2

14JUN2009
　
When you know your future, you want to be original simply to see what happens. After knowing your future, it’s the only way to live.
In my head all day long helping me keep in the moment: _I have my own._
(My own movements, my own Masculinity, my own intelligence, my own body, my own muscles. I have my own reflection of the Real.)
Being yourself is being who you want to be. Because your Self is a blank slate and your Want is the soul’s physical expression.
Seeing K____ and Muc___ (a guy he works with) together all the time triggers me, even though I know if mine and his positions were reversed (mainly our shifts), I’d be laughing with Muc___, too.
__________
　
15JUL2009
　
(evening) Muc__ paid me a hundred dollars to work his CP shift, and that’s where I am now.
I haven’t slept in along time between shifts in my AO and missions with third platoon ..
I crossed paths with K____ this morning after a couple of hours of sleep (I had returned with 3^rd PLT from mission around 0430).
Lately he’s been more and more egocentric, or at least lately I’ve been more and more aware of it. I knew about the ping pong, I knew about the whole he’s-smart-enough-to-be-a-medic thing, I knew he had Ego but everyone has flaws, not to mention mine.
That’s why I don’t talk to him about work outs, because he always has to try and make it out like he’s more educated about it than I am. Same as I don’t talk to him about music or books and especially about missions ..
But he’ll bring it up anyway, like this morning, him asking me about last night’s mission. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and answered honestly. I told him about my first dismount and the convoy passing by me at the same time. It was over 50 civilian eighteen wheeler fuel trucks, in a country war torn over oil. After that convoy another fifty eighteen wheelers came by. I was going to tell him more, like when S____ and J___ went at it, and about the pillow/IED. But he said quickly, _Yeah, they have to have convoys like that to supply all the FOBs,_ like he was teaching me .. Arrogant, he seems.
And I don’t understand why the acts seem so desperate. The good-looking one with family, college, girls, everything in the world is insecure enough to have Ego. I want to confront him, switch him back to Real, but he seems like a robot now and won’t know what I’m talking about .. I did my shift in my original AO. It was like a waiting. I made sure to thank SFC L___ for linking me up with 3^rd as their regular filler. I think he was surprised, since the first mission was so brutal.
I later SP’d with 3^rd at 1700 and as we prepped I congratulated SGT Sm____ on his promotion. He said they were just talking about me earlier, how I should’ve been promoted, how I should’ve been made the SGT.
_I mean, whenever we needed something, you’d pull out that little notebook and then haul ass,_ he said, and we laughed. _Then, next time we saw you, you’d have it for us. Not like it is now. Where it takes an act of congress to get something._
I had been wondering in the back of my mind about my competence as their SGT. Maybe I did do well, I don’t know .. The mission sounded boring but wasn’t because 3^rd’s new LT seems to prefer SGT S___, who is my TC .. Hence I went where the LT went, and was a part of the tour the IA gave and the unofficial two-hour meeting between the IA company and our PLT.
There were seven of us in a hot room talking over chi_. The American LT was a wood speaker, but the IA one was impressive.
Between the interpreter, the IA LT, the rest of the IA company, and the conversations and discussions, I was exposed for awhile to Iraq. I didn’t have time to bask in it, just experience it in the Focused way, so that’s what I did.
When I got back from mission, I was alone in mine and K__’s room. I started getting my gear off, straightening my rack, and folding my laundry, and was surprised that I wasn’t basking in the mission now.
I understood that the present moment was where I was at and the mission past. The secret was to not be surprised by being Good. I’m Good. I deserve good moments and am not to be surprised by it.
(It is my habit to remember a good moment so that it will see me through all the bad I’m in. It’s an unnatural, unfocused way of living.)
Later, on during another of Muc__’s shifts I was covering, the deterioration of mine and K__‘s friendship was obvious. We hardly talked at all. I think he assumed I was tired, and showed me where a couch was, and said he’d cover for me while I slept.