Memorial Day Synchro

I know and realize that Part I was rudely interrupted by my detainment in the form of handcuff transfer which led me to go off on a side track but I do plan to continue the story for it is completely real and attached to our now. Today is not the day however, nor will the morrow be for I am and we are dealing with the death of Maximus Grandis, the Greater Dane. The last 76 hours have been truly no less than real and on tomorrow night we will be with him when he stops living in this dimension. Sadness is only a result of the connection to what is authentic in a relationship when two spirits can drop everything and get on with it. I promise you, he is at peace.

In the meantime I have some Memorial Day Synchro to share with you.

In the story line, two days after we last left Part I, the day after Golf Company secured its objective on the western edge of Kuwait City I turned from my hasty fighting hole and made this image of then Lt. Brian Christmas, the commanding officer of 2nd platoon. The camera I used was my combat action point and shoot 35mm Olympus that I had bought two years earlier at the ship store on board the USS Nashville LPD-13
Lt. Christmas is seen here half standing behind some cases of MREs while he is talking on the PRC-77 handset to the CH-46 pilot in the background who was delivering supplies for our Company.

This past Wednesday night with Ms. Arcen out of the house I noticed that the clock on the oven read, 1828hrs. We are hardly ever in that spot so I turned on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and watched the semi-coverage from the spill in the Gulf. I stepped away and then when I looked back saw Mandy Clark reporting from Helmand Province on a 6th Marine Battalion Commander who was taking a different approach to his interactions with the people of Margah, Afghanistan.

It was none other than Lieutenant Colonel Brian Christmas who I watched step out into a field with open arms and palms to a group of elders. As soon as his face turned towards the camera I realized that it was him. Once again another Marine from Golf Company appears before me, this time on a screen in my living room. He looked amazing, like the last time I had seen him which Sgt. Karnes thought of me and I of him when we randomly crossed paths a few weeks ago.

The CBS story went on. He was a BN commander trying to help the folks there, not just assuming that their illiteracy was a rationalization for treating them with harm. The film I saw of him made him appear brave, braver than anyone I know even though we had only met for a few short years so long before. No armor, no Kevlar, no flak jacket or rifle. Just open arms extended in the form of consideration to make, build, provide and deal with what it is that we have all created.

I called Lasher to confirm and he reminded me that yes, it was indeed the same Lt. Christmas from 2nd Platoon and that he was the son of a Four Star General while we were in during the late eighties\early nineties and that recently NPR featured a story on his efforts as well. When Mandy Clark finished her story I found my photo book from the Arabian Peninsula and pulled out a picture of, at the time Lt. Christmas that I knew I had made almost twenty years ago. The understanding that I have been intuitively writing these memories into my reality of now gave me a transfer of thought that went backwards in time towards the beginning.

I am not looking for it or anything for that matter but yet when I follow what I know to be real, that process always manifests into truth before me. Today as I consider Memorial Day, I am quiet with my beliefs and am thinking about those who are immediately in harm's way surviving in a realm that they did not create but are very much attached to.