God, Hope, and Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash’s haggard voice soothes my soul. I’m listening to American IV: The Man Comes Around. The hurt and joy spill from his soul to mine through a pair of cheap headphones bought at the px to combat the music played by my roommate. Cash’s voice takes you to another place, a place you just feel. He’s able to take Trent Reznor’s Hurt and turn it into a cathartic experience. How can someone have that affect with mere words and worn voice. God is in that voice, speaking to me. I need Him. The Man in Black. He knew You and is no longer in the dark.
What have I become my sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away in the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
Even in this song God is somehow there. My sweetest friend. We are all going away, but you endure. Take it all. I have nothing. This empire of dirt is my home. Take it. Take everything away, but leave me your grace. I will only let you down. In our quest to please ourselves and you, we only succeed in making you hurt.
I sit here in my box, my patience being tested. The roommate’s listening or watching some shitty gangsta rap DVD on his new tv/DVD combo he just bought at the PX. We stopped by the PX after having to qualify at the range on paper targets. Qualifying in a combat zone, God help us. Could we possibly do any more admin crap while we’re in a supposed combat zone. We get rodded onto the range for safety, when less than 100 meters outside the FOB there are those that want to kill us. I’ve already had two all night missions this week. God forbid if they give us a few hours of down time. Not sleep time, down time. There’s a difference. Can I have one waking moment not involved in a mission or sleeping? Is that too much to ask? The rap music is trying to overwhelm the music in my headphones. I must escape this place. I have to turn up the volume on my headphones to stay sane. I’m winning the war on what flows through my ears, but my nose is in a losing battle. He’s doing it again. He’s spraying some God-awful cologne or deodorant spray up into the air around him as if to ward off evil spirits.
Take me away Johnny. Sing about God, hurting, killing, whatever, just take me away from this place for just a few moments. I hear a soulful woman’s voice singing with Cash. It’s rapturous, more beautiful than the sweetest smelling rose, lifting me higher, taking me away from this ugly place. It reminds me of being surrounded by dirt and violence and some angel of a girl walking up to me and handing me a rose. God she was precious, and the flower smelled like heaven. What are you doing here little girl? How can something so beautiful exist in such an depraved place? I want to cry out to God to help this girl. I want to protect her. Give her a good life, free of oppression. Rid her and the others of the chains that have forever bound their kind in this land. Protect her and give her peace. Give her a chance. Let her smile forever be. She must be an angel, sent here to remind the sorrowful that there is goodness and beauty on this earth. I hope she stays a long time. I don’t want Him to take her back yet. Don’t leave little girl. You must stay in this place and provide hope. Let her help these people. Give her opportunity. Don’t relegate her to being another field hand, watched over by men who sit idle. Keep her healthy and happy. Let her prosper. Let her dream big and attain them. Send her to school, a scholarship, opportunity. Make her a bright shining light.
Cash’s voice is bringing me back. The awful stench of the cologne has receded. The sleepless night before is behind me. The wasted hours sitting at a traffic circle don’t seem as fruitless anymore. For those hours make this moment that much better. I have three papers in front of me. I need the news. I need to know of something other than this place. They are all days old, but I don’t care. Discarded, they sat on the floor of the PX, with it’s picked through shelves. The Mother’s Day card display is almost empty as well. Only cards for daughters remain. How many people shopping in this shithole have daughters that are mothers? DVD’s, always DVD’s. So many movies, so few that interest me. The magazine rack in the back has been picked through as well. Hundreds of magazines but none with news. I need news, not magazines with girls asses bursting from the cover.
Cash is quoting a passage from Revelation. Take me away, even if it’s Armageddon. Let the Man come around, and I will welcome His embrace. Let the trumpets and multitude of angels sing. Let their voices fill my ears. Let the Man come around, and I will bow down before his throne. Fill this ugly place with your wrath and goodness. Show us your grace. Forgive me.
Magazines and magazines but nothing I want or need. Muscle men embracing bikini clad women, ass barely covered by a strand of fabric. God I don’t need this. I don’t need the women’s magazines boasting of the newest diet or position that will drive him wild in bed. I don’t need the guns or the trucks or the women or the computers or the games. How have they managed to make a dime from these magazines? To whom do these appeal to? Give me news. Doesn’t anyone in this God forsaken land read the news? I know not what day it is, neither the day of the week nor the date. It’s just one big day, eternal, never ending.
Where is the light? In the dead of night, in some desolate part of this place, why are my eyes always drawn toward the light? What am I looking for? I’m searching. Searching for that escape. Help me find it God. Show me the light of this place. Show me the light that will give me hope. Cash is singing about Hurt. I keep going back to that song. Listening to it doesn’t make me Hurt though. I makes me feel, the mind no longer numb.
Another song. A dying man, and Cash is putting me next to him. I’m listening to his last words. He’s out of prison and trying to get back to Louisiana to see his wife and son. God, don’t let me be that dying man on a journey to see his Rose. I’ll send his message and take his money to Rose, but I won’t walk in his shoes. I won’t have the same fate. I’ll give my love to my Rose and tell my boy how proud his daddy is of him. A man’s dying wish. Please give my love to Rose, don’t forget. I won’t forget. I’m not this dying man sitting beside me. I’m alive and will deliver the message myself.
The books are no different. Who are they appealing to? Is every person in this place a female looking for an escape through a romance novel? Another dark hole that leads to nothing. The books laugh at me as I peruse them, and I laugh back with the knowledge that I will never pick one off their dusty racks.
The newspapers are on my bed waiting to be read.
Cash is singing about a bridge over troubled water.
When you’re weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them off
I’m on your side
Oh, when times get tough and friends just can’t be found
Like a bridge over trouble water, I will lay me down
When you’re down and out
When you’re on the streets
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I’ll take your part when darkness comes and pain is all around
Sail on silver girl
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
God, be my bridge, and give me safe passage over this water. The bridge is long and the water dangerous. Help me cross it. Ease my mind. I’m weary. I’m weak. Strengthen me. I feel small compared to you. My tears are dry, but I sometimes see hurt in their eyes. Show yourself to these people. Fill their heart with light. Be on our side. We’re all the same. Another little girl peers around a gate. Look at her smile. There are millions like her, young and old. Sail on little girl. God, let it be their time to shine. Let their dreams be on their way. Let her shine. I’m on the streets and night has come. Deliver me from the pain. Show me the light that will guide my way. Help me to see. Help me to feel your presence amid the darkness that surrounds me. Is that you in that girl’s smile?
I pick up the paper on top and death screams out to me. 50 bodies found in the Tigris River. The Tigris. I’ve felt its cool water upon my skin. The souls of those killed making it colder. Kids playing, swimming against it’s current, oblivious to the horrors that lie beneath. Underneath this gruesome headline is Brittany Murphy. “A treat for the troops.” “20,000 free copies of Maxim going downrange featuring Brittany Murphy, a Marine’s curvaceous cousin.” Brittany staring at me with seductive eyes. Turning the page I see listings of recent U.S. deaths in Iraq. I’ll never be on this page. I can’t be. I still have to give my love to my Rose and tell my boy how proud I am of him.
Next page, ‘Akbar was racially harassed’, ‘DOD prepares to launch new sexual assault policy’, and ‘Maxim to give free copies to troops in Iraq’. Brittany again. A picture of the cover. She’s now wearing only underwear. A picture of a girl wearing almost nothing next to a story about the DOD’s sexual assault policy. I keep turning the pages. The new Pope, Putin and Rice, Saudis’ interest in nuclear development, Italian premier resigns, an image of Virgin Mary on a Chicago underpass. People desperate for any sign of hope in a dark world will see anything in the most unlikely places. I don’t need a vision of the Virgin Mary. I need God. I need to feel him. God reach out to me, embrace me, draw me to you. I see you in everything and yet I somehow still feel a million miles from you.
Did you know that boy I saw yesterday, the disabled boy who couldn’t walk? His legs looked strong. Why can’t he walk? Why did his parents not bother to clothe him from the waist down? Who are these people? How could he still be smiling with joy? He has hope in the midst of nothing. You gave him that hope. He sees you and knows you. How could he make me hurt for him and make me smile at the same time? His face was aglow with joy as I took his picture. Turning the camera around to reveal to him his own image looked to be the greatest gift he’d ever known. It’s just pixels, tiny digital dots that made him somebody, even if just for a moment. His image may be erased from my camera but never from my thoughts. Go with him throughout his hard life. Give him a little joy amongst the pain and the hurt as he did for me.
My roommate is now attempting to clean the pigsty that is his home. Our box is ugly. There is nothing beautiful inside. Where are you God? I need you and yet I reject you. The music is still loud in my ears, barely defeating the vile sounds emanating from our room. “The first time ever I saw your face.” He’s doing it again. Taking me away.
I thought the sun rose
In your eyes
And the moon and the stars
Were the gifts you gave
To the dark and the endless sky
My love
I see it. I see you when the sun rises or sets. I see it here in this box. My love, my precious wife. Her picture draws me closer to you. There is something beautiful in this box after all. It’s You through her. God, be with her and our son. She is a gift. A gift of You from You. Her light is eternal and endless as the sky, shining thousands of miles away, giving me the gift of promise. Promise and hope for a new day. The light in the distance that sustains me. You sustain me through her. I can feel her heart close to mine. Let me see her again. Let me feel the joy of life through her. Her hope is never ending and everlasting. Let me embrace it. Let me embrace her again. She is my hope. You are my hope. There is hope in this world, even in this place. Let these people see it as I have.
posted by Michael at 2:42 AM |
