Hiromi_X

I think you are referring to the assault on the town of Foy, Belgium (the episode where Lt. Speirs rallies the men during a crumbling assault and then, incredibly, passes out and back through enemy lines to re-establish communication with a lost squad). Just after they successfully take the town a missed sniper whacks a few guys from Easy Company before he himself gets whacked. It's possible though that you refer to the assault on Carentan, France. Before moving off this line, let me put in a plug for one of the best war films I have seen in some time: "The Wind that Shakes the Barley". It is the story of two brothers in the IRA struggling to figure out the right course during the violent birth of a new Ireland. I think I actually like it better than "Letters from Iwo Jima".

As for the second paragraph, that got my day of to an emotionally unsettling start (the fact that that haunting version of "Comfortably Numb" from the soundtrack to "The Departed" came over my mp3 player as I listened didn't help). This obviously isn't a solution, but it may be a band-aid for the moment: get the hell out of town this weekend.

Whatever you do, good luck Hiromi.

I read this post, and this song instantly came into my head:

She never mentions the word addiction
In certain company
Yes, shell tell you shes an orphan
After you meet her family

She paints her eyes as black as night, now
Pulls those shades down tight
Yeah, she gives a smile when the pain comes,
The pain gonna make everything alright

Says she talks to angels,
They call her out by her name

Eh, the lyrics on the page don't do justice to how they feel in context with the music. Go listen to it.

When I first heard that song years ago, I thought it was written for me, even though it's clearly about a heroin addict, a drug I've never tried.

But that sense of, she gives a smile when the pain comes; the pain gonna make everything alright"--the beauty and sadness of the guitar and the imitative "fuck you, I don't care" roughness of the singer's voice as he delivers those lines. I understood that.

There is a certain romance we develop with our darkness, those of us who have lived with it for any length of time. It's like a mean lover who's great in bed--you know you shouldn't go back for more, it's not good for you, but just one more time, because it's so good...

That darkness, it's strong and it's jealous and it wants to take over everything else so it's the only thing in your world. It's hard to fight it, so rather than allow ourselves to feel like we've surrendered, we attempt to empower ourselves by coming to embrace our captor. And then surrender can feel good. Like we're talking to angels when we feel that pain. Like dying and liking it.

There's a reason orgasms were named "le petit mort." Or, as some call it "beautiful agony."

And partly (I believe) these songs and these nicknames and our love for the dark exists because so many people understand that pain and have surrendered to it; and so there's a huge cult of literature and media devoted to romanticizing pain and keeping that mindset alive, until people feel it's okay to surrender to it--maybe even better, more interesting to do so.

But in the end, while it might make a good song or a dramatic novel, orgasms aside, agony isn't really beautiful, and neither are mean yet darkly intense lovers.

So in relation to that, all I can say about whether you'll (or I'll) always have this yearning for it inside you is:

You were in one bad relationship with a lover who was hurting you and you recognized it and you got out. Now you know how to do that and be okay with it. I believe you can do it with this, too.

It's almost like thrillseeking, but unlike Xtreme sports enthusiasts, who like to feel in control of their mortality, we like to surrender control to it.

I think that's not exactly right.

The very first time I ever stepped off the edge of a bridge, I instantly got this sense of incredible peace. I knew just how easy it would be to do nothing, to just fall to the water below. This lasted half a second before my survival instinct kicked in, and I opened the 'chute. But that's what kept pulling me back to jump again - that feeling that if I wanted to, I could just let go.

The same thing is true on a motorcycle, or skydiving, or maybe in a tiny way, scuba. It's not that you want to be in control of your mortality so much as you want to give yourself the choice to be in control or just let it happen.

So: I say you need a motorcycle. 50 miles to the gallon, and you get to flirt with the edge every day on the way to work. What more could one ask for?

While this is a relationship, it's not one I can leave. Like I mentioned to Peter, this is a disease.

Yeah, I wasn't writing about leaving alcoholism behind; that's not a possibility, only leaving the romanticism of the darkness part behind. But perhaps by that you're saying you feel they are inextricable.

That sounds like a good description to me.

But, I gotta say skydiving never did that to me. I found it incredibly, um, ordinary. No big scream. No wind whipped panic. I just stepped out the door and they closed it and flew away leaving me in mid air. It was very odd, almost comforting in a way. Maybe it would have been different if it had been a tandem jump, but back in those days your first jump was solo.

I've tried to write about that odd feelings dozens of times since (including on the blog) and I still don't feel I captured it. I can feel it, but I can't quite find the words to get it across to someone else. Sometimes things like you're feeling just can't be fully communicated either to you or to someone else.

I think they call that a mystery.

I have a Buell Blast and Suzuki GS500F. The Buell is about 6 inches shorter. Width is an issue too - a wide bike feels taller. Lemme know next time you're going to be in town, and you can come sit on mine.

There's a group of 3 women who I've seen riding on Westheimer a few times. They're all on sport bikes, 2 big-ish Ninjas and one Ninja 250. The woman on the 250 has pink leathers and a pink helmet.

I don't believe there's a way to be a woman on a bike and be an outcast. There are just too few of us.

Anyway, the most important piece of motorcycle buying advice: Take the MSF course first. It teaches you enough skills to stay alive until you figure out the rest of it.

Or like that professor at Virginia Tech who survived the Holocaust only to die in the shooting. (Although, I suppose, Holocaust survivors die in as many strange and mundane ways as everyone else does.)

The last time my depression took a nose dive, everything I looked at, every-ordinary-fucking-thing, was calling me to death with a siren's cry. The kitchen and the bathroom were like, booby-trapped with opportunities to hurt or kill myself. There were times when I was driving and I'd realize, "I really shouldn't be on the road right now," because it just seemed like it would be so easy - and so final - to speed through the guard rail and over the cliff.

I'm trying real hard to make sure I *GET* the "need," you're talking about here: am I off target? If I am, so sorry. But if I'm not, then I wanna say the bloody obvious : When you say "Fuck It," and you really, really mean it, you're in trouble.

And I don't mean "Fuck it," as in, "I'm not gonna wash these dishes, they can wait 'til morning."

I'm talking about those kinds of ultimate "fuck it"s people who aren't gonna be around much longer send out to the universe. Or else people who're about to do something they'll instantly regret.

What I'm not tryin' to say is that you're in trouble : You sound fine. I'm not tryin' to lecture you, neither.