I don't usually write posts about politics- and especially not war- but after reading an article about a soldier lost to post-traumatic stress disorder, I feel inclined to do so.

You should be able to view the article here, on the New York Times' website:
Tracking A Marine Lost at Home

Looking back on my studies of various wars, which I must admit are much more comprehensive when it comes to the Vietnam War, I get lost thinking about the individual faces that stare back from book pages, the youth and idealism have surely been taken away from them one way or another.

The homeless men living in Cass Park, the guy who used to live down the hall... It's so hard to really realize just how close these wars are to each and every one of us- to realize that many of our friends and neighbors are still grappling with the effects that the war had on them, when the rest of the country has moved on.

"We are what we love, not what loves us."
- A line from Adaptation



It's beautifully simple as a concept, but so hard to put into practice. Loving something so much opens us up for just as much pain and heartache as it does joy and happiness.






Sometimes I wonder if the pain is worth it.

I've lived in metro Detroit since I was four years old- a long time considering the fact that my parents were both, at one time or another, pretty transitory. My mother was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, the daughter of a carpenter in the long wake of the depression. My grandparents and their children- three girls, two boys- bounced around the country, from job to job, until finally returning to Michigan, the state where their ancestors had lived since the 1700s. My dad's family, during his youth, was a bit more stable; the Dowdings simply moved throughout the state, going wherever my grandfather was offered a job, as a math teacher. After getting his Associate's Degree at the University of Michigan, my dad travelled across the country with the U.S. Marines, going so far as Hawaii in his fifteen years of military service.

My youth was much more stable than my parents', though it started out rather rough with my family living in apartments or trailers on a military base. When we finally settled in Michigan, we moved to the same suburb that my dad had been raised in- a relatively large upriver city named Roseville.

The main road that runs through my hometown is Gratiot, and everything important- it seems- is located on that simple stretch that runs from downtown Detroit all the way out to the areas of the state that may, to those nostalgic old Michiganders, still be considered 'rural'. The rest of Roseville, the stores and factories and motels that held addresses in other areas of town, didn't matter to me as a child- even my Elementary School was only a block away from the road.

Perhaps it is not solely a metro Detroit phenomenon, but the dependence on main roads and highways seems to have defined my childhood. To this day I cannot tell you which suburbs are next to each other, after eighteen years of experience, but I can probably tell you which highway and exit number that will take you there. The city and its suburbs have simply, in my mind, become a disconnected list of places and things. Rochester Hills, Novi, Eastpointe, all of these places are accessible by highway, but try anything else and you might end up in Canada.

At one point, the fact that Detroit was the 'Motorcity' must have been a good thing, since the nickname stuck; nowadays, though, it just seems to be a burden. The loneliness of the daily commute, the hours we each spend singing along to our car radio, they seemed to have taken a toll on the city's residents. As I walk down the street lately, I notice just how many people cross the street instead of having to talk to me, and I notice my relief in being spared the 'how are you?' I would have had to expel had they not.

What is it that makes Detroit different from the rest of the world? Other cities- bigger cities- have their own brand of desolation and disconnection, but Detroit still takes the cake. The best and most frequent conversations I have these days, walking the dog in the streets of midtown Detroit, are those with bums asking for change, or drug addicts whom I can barely comprehend. The car companies really got us this time.

(I'm kind of fumbling for a direction with this one- I know I had it at some point.)

When I grow up, I want to be:








In a word, BEAUTIFUL.

A continuation/edit from an old story...

"Charlie... CHARLIE." The door swung open, and the harsh neon hallway light hummed its way into the dark room. Two figures entered- a man and a woman- both pausing near the door.

"He wasn't always like this, you know. And Charlie... well, he's a little senile," she smiled almost apologetically.
The man acknowledged her with a slight nod, and wandered over to the windows, drawing the heavy curtains back to allow the late-afternoon sun to enter. Charlie started a bit as the light hit his face, but didn’t respond when the man turned and asked, "HOW ARE YOU FEELING TODAY?"

"He doesn't speak much," she stated, almost apologetically. "You'll have to learn to understand his signals. He's usually a pretty easygoing patient; he only eats at meal times and doesn't really leave his room. The only thing you'll really need to know is when he needs to use the bathroom."



He nodded, looking into the glossy eyes of the old man. "I'm PAYTON," he nearly yelled, searching the old gray eyes for some sign of recognition.

"You don't have to shout. He can hear quite well. Ever since his wife, Jean, died, though, he really just gave up on talking..."



_______________________________________________________________________


"Boy, Charlie, of all the pretty nurses in this place, you get the one named Payton," he chuckled slightly.

"Dontcha know it. Ain't that just my luck, though, Charlie. Ain't that just my luck."


They sat quietly for a moment, with the light still highlighting their wrinkled faces. The winter sun was setting fast now, changing the colors in the room from yellow to orange to red until eventually settling upon a heavy grey.

"Well." He turned slightly, looking the other man directly in the eye as if waiting for an answer to a question that was never asked.

Charlie stood up and crept over to the flood of light coming in from the hall, catching a glimpse of 'Wheel of Fortune' on the television in the common room as he shut the door as quietly as possible. "Well?"



"What do you think? Is it him?" He asked, with such a spark of excitement that he was almost unrecognizable to the other.

"I dunno, Charlie, old man," Charlie’s voice trembled.

__________________________________________________________________________

Payton wasn’t terribly new to the profession, according to his resume, but Lauren thought there was something odd about him as she studied him from behind. The way he spoke to the patients, the almost callous bedside manner- something wasn’t right. Still, though, Lauren had to admit that his timing was impeccable, as he’d come just as an older nurse, Nancy, was set to retire. It was decided by the facility’s management that he would simply take over her patients- a fluid change that would leave the patients as undisturbed as possible.

As they walked silently down the wide, empty hallway, Lauren’s mind drifted through all of the names and faces of the patients who would now be in this man’s care. Mr. and Mrs. Calloway, who, upon admission to the retirement facility, were not expected to live past the first six months, and had somehow made it through for almost four years; Saul- an older resident, well-known and liked throughout the place for his trademark smile; Dolly, who took more medications than even Lauren could keep straight; and then there was Charlie. Lauren had been new to the facility on the day that Charlie had arrived, dropped off by a weathered-looking couple- probably his son and daughter-in-law who, according to Charlie’s file, lived almost fourteen hours away. She still remembered the genuine nature of his first hello, the years of wrinkles that surrounded his smiling eyes.

Lauren’s claim that Charlie was an easy resident to care for hadn’t come across as truthfully as she had hoped; while it was true that he didn’t ask for much, Lauren had come to realize that Charlie wasn’t simple at all. His quiet looks while she was speaking to him before he went to sleep, the way he had grabbed her wrist last week as she set out his dinner, something had been brewing in Charlie since he had first arrived. She had feared this when she finally got Charlie to speak to her- his few words had been ones of burden.

“Ugh,” Lauren groaned aloud, startling herself with the sound of her own voice. Lost in thought, she had completely forgotten that she was in the company of this new employee. “Oh, I… uhh...” her embarrassment burned in the redness of her face, and Payton smiled faintly.

____________________________________________________________________________________

“That new nurse is awright… I guess,” Charlie turned his question mark glance towards his counterpart, who stared blankly back. A silence took over the room for a few long seconds, as the two considered him.

“Oh Charlie,” the one said to the other, turning sadly. “Oh Charlie, we need to get out of here.” The thought had crossed Charlie’s mind every now and again as he had watched the long-term care nurses come and go. Nancy had been the most recent to leave, and before her had been that beautiful little blond… Sara? Charlie couldn’t quite remember- the name wasn’t important. Even with the senility that was setting in, thought Charlie to himself, he still knew how to appreciate a tasty little behind. Now, though, this Payton fellow- well, he wasn’t Charlie’s type.

Charlie’s mind briefly drifted to his Jeanie, the reason he had come to the Assisted Living Home in the first place. She had been even more beautiful than that cute little blond nurse when they first met. She was almost fifteen years younger than he was, a waitress at a roadside diner in some little town that he’d never bothered to learn the name of. A curvy little brunette, sixteen, serving all of those truckers their coffee and burgers, she had sauntered up to Charlie sitting in a booth by the window and simply offering him a cup and a menu she had saved his life.

SIXTEEN- the number struck him for a moment as the fuzzy memories of his wife drifted through his failing memory. Sixteen seemed so long ago- his beautiful wife, dead for almost ten years now.

It's funny how, the more we learn about ourselves, the more we teach others about themselves, and the more we learn about others, the more we learn about ourselves.



It's a quick thought, because I have no time to expound, but a rather profound realization if you live it.

I think I'm losing my mind. Lately, for no apparent reason, I've been having random brief spells of euphoria- it's almost like a dizzy spell, but it leaves me feeling disoriented and pleased. It's been happening for about a week now, and today other weird things have been going on with my mind. Today, for example, while talking to Phil, I had this weird feeling like I didn't know who he was and got really uncomfortable. That's rather abnormal.

It's like LSD flashbacks, but without the LSD, or the flashbacks. I'm sure that I'm losing it, and, with the euphoric feeling that keeps pressing into my memory, I'm not sure I want it back.

It's snowing like mad here again- something like half a foot in the past 12 hours.

I've never really liked snow, being from the suburbs of Detroit it was always more of a nuisance. It would fall hard, covering cars and making the roads too slippery for safety, but rarely did it afford any days off from school or trips to the nearest sledding slope- there were no hills in Roseville, only parking lots.

I never really liked snow- because for me it meant trudging through the brown sludge that lingered long after the snowfall, and learning the terror of driving without Anti-lock Brakes before I even had my license. Now, though, as I sit in a second-story apartment overlooking Second Avenue, I realize that snow isn't always bad. Snow in Detroit means that the mousy branches of the trees across the street are wrapped in icicles and covered in snow, almost allowing one to forget that a woman was murdered in the apartment building behind them less than a week ago. Down the street, the tentative remains of the apartment building that burned down two weeks ago look like something from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The snow swirls around the men that loiter outside of the local liquor store, and surely covers the bums that are still sleeping on park benches in Cass Park. The pristine white snow even covers the used condoms and rotten fruit that lay in the alley next to the apartment; the purity of the falling snow- that fleeting quality that will soon give way to the brown sludge- for an instant almost makes Detroit beautiful.

True love is unrequited.

A Brief Statement of Purpose.

I don't believe in the idea that one person can change the world. As a kid being raised in the suburbs of Detroit, I never had a chance to meet any celebrities, any of the people whose books I had read or whose faces I had seen on the covers of magazines in the grocery store. No one came to visit the plain, industrial cities that cover the flat surface of the state of Michigan, and- at least it seemed to me- no one ever came from there either. Nelson Mandela was from South Africa, Mother Teresa worked with the poor children of other countries, and everyone important from the United States seemed to either live in California or New York City. I was worlds away from these people, and I learned to live with the fact that I would never be one of them.

While getting my Bachelor's Degree in Michigan's capital city, I took to spending any school break I could abroad. I went as far as my feet and backpack would take me, and I looked for the shadows of the heroes I grew up worshiping. I traveled to Africa, viewing the prison that held Nelson Mandela. I walked through the gravestones of so many revered men and women at Westminster Abbey and saw glimpses of their lives.

I don't believe in the idea that one person can change the world- and I learned that through my travels. I saw the prison that held Nelson Mandela for years, and met many other men who were involved in the same struggle- held in the same prison. I visited friends in Hungary for a month and was welcomed with open arms by the most generous family I've ever met. In all of the countries and cities I traveled to, I learned more and more that it is not the person that makes the difference- it is the community, the people who live their lives day-to-day without the recognition that they deserve.

It was this realization that drives my desire to teach- and learn. I want to meet these people- the ones who aren't on magazine covers- because I think they can teach me much more than any author or professor, and I want to teach English so that we have a greater opportunity to learn from one another. I don't believe that one person can change the world, but I'll never let that stop me from trying.