This universe constantly advises me that

                this gypsy soul will forever

                                be a mystery to the moon.

But our moments speak of dreams

                that you have been

                                a wandering soul too.

This gypsy heart

                needs to wander.

Traveling to undiscovered mountains and caves

                that guard the world’s mysteries.

As I unturn every stone,

                I will explore every unmarked trail.

I will dive within the darkest seas,

    and, discover the secrets that were meant only for me.

A Warrior’s Heart

From The Dish: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/

A Warrior’s Heart

JUL 1 2014 @ 2:00PM

In a review of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Elizabeth Schambelan contemplates notions of wartime masculinity and friendship:

The broadest political implications of Achilles in Vietnam lie in Shay’s powerful critique of what might be called martial masculinity. The entire book enacts this critique, but it is most explicit in Shay’s discussion of the intense bonds that often form between one soldier and another.

“Combat calls forth a passion of care among men who fight beside each other that is comparable to the earliest and most deeply felt family relationships,” he observes. When Patroclus dies, Achilles no longer wants to live. To Shay, the age-old question of the pair’s relationship status is irrelevant: “Achilles’s grief . . . would not have been greater had they been a sexual couple, nor less if they had not been.” The failure to recognize “love between men that is so deeply felt” greatly amplifies the survivor’s pain. “If military practice tells soldiers that their emotions of love and grief—which are inseparable from their humanity—do not matter,” Shay writes, “then the civilian society that has sent them to fight . . . should not be shocked by their ‘inhumanity’ when they try to return to civilian life.”

In a recent interview, Kash Alvaro—an army veteran who served in Afghanistan and who has been diagnosed with both PTSD and a traumatic brain injury—alludes to the lingering, interlinked stigmas around the disorder and around masculine expressions of “love and grief.”

 We’ve been through things that—that’s never going to leave your mind, and it’s always going to be there. . . . And just to come back and have someone tell you, “Oh . . . you’re just acting out. You’re just looking for sympathy,” and those people just don’t understand. Not everybody—I mean, if you have a strong heart, that’s good. That’s good. But there’s people in the world that don’t. You know, you lose somebody, and it’ll break you. . . . And if—you know, if I make it another year, two years, three years, I’m fine with that. If I make it ’til next week, I’m fine with that, too.

The irony that makes this statement all the more painful to read is that, even as Alvaro reels off a checklist of PTSD’s symptoms and triggers (intrusive memories, “acting out,” death of a close friend, parasuicidal fatalism), he seems to have internalized the notion that his post-traumatic stress could have been prevented by a “strong heart,” i.e., by the inhuman lack of feeling to which Shay refers.

(Photo of two-time Iraq War veteran Mikey Piro and his comrade-in-arms, Brian. Mikey did a podcast with me last year about his post-war experience with PTSD. Follow his blogging at PTSD Survivor Daily. The Dish has covered much of those writingshere.)

Only sadness can convince all participants that moderation is necessary...

From Razib Khan

http://www.unz.com/gnxp/living-in-a-world-that-is-but-isnt-ought/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=living-in-a-world-that-is-but-isnt-ought 

You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.

You let a weed grow by the tomato
and the tomato grow by the house.

So close, in the personal quiet
of a windy night,

It brushes the wall.
And sweeps away the day until we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:
“Things that are lost are all equal.”
But it isn’t true. 

If I lost you, the air wouldn’t move,

Nor the tree grow.

Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet would not be yours. 

If I lost you,
I would have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

Admit It, Political Scientists: Politics Really Is More Broken Than Ever

Scholars restrain themselves out of fear of being seen as partisans, but what's happening now is different, and false equivalence is no virtue.

THOMAS E. MANN

MAY 26 2014, 8:00 AM ET

The widespread public belief that our political system is dangerously broken is often met with skepticism among longtime students of American politics. “We’ve seen it all before,” “this too will pass,” “nothing can do done about it anyway” say the scholars. I understand and sympathize with that defensive posture. I’ve spent decades in Washington explaining and defending the American constitutional system in the face of what I considered to be uninformed and ill-considered attacks on Congress and our way of governing. I’ve also worked scrupulously to avoid any hint of partisan favoritism. 

There are, in theory, good reasons to be skeptical of doom saying. Other democracies struggle trying to deal with similar problems; the United States has overcome similar periods of subpar performance and political dysfunction throughout our history; and our political system has adapted to new circumstances and self-corrected. There’s something else going on here, too: How would political scientists justify ourselves if we didn’t contest the conventional wisdom of mere pundits and journalists? We have a positive political science to conduct and are properly critical of half-baked diagnoses and ungrounded normative speculations on how to cure our governing maladies.

Re

But I believe these times are strikingly different from the past, and the health and well-being of our democracy is properly a matter of great concern. We owe it to ourselves and our country to reconsider our priors and at least entertain the possibility that these concerns are justified—even if it’s uncomfortable to admit it.

More:  http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/dysfunction/371544/ 

You are my eyes, my wind, that voice telling me 
     Never to give in.

You are my shadow, my light, that special someone
     That clears my sights.

You are my woman, my friend, the person I share secrets with
     Again and again.

You are my soul, my mate, the person sent to me 
     According to fate.

I love you, you love me, this love will remain true
     As it was prophesied to be.

Give me back my father walking the stables,
     with sawdust and hay clinging to his boots.

Give me back his hand-hewed tools,
     his saddle and his lariats.
Give me his daydreams on lined paper.

I don’t understand this uncontainable grief.
Whatever you had that never fit,
     whatever else you needed, believe me.

My father, who provided for many,
     always had the time to squat down at your side
     and listen to your dreams.

We walked on the bridge over the Indiana creek
     for what turned out to be the last time.
It was just a moment, really, nothing more.

However, I remember marveling at the sturdy cables
     of the bridge that held us up.
And threading my fingers through the long
     and slender fingers of my grandfather.
An old man from the Old World
     who long ago disappeared into the nether regions.

And I remember that six-year-old boy
     who had tasted the sweetness of air.
Which still clings to my mouth
     and disappears when I breathe.