6 foot 3 inch 215 pound soldier trained and ready to kill to defend myself and my fellow soldiers, looking at this little girl approaching. She walked so daintily. Her eyes met mine at one point and I could tell she didn’t know what to think. I would have been scared if I was her, but she just kept looking at me as she walked. I couldn’t help but soften and I found myself smiling at her as she walked by, her eyes alternating between me and the mud on the ground. As she passed I happened to look up to see that the two women were clearly her young mother and her grandmother. Surprisingly, her mother looked at me then looked at her daughter, then back at me. I expected a look of disdain but instead she smiled warmly at me, too. Grandmother was not so warm as she gave mother a scornful look. As they walked farther on she looked back a second time to smile at me. While this was happening, the crowd at the end became more vocal and restless. I dropped the bipod on my weapon in preparation for a firefight. The crowd calmed after our increased stance and we were able to continue on after a few more minutes. We mounted our vehicles and drove on while the images of the girl and her mother continued in my mind. That was the first I realized how confusing war can be.

A Different Side
Went on another convoy yesterday. This time we also went to Magic Mountain. It is a distant location on the very top of the highest hill on the Iran/Iraq border. I took some incredible pictures that just don’t capture the scope. Standing on that high mountain top, I could view literally thousands of square miles which all shared on common trait; they are completely useless. Ok, so beauty might be a use but thinking deeper I realized that most, if not all, of what we hold as beautiful is actually useless. Take for example the natural terrain that I was looking at. Desert.

Not good for building, mining, living, anything but viewing. Art, modern art especially, serves no functional purpose but is yet beautiful. But you may think that the new whatever make of sports car is a work of art and very useful. I would say that the beautiful *part* of the car is pretty useless…. The body and paint are mostly for esoteric appreciation instead of designed for function. Contrast that with a HMMWV.

My point is that anything beautiful is useless. But is that not where we put our deepest assets? In the useless? A picture drawn by a child treated like a Picasso. A ring on a finger, a virgin forest, a trophy…… Functional is ugly, useless is beautiful. We work so hard to create and maintain beauty when we just need to be less functional.

On that mountain top was a dog. How it got there I have no idea, there were nomads with flocks miles away at the bottom, so maybe from there. They named the pup, ironically, Paris Hilton. We all took pictures with Paris, and she ended up following me around since I played grab-the-paw with her. That is the universal game amongst dogs.. Paris didn’t care a bit about the view.

Hay un tiempo para todo y un tiempo para cada cosa bajo el sol:
Un tiempo par nacer y un tiempo para morir,
un tiempo para plantar y un tiempo para arrancar lo plantado;
un tiempo para matar y un tiempo para curar,
un tiempo para demoler y un tiempo para edificar;
un tiempo para llorar y un tiempo para reir,
un tiempo para lamentarse y un tiempo para bailar;
un tiempo para arrojar piedras y un tiempo para recogerlas,
un tiempo para abrazarse y un tiempo para separarse;
un tiempo para buscar y un tiempo para perder,
un tiempo para guardar y un tiempo para tirar;
un tiempo para rasgar y un tiempo para coser,
un tiempo para callar y un tiempo para hablar;
un tiempo para amar y un tiempo para odiar,
un tiempo de guerra y un tiempo de paz.

Eclesiastes 3, 1