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| Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to Me and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to Me. Hear me, that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
-Isaiah 55:1-3 | | |
| You know I'm so alone without you
Maybe you'll be lonesome too Just remember til you're home again
You belong to me | | |
| Do you remember when we first met?
I sure do, it was sometime in early September.
Well you were lazy about it, you made me wait around.
I was so crazy about you, I didn't mind.
Guess I was afraid that if you rolled away,
You wouldn't roll back my direction very soon.
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| Brother, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother
Not for years, anyhow;
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Then I will warm you,
Hold you close, wrap you in circles,
Use you and change you
Maybe thousands of years, brother. Carl Sandburg | | |
| How do you generalize?
War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket's red glare. It's not pretty, exactly. It's astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross that river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.
-Tim O'Brien | | |
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