Word Stream 1

He remembered nights with dark Gothic buildings, busy people, old wax candles melting down to their holders in the small hours of the morning – up all night watching movies. The skies were damp and gray. Everyone seemed spirited and lifted on so many ideas of the future. Like children building the best future in their heads and turning it into the physical with their minds. The movies were simple, but we laughed, ate, and drank. We wanted to know what it was like at the front. It always felt like I wanted to be there, in the action. Here was too safe and away from the important changes, even though it was where the changes to push were made. Still, to imagine the new equipment, and relative ease of encounters... to get the heart racing again in the thrill of battle where your life could be gone in an instant. Death was always a sobering thought. If it came, it came, and it just happened. That was it. No deep contemplation, no fear, just a slice of reality to leave behind. Who wanted to live thinking of death? Not while we can build, think, be together, and make dreams for the future. One wished even to skip sleep. Imagining with all the threats removed, and everywhere a safe zone of no violence. All guns, tanks, planes, having served their purpose, now shown with honor, restored by hobbyists and military buffs. Veterans, safe, happy, liberators, heroes all. Spending their days outside coffee shops chasing young waitresses. Cities full of life. Clean designs, big, open roads, but not too many cars.

The candles melted down to their stubs. The room was gothically dark, lit only by slips of pre-dawn gray and tiny flickering flames. It would be light out soon, and the rain was spare. It was supposed to be an overcast day, and for some reason it felt comforting to exist in the natural wrappings of cloud density. It was like operating with cold efficiency, guarded, protected by an unseen force. A voice and force he could hear, and was more potent on overcast days. It was all a game, one he would win. It wasn't even a question of wanting to be smarter, better, 'more right', or for even the sake of winning. Those feelings charged a different sense of self. This one was more of a completionist sense. It needed to be complete. It would be complete. Everywhere, everything was pushing to some grand sense of completeness where all the parts connected and light was shone in the cobwebs to make way for something everyone wanted to build and feel to continue building and feeling in the way that kept the completeness advancing. To build one stone atop another to start, then to add windows and doors, a roof, some furniture, a welcome mat... it all felt a lot less like competition and more like home construction. All the projects and plans were visualized, set to paper, and filed into the bullet-proof pipes. The old tensions were far from flaring. The confidence in the future was so bright that all the quarrels of the past melted away. What would it take for them to see this, overseas? If they could only feel what it was we wanted to accomplish. There would be no enemies. No reason to draw up arms against one another, and they could see that in the end, even in the near future, we would do far better to work in teams away from the cancer eating their hearts. It was a health sickness at its root. Felt like playing doctor. Doctor of a nation? What could be the oath? Everyone, nobody needs care what I do or say, but for the sake of your own life, can you feel what it's like to live openly, without the flames of revenge nipping away at all corners? We could sweep it away to learn and grow, make a city with big gardens right in the streets. Forests on rooftops.. why has nobody done this? Free cinemas for the children. What was the film we watched last night? It was some muffled projector film. We drank some beer and laughed a lot. Until our bellies hurt. We too many tablets and got all screwed up. But I don't really like sleep. Some times it's better to carry on through the night, and in the morning all the essential work gets tackled with decisive, feverish efficiency... then when the noon time starts to weigh in people's minds who seek leisure, I can sneak away for a recharge nap. Then wake up fresh! With all the rush of the morning having had a time to decompress, rather than it getting squished out by evening letters. Much of the time the work was automatic, repetitive, and devoid of any creative input. Administrative nonsense. Desk clerk hell. Lost in webs of pencils, papers, forms, pen & ink & scribbles & stamps. Up front. Outside. Fresh air... this is where life happened. Even so, a tether to responsibility and organization was needed. It was another sort of game. And it was important to keep a mental inventory of the scenario. The numbers would sit there like blocks gliding across open land, encountering other blocks and planning... plotting, outmaneuvering, men shouting and tanks rolling, unstoppable. The mental map was supplemented with facts and figures... even faces, decals, insignia, ranks, equipment, supplies, convoy routes, meeting locations, checkpoints, bridges, railways, mountains, natural terrain, cities, towns, places where resistance had been met and battles had been waged. Small skirmishes, reports of enemy activity, scouts, snipers, wildlife... weather conditions. The trucks needed to keep rolling. Convoy routes to provide the right supplies. I felt a personal anxiety over the necessity of supply trucks arriving at the right place at the right time. The feeling of new supplies when the days are long and grim is more than just a morale boost... it is essential to win the fight. It was only going to get harder and harder and the lines pushed further and deeper. Speed! The time to waste months blowing each other and the earth to mush needed to be put to an end... the lives were too important to waste on stalemates and blowing through ammo like candies... and they knew this and were smart about this, well, most were. I'd rather be out there driving supply trucks. Could I put on a disguise? Would they notice? At least to see their faces at the front. See the lines, the conditions, it's hard to make a call so far away. How long by truck? A few hours? Surely. But the lingering dread flared up... there is too much to do... here they would lose there minds. We are a team, some of us more so, and we act in kind. No decision is made by any one, and we all have a say, even the unfavorable. It is a game of strategy that no single mind can ever win. We put our minds on the front, our feet in their shoes, and play it out as if our lives were on the line. We see it in the maps on the board, it shows in their faces when we talk war, some light up, others become enlivened with stories. We all think of it as a deadly game of chance. Flashbacks come quickly, and our thoughts strike up into a zone of action that takes on a consciousness of its own. For long moments we lose touch with our material selves, marching forward and onward in memories of battle. It's as if we never left. It was as if our former selves were issuing commands from the past, using our present bodies as vessels of blood and impulse. Sometimes hours would pass in this mode. After the plans were laid, we would enjoy the sunset and the night. Confidence sky-high. Men would smoke, think, write notes, and gaze out at the sky until long after the sun had set. The women, busy but happy, would rest their selves with their men, always smiling, laughing, playful to release the day's work in a stream of joy. All the smiles and warmth came at the cost of wishing the same for the fronts. How lonely and sullen it gets for some, but many learn to find even greater joys in the things they would have previously never imagined. And with the speed, the rush, the future beating down the doors, we would all be home soon enough to put the fire in our hearts deep within the wellspring of creativity and change.