Mutterings and Musings

Standing alone for a moment on a quiet morning, sadness and joy intermingle as I watch the sun rise over the Huachuca mountains and paint the sky with the deep and fragile colors of the desert.

This is the poetry of life.

On the other side of a fence, men are adjusting landing gear - close enough for me to watch but too far away to hear. In the grey light of dawn they are almost shadows; ghosts of comrades I have known and loved, and friends I have yet to meet.

Later, I will leave my friends and return to an empty home. But now they congregate behind me, waiting to step into a hangar and participate in the ceremony that marks the end of our time in the high desert.

The mountains to the south blush pink. I turn to the company of friends. This is the poetry of life.

It has been so long since I felt inspired to write anything like that last entry that I had almost forgotten - forgotten not only that I once wrote regularly, but that I even felt things worth writing at all. I have made several new friends recently and the light they have shone upon my heart has splashed it with color, like the sun rising over high desert mountains.

Last weekend was fantastic. I finally met Rose, who moved from Alaska to Sierra Vista with her husband, and with whom I spent a ridiculously enjoyable evening discovering that we were better friends than I thought we would be. Then on Saturday I invited everyone in my wing of the barracks to a party in our day room, food and drinks provided by me. Barracks life is generally separated out by floor, and while I knew that there were people living up- and downstairs from me, I didn't know much about them and had never met any of them. I really regret not having made friends with them earlier, because I discovered an amazing group of people living just a few stairs away from me. They'd been there just as long as I had - all it would have taken is for me to walk upstairs at any time and say hello. I am taking this as a lesson learned.

I graduated from the Shadow UAS maintainer/technician course yesterday - 10 Nov 2009. I was my class's honor graduate, for which I received two coins - one from a lieutenant colonel and one from a full bird. If you're not sure what that means, let me break it down for you: it means AWESOME.

I also received some very disturbing and upsetting news on Sunday. I don't want to write publicly about it right now, because I don't have a lot of details and... well, even if I did, I still wouldn't want to write about it. I don't even want to THINK about it right now. Eventually I'll get angry, and then apparently I will move on to bargaining, etc. This, incidentally, is another reason I am glad I met the people upstairs from me on Saturday. When the news arrived on Sunday, I... well, I don't know what I was. "Shocked" is too mild a word. I couldn't think. I felt numb, and afraid, and (strangely) guilty. But I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to, because when we'd spoken the night before she had demonstrated tremendous amounts of empathy, kindness, and exactly the sort of delicate, intelligent humor that I desperately needed. To say that the timing of our meeting was perfect is an understatement* of the highest degree. It's almost enough to make me rethink some of my basic beliefs in the existence (or lack thereof) of a higher power.

I am torn apart inside right now by wanting to be where I am not, and wanting things to be... not how they used to be, but how they never were. How I thought they were. I am going to post this and go upstairs and force myself to be here, and to live my life as it is. I am going to call my sister and tell her that I love her, that I'm thinking of her. Then I will go outside and rake the leaves.

*Understatement - This is a word that I do not know how to spell, but that my fingers do. If I try to think too hard about it, or look at the word, I can't get it right. On the other hand, if I just think it and let my fingers tap away, they get it right. Go fingers!