I have been home for iraq for about a month now. I know I don't write in here much I seldom find the need now that I am at home with Ryan and I actually have somone to talk to. I am in durango in a motel 8. Last night was spent in telluride. I love that town. I saw two movies tonight. Batman begins and the island. The island is another one of those terror in scientific advances. The horrors of cloning things like that. I also saw a book today called the traveler it seems that there is this big fixation with a grid that it is better to live off if it.

Well more time to talk later.

Well, I am still in Iraq. This is highly depressing, even though I do not feel quite as down as I have at other points of this deployment. I am so ready to go home to New York. No matter how much I don't want to call it my home either. I hope to travel often once I am back. My problem is that I do not have a clue when I will even be home.

I need to find something to do with my time. I am not doing anything right now but sitting around. I cannot sleep all day. I can go to the Gym for a little each day but the ability to do things over here is rather limited. I think I am going to make it my goal to finish my book while I have these few days left.

I got to talk to my mom last night. I am concerned for her well being. She seems like everything is going well since the surgery. However, she also has a tendency to fill days with as much as I do. I pray that she is taking it easy. She told me last night she is still in a great deal of pain.

I am still thinking about Mary often. It is wierd even after I talked to her on leave and discussed all of my feelings. Now more than ever I think so highly of her. The problem is that our conclusion still leaves me falling in love with a girl so slowly that it feels like g =.000001 m/s/year. I can only just simply pray that the soon it might change to m/s/week or even month would be a huge improvment. (I don't think anyone reads this but if you do and have never taken quantum mechanics that analogy deals with acceleration).

Everyone has this obsession with getting me drunk and layed when we get back to the rear. I am quite astounded at how adament some people I thought were close friends are about these things. They really have no clue as to what I am talking about when I say that I drink just not that much. Then the whole sex thing. Wow that really steams me bad.

The Dissertation of the Christian Male:

To begin I will explain. I am not a eunuch. I do desire to have sex. I do find women incredibly sexy. The difference is that I view sex as an adventure to have with one person. That way instead of perfecting everything I have to do to get what I want out of sex I only am concerned with giving her everything that she wants. I know this is how I want it. Nothing anyone can tell me will change my mind. I have had the oppurtunity with great women and held my ground. I know what I stand for, I know who I am. I have been given self-control and I love using it. NOW, that said. LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.

This feeling of being alone is coming in stronger now that it has the chance. It seems to me that everyone had someone. It frustrates me because I keep telling myself that I know who I want that someone to be, but I really don't know. I dated her right before leaving for the Army. She was great, and now as time has progressed she seems better and better. The problem that also as time progresses she seem to be further and further away. It is easy to get around these thoughts when I am busy in Iraq with lots of guys around. Now that things are begining to slow down; I love the time to myself. However now I have to deal with all the things to momentairly went away when I didn't have to think about save the few time I thought it necessary to call or write. Though even then the sporadic correspondence was never enough it always left me wanting. - side note, I cannot seem to get any music to play. more frustration- I want to call her more, I want to spend time with her more. It is seldom that one would rationalize driving 6 hours round-trip in one day to go on a three and a half hour date with her. That really wasn't a date anyway. She was interested, I was obvious; yet still there is the great barrier of space. Benjamin Gibbard was right, I wish the world was flat like the old days and I could travel just by folding the map. I want to settle down and have the comfort of knowing that I have someone to hold at the end of the day. But it never seems to come. I think my problem is that I am too reserved because I am scared that if I do then I won't be able to still live ther adventure that I have always dreamed. What is the greatest life of all if you have no one to intimatly share it with. I have chances to maybe connect deeply with someone, and then I throw them away for my own self-prescribed reason. It is out of season for me to think about something like that. But Love is never out of season. I think it would have made this deployment go so much faster than it has.

Now on to the other things. What if this girl is not at all what I really want. I meet some great thoughtful girl in New York who wants to talk to me. No not talk to me the way that everyone in the world talks but really talk to me like she cares about it. Someone who reads books and thinks about the writers life views and what is means for her in her life. A Girl who listens to great music not because of the rise in emotion she gets out of a chord progress, but due to what that artist has to say. I look at girls in magizines and convince myself, wow she looks like the type of girl I am looking for. But then I remind myself that is highly unlikely, for it would be more important for this girl to be rather than to appear.

All of those thoughts lead into Fallon. Picture frame the scene. I am about to leave for Iraq, to the point that I have already left Ft. Drum and have driven the 8 hours to get to baltimore. And yes it was raining in Baltimore. Once in line at the ticket counter you see a girl, attractive in her own right, just the way you like it. You can see she is in shape, this leads you to the fact that she has the great quality of self-discipline something every girl you have ever been with greatly lacks. She now goes outside for a cigarette, you don't really smoke, maybe every once in awhile. But today, you are a smoker because you will do anything to talk to her. Half way down your cigarette, you see hers is amost out, its now or never. You go for it, and begin talking. Easy ice breaker you are both in the service. She is an Air Force MP stationed TDY in Kuwait. The conversation quickly drifts from work to life. Now it is on. She opens up to you the way everyone seems to have a habit to. Is it just because you listen and most other people they talk to never do, or is it something about you that just says "I want to know everything" I don't know myself well enough to determine. You go to lunch with her, Pat comes with. Soon pat leaves and now she is all yours again, absorb, absorb, I want to know you Fallon, how you work, why you think, what you think, who was your first love, what happened, what do you know about anything. Slowly your questions become realizations. Some of them needed to be spoken to know, some of them I just can verify by your loquaciousness others by your taciturnity. You are captivating me. As night falls outside, you and I are still talking there was only one 45 minute break. I love talking to you. You are someone I would want to be friends with. Now I am given time away from you I have to go so the things that my job requires, but I will see you within the next 24 hours. Now everything dissapates. It my thinking that leads to the demise of great thoughts. I think everything through too much most likely. Then as I have more time away and eventually come here to Iraq and you leave and go home to your post in California we lose touch, I think of you everytime I write an email. I see you name on the address list, but never seem to click it, now that it had been three months since we last had contact, maybe I should remove it, I don't, five months, I don't; now 11, I don't. I want to know why I do not. am I hanging on to something. Can I never let go of anything. Why did the Girl I dated for 2 years haunt my mind for 3 before I put my foot down and told her everything I thought two months ago. Now she is gone never there for comparision or repose. But the girl I only knew for a week a world away from what I call home, is now there in my mind occasionally to remind me that whenever I have a chance I throw it away.

Or did I throw it away because the more I knew the more I realized that it never would have worked. She was in the middle of getting a divorce. I knew I couldn't handle that. If I couldn't have romance I wanted nothing at all. Was it because she was interesting, but not the way I wanted her to be. The military was too important to her. There are so many things I can think of as to why she would have never worked. Should not these things be enough. Maybe it is due to my thought that Love is the hardest work I will ever do. So why not wait until I can find the perfect one to do it with. What is she going to look like God, how evident will you make it too me. Have I seen her before. The questions that I want to know.

All of these things though in my mind seem to directly conflict with my desire to see the world, from the top of places. I want to thru the PCT. I want to climb Everest, Denali, Patagonia, I want to boulder in Australia. I want to spend six months exploring New Zealand. I have so much to do. How important is all of this relationship stuff to me anyway, I mean wouldn't I be willing to give up parts of me for something great with someone else. Is it because I have not been really held in years. I haven't kissed in 3. Why is the physical so important to me, it is. I know it is. I would give anything in the world to cuddle with the girl I spoke of at the begining of this rant. I would have drove 4 times the distance for half the time with that Girl. She is amazing. yet I never seem to be able to muster the conversation that I long to have. I have explained all of this to her, that I think of her so much and I want to come back for her and finish what we started. I told how much she is on my mind and she had little to no response, just that she really understood and agreed I thought I knew what that meant. Until I had plenty of time to think about it.

After this long on a computer I will have cataracts in five years I have to get going. Thanks for listening, it is nice to know that no one reads this thing.

Currently Playing War All the Time By Thursday see related

Well, things are rapidly coming to a close over here for me in Iraq. I think back from when I first decided to join the Army and relize that coming over here nad being a part of this is all I wanted out of my military career. I wanted to be a part of something great. This was far less than great, however the effort I still believe is commendable. I am glad I did this, but it was far from enjoyable.

I think things that were once important to me really no longer are. I used to want everyone who meets me to think the right things about who I am. The time I have spent in the service lets me know that people don't care who I am. It is not the fact that people don't like that bothers me here, I have never quite fit in. The thing here is just that no really knows at all what they are doing or for what purpose they are doing it for. There is nothing these people look forward to other than the next bottle they can turn upside down.

I watched Kingdom of Heaven last night. That was a great movie. I was very impressed with Orlando Bloom's part, that would be a first. He plays the type of man I want to be so badly. It incouraged me to continue as I have been thus far in life.

I am looking forward to seeing Ryan soon. I still feel after a year with all of these guys, some of who I get along with very well, that Ryan is my only real friend. I think  Iwant it to be that way so I have plenty of time in the Rear to do what I want to do. Well I am signing off for today.

Well, I have not written in awhile. Due to my lack of friends with common interest I guess you will be someone to talk at. Today was just a normal day as far as they go over here in Iraq. Nothing new or special, however one thing that is greatly changing is my ability to keep my mind working. I have checked many books I wanted to read off of my list. Tonight I want to talk about one of them.

Recently I read the book "The Virgin". Recommend, not likely. Unless you are deployed and very bored it didn't have much to say. I was dissappointed it was greatly built up by readers reviews online and in trusted periodical editorials. What did it have to say? Reality TV is deceptive and not really reality. WOW. that is such phoenominal insight I might not actually stop watching reality TV. Ohh no wait, when discussing things with an audience of listeners who fav writers include Orwell, Bachelder, and Huxley; one might be safe to assume not much media is seen by our eyes. It was loathsome, the task of attempting to win in an on-air contest to win the virginity of a guess what, not even really a woman. Wow was that supposed to shock me or make me think twice about turning on the Tele. First yes I do lake the creative mind that it must have took to write something with such veratic detail, but pay no mind to my taciturnity when asking me what I got out of it. In my mind all you are doing is taking the television writes ideas to one new level and, guess what. You wrote a part of someone who ought to be in a reality television show. I am sorry but you are what you are poking fun at in the book. Were you going for satire, if so I think you underdid yourself. Anyway bigger things to care about I am done ranting.

Props go out to the writers of the film "All I Want" yes it might not be new to you in the states, but I am in Iraq. Creative, yes. It was not your run of the mill college flick for people my age. Some one who wants to be a writer simply so he can live vicariously thought his stories, who becomes though a series of growth experiences the man he thought he could never be. Thats right Frodo, pack away that typewriter and go be who you want to. Then the struggling actress and struggling photographer. If only every apartment I moved into I had two beautiful, inticing, artistic women who lived on my floor. Good move with the more complicated girl, or was it. I find that Mandy must have been much more complex than we were willing to give her credit for. On top of that the predictability went through the roof when she told him to fall in Love first. I might have wrote in a deception plot to have Mandy fall in Love with me then drop her like a bad habit for trying to tell me how to live, but I also don't ever like characters who have sex for fun.

Well in closing, things are much better for me over here these days. Maybe after this infantry thing I will become a literary critic. That would be a far better job.