Gibberish...Final Entry

August 16, 2009

I think I’d write about nothing at all. I’d write about the clouds and how blue they make the sky look sometimes, or the curly ends of a wispy one that remind me of a dance I used to do in my head while dreaming about better days. If I could just write and write and write, this is the kind of stuff that would come out of my head. A slow song and how it makes me remember a slow dance and kiss I once had, or the thought of kisses that will never come.

Who is to say I can’t write about every picture my mind paints? I have no idea how to put thoughts together into discernable sentences and paragraphs. I don’t know what a pentameter is. But I do know how to make what I think come clearly through to someone who reads m y thoughts. What’s that called? Am I a natural born writer? Or, do I just have a natural knack for making people see my point of view? People say, “Good point,” or “I know exactly what you mean by that,” all the time. I think it’s more than just an ability to write because the actual act of writing takes a lot of time. It doesn’t flow as easily as I’d like it to. It’s only after I go back and reread everything and put final touches on what I’m trying to say that it then makes any sense. I know; maybe I am just a good story teller? If that’s true, then a story is what I should be spinning. For such a long time, actually, I have felt like there is something I’m supposed to be saying, I just haven’t ever been able to figure out what it is.

So what’s the story? I wonder sometimes if it is supposed to be a string of stories or ideas that I can put on paper and make people see something definitive. But that doesn’t feel right for some reason. It feels l like there’s something big on the horizon and all I need is the right push or muse to get it started. After all, one of the few things I learned in Writing 101 was the phrase and idea, “Write what you know.” That’s different than, “Write like you read,” which was probably the only other thing I remembered. So what the heck do I know? I know my story, but it hardly seems like one worth telling. My life has had some highs and lows but nothing that hasn’t already been done. Iraq has been big, but I don’t think my little piece of the war is significant. I have read a few stories about this war by people who have done a good job making it read like they were more important than they really were. I wouldn’t want to do that. Is there some fiction I can weave into my life and make it interesting? Maybe I should tell the human side of things all spun around the life of a Contractor? If I went for pure fictional, commercial value, I’d tell the “poor me” side of the story; either a poor Arab or Muslim, or a poor, sad American who was forced to fight the war against their will. But for some reason that doesn’t feel right either.

People do get forced to be here when they don’t want to be. I overheard two soldiers talking about it just last night. Someone had gotten almost home on the Freedom Flight and then had his orders changed at the 11^th hour. These soldiers are a real story actually, so I should probably write about them. I’d take out all the “Private Ryan” heroics and “Band of Brothers” camaraderie. Instead I’d tell the story about the American boy who is a soldier in a war he doesn’t understand, (but doesn’t care), for a country that’s in flux itself. Maybe it’s been done before…maybe not. It’s not a protest story; it’s a real story about American heroes …this time, during this war. Not WWII, but during the desert war of the Bush’s.

I have seen enough of the desert now to know it grows on you as much as it sickens you. I’m flying high over the blue Atlantic right now on my way home after 20 months of sand and sun. But even as I curse it, and curse the Middle East as a place hardly worth the sweat and blood spilled to save it, I know I’m going to miss it. I haven’t been able to put my finger on exactly what it is I will miss though. I just know something will come to me one of these days. So maybe the desert becomes like a forlorn lover to American men now. We love to hate her, or we hate to love her, I don’t think it makes a difference. Maybe it’s really just about oil like everyone says. After seeing Kuwait, (in the daylight this time), I can’t, for the life of me, imagine one single reason why we spilled American blood to save that country other than for oil. So I have a feeling I may have been a bit naïve where it came to oil and America’s part played to secure it here.

Whatever it is, I know if I could find the right story to tell I’d make a lot of money. Someone is going to swoop in and do what I am proposing. In a year, or years, or a day from now, someone is going to slide the right manuscript across a publisher’s desk and that will be all she wrote. Stone had “Platoon” and Coppola “Apocalypse Now.” Maybe “All Is Well” can tell this American’s story about longing and patriotism, and what I think it all means.

-Jim Franks