I was trolling through some old memories this morning.  All of sudden, I couldn’t remember who I was; or who I am.

Will the real Clay Lowe please stand up?

I was born Clayton Lamont Lowe.  But from the very beginning, Clayton didn’t exist.  My family called me Lamont.  Then Clayton appeared when school started.  Then I became two people; Clayton at school, Lamont at home. 

After I left home for university, Lamont disappeared and Clayton became Clay.  I don’t remember who first called me Clay, but the name stuck and I’ve been him ever since.  And now I’m trying to remember who Clayton and Lamont are.  Has anybody seen these guys?

btw…in Purple Haze, does Jimi say ‘excuse me while I kiss the sky’ or ‘excuse me while I kiss this guy’?

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Kirk Nugent is a poet with passion. If you have ears to hear, then listen.  And then go do!

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I thought I would have a greater sense of nostalgia upon my return to the Rock, instead I was greeted with ambivalence and massive piles of rubble. 

March is the month of Founder’s Day in which West Point grads celebrate the founding of the United States Military Academy.  The closest Founder’s Day celebration to me was in Heidelberg Germany.  This, I thought, was extremely good fortune.  I could kill three birds with one stone.  I could meet my long time friend Jeremy whom I served with at the Rock, I could re-visit the place I lived for three years as a young 2nd lieutenant, and I could attend Founder’s Day.

Not to concerned with our carbon footprint, Ruth and I booked a couple of flights to Frankfurt-Hahn for 2p each round trip.  The plan was to fly into Hahn airport, rent a car, and drive an hour and half to Frankfurt, pick up Jeremy and his wife, and then continue on another hour to Geissen to bed down for the night and go in search of the Dead Beat.

Driving on the autobahn is a fantastic experience.  It’s nice to be able to drive at the limits of your skill and the car’s will to go fast.  Ok, I know driving at high speeds is not good for the environment, but speed is king.

After we got settled into our B&B, we drove to Neiderkleen in search of the Dead Beat which was the unofficial name of the restaurant all the officers in our battalion adopted as thee place to hang out and break bread together.  The real name of the restaurant was Molise.  How it came to be known as the Dead Beat is a lost legend.  It just became a tradition of the unit.  When a new officer joined the unit, us older officers would make part of his induction a meal at the Dead Beat.
But it seems the Dead Beat met its demise when 3/5 Cav closed the post down and moved to Freidberg.  The Molise as we knew it was gone. 

A new restaurant stood in its place.  We went inside to enquire about the Molise’s fate, but none of the locals admitted ever knowing any such restaurant ever existed.  We got the suspicion that maybe they were just saying that so as not to chase potential business away.  Not to be deterred, we asked a passer-by on the street if he knew of Molise.  He did.  He said it had closed down 6 years ago, and had moved elsewhere, but he didn’t remember where.

We decided that although the name had changed on the outside, the spirit of the Dead Beat still lived on, so we eat at the new place and reminisced about the old times.

I couldn’t find my sense of the roads or make a connection with the place that had been my home for 3 years.  I thought coming back to the Rock would conjure up strong feelings of remembrance, but I just couldn’t feel anything for the place other than a vague familiarity. 

The next morning, we visited what used to be Ayers Kasserne or the Rock as we called it.  The Rock had been bought by a trucking company and basically turned into one huge parking lot with piles of rubble that were once the offices and barracks of 3/5 Cav.  We tried to bribe the civilian guard at the gate to let us come in and have a little wander as old soldiers who were once stationed here.  But he kindly explained to us that this was private property now and he couldn’t authorise a walk amongst the rubble.

 

 

We said our final farewell to the Rock.  I felt a chapter close on an historic period of my life.
The rest of the weekend was a bit of an anticlimax for me.  We drove down to Heidelberg for the Founder’s Day dinner.  The turn out was very small as most of the active duty officers assigned to Germany these days are deployed to Iraq. Still it was good to be in the company of old brothers in arms.  And it was good to get an update from the current Dean of Academics as to the state of affairs at West Point.  It appears the new generation of Cadets are up to some really great things.

It wouldn’t be a gathering of old Grads without at least one West Point Rocket cheer.  My table won a bottle of wine for the best rendition of the Rocket.

There was one hair rising moment.  It’s a tradition for us to pay homage to our fallen comrades.  When the adjutant read off the final roll call, I was awestruck at the number of young officers who have died in the Iraqi conflict.  A chill ran up my spine when the adjutant called out the name Guy Berrateri.

Guy was a personal friend of mine. I dedicate this post and the following song to him.

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I hit a bird yesterday, or rather a bird hit me. I was travelling back up the M5, going 90mph, when I heard this awfully loud crack. At first I thought a rock had hit the windscreen, but then out of my rearview mirror, I saw feathers floating in the air. I thought, ah I must have hit another bird.

Later when I pulled into the printers to pick up my new batch of business cards, I saw the most gruesome sight. The reporter in me wanted to take a picture of it, but the humanitarian in me said to be respectful of the dead even if it is just a bird. What had happened was the bird had impaled itself on one of the roof rack bars. I’m talking this square bar had gone clean through this bird’s chest. I literally had to cut the bird off with a spade, it’s guts and stuff spilt all over the side of my truck. Yuck!

If you’re one of them militant vegitarians, this video might help to strengthen your cause.  I haven’t tried the experiment myself, but as soon as I have the opportunity to slap some pork in a dish, I’ll give it a try.  But as you can already see, I do enjoy the taste of a good worm!

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This past week or so I have a huge demand on my intellectual reserves so there hasn’t been much time left over for blogging.  But no worries, I shall endeavour to persevere. 

I’ve been doing some research on African legends.  I thought I’d share a few of the stories with you.  Here’s one about Akiti the Hunter.

A FAMOUS hunter and wrestler named Akiti boasted that he was stronger than any other man or animal. He had easily overcome a giant, a leopard, a lion, a wolf, and a boa-constrictor, and as nobody else opposed his claim, he called himself “the King of the forest.�

Wherever he went, he sang his triumphant wrestling-song, and everyone feared and respected him. But he had forgotten the Elephant, who is a very wise animal and knows many charms. One day the Elephant challenged him and declared that he had no right to call himself “King,� as the Elephant himself was the monarch of the forest and could not be defeated.

Akiti thereupon flung his spear at his enemy, but because of the Elephant’s charm, the weapon glanced off his hide and did him no harm. Akiti next tried his bow and poisoned arrows, and his hunting-knife, but still without effect.
However, the hunter also possessed a charm, and by using it, he changed himself into a lion and flew at the Elephant, but the Elephant flung him off. Next he became a serpent, but he could not succeed in crushing the Elephant to death.

At last he changed himself into a fly, and flew into the Elephant’s large flapping ear. He went right down inside until he came to the heart, and then he changed himself into a man again and cut up the heart with his hunting-knife. At last the Elephant fell dead, and Akiti stepped out of his body in triumph, for he was now without question “the King of the forest.�
 

I want to go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voices of the siren’s call, to feel the pull of the stars, to prowl the spaces between and betwixt.  The night calls…

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(Picture:  a sketch I did from an advertisment for cars of all things!)

My girl’s a pretty girl
She is a city girl
And I’d do most anything
To keep her in style

My girl has a long long nose
Just like a garden hose
But I’d do most anything
to keep her in style

My girl has great big eyes
Just like two custard pies
But I’d do most anything
to keep her in style

My girl has a thin thin chin
Just like a safety pin
But I’d do most anything
to keep her in style

My girl has great big hips
Just like two battleships
But I’d do most anything
to keep her in style

My girl has no tits
just two bumps that look like zits
But I’d do most anything
to keep her in style

– an old army cadence we use to sing while marching

Maybe I just don’t get out much because I had no idea these things existed.  Or maybe I’ve just been living in England too long and need to get myself back across the Big Pond and find out what’s going over there! 

I like my coffee straight up – black, no sugar – coffee flavored coffee as Denise Leary once joked.  But thanks to my friend Becky, a girl in short shorts, I might have to rethink my whole concept of coffee and how I like it served. 

This is the thing that gets me all conflicted.  As an intelligent woman I should be deeply offended, when I pull into an expresso stand and am served by a bouncy bodacious barista in pink hot pants.  And if I was a totally straight girl (or a 1993 lesbian), I probably would have. read

Coffee will never be the same!

I attended the Professional Speakers Association meeting the other night and one the keynote speakers gave a presentation on purpose.  His theme was that we should live our lives on purpose not on accident.  He said the way to find your purpose is to align your true core values with your true insecurities.  Once you truly understand what they are you can begin to live your life in accords with your purpose. 

His presentation got me to thinking about my own purpose.  Yesterday I spent the morning really questioning my core values.  By doing that I came to understand that my core values are driven from my insecurities about myself.  The traditional rationale goes something like this:  if I be more of my core values, my insecurities won’t have room to show. 

But actually it’s my insecurities that drive who I aspire to be.  And by asking myself some tough questions as to why my insecurities are what they are, I was able to discover my purpose.

Animals are fantastic.  We can learn a lot from them about life.  When it comes to living on purpose the lion and gazelle story is a perfect example.  The story goes like this:

Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up knowing that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or starve to death.  Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing that it must outrun the fastest lion or be killed.  You see it doesn’t matter whether you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you had better be running!

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“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.  The player on the other side is hidden from us.  We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient.  But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.â€?  – T.H. Huxley

Life is a mind game.  How we play the game in our head, affects how we play the game in real life.  Your mind dictates whether you fulfil your potential or live your life forever hoping and wishing your dreams will come true.  How you play the game in your head is the difference that makes a difference.

Presumably the purpose of a game is to enjoy the experience or to learn from the experience in order to grow. 

We play many games – board games, video games, physical games, corporate games, and ultimately the game of life.
I think we get ourselves so caught up in the small games that we neglect the bigger game of life.

How good a player are you in the game of life?  Some of us seem to play the game better than others.  Is that down to luck?  Or do these people have a better understanding of the rules and have learned to master the game?

 

(Picture: a digital print I made called Savage Peace, click image for larger view)

Yesterday it was reported that abortions set a new record for one month in Britain.  Marie Stopes, which performs about a third of the abortions in Britain, conducted 5,992 abortions in January.  The question is why? 

Liz Davies of Marie Stopes thinks it’s possibly due to the festive season and all the excess partying and booze consumption.  All of which “combine to increase libido and lower inhibition, with the inevitable consequences of unprotected sex resulting in unplanned pregnancies.”

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s chief exec, Ann Furedi, believes the high number is due to “a difficult struggle to access proper services, rather than the results of women being careless after boozy office parties.”

Side note:  I did find it odd that this report appeared alongside of giant picture of Roselane Driza, the cleaner who was jailed for blackmailing a judge with his home sex videos.

If you open your eyes in the morning and you are still breathing, then you are alive.  Every thing else is a bonus.

(Picture: somewhere on manuevers in Germany)

Part of my training as an Infantry Officer required me to go to Ranger School, which is suppose to primarily be a leadership school for combat soldiers who want to join the Army’s elite light infantry unit known as the Rangers.  It was an unwritten rule that every infantry officer had to earn the coveted Ranger tab or he wasn’t worth his weight in salt as a leader of combat troops. 

When I went through Ranger School, it was a 68-day course.  We were given one dehydrated meal a day and an hour or two of sleep if we were lucky.   The course was designed to test our physical and mental limits as combat leaders.  We had to learn to lead men in all environments.  There was the Benning Phase where we learned to fight as a small unit in a woodland environment. There was the Mountain Phase where we learned to survive and fight at high altitudes.  This was followed by the Desert and Jungle Phase.

I drew the unfortunate short straw of having to attend Ranger school during the winter months.  I have never been so cold in my life and have come to dislike the winter months for that reason.

One morning we were huddle together like seals trying to stay warm.  We had on our Gortex winter jackets and we were still cold.  A Ranger Instructor came strutting out of his warm command post, a big smile on his face.  “Take those Gortex jackets off men.  It ain’t cold out here.  It’s 80 degrees out!  Cold is a state of mind.�  We groaned and shuffled and did as we were told. 

The Ranger instructor stood over us as we shivered and curse and said: “Men, if you make it through Ranger School, every day will be Christmas and every meal a feast.�

I didn’t believe him at the time.  But in retrospect, I now know what he meant. 
Every day is Christmas; and indeed every meal is a feast.

 

Whatever happened to good old fashioned hedonism, you know, the doctrine that states that pleasure is good and that pursuing anything other than pleasure is absurd and irrational? The only thing we pursue these days, it seems, is work, work, and more work, so we can buy more things we don’t need or have the time to enjoy. 

The things we do enjoy – sex, drugs, rock and roll, fatty food, and cigarettes, are deemed to be not good for us and will shorten our lives.  The prevaling thought seems to be “if I avoid all things pleasurable, I’ll live a long happy life.”  I’ve had just about enough of that.  Bring back the old school hedonism like the kind practiced by some of the greats like, Epicurus, Cleopatra, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Dumas, Flaubert, Balzac, and Timothy Leary to name a few.  I want to run through the garden naked, get drunk on red wine, and chase naked girls with flowers in their hair.  Sorry.  I digress.

Here is a simple test, courtesy of Michael Flocker, to see if you’re in the machine too deep. 

(If five or more of the following statements are true for you, then you are in serious need of hedonistic intervention.)

1.  You no longer remember anyone’s phone number because they’re all programmed into your cell phone.

2.  You email people at work who are seated within twenty feet of you.

3.  You make itineraries for your vacations.

4.  The idea of a full week without internet access fills you with terror.

5.  You are bored at home if the television isn’t on.

6.  You avsolutely must watch the news every day to be sure the world isn’t ending.

7.  You regularly watch sitcom reruns that you have seen countless times before.

8.  You are unable to sit still and think in silence.

9.  Your conversation regularly revolves around the lives of others instead of your own.

10.  You buy shoes because they match your ipod.

(Picture: Birmingham, New Street)

We live in a consumer society and it runs on a simple principle – our lives will be better if we buy this car, own this home, eat this food, use that mobile phone, drink this beer, or wear this brand of clothes.  We have allowed ourselves to buy into the illusion that if we own these possessions, we will feel better about ourselves.  We buy more possessions and our possessions need possesions, so we have to man the till to feed our possessions.  “Aspiring to this world”, says Jim Baggot, “keeps us in wage slavery, functioning as perfect consumer units, to the point where it is no longer necessary to feed us the illusion:  we are the illusion.  In the 21st century, the dream has become the reality.”

Ask yourself this, what would happen if you were to wake from this dream?

(picture, created in photoshop, click here to see a larger view)

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.” – Martin Luther

Martin Luther didn’t have much good to say about reason.  He likened reason to the Devil’s bride, a “pretty whore” that comes in and thinks she’s wise in what she says and that her words come from Providence.  And indeed we treat reason like a whore using her to support our twisted logic and bolster our world view.