Monday, September 08, 2008
Camera Phone: images amok
This was going to be a day with no postings, and I had a very clear sense of what the next post was going to be. Lesson learned: I don’t know squat and maybe that’s for the best. A handful of images from a weekend run delightfully amok:
You know it’s summer in San Fran when the historic light rail is running the transit schooner - the trolley that puts the “fun” in “funicular” (assuming it can go up a steep hill and has an angled bottom edge, but you know what I mean):
Sunday, we took a little time in the morning to visit the beach and play on an honest-to-goodness seesaw. It was a lot more fun than I’d expected it to be. This particular piece of equipment is made out of old creosote-soaked timber - a half-buried log and a long sturdy board. We were alone with the cool morning breeze. Good times.
Finally, sunday afternoon I spent a little quality drinkin’ time down in the lower haight. This is my favorite of the various graffiti and street-art images I took with my cellphone during that trip (and yes, these are all cellphone photos so don’t go whining about the lame quality, I know they are pretty crude but so am I sometimes):
Finally finally, I got a cool note today from a “recovering educator” out in Maryland who liked one of my old essays, about sad old shops. He found me by doing a google search on “desuitude.” Be-YEAH! I’m in the top 20 google results for “desuitude”! He sent along a very cool essay, that I post up for your enjoyment in the extended entry. Also, have you gotten into FieldReport.com? Just saying… it’s kind of addictive, but not in the bad way.
Okay, time to get back to the… thing… that I was doing… before.... SOOKAYGOODBYETHANKSOKAY? More later in the week; those “music” posts I had in mind are still percolating....
Kensho* Under Fire
Richard O. Titus
Being shot at wasn’t what I had imagined it to be. There was no panic, no desire to flee, no anger, no fear. Under fire, I visited one of the most serene places of my life.
The night-time infiltration course was scheduled at the end of my eight- week basic training cycle, in March, 1962. Using machine guns, barbed wire, and pit explosions, the Army sought to approximate a field of actual combat. A kind of trial-by-fire send-off for its new crop of troops.
Physically, I was in the best condition of my life. Psychologically, I’d learned the value of compliance, a hard lesson for many young men in the non-prison population. I performed all requests of the trainers as quickly as possible, without comment or question, and with a fierce determination never to be in a stand-out position that would invite their attention. No matter how mindless, uncomfortable, or distasteful an act I was asked to perform, things always went best when I quickly performed what was asked and endured in silence. This was what I had learned to be the definition of ‘good soldiering.’
The Fort Jackson Infiltration Course was about 300 yards in length, containing low barbed wire barriers strung on wood stakes, and several circular enclosures, defined with a three-foot wall of sandbags. Inside the sandbag ring were explosive charges to be detonated randomly during the operation of the course. At the end of the Course were two platforms made of railroad ties and filled with earth. On each platform was a M1917-A1 .30 caliber water-cooled machine gun.
When I first saw them, these guns made no more impact than props on a film set. The configuration of the machine guns were familiar to me but, somehow, seemed smaller than the one fired with clenched-teeth by the doomed Sgt.Bill Dane (played by Robert Taylor) at the conclusion of the 1943 film, Bataan.
The traverse and elevation of the gun barrels were fixed and, with three-foot platform and the additional height of the gun mount, I estimated the barrels were at least five feet off the ground. The guns were probably elevated to fire at least several feet higher, at least I hoped so. In operation, each machine gun had a crew of three. A shooter, a loader, and a standing observer who would spot any problems on the course, perhaps the odd ill-fated standing or wounded soldier.
Our trainers assured us that live rounds would be alternated with tracer rounds and that, as they so colorfully put it, it would be best to ‘keep our asses down,’ as we moved on the Course. I usually found dire warnings of our trainers a trifle melodramatic in tone and generally discounted them.In this case I took the warning to heart. When the guns began firing I assumed as flat a posture as I could manage and I’m sure left a shallow trench in my wake as I moved down range.
To reduce our chances of doing anything life-threatening in the dark, we first negotiated the course in daylight. Like military ballet students, we were asked to assume the classic military movement positions that included the high crawl, low crawl, and back crawl, all the while remembering that our ‘best friend’ – a ten-pound Garand M1 rifle – was to be protected from dirt and debris at all times.
As we moved down the Course in our daylight trial, our cadre positioned themselves on the side of the course to critique our progress. It was their loud, profane, and continuing opinion that we moved too slowly, handled our weapon poorly, and didn’t travel nearly close enough to the ground. In short, we presented a pathetic, spastic carpet of mud and green-clad humanity. Despite our obvious shortcomings, our trainers determined that we were ready for the night-time infiltration course.
We marched out to the course on a March night with only the sounds of boots on the hard-packed sand roadway, with occasional coughs, and the drilling sounds of early spring insects in the pines around us. Above us a bright full moon illuminated the sky like a great dark bowl.
Arriving at the Course we queued up at the far end. A whistle blew, machine guns began their fire, explosions echoed, and a first wave of five trainees was launched onto the crawling ground. I was in the fourth wave.
As I lowered myself onto the earth of the Course I found it cool and quite agreeable. The earth was soft to the touch and somewhat dense, not like the rasping sand in which we usually trained. The consistency of the earth was like the potting soil my mother used to start her African violets. It was as if the Army had prepared a special growth media for sprouting new soldiers.
Because we had run the course in daylight and knew what to expect, my reaction to night-time course was rather blase. I was fixed on the mechanics of negotiating the course. I had finished the high and low crawl portions of the course and had begun my back crawl, shifting my rifle onto my chest and belly.
As I turned onto my back, I was unprepared for the sight that now appeared above me. At a height impossible to determine, yellow trails of tracer rounds curved down range and over the horizon. As these brilliant fingers reached out into the night some made occasional whizzing sounds. When the firing paused, the full moon was visible.
I lay completely still, transfixed by the scene. The temperature seemed perfect, neither hot nor cold. I realized that, even with the full moon, our movements were obscured in darkness. Without the profane personal coaching of our trainers, our rate of progress down the course was a personal decision. I was in no hurry.
The power of the moment dominated my senses and muted the sounds of the guns, explosions, and shouts of the trainers. A wave of contentment washed over me and made me smile. I felt a sense that I had not been placed there as randomly as I may have thought. I felt reassured that I was a part of some larger universe, quite beyond what I had known.
I was not then, and am not now, a religious civilian or soldier but, on that soft, cool earth I recalled a fragment from Philippians that referred to ‘peace that passeth all understanding’ and also a reference by Zen interpreter Alan Watts to ‘catching hold of the present moment.’
Whatever the portent of that moment, I have recalled it many times since it passed and have been grateful for it. It did not change my life. It gave me no special calling. But it did define for me the relative unimportance of the pandemonium of training I had passed through and reminded me of a larger world inside and out.
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*: Kensho - Literally “seeing the nature” in Japanese, is the experience of enlightenment described in the context of Zen Buddhism. The term is often used to denote an initial awakening experience, seeing one’s buddha nature, though not as a permanent state.
Thanks, Richard! That was cool!
