Sunday, November 19, 2017

PHOTOS ARE FADING BUT THE WAR DOES NOT

    We can walk fifteen minutes -to the end of St. Gauden's Road - to stare out on Biscayne Bay.  It's always exhilarating to gaze at a blue horizon and the pelicans gliding over it.  Hurricane Irma made it a little less so as it downed nearby trees and washed away the grass and our meditation bench.  
    
Walking there yesterday I found someone's  story in the rocky rubble remaining, dozens of scattered photographs which I assumed were souvenirs from the 16-year-old war in Iraq.





    They were all taken from or near large trucks. I got the the impression that they were shot by a U.S. civilian there to support the war.  You can make  $100,000 a year dodging land-mines in an 18-wheeler.
Solorized photo of a truck convoy


   These ideas were running through my head as I looked at the images of trucks, children, bleak landscapes and imagined the war that goes on and on.
   

 


Thoughts merged with remnants of last week's Veteran's Day parade and the incredible PBS show we saw this week, "Almost Sunrise".  It told the story of young men and women using new techniques to overcome the psychological damage caused by war  (you can see it too online).
    I'll never know why these photographs were scattered there.  Maybe they were one person's way of leaving bad memories behind.
                    ______________________
    

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