being human | penfist

I wake up in hell. My back hurts. My back always hurts since I came here. Something happened in Kuwait when I was dragging equipment through the sand in a windstorm. A ripping in the muscles I think. Now the endless hurt. Groaning, I rise from the bed, pull on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I grab the pack off the night stand. Cheap Iraqi cigarettes. I find it ironic that I am pulling little streams of smoky death into my lungs daily that are marked with the brand name Miami.

This trailer park I live in is a very different world from Miami. Nothing I’ve seen in Iraq resembles Miami. Here I sit, pulling on my cigarette named Miami. All I can think about is the nature of death. In the months I’ve been here, I’ve seen it fall from the sky at random. The realization that there is no god becomes stronger with every moment I spend in this place.

I take a drag and ponder it. The idea of a just and loving god is ridiculous to me. The idea of any intercessory supernatural force is asinine. Here I am, in the middle of a war, trying to make sense of the universe. Fatalistically pondering the blue sky above and the waves of heat radiating off the paving blocks under my feet. The world around me is peaceful for the moment. I am keenly aware of how deceptive the moment is.

We are fragile. I am surrounded by chaos and a city in which slow, murderous retribution is playing out on a daily basis. Murder squads roam the streets at night. Men in trucks position themselves as close as they can to where I live and lob mortars into the neighborhood, hoping to kill.
They don’t know I exist, but they hate me nonetheless. If they could take a drill to my head and make me suffer, they would. Every day I am exposed to the savage effects of the worst behavior that humanity can dream up. Rape. Torture. Outright murder. Most of it is being done in the name of god.
The cigarette’s vapors fill my lungs. I relish the calm, this sanctuary of reflection under a sun we all share, and upon whose light we depend for continued survival. I think about how humans used to worship that sun and call it a god. There have been many gods in the history of this species. As far as I can tell, every one was invented to fulfill a desire to be more important than the inventor actually is or was.

This planet is a backwater in the universe. The universe is a cold, uncaring place.

All the good and bad things that happen on Sol are either cause by natural phenomena or humans. There is no supernatural force manipulating anything. Miami is only a fleeting state of mind, and I am not important.

They taught me about Jesus, who came to die for my sins, and in whom I have no faith. Legends say Jesus was hung on a cross at 33. My cross is this place, a cigarette named Miami, and the uncertainty I feel about this war that surrounds me. I can never come back from here.
I will never be the same. It is already harder to laugh. Harder to talk. Harder to care about what happens next. I am numb, but the cigarette that is my cross reminds me I am still human. It is making the fingers I hold it with warm. The cigarette is almost done serving the purpose it was made for while I am still pondering whether I was made for any purpose at all.

I stub it out on the paving blocks, blow out the last cloud of smoke, and suck in another breath of Baghdad. I wonder if there is any growth I can find in existing today. Surely, there must be.
My back hurts. It always hurts now. One cigarette is never enough. Life is a series of addictions.

I think about how, at some point, somewhere nearby, someone else must have been caught up in a narrative opposite mine. One that felt like heaven. I hope to myself they can hold on.

A memory for Raya.

Colonel: Marine, what is that button on your body armor?
Joker: A peace symbol, sir.
Colonel: Where’d you get it?
Joker: I don’t remember, sir.
Colonel: What is that you’ve got written on your helmet?
Joker: “Born to kill”, sir.
Colonel: You write “born to kill” on your helmet, and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?
Joker: No, sir.
Colonel: What is it supposed to mean?
Joker: I don’t know, sir.
Colonel: You don’t know very much, do you?
Joker: No, sir.
Colonel: You better get your head and your ass wired together, or I will take a giant shit on you!
Joker: Yes, sir.
Colonel: Now answer my question or you’ll be standing tall before the man!
Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
Colonel: The what?
Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
Colonel: Whose side are you on, son?
Joker: Our side, sir.
Colonel: Don’t you love your country?
Joker: Yes, sir.
Colonel: Then how ’bout getting with the program? Why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
Joker: Yes, sir.
Colonel: Son, all I’ve ever asked of my Marines is for them to obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It’s a hard-ball world, son. We’ve gotta try to keep our heads until this peace craze blows over!
Joker: [salutes] Aye-aye, sir.

— Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick

We are all dualities, and madness is always closer than we think it is. Brains are chemical soup, and the recipe has to be just right for us to blend into the tribe and play our part correctly. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who came up with the concept of the ‘duality of man’ was himself beset by mental illness. The duality concept is simple, unless you don’t want it to be, and lots of you who read this won’t. But simple needs complex so I understand if you want duality to be the other side of the coin. I’m going to argue for the simple side.

Good needs evil. In this reality if I do something good, someone else somewhere else has to do something equally evil to keep the universe in balance. We are individuals, but we are also all part of this duality. I am not all good, or all bad. I am not all man, and you, if you happen to identify as female, are not all woman. Each of us, whether we like it or not, has some characteristics of both sexes. There is no purely asexual or androgynous human being.

This is a yin.yang thing. Making people think about the idea that they aren’t all one way makes them uncomfortable. In the movie, Joker is a pacifist with a gun. He’s not all killer, but some of him is. Another part of him wants to be peaceful. He is at war in Vietnam, but he is also at war within himself. When I was in the Marine Corps, many years ago, I watched Full Metal Jacket over and over and thought about duality. I was raised by pacifists, so I need to join the Corps. I did the same job as Joker. I was a combat correspondent. The movie was release in 1987 and I joined the Corps in 1991. We are creatures of our time and place, and we are more than one thing.

It’s how a loving mother can also be a wanton slut, how a priest can also be a pedophile. Murderers can be kind. Dictators can be benevolent. The world is full of people who are more than one thing and also people who are in different moments, opposite things. I understand how that can be confusing when we are constantly being asked to make quick judgment calls, when people demand that we label others and wear the labels they have given us.

My advice to you is to quietly let them know you refuse to wear that which they want you to wear. Tell them you are a duality. Tell them you are just trying to wrap your mind around that fact and are therefore much too busy to be bothered at the moment. Tell them it is hard enough balancing out what you are without all their white noise. If that’s not enough, thank them for teaching you what sort of person you don’t want to become. It’s OK to make mistakes, and you get to choose the balance you want for yourself. Unless you’re so off kilter the rest of us decide you need to be kept in a cage for our safety and yours. We’re all evolving at the same time. At different rates. You are fortunate enough to have been born into a time and place where the sum of all that is known is growing exponentially. This leads to opportunities for massive empathy. And also endless cynicism. It’s your choice to make.

You’ll be remembered as a saint or sinner, but most likely you’ll be somewhere in between the two extremes. Remember duality as you walk the paths life shows you.