No blog yesterday, I was kind of disappointed in myself, after all I did go to the gym. I told a friend if you can make a commitment to working out, a blog is nothing.
Well yesterday I waded into the SSgt Bales incident. The guy that shot 16 people in Afghanistan on 11 March 2012. Weird date, 10 years and 6 months after another event, which took US and NATO troops to Afghanistan.
Me being a writer tried to empathize with the guy. I got shot down, it made me know want to write an opinion again. But today at the gym I worked it out.
I have been on mefloquine - here is a link (ipad and blogger don't allow imbedded links) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a603030.html
Read the side effects. I didn't read them before I went merrily on my way.
I started taking the drug as prescribed and went on my way to Pakistan. I was going there for work. We read the books and got all the shots. It was recommended that you be on an anti-malaria drug. So I was.
Got to Islamabad after a long flight from Ottawa, via London. It was about 3PM when we arrived there. After getting to the guest house where we'd be staying, a friend and I set off to meet up with the Hash House Harriers, a drinking club with a running problem. I was a member in Edmonton, and they even had one in 'dry' Pakistan. At the end of the run there is a down, down (Hashers like to repeat words). At the down down, you get to drink beer, really fast. In pakistan you can drink beer in a compound. Basically all houses are in a compound (therefore you can drink in there).
After the run we went back to the guest house. I get ready for bed, I was really tired, it was a 22 hour hour day and it ended with running and drinking. Sleep should be easy.
I slept for 20 minutes, I awoke from a really strange dream. I think after an hour I got another 20 minutes of sleep and awoke from an even stranger dream.
We had to start the next day, Monda.y. We learned a pile of stuff and got down to our real jobs in the afternoon on the Monday. It involved assessing and interviewing people.
The lack of sleep and the weird dreams went on all week. I was still taking the pills. By Friday I was a wreck, paranoid as hell. I do not know how I made it through the interviews, 8 a day. On Friday there were no interviews. The place I was working had a nurse, who was Canadian. There was no doctor, if I wanted to see one i'd have to go to a Pakistani hospital. That wasn't happening.
The nurse looked at my list of shots and then asked why I was taking the mefloquine. I showed here the sheet with what we needed, which we got from the employer. She said 'The last mosquito, carrying malaria died a few years ago, near Karachi. We are hundreds of miles from there.' She recommended I stop taking it.
I did, it took about a week, but I felt a lot better.
Back to Bales, he shouldn't have been there. It appears that he was stationed at a base where the 'fit for duty' assessments were not reliable. I am not sure if he was on any meds which altered your reality, but if he was....a person could add that to: financial hardship, a marriage in trouble, young children, not wanting to be there, an economy in USA which fell apart and a war in Afghanistan for which there was no mission. Give this guy a fully automatic weapon. I am glad I only had a pen.
That's it for that. I don't think I need to read anymore on that story. Nor about Trayvon Martin - the security guard should not have had a gun. George Zimmerman should turn himself in.
I am reading a book at the gym. I tend to read autobiographies and psychology books on the treadmill. These are books I buy with the intention of reading, but just like Gatsby, never get to actually reading them. So I have read Tom Judd's book, 'Playing by the Rules' - Justin Elzie and a book a SEALS, Reflexive Fire by Jack Murphy. Now I am reading Commitment and Healing: Gay Men and the Need for Romantic Love, Richard Isay. I read the reviews on this book before I read it, they were glowing.
I can't identify with any of the subjects in the book, I can identify with parts of their history, but not all of it. It discusses Gay men and their relationships with their mothers. It is a tempest in a teapot. When gay men get into relationships, their father becomes a factor. As I said I have found out that I am a combo plate which I have to work on.
It does discuss one issue though that Plato and Erich Fromm have covered. A lot of men will say they don't need someone to make them whole.Well that is true, you can exist as a human and function normally (points finger at self). Will 'Richard Corey' be your theme song or 'I am a Rock'?. But if you really want to enjoy life, find someone and love them. This is a work in progress.
My life has been a series of substitutes for love. Gay men were most likely sissy boys until they left high school. I can honestly say, I never want to go back. To compensate for this, you decide either to come out or you devote yourself to something - and stay in the closet. That something, work, art, writing, sports becomes your new partner.
Looking back on my partners (the non people ones) they have been:
Music - was pretty good on the relationship of bands to other bands and I wondered into liking some pretty cool stuff.
Mountain biking: I started mountain biking, I don't know why. But I'd go for long rides in the River Valley. Really long rides. Sometimes I'd forget to eat.
Running: well riding a bike got to be a pain, it is pretty windy in Alberta. It always felt like you were going up hill on a bike. I embraced running again, in High School I was pretty good at it. I have run 2 Marathons and about 20 half marathons.
Writing: I could always write, I just had motivation issues. When I had to do reports in my job, they were pretty good. I passed some university courses on writing alone, with some basic understanding of a theory. I have written a book, and I want to write another one. Even if no one else reads it.
Cigarettes: It was something to do. Maybe I was being anti-social, but I think I met more people when I was smoking than I have when I quit.
Motorbiking: This is a high risk activity and I probably enjoy it more than anything thing else I have ever done, save sprinting to the finish line at the end of a Marathon. I have got runner's high on a bike, the most memorable happened last year on Road to the Sun highway. About 5 miles of a twisting and winding road on the side of a mountain. All alone.
So I have to learn how to tie all the above into meeting a man. I have to learn to forgive my mother, who drove me nuts. I am working on my father, probably not as hard as I should be.
Thanks for reading, this is probably more personal than I wanted to be when I had the thought to write this. But if God truly is at the inception of thought, it is where it was supposed to go. No one got hurt.
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