In the Army Then (4)

After the training stage I was assigned, in a big base, to work in an administrative post. This was an interesting and rather relaxed period. It felt more like a civil job. We were around 7 recruits in the same office.

M was my best friend. Genuine, rather naïve and funny. He would just say a comment that made everyone crack up and look clueless why the uproar was. He was the only one I kept contact with for years later until we left home, lived in different countries and lost the track of each other.

G was the guy carrying much baggage. We were close but I could not figure out what precisely was behind him. Troubled family? abusive father? Women and sex occupied a big space of his thoughts. It happened that I met him accidentally 10 years after we last saw each other, but he did not recognize me. In order to refresh up his memory, I asked him who his closest friends in the army were. He mentioned two names including mine, but could not attach the old name with the new face. Interesting, but that in fact said more about me than him!

E whom I first found pleasant and easy going turned out later, through some situations with G, to be childish and unreliable. Until the last day of our service I kept a friendly buffer zone between us. I couldn’t/can’t cope with unpredictable persons. E was thin, tall with a typical nerdy look.

T was interesting. A muscular bulky guy with rough features and kind heart who came from a struggling family. He got engaged and used to tell us every morning the details of his conversations (and sometimes intimate moments) with his fiancée. T had an aunt who was a D-list actress whom he was so proud of. Most of us had to shake our memories hard to remember her roles. I posted about T before here.

M2 liked to describe himself as a thug. A fear nothing/care nothing guy. He always said: “Do not see me now in uniform and short hair, this is not my real look”. He definitely was not a shy person and used to boast about his adventures with women, but that did not prevent him from telling us, a group of supposedly heterosexual guys, how he was once cruised in the street by a famous show business man, and explaining in details that eventually he did not mind giving the guy a pity f***.

H was decent and level headed. He would shave his beard and two hours later it would look 24 hours old. Thick beard and sensitive skin caused the inflammatory face. The news suddenly spread out that he got engaged to a female staffer (officer). We were surprised because for more than a year they did not show any kind of special relationship. The last I heard of him they got married and had a child.

I wonder, while writing this post, how do they remember me now? And how their thoughts would match what I thought of myself back then.

O sister 2011

Only two months elapsed but huge events occurred on national and personal levels. Ending dictatorship, unexpected turning point in career and a tragic change in a close friend’s life. I wonder what 2011 hides more?

Dream (February,18 2011)

A blurry faced figure/friend and I decided we had to uncover the crimes committed by a young female. We thought that at a certain hour in the middle of the night we would make a list of her crimes in two languages and attache it to a mug shot. I felt confused and uneasy. At the fixed time I/we prepared the list and the difficult task was to take the mug shot. The accused resisted me/us and I had to drag her by hair. It turned violent but I almost overcame her.

Straight Pass of Suffering

Through the straight pass of suffering
The martyrs even trod,
Their feet upon temptation,
Their faces upon God.

A stately, shriven company;
Convulsion playing round,
Harmless as streaks of meteor
Upon a plant’s bound.

Their faith the everlasting troth;
Their expectation fair;
The needle to the north degree
Wades so, through polar air.

Emily Dickinson

February 11, 2011

Freedom from space and also freedom from time
Freedom from attachment and freedom from crime
Freedom to work and freedom to play
Freedom to believe and freedom to pray.
Freedom to experience a rebirth someday.

George Krokos