Lost Case of Being Found – Scott H. Biram

You ever have one of those moments where you found yourself completely lost? Not that you were really ever found, but there’s that unsettling feeling that the ground beneath you is so amazingly unfamliair as to render your senses lost. Even with a good internal compass … lost.

I find myself in that situation as we speak. A divorce pending, a deployment pending, a custody battle pending, a future … pending.

Where do I go from here? That’s the question right? And the question is filled with more questions and really, I’m not sure I want to answer any of them.

I’m usually pretty good at knocking the pillars down, pulling the carpet out from underneath my feet, starting over … it’s the whole military kid thing — adapt to anything sort of vibe. But, maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s my frame of mind … really only God knows and truthfully he’s not giving many answers to my prayer these days. Hey big man, where are you? I could use some help down here, but apparently you’re busy on another call. It’s ok, I’ll wait, I’m used to it. Besides, I sure as hell know you got more important things to deal with than my petty stuff.

It’s a void. Look not into the abyss for you might be disturbed by what ponders back at you. Hell, at this point, I’d give important, delicate body parts to have the abyss stare back at me. Probably better then this bottle of vodka or whiskey that I currently call friend.

Good friends, they make the pain go away, at least for a minute. It’s hard to really feel anything with the passion I’m used to when you’ve become so numb to everything around you. Everything seems like a fight, a mounting of the ramparts and frankly, it’s damn tiring. You can only go at 110 percent for so long before you just need to waylay at some location for a nights respite. But where is it? I lost the map.

You can only fight so many fights, you can only be righteous so many times before all those around hacking and slashing wear you down and knock the wind out of you.

Even Superman had his kryptonight, and I’m no Superman. Always fancied Batman more anyway, but even there, whom I kidding. But even Batman had Bane. No worries, if you ain’t following me here, it’s all good — Just means you aren’t a geek like me, strike two, I’m out.

Friend loses a job. Two kids to feed … nothing on the horizon. Where are we? Where are we all? Another friend loses a job … what a turn of phrase. Loses a job? No, really they know where it’s at, it’s just that door isn’t open anymore.

We’re all in a very weird sort of place. I can’t imagine anyone is really comfortable where they’re at. The axe is always looming, the pink slip a day away. Terrible place to be, this combination of blandness and blindness makes you want to do something crazy. But what? Better to be meek?

I don’t know.

Born to be Wild – Steppenwolf

It seemed like a good idea at the time. All the adventures that land in me in the most trouble always seem to start out the way – a good idea at the time.

Pack up a few clothes and enough essentials to survie a couple weeks, jump on the Harley and ride from Phoenix to Kimball, Neb. some 1,500 miles away and home of my brother.

I’d had a hard time of things finding a job after ending my two-year mission with the Arizona National Guard and the U.S. Border patrol and frankly, I was getting desperate for something, anything to break. So when my brother suggested I come out there and see what I could find, I balked at first but after talking it over with my wife, the decision was made to go for it. Little did I know I was about to embark on a hell-ride.

The trip started out pleasant enough. Riding out of Phoenix, heading towards Flagstaff, the sun warmed my back as I rode north up the highway. I was jamming along to the music my IPod provided, already missing my family but hopeful that good things were just up the road.

They weren’t.

About two hours into the ride, the sky ahead started turning a menacing shade of gray, thunderclaps rolled on the horizon as lightening danced in front of my eyes on the road ahead.

“Well crap,” I thought to myself as I hurtled ever closer to the pending storm. I decided to push on as long as the rain didn’t start and I could always duck into some restaurant or coffee shop for a spell if it got to bad.

About the same time I came to that conclusion, the sky opened up and began a monsoon like downpour. I scanned ahead for the nearest exit – five miles up the road. I hunkered down on my bike and vowed to pull off as soon as I could.

Leaning into the exit, I scanned around for any signs of civilization or something I get seek shelter from the rain in. A sign indicted there was a campgrounds about two-miles to the east, nothing else seemed available. I pulled on the throttle and pointed the bike east, had to be something there.

There wasn’t.

The campground was apparently closed for the season, so too was the general store that serviced the facility. I pulled into the general store and decided to just sit down under the store’s overhang.

For nearly two-hours I sat there, watching the rain fall from the heavens, it finally broke enough that I figured I could get back on the road and on my way.

Just ten more miles north along the freeway and the rain started again, I found a coffee shop this time, my body soaked and shivering from the rain I pulled in and ordered the hottest coffee they could serve. Hours again ticked by as the rain continued and then a break, the sun poking out from behind the clouds. I watched with envy of the warm rays filling my mind. About an hour later, I was on the road again.

This was just getting started.

Crossing into New Mexico near dusk, the wind began its assault on me. At point along the way, my bike and I, nearly fused together from me pushing down so hard, seemed to be riding at a near 45-degree angle as I fought to counter the driving wind of the high desert. The rain started and nothing in the way of road signs indicated I was near anything.

I fought to keep my hands holding onto the bike as feeling and sensation left them with the sub-zero cold and wetness. Occasionally, I would reached up and in a futile exercise, try to clear the accumulated water from my face shield.

Ahead, something, a sign – blue. Has to be an indicator of something I thought.

Finally, it was.

I pulled the bike into the hotel parking lot. What a sight I must have been to the hotel clerk as I stumbled to the counter, barely able to speak as shivers wracked my body forcing a loss of nearly all body functions.

The clerk was able to determine that I needed a room, needed one right now. Forcing my hands into the soaked pockets of my jeans, I pulled a wad of cash out and dropped it on the counter.

“We need a credit card sir,” the clerk said.

“I don’t have on,” I stammered, “Please, I just need a hot shower, I’ll be gone in the morning, I promise,” I pleaded.

Looking me up and down real quick, the clerk agreed. Using the walls for support I stumbled down the hall, made my way into my room. This was hypothermia, I knew it and my semi-lucid brain was directing me to get into the shower.

I turned on the hot water, not to hot at first, don’t want to scald myself and flooded into the bath tub.

Mother nature had down her absolute best to beat me, but this day, I had walked away. Not with a victory perhaps, but still alive all the same.

The rest of the trip would be no better.

And Out Come the Wolves – Rancid

The pummels of dust kicked up from the helicopter that had just dropped me off began to finally clear and I slowly began taking in my surroundings. The abandoned mall I would be calling home for the next several weeks looked like something from a post apoplectic nightmare. Tracing the line of the building from right to left, the view got worse the further left you went – sections of roof strewn about on the ground in a haphazard pattern, walls with holes in them or completely missing strained under the weight of support and the water, everywhere pools of standing, putrid water.

It was obvious before the storm had torn this building to shreds, it had been under construction, a new shopping complex for this poor neighborhood. Not even finished and it looked like someone would have to start over. But when they’d ever be able to, not a one of us really knew.

I grabbed up my gear and made my way to the place that looked like it might contain some answers. As I drew near, a young Soldier, his eyes covered by dark aviator glasses, stripped down to his t-shirt, sweat glistening off his forehead walked up.

“Who the hell are you?” he challenged.

“I’m the combat camera guy,” I responded.

“Oh great,” he replied, an exasperated lift punctuating his voice. Tilting his head to an opening behind him he announced my arrival, “Hey guys, check it out, we got a combat camera guy now!”

His call was met with disparaging remarks back. I’m not entirely sure, but I think I heard slurs against my mother, father and a few inquiries as to whether or not I had a sister and was she cute.

The Soldier standing before me turned back to face me, a chuckle escaping his lips, “Well camera guy, you want to head over there,” he said pointing in the direction just behind me and to my left.

“Someone in there will know what to do with you,” he stated as he flipped around and disappeared into the darkened room.

“Some things never change,” I thought to myself as I made my way to the hole recently indicated. “Damn, grunts.”

After several hours of working with the upper levels of command on where I would stay and what I’d be doing, I headed back to the location that was the source of my introduction to this group of Ohio infantry. I pushed through the door, found an empty cot and tossed my stuff on to it.

“Hey, the camera guy’s back!” came the voice I immediately recognized as belonging to my earlier host.

Only the removed sunglasses and increased sweat changed the man’s appearance.

“So they put you in here with us huh?” he said.

“Looks like it,” I responded dryly and continued unpacking my gear. I was in no real mood to play silly infantry games, I knew I was the “cherry” but really, I was in no mood.

Walking around to the other side of my cot, my antagonizor looked me up and down.

“So what’s you name camera guy,” he poked.

“Spec. Cossel, good to meet you,” I said extended my hand outwards.

“I’m Rinaldi,” he said, I immediately thought “ringleader.”

“Try not to get in our way, we wouldn’t want to have to pull your butt out of the water too,” he stated.

“I’ll do what I can,” I spat back.

Rinaldi walked away and I stretched out, tomorrow would start early and I was exhausted.

The next few weeks were a non-stop blur, breaking down doors, searching buildings, driving or paddling boats down streets meant for cars and of course leaving that now famous mark on any building we’d gone through.

The September heat and humidity of the New Orleans sun made everything seem ten times harder, all movement slower, energy eaten up at a ridiculous pace. But we didn’t care, we knew the work we were doing was important, lives were on the line.

We saw our share — the destroyed lives, the destroyed homes, the receding water lines leaving their sewer like marks on the side of houses and the bodies. Bodies floating in the water or laid out on attic floors, twisted in unimaginable contortions.

A few days after arriving, we’d had a particularly tough time of things, we’d found several bodies, been attacked by starving dogs, one of the large trucks we used had misjudged a turn and slipped into a culvert burying the truck up to its windows.

We were about to call it a day, pulling the found boats onto trailers, Soldiers jumping into the back of the vehicle that would take us back to our shopping mall of a home. I’d dropped my gear and was leaning back against one of the large wheels of the truck. Rinaldi walked up to me. Bending over, he whipped off his aviator sunglasses, bent over placing his hands on his thighs.

“What’s your name again,” he asked me.

“I already told you, Spec. Cossel,” I snapped.

“No man, what’s your name,” he said back.

Not fully understanding exactly what was going on, I looked back at Rinaldi with a bit of confusion.

“Um,” I stammered for a second, “Ben, my name’s Ben,” I said.

“Hey guys,” Rinaldi called out. “I want you all to meet Ben, you used to know him as camera guy.”

Heads popped over the top of the truck as Soldiers peered down.

“What’s up Ben,” one of them called out.

Rinaldi reached his hand out, helping me up.

“You’re all right Ben,” he said.

And I realized what exactly had just transpired — I was finally in with these guys.

Thunderstorms and Neon Signs – Wayne Hancock

There’re two kinds of people in this world. Ok, there’s more than just two, but for the purposes of this, we’re going to say two – travelers and homebodies. I’m a traveler.

I come by it honestly, my dad was in the military and we lived a life that every couple of years had us going somewhere else. By the time I was six-years old I’d lived in a couple states and a foreign country. By the time I was nine, I’d already bounced around to several different schools and seen friends come and go only to work on making new ones. It was always the same, just about the time you were figuring out the rules and the groove of one place, you were off to another to start over. Amazingly frustrating as a child, I look back on it now and wouldn’t trade the experience for anything — it informs the me of today as much as anything from my youth.

Parents do their level headed best to teach their children, to help them grow and mature to eventually leave the nest and start a nest of their own. But I would argue, that even with the best of parents (mine were pretty darn good) some of the toughest lessons, the ones that stick with us throughout our lives are the ones we learned without them.

Learning to quickly make news friends, learning to adjust to a new environment, never accepting the permanence of anything, learning to cling to your family when it got too tough (to this day, my brother is my best friend in the world, there were times were each other was all we had) and so much more, these were just some of the lessons I learned growing up in the manner I did.

And that legacy sticks with me – every couple of years I get an inch, something inside that says it’s time to move on, there’s something I’ve just got to see over the next hill, down the freeway, around that bend. I swear, somewhere, deep down at a point that I didn’t know how to give words to back then, is why, at least in part, I joined the military myself.

I wouldn’t argue that there’s something to be said about growing up in one place. Going to school from kindergarten through high school with the same core of friends. I look at some of my friends who have that, friends with people they’ve known since they were both children and I’m a little bit envious. The deep connection they have to one place and I know deep-down I have no such place. Heck, even the place I spent most of my time growing up in high school has long passed — my parents left Alaska, moved to Kansas only to move again to Texas – once the bug bites you, there’s no salve to cure the itch.

And to those who would state their case for growing up in one place I would ask them this – have you ever seen a midnight sun over a glacier peak, have you ever walked the chilling halls of a German castle’s torture chamber, have you ever jumped in a car on one coast and ended up on the other and experienced everything in between? It’s an easy thing to say “America, the Beautiful,” its another thing all together to have seen it with your own eyes. To have taken in the air from at the highest points in this great nation all the way down to the lowest. To have played in both the Pacific and Atlantic, to have swam in the many different gulfs and seas that surround our land.

America is such an amazingly rich tapestry of people, colors, sights and sounds that I feel I’d be depriving any child if I were to take away that opportunity for them to experience it all themselves when they’re young, when that love of all things and new things and experiences can be a foundation pillar for the adult they become.

The homebody might say “Home is where the heart is,” me, I prefer the words of Jack Kerouac – “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

I had to chapter a Soldier out of the Army today. I had no choice. She was a good Soldier, but the laws are clear and the laws tie my hands.

The words that got the ball rolling on her separation from the Army were only four and they made up one of the most ridiculous sworn statements I have ever seen in my life: “I am a lesbian.”

My commanding officer and I stood there looking at the piece of paper. “That’s it?” a look between us seemed to say. A straight, diagonal line from one end of the page to the other said that, yes, that was it – Nothing Else Follows.

I glanced over at my young Soldier standing there at attention, eyes locked at some point straight ahead. She had told me earlier while we both were outside smoking a cigarette she was going to do it — she was going to come out to the commander. Most of the unit already knew she was gay — no one really cared. She was smart about it though, keeping it hidden away from those who could put forth into motion processes she wasn’t ready for.

She knew the consequences of what she was about to do, but she told me she couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t live the lie, she couldn’t not be herself anymore.

“You sure this is what you want to?” I asked her.

“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, a quiver in her voice betraying the wall of strength she was desperately trying to project.

“Don’t lose your cool, don’t lose you’re bearing,” I said to her after we’d talked some more and affirmed a course of action.

“Be a professional to the very end,” I told her.

Glancing back at her as the CO signed the legal documents I was so proud of her, standing there, rigid, “yes, sir” and “no, sir” the only answers coming out of her mouth. Right there, at that moment, she was walking the walk of an Army value of personal courage, and as I looked at her, both pride and frustration at the current Army policy concerning homosexuals washed over me. This was only the beginning; it would take weeks before all the paperwork would be done and she was discharged from the Army. In the meantime, she was expected to go back out there and be a Soldier, albeit one who wasn’t living a lie anymore.

I said she was a good Soldier. That’s not to say there wasn’t a slew of problems – but they were the problems found in many a young Soldier: she partied a little too hard at times, she was late to unit musters without calling ahead, and there were other issues but nothing that would not have resoled themselves with mentoring and maturity. She is, after all, only 20 years old.

And then something strange happened, so strange that everyone around her noticed it. After coming out to the CO, she changed: she tried a little bit harder, she wasn’t late anymore, she did everything we asked her to and she did it with the passion and fire you expect from a Pfc. Her attitude changed; she smiled a bit more often, cut up with the unit more freely. She was finally comfortable in her own skin.

Living a double existence is one of the major problems of the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that doesn’t get much attention. I understand that it’s kind of a hard thing to encapsulate, but forcing someone to live a lie puts them in the position of holding back – how would you like it if always seemed like there was a thumb pushing you back down?

It’s time. It’s past the time, actually, to end this ridiculous policy and let those who are gay serve alongside anyone else willing to put their life on the line for this great nation.

An informal straw poll of some Soldiers around me revealed what most of us wearing the uniform already know — very few people care who you’re sleeping with. Almost universally, the answers went something like, “I don’t want to know who anyone is sleeping with gay or straight, I want to know that if it came down to it, could that person put bullets down range and could they pull my ass to safety if I should go down.”

Of course there are those who, for whatever reason, are still adamantly opposed to gays serving in the military just like there were those opposed to integrating the services back when blacks and white served in separate units. I won’t get into their logic because frankly, I don’t understand it.

And like those days of integration, there will be some high-profile problems if the decision to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is ever reached. But that can no longer be a reason for the delay; just because something might be hard and might come with new sets of problems is no reason to forgo the action. One of the things my dad, a career military man himself, told me long ago, that has stuck with me through all the years, was that most of the time, doing the right thing is the most difficult of all the paths ahead of you.

“Hey Sarge, this is all I’ve ever wanted to be, since I was a kid,” my Soldier said to me as we were back outside smoking another cigarette, an uncertain future ahead of her, “you think they’ll let me back in if they ever repeal this stupid law?”

I wanted to tell her it was a slam dunk, that, absolutely, if and when those in Washington who seem to delight in playing puppet master with peoples lives removed their heads from their sphincters, everything would be okay and she would be able to come back into the Army. But I looked her in the eye and held her gaze for a few seconds.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

Kerry stood by the window, looking outside, just hoping for a thunderstorm.

“Think we’ll get lightning tonight, Dad?” he asked me.

I was knee deep in something — homework, work, trying to figure out how to rob Peter to pay Paul — something, anywhere but on lightning storms.

My mind did a quick shift: “Well, the weather forecast is calling for the possibility of storms, so there’s definitely a chance,” my overly Spock-like response came back.

“I sure hope we do,” he said as he stood there in nothing but his boxer shorts. It was getting on his bedtime and somewhere along the way, he’d abandoned the idea of pajamas in favor of nothing but his skivvies as bedtime attire.

Leaning over from my desk-chair, I put my chin on his shoulder and peered out into the night sky with him. The dark night betrayed nothing of the clouds that may have been lurking unseen by our upward-looking eyes. Kerry turned his head ever so slightly.

“I know, Dad,” he almost whispered into my ear, “let’s check the Weather Channel and see if anything is coming.”

We popped over to my computer and did a quick jump from my online class to the Weather Channel’s maps.

“Look at all that by Cheyenne,” my son said, a tone of wonderment befitting an eight-year-old punctuating his voice.

“Which direction is it heading?” I somewhat rhetorically asked him. I knew, but I didn’t want our conversation to end.

We sat and discussed the direction of the storm — was it going to hit the town west of ours or was it going to make a beeline for us? A few minutes more of talk about the impending storm and Kerry returned to the window, both his hands on the glass, framing his head, the rim of his glasses and his nose the only distance between his face and the cold window. I studied the weather map a little longer.

“Dad,” Kerry said.

“Yeah, bub,” I called back to him.

Writers, it’s almost always about writers — I started calling Kerry “bub” a long time ago, because that’s what one of my favorite writers, Hunter S. Thompson, called everyone — bub. And Kerry, that”s short for Kerouac, my favorite writer of all time.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he said.

“I’m gonna miss you too,” I said back to him as I raised my arms and did a “come here” motion my son long ago learned meant to get over here and give his old man a hug. I held him, that tiny body shaking with equal parts night-chill and lust of the world. Just under 24 hours from that moment I was going to take this wonderful piece of my life, drive him to Denver, put him on a plane, and send him to his mother, my wife, separated from me due to the wind-shifting vagaries of the current economics of the world, in San Diego. When I would see him again: a long time from now, longer than is reasonable or right but no matter, it’s what the heavens have deemed necessary at this moment.

“Out-of-state Utah!” I yelled out as little man and I made our way to Denver and the waiting United Airlines flight that would take him to the other side of this country.

“No fair, Dad, you always see them before I do,” came the disgruntled reply of my co-pilot.

“I’ve got my eyes on the road and paying attention,” I smartly replied.

“Not fair!” Kerry said as he folded his arms underneath themselves and assumed a most grievously slighted stance.

“Oh come on now,” I said back to his defensive position.

“You get them all! I never get one,” he replied, his injured ego rearing its monstrous head.

“Dude, it’s no big deal,” I said trying to appease the demon of adolescence.

The demon of the child — quickly angered, quickly tamed.

“Slug-bug yellow!,” he triumphantly screamed as he delivered a shot to my arm.

“Nice one,” I replied.

“I like this song,” he said as Skinny Puppy filled the open space not more than 30 seconds later. His mood shifted as the lyrics to “Tin Omen” filled the car and we both assumed our machine-gun positions and ratta-tat-tatted along with the song when the drum beat goes crazy for nearly 20 seconds, deep into the track.

I Still Miss Someone – Johnny Cash

Looking out the window from my vantage point in the office, the bright, cloudless, sunny morning betrayed the below average temperature the wind was forcing. It was a typical Saturday, jammed pack with things to do, work to be done, several hundred miles of pavement to tick off on the way to each event.

None of this mattered to me, one of my favorite events – cattle-branding, was on my list of things to-do today and I was anxious, excited and wishing I had more time, always wishing I had more time.

I stepped outside and the wind and chill cut through the light shirt I’d decided upon, I ran back into the house grabbed a jacket, advised my son to do the same and off we went.

Everywhere I’ve lived, everywhere I’ve gone, one thing as always stuck with me at each place I’ve called home for a spell and as I left the barbed-wire corrals of the Gross-Wilkinson Ranch headed a hundred miles up the road, I realized this too would someday be something I would miss and forever associate with my time in Wyoming.

I miss laying across my motorcycle, parked on the piers of San Francisco. The lazy stars almost obscured by the ever present fog but demanding to be seen by anyone who would take the time, pushing through the fog, announcing their presence.

The absolute insanity of Time Square on a weekend summer afternoon. Belligerent natives glaring at the obvious tourists snapping pictures of this and that, asking for directions to Broadway – “Down the street a couple blocks, you can’t miss it” was almost always the response in a near snarl.

The oppressive humidity of North Carolina deep in the dog-days throes of a summer night. The humidity informed nearly everything as it slowed all-things down — your movements, your thought processes. I may be wrong, but I often think the southern drawl has its roots in the humidity. Both are a bit slow on the delivery, a bit deliberate and laced with a politeness that could shred you to pieces if you didn’t know which signs to look out for — isn’t that nice?

And the people, everywhere the people.

From the outrageously colorful personalities that peacock-ed the landscape of the Haight-Ashbury forming a witches-brew of personalities to the group of musicians struggling to find their way, locked in the poverty-stricken row-houses of Baltimore. The smartly dressed friend who everyday put on a necktie, walked the two blocks from our apartment in Jersey City, down to the PATH station where he would go hurdling towards NYC, under the Hudson River to be delivered to his job at the World Trade Center. The wise and wizened old dwarf of a sergeant who always had the proper dose of gravitas to any situation but would suddenly flip with a well-placed bit of dry-humor wit to lighten the mood – even at forty-something, Dan was wise beyond his years.

Some I loved and are still with me, some I loved intensly for a short period only to lose them in a sea of moves, email address changes or new cell phone – and technology was supposed to make staying in contact easier. Some I loved but the love hurt so much as to force a permenant break while others are still here, everyday as close to my heart as to reach out and touch them.

Its something of a strange feeling knowing that a very particular amalgamation of sights, smells and sounds are burning themselves into your permanent memory even as they continue to unfold right before your eyes. Those images forever a part of what informs you, guides your decisions, adds to the diorama viewable only by your mind’s eye. Much like the mark now emblazoned on those some 224 calves branded that day, that mark is now forever there for the world to see.

The Best in Me – Nick Lowe

Ever looked at a still body of water and pondered what’s beneath? On the surface, nothing moving, a tranquil scene, but underneath, life in all it’s bestial glory. Creatures being birthed, creatures being ate, the cycle of life moving onwards. What an odd positioning when you think about it, the difference between what lies above and what lies beneath.

Just like us. What appears on the surface, what we present to the world, is often times at odds with our inner most thoughts. On the surface we may appear the kind gentle person that would help nearly anyone at a moments notice but beneath is the inner, contemptuous rage that drives some to murder and other atrocities.

I’ve often wondered about those who find themselves having to channel both instincts at once, take the Soldier on the field of battle. One moment they’re killing they’re enemy only to stop and render aid to the wounded the next moment. Or the cop, who after engaging in a hours-long standoff must find it within themselves the capacity to extend compassion to the someone who just tried to kill them. It’s almost like the werewolf of legend — a man one moment, a beast the next.

With every unleashing of the beast, is it more difficult to bring forth your other side? Is this a slippery slope that with each passing moment we descend deeper and deeper into the abyss? And what do we become once we can no longer put the beast away … that’s rhetorical.

Duality is a strange thing — there can be no night without day, no good without evil. But does there come a point where the yin slips past the yang never to be seen again? I don’t think I could stand living in a world of perpetual night.

I had some limited experience with extremes of daylight while growing up in Alaska. The extremes of that location brought out the worst in some people. Most folks up north explain it away as cabin fever, the loosing of one’s mind due to being cooped up inside, the constant darkness crushing the spirit.

So as we walk this constant line between the person we are or the beast we may become, how do you keep yourself in line? What pulls you back from the edge when you’re ready to dive head first off the cliff? I’ve struggled with this lately as circumstances and events work to push me closer each day and each day it feels harder and harder to pull back. I find that typically a good long run or some time on a heavy bag suffices to release the pent up steam. And while I’ve pulled myself back every time, I wonder if a day will ever come that I won’t be able to come back from.

The fear of that possibly pending day holds me in check as well. But fear is something to conquer, to overcome. What happens when the fear no longer matters? What do you do?

Surviving – The Kinks

I took two steps down the stairs and disappeared. There was nothing, nothing but darkness and heat all around me. Not only did I disappear, but Eric, right in front me, he disappeared too – I could still feel him ahead of me, the hose-line connecting us, but his shape was gone. I could hear him in the darkness.

Darkness, heat, my facemask covered with condensation from leaving the chilly five-degree weather outside and entering the sauna that was the basement.

There was no fire but things were still burning — the amount of heat, the smoke, it was amazing. I flipped on my helmet light – “that was about pointless” I thought to myself.

You ever been driving through dense fog and at some point it strikes you to try flipping on your high beams? Maybe it’ll help? For a split second you realize you can now see even less, you flip the lights back to low-beam – that’s what flipping on my helmet light was like – illuminated the smoke real well, not much else.

“Where’s the heat coming from man, where do we need to go?” Eric’s disembodied, muffled scream came emanating from behind his mask.

A jab with my arm to the right and something solid, probably a wall but not really sure. A thrust to the left — nothing, open space, must be where we need to go. I felt the tug of the hose and we advanced.

I let go of the hose to clear my facemask and use the thermal imager. A scan left to right, readings from 400 to 1100 degrees blipping across the black and white screen

“It looks like it’s coming from about eleven o’clock” I called back.

My mind started racing – “eleven o’clock? you can’t see Eric, you idiot! What if he’s facing the opposite direction? What would be the point of that! What are you telling him? What if he fires the hose in the wrong direction?”

The sound of water crashing against walls filled my ears along with Eric’s challenges to the fire.

“Come on you!” Eric yelled. “Take some of that you son-of-a!”

“Eric, where are you man?” I called out.

“I’m right here!” came the response.

“Where the hell is here?!” I thought to myself. A ringing alarm penetrated all other sounds — Eric’s alarm on his air-pack was going off – getting low on air.

“We’ve got to get out here,” I called out.

“Yep, it’s time to go,” Eric responded. We got the hose turned around and I felt the pull as we advanced in the opposite direction. And then it happened – I fell, tripped over some unseen piece of detritus.

The thermal imager dropped a few feet in front of me, the black and white screen the only thing I could see. I crawled towards it, grabbed it up. I patted the ground all around me, feeling for the hose but it wasn’t there.

“Eric hold up a minute,” I called out but no response came back.

“Crap!” I thought to myself, “I can’t see a damn thing, I can’t feel the hose, it’s hot as hell down here and my air is getting low – I’m so screwed.”

For a split second thoughts of death seeped into my brain, of never seeing my wife and son again, panic started a slow crawl down my spine and up my throat.

“Get a hold of yourself Ben, you’ll never get out of here by freaking out,” I told myself and the words of my instructors Jerome and Kevin and even Nick, standing somewhere outside and who’d been with me in class, came back to me – find a wall, tap a way out.

The brain is amazing when it can focus on a task – find a wall, check — actually my helmet found it first as my neck crunched back from the impact. Follow the wall, one direction, think … which way did you come in? This way, ok go …

“Where the hell is Ben?” I heard Eric, somewhere far away. “He was right behind me, where the hell is he?! BEN!”

My knee found the hose first, “follow the hose out” came Jerome’s voice.

“I’m right here,” I hollered back as I crawled up the stairs and saw my crew standing above me.

“That was scary for a minute,” I said to Eric as we headed over to the rescue truck to change our air-tanks. I sat down on the edge of the tailgate,

“You got a smoke on ya’ brother?” I asked Eric. Eric always had smokes on him.

“You gotta start remembering to bring some with you man,” Eric said as he handed me one and we both lit up and sat in silence for a second, fresh tanks on our packs. We both finished about the same time, crushed the buts out on the ground and packed up.

“You ready to head back down there,” I said to Eric.

“Yep, let’s go get it man,” came his reply.

Our House – Madness

So I’m going through this book, it’s all about writing and writing better. Good book so far it’s called “Writing Life Stories” by Bill Roorbach. My friend and partner in crime at the newspaper, Cindi and I saw Roorbach at a seminar at the local community college awhile ago and we were both intrigued by some of his ideas — intrigued enough to buy his book anyway.

I was sitting on a plane to Dallas a few days ago, I’d packed Roorbach’s book determined I was going to get through some of it and I did. I didn’t know there were going to be exercises along the way though in retrospect I probably should have – this is a book about writing better after all.

I get to the first exercise – draw a map of the first place you remember growing up. As is often the case with me, I was unprepared for this exercise so I flagged down the airline attendant and asked for a couple extra napkins (I ha d a few pens but inexplicably I’d put my notebook in my checked luggage) and began sketching out my family’s first home that I remembered in Fort Dix, N.J.

As the memories came flooding back, my pen set to whirling – over here, me and some friends found the biggest, most dead, sewer rat I’d ever seen (this being New Jersey, it didn’t occur to me then that the rat may be my legislator). To this day I still remember the putrid smell emanating from that drain pipe where we found the rat and I still remember the bloated, blackened body of the animal.

“X” marks the spot where I got the worst haircut of my life – a six hour ordeal that ultimately resulted in me looking like a bowl had been placed on my head that my mom then cut around even though I swear every single person in the neighborhood took a whack at my head. It’s still unbelievable to me that so many people could have gone at my head with scissors and I still looked like some twisted midget version of the early Beatles.

Right here, under this lamppost is where the batman run ended – me in my pajamas, standing under the light, just positive that if I stood in the light I wouldn’t turn into a bat. The darkness all around me, a circle of light my only protectorate – the snow was gentling falling in the light and my bare feet were screaming for me to return home, to get out of the cold. But I wasn’t moving, that bat-thing with the unnerving scream I’d heard on the 45-record that started this whole ordeal wasn’t going to get me!

This row of concrete storage sheds, this is where all us kids used to play hide and seek for hours on end and where back here in the corner shed something terrible happened.

Tucked behind this fence lived Kong, the evil police German Shepard that tried to eat me one really bad day and over there was the big parking lot where my dad first took me for a ride on his scooter.

It wasn’t a parking lot it was a scooter lot that dad would take Patrick and I around on, both of us trying desperately to manage both keeping the helmet, at least four sizes too large on, as well as holding on to dad. Mom had terrified us both with stories of what could happen if we fell off and while we both swallowed an ounce of fear when we climbed on the back of dad’s shiny metallic blue scooter, we were both determined to ride that thing with dad.

And right here, in my own little swath of backyard was the place where everyone told me watermelons would never grow and a few months after I planted the seed a shoot of green sprouted much to my pride – don’t ever tell me I can’t do something. I never did get a watermelon off that thing, this being military housing and all we moved on too quickly. And everyone was probably right – it would have died before any fruit could be born, but just the sight of the tiny green shoot protruding from the ground was enough in my little head to proclaim victory.

But as I sketched and sketched and the memories came back a stark realization occurred to me – while I could remember so much about the outside, I couldn’t remember nearly anything about the inside of my house. Vague, very vague images of a few things occurred to me; the bean-bag chair I was sitting on listening to my batman 45 that started my run of terror, the screen door that looked outside my kingdom — framed in black all around the outside of the door, a glowing light, the outdoors, filling the center. And that’s about it.

Memory is a fickle thing and I’m pretty sure I’m going to do this exercise again using other places, other times for my jumping off point cause I don’t want to forget. I see people all around me struggling to remember who they were and where they came from and I don’t want to forget.