Third entry for The Colonel`s Scrapbook
June 27th
Were born two kings of France:
1462 Louis XII (the Just) king of France (1498-1515) Never the Just, he forced his daughter Claude to marry a rake, Francis I
June 27th
Were born two kings of France:
1462 Louis XII (the Just) king of France (1498-1515) Never the Just, he forced his daughter Claude to marry a rake, Francis I
.1550 Charles IX king of France (1560-74)boy was he useless!
Born 1880 Helen Keller blind-deaf author/lecturer, despite her handicap she had more sense than many
1844 Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, and his brother Hyrum were lynched by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, resulting in part from the community's moral outrage at Smith's recent authorization of polygamous Mormon marriages. Boy was he a lecher.
Violent day in history today, as I sit here before my keyboard, and I think I would love to write lines like Charlotte Bronte in Jayne Eyre, saying that last night I dreamt I was going back to Manderley. No. Last night I dreamt I was in combat. Not for French King Charles XII who should have never set foot in Italy to try to make such a ridicule. Again. You know every time my mind has a spook show. Two nightmares per night, no matter if I eat a whole dinner or just pick at my meal. Upcoming, next, in the Sci-Fi channel from the colonel`s wicked, jaded and perverted head, the two best horror flicks that her past have produced. Liked Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando? Yes, well this is better. Mix one part Stephen King, another with Clive Barker, throw in Edgard Allan Poe`s mustache, season with a bit of moonshine and shake well. Don `t forget a dash of Jewish seasoning, kosher by the way, with Ira Levin. For a crunchy topping, pour in all the nuts belonging to this woman`s war traumas, ghosts in her attic, skeletons in her closet. Serve chilled. Last night I didn`t dream anything rosy, yet I find myself saving each detail, every image, every piece of sensation still caught in my inner eyelids, as a bit of yolk stuck onto an eggshell.
I was in Vietnam. This time I looked for my father, who as a war veteran from World War II should have been there. Somehow he wasn`t. Why?It was his duty. He never frowned when I went into combat. Or on mission. He would stay there on the porch, watching the jeep leave, the jeep which would take his most valued treasure away from him. He would dismiss me with a cheerful smile, yet his hand was over his heart. The other hand was raised, as the branch from a tree. I knew the meaning of this. We both loved the poetry of the Nicaraguan poet Joaquin Pasos, specially when he wrote,”you must raise your hand, I want to take with me a memory of you as a cheerful tree.”
I knew what came after I had disappeared from his sight. He would rush to my room, grab the plexiglass image of Vercingètorix-the most beloved freedom fighter of France, the guy who still being a teenager almost defeated Julius Caesar and whose memory puts even Joan of Arc to shame- and light a candle inside the figure. That would guarantee this tender atheist that his kid would come back from the sweet abyss, from the brink of death, safe, maybe missing one piece, shrapneled, broken, shot, bleeding, but still alive. I always came back for him. But in this dream I didn`t see my father. I was godless in this nightmare.
Have you ever been shot? It is not what it is cracked up to be. No instant vortex of pain. 1984 saw me shot by a 22 caliber bullet that entered my left knee through its fatty tissue in the back part. It was like a snap. Yes , don`t look at me like that!It didn`t hurt. Only minutes later, already ensconced in the helicopter, did I notice anything. A rhythmic geyser of blood came out from behind my knee, and I was shown by a comrade what was happening. I am sure you have all seen in the Cartoon Network when Jerry runs off a cliff being chased by Tom. It isn`t until the mouse looks down at the abyss that he realizes he is gravitating on thin air. And smack, he falls headfirst into the gaping space. That was what happened to me in 1984.I was astounded to see my own blood and couldn`t find tears to cry. I understood why Celtic women were more feared than men. We have a bigger threshold for pain. My best friend was on the helicopter, and he took off his bandanna to use it as a tourniquet around my gushing knee wound. It would hold until I got taken to the military hospital in Managua, in a noisy ambulance, as soon as we landed.
In my dream last night I had been shot. I was there, wearing a strange hat and camouflage. On the wet grass. Nobody was paying attention to me. I tried to get up and saw in the distance a man coming towards me. He had long dark hair, thick eyebrows and a halo of light around his forehead. I will not insult your intelligence by saying he had sprouted wings. I am not writing slapstick. I had the eerie feeling I had seen him elsewhere. He knelt by my side. I was convinced that if he laid a hand on me the bleeding would stop. He wasn`t Vietnamese. He had a Semitic appearance.
He would just look at me and smile, as if he had found something strange and precious.
In my dream I wasn `t feeling anything like being a precious objet d`art. Covered with my own blood, I must have been like something my cats dragged in from the rain. Sorry-looking, maybe even hideous. I stretched out my bony hand and felt as if I had touched the most priceless silk, but it was only the skin of his forearm. I still keep the sensation of living satin on the tips of my fingers, the power of his muscles beneath the skin. The vibrant live energy of a living thing. All around me, there were mutilated bodies, bleeding and moaning soldiers, pieces of weapons. An incredible surge of well being and happiness coursed through my veins. The man only smiled again and let me touch his forearm. Just by being there, with him kneeling next to me I felt safe. Nothing was going to harm me. My bleeding had stopped, and the pain was going away. I was getting up in my dream when a blast of napalm scorched the air over our heads. The mirage, or man, or whatever it was, disappeared slowly, like hot air moving during a heat wave. A sudden surge of emptiness overcame my former feeling of happiness. I had been wounded on the palm of my left hand. Only a small pink scar remained where the bullet had gone through sinew and bone.
But my shirt was now wet with my own blood. My left breast was bleeding, and a sturdy gold medal was pinned upon my shirt. The pin of the medal pierced my left breast. It was a sense of dèja vu. In the eighties I had been condecorated and the army general, who had almost useless hands due to a detonation years before he even dreamed of wielding so much power, had been so proud of me when he was giving me the medal that he had not realized he had stuck it firmly to my shirt and skin underneath. I had not even budged, even when the blood streamed in a slow trickle into my shirt and everyone was watching during the ceremony. Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius would have been proud of me. Perhaps whatever I was back then, the spark of life that now made me be onlyme and nobody else, had been with him in his Marcomannic Wars. I had patiently and smilingly waited until the general finished condecorating officers, and the marching band went away with its loud march called El Danto(The Boar),when I finally allowed myself to faint. I crumbled to the ground and the same guy who had lent his bandanna to make a tourniquet for me when I was shot, picked me up from the floor and took me to his office, where he unstuck the medal and sent someone flying to get merthiolate, peroxide and all that was necessary. I can still see the small faint scar on my left breast. Imperceptible to anyone except to myself. Time might be a real doctor curing all wrongs and pains, or at least trying to heal wounds that may or not fester again. Nobody can accuse time of malpractice.
What would have happened if the man I saw in my dreams had been there when my breast was pierced by metallic honour? Would he have only placed his silken hand over the wound and made it heal instantly? How long would it take his hand to heal me? Is it healing that I need and the nightmare was just a warning signal?
I think about Bayard, sieur du Terrail, who was destined to be the chivalrous epitome of the gallant knight. How would he have reacted to skirmishes in Vietnam? If I only had a time machine to dig him up from the Renaissance, when he thought he was really serving France to go with his king to the Italian campaign! Was it the shadow of Bayard, wearing black like an angel fedayeen, or a hazy samurai… the man who came to heal me in the nightmare? I always ask too many questions. That has exasperated all the men in my life-brothers, husband, stepson, students, chums- except my dad with his faith in Vercingètorix, knowing that I would always find the path back to his arms. That is why I always keep coming back. Someone, somehow, somewhere must have a candle lit inside the plexiglass figure of his faith, never letting me go too deeply into the dark crevices of my shell-shocked brain, or into the turquoise waters of the San Juan River or Cosiguina Lagoon I so adore.
Only one thing. No matter what, even if I don`t say your name, let the fire extinguish itself..Keep your candle alight, whomever you are and I say this because I cannot give you a public name. I will always be coming back for more. whether in real life or in my nightmares untilo I can make a dream be forced into becoming true.
Born 1880 Helen Keller blind-deaf author/lecturer, despite her handicap she had more sense than many
1844 Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, and his brother Hyrum were lynched by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, resulting in part from the community's moral outrage at Smith's recent authorization of polygamous Mormon marriages. Boy was he a lecher.
Violent day in history today, as I sit here before my keyboard, and I think I would love to write lines like Charlotte Bronte in Jayne Eyre, saying that last night I dreamt I was going back to Manderley. No. Last night I dreamt I was in combat. Not for French King Charles XII who should have never set foot in Italy to try to make such a ridicule. Again. You know every time my mind has a spook show. Two nightmares per night, no matter if I eat a whole dinner or just pick at my meal. Upcoming, next, in the Sci-Fi channel from the colonel`s wicked, jaded and perverted head, the two best horror flicks that her past have produced. Liked Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando? Yes, well this is better. Mix one part Stephen King, another with Clive Barker, throw in Edgard Allan Poe`s mustache, season with a bit of moonshine and shake well. Don `t forget a dash of Jewish seasoning, kosher by the way, with Ira Levin. For a crunchy topping, pour in all the nuts belonging to this woman`s war traumas, ghosts in her attic, skeletons in her closet. Serve chilled. Last night I didn`t dream anything rosy, yet I find myself saving each detail, every image, every piece of sensation still caught in my inner eyelids, as a bit of yolk stuck onto an eggshell.
I was in Vietnam. This time I looked for my father, who as a war veteran from World War II should have been there. Somehow he wasn`t. Why?It was his duty. He never frowned when I went into combat. Or on mission. He would stay there on the porch, watching the jeep leave, the jeep which would take his most valued treasure away from him. He would dismiss me with a cheerful smile, yet his hand was over his heart. The other hand was raised, as the branch from a tree. I knew the meaning of this. We both loved the poetry of the Nicaraguan poet Joaquin Pasos, specially when he wrote,”you must raise your hand, I want to take with me a memory of you as a cheerful tree.”
I knew what came after I had disappeared from his sight. He would rush to my room, grab the plexiglass image of Vercingètorix-the most beloved freedom fighter of France, the guy who still being a teenager almost defeated Julius Caesar and whose memory puts even Joan of Arc to shame- and light a candle inside the figure. That would guarantee this tender atheist that his kid would come back from the sweet abyss, from the brink of death, safe, maybe missing one piece, shrapneled, broken, shot, bleeding, but still alive. I always came back for him. But in this dream I didn`t see my father. I was godless in this nightmare.
Have you ever been shot? It is not what it is cracked up to be. No instant vortex of pain. 1984 saw me shot by a 22 caliber bullet that entered my left knee through its fatty tissue in the back part. It was like a snap. Yes , don`t look at me like that!It didn`t hurt. Only minutes later, already ensconced in the helicopter, did I notice anything. A rhythmic geyser of blood came out from behind my knee, and I was shown by a comrade what was happening. I am sure you have all seen in the Cartoon Network when Jerry runs off a cliff being chased by Tom. It isn`t until the mouse looks down at the abyss that he realizes he is gravitating on thin air. And smack, he falls headfirst into the gaping space. That was what happened to me in 1984.I was astounded to see my own blood and couldn`t find tears to cry. I understood why Celtic women were more feared than men. We have a bigger threshold for pain. My best friend was on the helicopter, and he took off his bandanna to use it as a tourniquet around my gushing knee wound. It would hold until I got taken to the military hospital in Managua, in a noisy ambulance, as soon as we landed.
In my dream last night I had been shot. I was there, wearing a strange hat and camouflage. On the wet grass. Nobody was paying attention to me. I tried to get up and saw in the distance a man coming towards me. He had long dark hair, thick eyebrows and a halo of light around his forehead. I will not insult your intelligence by saying he had sprouted wings. I am not writing slapstick. I had the eerie feeling I had seen him elsewhere. He knelt by my side. I was convinced that if he laid a hand on me the bleeding would stop. He wasn`t Vietnamese. He had a Semitic appearance.
He would just look at me and smile, as if he had found something strange and precious.
In my dream I wasn `t feeling anything like being a precious objet d`art. Covered with my own blood, I must have been like something my cats dragged in from the rain. Sorry-looking, maybe even hideous. I stretched out my bony hand and felt as if I had touched the most priceless silk, but it was only the skin of his forearm. I still keep the sensation of living satin on the tips of my fingers, the power of his muscles beneath the skin. The vibrant live energy of a living thing. All around me, there were mutilated bodies, bleeding and moaning soldiers, pieces of weapons. An incredible surge of well being and happiness coursed through my veins. The man only smiled again and let me touch his forearm. Just by being there, with him kneeling next to me I felt safe. Nothing was going to harm me. My bleeding had stopped, and the pain was going away. I was getting up in my dream when a blast of napalm scorched the air over our heads. The mirage, or man, or whatever it was, disappeared slowly, like hot air moving during a heat wave. A sudden surge of emptiness overcame my former feeling of happiness. I had been wounded on the palm of my left hand. Only a small pink scar remained where the bullet had gone through sinew and bone.
But my shirt was now wet with my own blood. My left breast was bleeding, and a sturdy gold medal was pinned upon my shirt. The pin of the medal pierced my left breast. It was a sense of dèja vu. In the eighties I had been condecorated and the army general, who had almost useless hands due to a detonation years before he even dreamed of wielding so much power, had been so proud of me when he was giving me the medal that he had not realized he had stuck it firmly to my shirt and skin underneath. I had not even budged, even when the blood streamed in a slow trickle into my shirt and everyone was watching during the ceremony. Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius would have been proud of me. Perhaps whatever I was back then, the spark of life that now made me be onlyme and nobody else, had been with him in his Marcomannic Wars. I had patiently and smilingly waited until the general finished condecorating officers, and the marching band went away with its loud march called El Danto(The Boar),when I finally allowed myself to faint. I crumbled to the ground and the same guy who had lent his bandanna to make a tourniquet for me when I was shot, picked me up from the floor and took me to his office, where he unstuck the medal and sent someone flying to get merthiolate, peroxide and all that was necessary. I can still see the small faint scar on my left breast. Imperceptible to anyone except to myself. Time might be a real doctor curing all wrongs and pains, or at least trying to heal wounds that may or not fester again. Nobody can accuse time of malpractice.
What would have happened if the man I saw in my dreams had been there when my breast was pierced by metallic honour? Would he have only placed his silken hand over the wound and made it heal instantly? How long would it take his hand to heal me? Is it healing that I need and the nightmare was just a warning signal?
I think about Bayard, sieur du Terrail, who was destined to be the chivalrous epitome of the gallant knight. How would he have reacted to skirmishes in Vietnam? If I only had a time machine to dig him up from the Renaissance, when he thought he was really serving France to go with his king to the Italian campaign! Was it the shadow of Bayard, wearing black like an angel fedayeen, or a hazy samurai… the man who came to heal me in the nightmare? I always ask too many questions. That has exasperated all the men in my life-brothers, husband, stepson, students, chums- except my dad with his faith in Vercingètorix, knowing that I would always find the path back to his arms. That is why I always keep coming back. Someone, somehow, somewhere must have a candle lit inside the plexiglass figure of his faith, never letting me go too deeply into the dark crevices of my shell-shocked brain, or into the turquoise waters of the San Juan River or Cosiguina Lagoon I so adore.
Only one thing. No matter what, even if I don`t say your name, let the fire extinguish itself..Keep your candle alight, whomever you are and I say this because I cannot give you a public name. I will always be coming back for more. whether in real life or in my nightmares untilo I can make a dream be forced into becoming true.
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