I guess the fact that Xanga now has ebay.com and other banner ads running on our pages means that Bianca finally earned her MBA and has started to put it to practical use.  Actually, it signifies either that Xanga membership has reached a critical enough mass to appeal to advertisers or that Xanga has struck some kind of sweet deal with them that’s subscriptionally irrefusable.

Hey, I wonder if Xanga’s willing/going to sell members banner space on other members’ pages?  O—what would my banner ad say?…*Xanga Bannering Sucks* or *notforprophet is the biggest damn jerk around* (hey, negativity is still publicity!)

Or, perhaps, soon, since the existing banner has just become a shitload more distasteful and unattractive, they’ll offer a Super Deluxe Premium Membership—everything else + *no banner at all* !! 

What if we all in protest started depicting the code-script I’ve implemented on notfortesting (which site, by the way, in some other functional regards, I busted while testing!)?

Or what if we all just clicked through to Xanga’s advertisers and made Xanga a happy ever-after blogdom? = fair prince kisses spelled princess/frog and turns into a frog himself!

All that I could be: my own army of one?

What I felt whenever I got off-duty was what Mel Gibson proclaimed as Wallace in the movie Braveheart:

FREEEEEEEE-DOMM!!!

Now you might think: Was I deluding myself? Pretending to be free from the gripping constraint of an organization to which I was conscripted simply because I was afforded time off, off-time which could be retracted anytime, off-time that could disappear forever in the crunch of an emergency?

Ha!  I was free alright, but the freedom I was seeking wasn’t from duty but the freedom of being allowed to transcend duty.  Indeed, I truly saw my free time as freedom to fulfill my destiny as a warrior beyond the constraints and piddlings of the Army’s bureaucratic organizational routines. 

As I saw it, the Army wasn’t keeping me fit enough—it wanted to feed me and primp me, but I wanted to run.  The Army wasn’t challenging me to embrace the world around me—it was encouraging me to work stated hours and then party and lounge, but I decided to push always the envelope of discovery well beyond that provided by the organization’s leveled horizon outlook. Essentially, my self-determined mission as a warrior in every way exceeded that organizationally proscribed for me.  I needed my freedom because I was fashioning myself into a modern techno-ronin and the organization was serving de facto to keep me down.  So I did what I had to “militarily” (as a “model” soldier, I got early promotions, positions of “honor”, and I always max-ed my physical training tests), and then stole away to complete the rest of my quest. 

The core of this quest was tantamount to running like a fool (but pre-dating the example of Forrest Gump!), at least again, in outward appearance.  So instead of eating lunch and bulking at the mid-section like many of my colleagues, I'd typically strip to my running shorts at noon in the 90 degree/100%-humidity clime and streak for the jungled peak of my little mountain refuge.  Yet as I ran bodily-enthralled and unbounded, baptizing myself in the steam and mist and dripping humidity of the jungle, my mind held still.  Though indulged by barracks life with months and months of incessant respiration of some of the best weed available in central America, I had come to master all my physicality—all action—as a heightened trip with attentive meditation.  So as I ran, I also watched myself running.  I watched myself flow and fuse with the jungle—becoming one with the huge blue butterflies wafting around my head, one with the poisonous snakes that I’d have to leap as they passed underfoot, one with the terror of torrential downpours that could suddenly ensue.  I flowed, I fused, I hid, I merged.  Then I re-emerged with all the secrets learned therein. 

It is with this previous body/mindset that I left my completed CQ duty behind early on Saturday evening, took the rich Columbian gold that I had confiscated from the careless girl, and advanced upon my little jungle mountain scattering the weed in little handfuls like a faerie would scatter dreamdust while I was again yet running like a bat out of hell.  Oh yes, I scattered the seeds, too—and some did grow.  Did I waste the weed?  Oh no—I simply did not greed the weed.  I no longer needed it in that form.  My organizationally-bestowed high and its predisposition for imminent psychic involvement was set.  I wasn’t sure what awaited me, but I sensed, I seemed to know, that I was fulfilling my destiny.  And as such, was good to go.

(...to be continued)

...End of Part III

Part I: What Kind of Holiday Was That?

Part II: Holding the Vision

Decoration Day (aka Memorial Day)--what kind of holiday was that?

What kind of holiday is it when the tiddy bar is closed?  Yep.  Got there and couldn't believe it.  So I did something equally decrepit instead: I ran.  Let's see: only about 24,985 miles left until I get back home... Great!  I'm right on schedule for year 2017.

Do you think I’m making light of a holiday dedicated to remembering the war dead?  Well, damn it, I celebrated by buying a new car!  What could be more American and patriotic than that?  Oops--didn't buy American...but bought in America and am paying gobs of sales taxes and future homegrown financing.  Hell yes, that was a perfect consumptive celebration!  But...

The dead.  What about the dead?

I honor them.  I am their brethren.  I once joined the service for the explicit purpose of fighting a war, dealing with death, and possibly dying. 

But I was denied.

Guns for hostages, drugs for guns, whatever you want to call the dark Contra political dealings of Reagan's initial administration as scapegoated by Col. Ollie North, an imminent conflict was averted.  The Iran hostages came home, war plans faded into Central American irregular operations, and I was left…high and dry? 

No—merely high.  Though I wanted to fight and possibly die, the government instead just got me high.  Literally.  Sent to Panama, I found myself as a battleless warrior enwrapped in great oblivion: mindless, unending drug intoxication.  And none of it was my volitional doing.  Really not.   No, I was, like Lancelot, at that time, indelibly pure.  But I, nonetheless, sustained in my barracks daily massive exposure to seemingly incessant clouds of smoked cannabis.  More than just a “contact high”, the interlacing haze of grass was the permanent atmosphere.  Breathe in, breathe out—breath after breath, day after day, month after month, dope for a full two years.   Seemed like nearly everybody else (25 of 27 troops on my floor) smoked and nobody, including officers, non-commissioned officers, and military intelligence—just two barracks over,  gave a damn.  Seemed like it was, in fact, an unspoken de facto plan.  Seemed like indifference ruled.  So much just seemed back then.  So much just drifted and spiraled like wafting smoke to the heavens....

And higher and higher, by virtue alone of intense contact, did I ascend, remaining emboldened as a warrior, into a psychic realm—a realm of visionary realizations unveiled that provided me more critical intelligence about some things than that conventionally available to the military.   For dope was never for me an escape or recreational substance, but always a magical herbal ally, a door to dream.  And dream I did.   Right out of time.   But to observe me by exterior facade alone, I remained clearly one of the fittest and furious-looking hombres wearing jungle fatigues to be found.  Clearly from a military perspective, I appeared most commendably soldierly, even as I hovered, while in, yet out of body and beyond the constraint of ground.

...End of Part I

Part II: Holding the Vision

Part III: All That I Could Be...

Part IV  Polistrophy (political catastrophe)
 

Holding the Vision: Panama--The Setting

The First Sergeant was heading out and heading home for the weekend.  Of course, he ruled the barracks of his 93rd Signal Company like a king, but didn’t live there.  And he always ensured that his weekends in the paradise that can be Panama were enjoyable weekends, and thus, by his definition, barracks-free. 

“OK, sergeant,” he said speaking to me, “let’s inspect the barracks before I turn them over to you.” 

Yes, I had it and hated it: Charge of Quarters (CQ) for 24 hours beginning Friday night.  Twenty-four hours when, as the charged non-commissioned officer, one was responsible for everything going on in and everybody going in/out of the barracks building.

But the traditional passing-of-the-baton inspection this particular Friday evening with the First Sergeant was a little later than usual, for the troops had mostly finished the workday and were already back in their rooms resuming the party which had been  interrupted by work demands, but which otherwise really never would ever seem to end.  And as we proceeded up the first flight of stairs to the 2nd floor, the First Sergeant stopping halfway up, sniffed most demonstrably three full times, then said, “Well, sergeant, I’m running a little behind…and whatever’s going on up there I don’t need to allow to ruin my weekend, so it’s all yours.” 

Of course, the partying had already begun and it was intense.  Music, attitude—what have you.  Here was the seedier promise of paradise . And booze was the elixir and cannabis the incense.  And I had just been charged with the bureaucratic authority and responsibility to bust it all up, shut it down, and break the whole thing wide open.  Right.  Like putting on a Superman costume and expecting it to confer upon me the ability to fly.  Exactly.  No, no, no.  My intent was just to do good by the First Sergeant and make sure his building wasn’t burnt to the ground before he returned on Monday morning.  Or actually, even more modest than that—make sure that it didn’t go up in flames on my watch.  Beyond that, just like every other CQ, I wanted to make sure that the troops kept the building’s public areas clean.  Otherwise, when I handed the watch over to the next CQ in 24 hours, upon failing his/her passing-of-the-baton inspection, I would probably  have to clean the any mess created myself.

So the games had begun.  And boys (2nd floor) were being boys.  And girls (3rd floor) were being, well, ...bait!  And my hourly tours through the barracks were only to insure that the doors to each room were kept closed and locked, that there was no excessive frolic in the halls or restrooms, and that no spies were creeping about.  I only prayed it would all last intact for 24 hours, and then I could  return off-duty to this very milieu myself only long enough to change and run.  That’s right.  Most of those burdened with the 24-duty, when they got off, would either go directly to the mess hall to eat or go right to sleep.  But I’d run.   I’d run for an hour up and down a small jungle mountain  along an unimproved jeep trail seemingly my own since I nearly never saw anyone else upon it.  I’d run because I’d rarely eat or only irregularly so.  I’d run because I hated to sleep—I wanted to always to stay awake and open to all there was to know.  I’d run because I was tripping, and the jungle when tripping, was a scene.  I’d run to detoxify.  I’d run to be me.

During this duty-day, however, smoothness hit a snag as early in the morning I encountered a troop with only her bra and panties on, her head sunk into a toilet bowl in the men’s latrine, and her body seemingly otherwise sprawled lifelessly there about.  My first impression was a scene of murder-rape.  My first reaction was to touch, which I did, and my heart flamed as she responded with an intoxicated stir.  She was only sick, having turned the toilet bowl into a vomited kettle of quicksand.  And her underwear was still intact and unfussed, so I assumed (big assumption) that even though intoxicated, she had kept control of her own private parts.  But, alas, too, there next to here on the latrine floor lay a sandwich baggy much too overfilled with the best of Columbian gold.  *Damn it!  Now I’ll have to bust this bra-bursting bitch.* was my first inkling. 

But on second thought, I came up with a better plan.  I confiscated the dope, roused her to her feet, escorted her to bed, and finished off my round-the-clock charge without one word of what had transpired put into the barrack's official log.  Then I was again free.  And free in more ways than one.

...End of Part II

Part I: What Kind of Holiday Was That?

Part III: All That I Could Be...