Tethers

Once again I woke early, in the quiet watches.

And glanced at the quiet watch on my wrist. 12:30 - but quick mental math told me it was... damn! 20:30! Late late late...

No, wait. There's the clock on the nightstand, and it says 04:30. In the morning haze I had done the wrong math. All was well. Not only was I now awake and aware, but I was awake and aware at roughly the proper time. Jet lag's ass was half kicked within hours of ending a trip of 24 hours plus - including a time-stopping westward jaunt above the clouds and across the Atlantic flown in the endless twilight of a seven hour sunset. So much for days of long nights and long shadows...

Now outside the hotel room window it is pre-dawn dark. But it is also America. Soon the sun will rise and so will an aircraft taking me on the first of two short hops home.

Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.

It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and none really an option now.
<...>
She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

-- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

So it is 0430, and I'm in a hotel room somewhere in the megalopolis of the east coast of the US of A.

And it is hot. Before falling asleep I'd misjudged the power of the room ac/heating unit. Nudged it a bit too high. So now in the pre-dawn coldest part of the day I throw open a sliding door to a foot-wide fourth floor "balcony" and let the cool air in. The cold feels good. It is no colder than Baghdad, where desert winter has replaced the searing 120+ of high summer. It is perhaps a bit warmer than Ramstein Air Base, Germany, once just down the road from my home but now my final stop before America.

It is a cold that I find useful for many reasons.

That quote above from Gibson is from page one of the book. I'd had it in my locker in my room in Baghdad for a couple months. Grabbed it from Amazon because it was available as a bargain book, but didn't want to dive right in. I'd read others of his books on this trip - as readers here well know - and had moved on to other authors, variety being key to avoiding the deployment doldrums.

But with mere days left in country it was time to take it off the shelf, to take along for the days-long ride home. That page one - and many subsequent pages - would deal with jet lag and cross-ocean travel can only be called synchronicity. An added element of immersion...

"What's on tap?" I'd asked the friendly hotel barmaid the night before. Made the choice as I almost always do (the one I'd heard the least about) and selected "16" as an answer to the question "16 or 22 ounce". It's best to ease back into these things.

Perhaps two minutes later I had to point out to her that tragically my glass was empty.

By closing time I'd quaffed about four of them, along with a couple shots. And if you can't get that along with an Angus Burger and fries in a fairly nice hotel lounge somewhere near an airport in the great megalopolis then it's likely that someone paid (anonymously) for a round or two for the guy in the sand-blasted ACUs.

And a very few hours later I had not one hint of a hangover. And the cold air felt good, every bit as good as my first beer and my first shower in a shower in a real long time.

Obviously I had consumed alcohol before my soul had arrived. Therefore it had snapped back into me fully sober, waking me at 0430 and demanding action.

Or at least motion.

Certainly no laying around.

By the way - no, you don't fly across the Atlantic at hundreds of thousands of feet.

Unless you do it on the Space Shuttle.

More to follow...

Tending Distant Fires

Far from hearth and home, watching
Cold alone but not alone
On distant shore and only wanting
Safe return and little more

What tales we'll tell
When that time comes
When tales can be told

When things grim
Seem far away
When other fires go cold

Some distant sunset, vision fading
Memories remain
And tired eyes gaze 'pon folded flags
While distant drums beat their refrain

Saluting fallen friends whose names
And youth will never fade
Here's to those on other shores,
for them live well, the price is paid

- Greyhawk,
-- Iraq, December 2004

That's from my last tour - this year I get to be the guy who came home just in time for Christmas.

And still to come in The Mudville Gazette Christmas Special, 2007, special appearances by (alphabetical)

Lance Armstrong

Lewis Black

Grim

Kid Rock

Bill Roggio

Rachel Smith, Miss USA 2007

Michael Totten

Robin Williams

The Winthrop University Men's Basketball Team

And a cast of thousands.

Post begun 2007-12-20 13:42:57 (UTC) and updated subsequently with more to follow throughout the weekend.

Merry Christmas, America.