I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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Days & nights I carried two weapons everywhere. I wore pockets of bullets across my chest. I wasn’t of age. I was pretty much a virgin. Nights I’d watch women wail & scream as I stole their son, husband, brother. I’d search these men, inch by inch, between the legs, up the ass cheeks, then walk them, hands zip-tied, to the truck & all the while the women screamed. Nights & days all of us — eight, ten, a dozen soldiers — stood there mute, numb, as quiet as we could be in a room filled with screaming. Sometimes I may have even yawned or laughed. Sometimes, some long nights, I’d pace & mutter fucking Jesus while the women also spoke, in refrains, their god’s name, & I’d want to scream back but couldn’t.
Hugh Martin