Why I went to college

draft

Being here sick, tired, weak, unable to continue serving humanity's cleaning needs until well, I briefly remembered why I went to college, really remembered.

I wanted to know. I wanted to know the power questions and the power answers. I wanted to know what the "knowers" thought. I knew from socializing with college graduates while in foreign lands that there was much more worth knowing and I did not know much if any of it. I knew there was a language within English that was so different, more powerful than the language I was using, although it was the same language. Now I understand that this is an "intellectual" side of the English language. (Now I'm overheating from fever. Funny words following.)

So I went to college and studied hard and then not so hard, and then hard again, and then went on my own path to "college." I was a maverick, reading outside the curriculum, which turned out to be the best idea. I had a couple good role models, it turns out. I did not do well, but I did what I wanted to do. I did explore ideas, people, nature, events, and on and on.

I remember MEAL, an acronym for metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. I remember studying each as discrete subjects, and then as related, and then finding the axis of it all, social and physical ecology. That's where it lead.

"Art, religion, philosophy, science, social affairs," these terms, too, the American Pragmatist Santayana claimed to be the "realm of being." I suppose there's more between the words, but like MEAL, these words help to place the full of it into some perspective. Well done George!

Now I am writing about suicide because I clean the remains of suicides. I sometimes wonder the "why?" of suicide. Then I remember Durkheim's book, Suicide. Ah, I wanted to know, and Durkheim helped. Education is a good thing. I never thought that I would learn about suicide while in college.

I remember sitting in foxholes at night, fighting the urge to sleep, to fall into a deadly void for moments. Ah, to sleep, to relax, to extend myself into the a dreamland void of non-wake, non-suffering. Sleeplessness is suffering, I have learned. And soldiers suffer so much. I believe that it actually hurt, staying awake that way. I believe that I wondered how different it would all become with the passage of a 7.62 lead ball from an AK 47 through my brain. I may have even wondered if sending a smaller, maybe more deadly 5.62 round through my head might achieve the same peaceful affect as sleep. How could I continue to stay awake?

I staid awake because "Charley" lived well in the dark and he wanted to kill me, and he wanted to kill me real bad, even at the risk of his own life. His friends were just as bad. Sometimes they tried, and because they tried, I learned the skill of staying awake. Staying awake, I learned to think the deep thoughts during the night. I thought the small thoughts too, the thoughts from daylight hours when I watched ants march across the bottom of my foxhole.

These were the "low land" ants. Then there were the "high land" ants, those marching across the parapet in singular order, silent to all but their opposing ant armies. Little did they know or want to know their brethren below gained a much less useful perspective of the World. Their lowland brethern were bound by the limits of their horizon, 4 cliffs, dirt walls surrounding their line-of-march. Occasionally dirt and clods of dirt fell upon them or in front of their line-of-march. They marched on, anyway. What a big difference in perspective they experienced. Perspective would give me big thoughts and little thoughts with more words and a greater ability to nuance ideas, events, and nature.

My thoughts lead to my own perspective of the World as I sat there watching the clouds gather in the sky, way off. As hours passed, as I took my own two hour sleep breaks (If one can sleep for 2 hours in a rice paddy or rain forest.), those "way off" clouds made a slow march of their own to my tiny foxhole below. "How different the World looked from up there" I often wondered.

From the clouds, I might be able to see for miles and miles around. I might see from Saigon to Beinhoe, from War Zone D to the Happy Valley. Maybe I could see Charley?

I sat, legs and feet dangling over the edge of my foxhole many dark nights. I could sometimes see comrades to my left and right, sometimes to my rear, sometimes forward of me. I could see trees, vines, maybe a trail or two. I saw the sky, the clouds, and the stars. I saw the stars a lot. I had not grown up watching the stars. In Vietnam, I watched the stars from my foxhole. The sky stood out so clearly. The Big Dipper and Little Dipper were often subjects of conversation among my foxhole companions, whenever I had one, and I usually did. I will not, cannot forget them, stars, comrades, or Charley.

So I learned the skill of staying awake for inordinate amounts of time and during night time hours when I should have been asleep. I also learned the skill of juxtaposing nature for a more meaningful view of the World and its inhabitants. During these times I thought the big thoughts with my small collection of words, words that I wanted to add to when I could go to college some day. I had not thought of college before, but now it was something to think about. "Why did people go there" and maybe I need to go there and see what is going on. "After this, why not?"

"MEAL would bring more meaning to what I thought those nights in my foxhole.

It is so ironic, too, how "Charley" may have influenced my decision to go to college more than any other character in my life's short story.
I will close for now and perhaps resume this thread at a later date, when I feel better.