Nostalgia
I have been away from Medium for some time due to a bad time in my head. I have hardly written a word in 6 months and the same is true for my reading. Things has been hard I have a lot to do at work including lots a traveling days. I have had medical issue culminating in a trip to the hospital where I was hospitalized for a week with blood poisoning. I was extremely close to losing the fight against stress.
My trip to the hospital got me back to reading. I have started reading The Books of the New sun by Gene Wolfe. At the moment I have just started book 3 The Sword of the Lictor. Do I feel better when I read and write a lot or do I have to feel good to read and write?
My wife is going to a flea market in the weekend and has been going through lots of our old stuff. She found an old notebook of mine from when I served in the military 23 years ago. I volunteered to serve a year in the unit that serves as the ornamental protection of our queen. I was young and idealistic and saw it as my duty and a way to repay society for the privileges I was about to receive..
Military service didn’t agree with me. The constant effort to make us fit their rigid mind set was grueling. But I learned a valuable lesson or had an earlier life lesson reinforced. I can endure almost anything. The very repetitive daily life as recruit in the danish military made me very good at doing repetitive tasks and at the same time let my mind wander. Something I have used a lot in the 10 years I have worked in different factory jobs. But back to my earlier question.
I had to take the train back and forth weekly four hours each way and the time was spent reading. The notebook contains some of my thoughts and early poems. Which was revealing to read seems I have always used writing as an outlet for my frustrations and feelings.
The Poems of the Notebook
I have always considered friends as a very special thing and only have a very few extremely close friends and lots of acquaintances. I have a saying “friends are the family that we choose”. Below is a poem called friends.
Friends
For what we had,
what we have
and what is to come I would die
I made a universe with an antagonist called Captain Chaos whose reign in a land called “The Military Way”. I wrote some very angry and simple poems. I have corrected the spelling and grammatical errors.
Anger (Abuse)
He has stars so what
His brains has been lost, and all expeditions to recover it has failed.
It is trapped in the “The Military Way”. The dark domain of Captain Chaos defiler of intelligence
And I am trapped with nowhere to go
The Military Way (TMW)
TMW is a strange land, it has none of the first three dimensions on the fourth Time.
Some weak people start at there own choosing, they are lost. Because they know nothing about TMW.
Some strong start and are broken by Captain Chaos.
I hope this can serve as a warning for those to come.
Where I belonged I don’t know. I properly saw myself as a weak person who made a bad choice in volunteering.
The Servants of Captain Chaos
These lesser beings of power tend to be more numerous than his more powerful helpers. The typical mark of these servants are that they think they are better than us. They look well trained and in balance with themselves and the other servants of Chaos. In the lands of Captain Chaos there are some rules, but the lesser servants doesn’t care.
Suddenly the reign of Captain Chaos has ended.
We had 8 months field training and 4 months guarding the Queen and other places in Copenhagen. In the transition between the two I wrote this last one.
Leaving The Military Way
After eights months of travel through the undefined lands of Captain Chaos we are finally leaving.
But for what?
Another strange land ruled by another creature of Chaos.
This one I haven’t met yet and therefore don’t have any opinions.
The known traveling time for this new land is four months.
Will they be better than the first eight?
So it seems I have always used writing. In many years after I served in the military I didn’t do much writing besides school.
So the answer to my question is that I feel better when I write. I most set myself tasks and use the time to write.
Another curiosity in the notebook was listed under the headline Ideas and it simple says. “A world with a strong church and the same level of technology as our world”. Which is almost the same as the idea for my what-if world.
I read to marvel in the wonders of great minds I write as an outlet for my frustrations and feelings.
My time in the military is also a story of the second girl I feel
My time in the military is also a story of the second girl I feel love with. This time also unrequited. She was a friend of a friend and a couple of years older than me. We spent a lot of time together both at her place which was next to the train station and drinking at bars. I properly misused our friendship and just visited her at the strangest of times. Both straight from the train from Copenhagen and other times early in the morning when I was drunk and didn’t want to go home.
In the regiment I served we had a great celebration between field duty and guard duty. It has much of the same feel as a high school homecoming celebration. And I had to bring a girl and this friend of a friend agreed when I asked. It was done very early and with the condition, which was rather utopian, that I hadn’t gotten a girlfriend before the celebration.
Some time after the celebration I sent her a letter confessing my feelings for her and she wrote back and let me down gently. I was not her knight in shining armor. I always write armor with a u armour. Some days she way the only reason i didn’t quit the military. There is an entry in my notebook with date and time stating her being as the only reason that life is worth living.
It is strange thinking about these in innocent times.
Last bit of nostalgia some compliments to women.
You are like the Virgin Mary beautiful but unobtainable
Your beauty can’t be described using only the five senses
Hopefully you have found my ramblings amusing.
