I'll probably withold any other post until CH One is complete, reviewed, and edited...

"Breakdown"

May 31, 2009, Santa Cruz, CA.

Sitting along the western shore watching the waves crash and retreat in perpetual flow, I look up and down the beach. Moments just combusting as I attempt to crawl my way back towards the present, families descend onto the sand in picnic and celebration. Kites dance against the wind competing with the seagulls advancing up and down in concert with prevailing winds. Children run up and down the beach playing games wrestling in constant confrontation of when their parents will allow them to venture to the amusement park and roller coasters and boardwalk. Their youthful enthusiasm is never exhausted. The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers permeates the senses. Even though I'm standing there, it seems so far away from me.

I glance down and pick up a seashell. For a moment, I'm engaged in the beauty of the weary lines drawn from its beginning. My feet, carrying my Rainbow flip-flops, are covered in sand. Flooded in contradiction from the tides, this shell once sheltered an oyster securing a new life. Now, it sits along the sand in a broader moment.

I stand perplexed knowing today is supposed to be a day of remembrance of those that sacrificed all for the nation. As I gaze, in some ways, I stand confused and confounded by the lack of sacrifice asked and demanded from my countrymen. In other ways, I'm glad that they will never experience the horror that I witnessed. Even as I stand absorbing the beauty of this moment, I'm drawn contemplating my boys still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sense of peace and closure that I spent fighting for seem so far away. Sometimes, I walk back there.

In another moment, many moons ago, I was that child running up and down the coast with no care or worry. During our summer trips to Wrightsville Beach, Atlantic Beach, and Ocean Isle, nothing seemed to matter. Growing up in Charlotte and Raleigh, I was protected from the realities of the world nestled deep within the comforts of the success towards modernity of the Research Triangle Park. Capital injected into the southern piedmont, traditional farms collided with technology, the small hamlets of Cary and Apex expanded overnight into tremendous suburbs of the burgeoning the new economy. My father served as one of the armed social-cultural reformers. Armed with capital and political clout, my dad reshaped the landscaped of Cary helping to expand the area.

I didn't know it, but change had come to the piedmont. In that day and time, the world was simple to me. At the half-time of the Sanderson football game, we were down by twenty. I was so mad at myself for a missed past in the first quarter. Coach Mike asked us to step up. In the second half, I caught two touchdown passes from Clay Stoneman followed by the game winner from Sean Ray. We won the game. Looking back, I suppose that role of the underdog defined my early beginnings.

Time shifted, sweet tea intersected with IBM and SAS, and the landscape of North Carolina changed as Van Morrison and Jimmy Buffett jam in evervescant southern rhyme. I grew up surrounded in this predesecer to globalization. Ascending to the top of my class, excelling in sports, success seemed but a step away. For Haloween, I could still venture to the farm to grab my pumpkin from my second-grade teacher. Life seemed a simple equation until the war started.

I'm no longer the innocent god-fearing prodigy from North Carolina. Many moons ago, I left home for West Point. My childhood and expectations ended when the planes hit the World Trade Towers on 9/11. Everything changed or so we thought. Everyone has their share of battle scars in life. Everyone deals with their wars differently. Today, I accept that I am alive. Today, that's good enough for me.

My thoughts overwhelm. I can't fight the tears that ain't coming, and I can't control the tears that flow. I grab my long board and jog towards the water preparing to breach the icy depths of the northern pacific ocean. The world didn't end that day. I'm still here. The realities are just a bit different than what we assumed. Time to venture back to reality.

Slliding into the gloss, I plunged into the icy cold waters paddling through the surf. The tide is strong, and I'm swept off my board several times. Tumbling down, water fills my eardrum, and I'm unnerved in an imbalance of equilibrium. Fighting through the ringing in my ears, trolling to gather my breath, i'm forced to face the reality of the here and now. Emerging through the plane of water and air, I gasped filling my lungs with oxygen. I pull the cord of my tethered board and continue to breach. This is here. This is now. Everything is different. I'm forced to confront time.

Evil, good, and self-determination are an after thought as I paddle. Survival reigns prevelant. I sort through my thoughts as I recover my board and paddle. My wife left me. I paddle harder. Taylor loves me. I paddle even harder. The bifurcation of the past and present collide. Everything intersects in this world. I paddle. Eventually, I work my way past the break. For a moment, everything is calm. For a moment, I am in the present.

This calm is only my perception as I observe from above. Below the surface, another world exists. Within each wake, below me, chaos assumes into three levels. On the bottom, sea creatures and plants live in a mostly calm world. In the middle, they cope with continual friction and chaos derived from perpetual chaos of ascending waves. Those that learn to learn to survive in this arena learn to adapt. On the highest level, those that survive learn to accept the chaos. This orderly conduct stemmed well before man.

As I sit on my board, I accept that I'm just a grain of sand along the beach. For whatever reason, I survived the war. As I sit waiting for the next set of waves, I'm drawn back towards Bragg and my life as a paratrooper. I don't even know where to begin...