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Yankee Station

In the silence that overcame me as I refixed my gaze upon the stark panorama, which had unfolded before my eyes, I recalled some vague passage from the Gospel of Luke (12:54-57): “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say immediately that rain is coming—and so it does. When the wind blows [...]

The Vagaries of a Melancholy Mood

As the ship steamed relentlessly southward at full speed ahead, the mood of the crew grew conspicuously more somber. Forced to let go of the frenzied and orgiastic pleasures of a Dionysian holiday in Japan, they unwillingly surrendered themselves to the more Apollonian way of life found onboard the ship. Totally incapable of seeing beyond [...]

On the Road Again

Bright ’n’ early the following morning, did I arise and, after a hearty breakfast, slip off to the train station in Yokuska where I purchased a round trip ticket to Tokyo. I was so much taller than the local inhabitants, that I felt as strange as Gulliver must’ve felt, walking amongst the Lilliputians. Besides, I [...]

On the Brink of Insanity

It wasn’t until later on that morning that I saw the door inch open, ever so slightly. Having been ordered to report to the shipyard dispensary, I figured they (meaning the Navy) wanted to examine me, that is, my body, to see if I was physically fit to make a West Pac cruise after my [...]

Sitting on the Edge

About the twentieth day of my fast, I woke up feeling light-headed and weak. Not till my heart started fluttering rapidly, as I stood up to get dressed, did I get scared. Scurrying up to the mess decks, I gulped down a glass of fruit juice, with the hope it’d alleviate these symptoms. Instead, I [...]

Taking on the Navy

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was eventually transferred off the mess decks. Though I’d continued to bathe ’n’ put on clean underclothes daily, it’d been a month since I last changed my pants. Because I had no other pants to wear, I couldn’t throw ’em into the laundry when they got dirty. To protest my [...]

The Real Fight

“For four long years,” began my new-found friend, a rebellious intellectual from Boston, Massachusetts, “I’ve struggled against becoming an animal like the rest of these poor bastards. Next week when I walk off this ship for the last time, I’ll have prevailed.” “I know the feeling,” I interjected. “From the first day of my enlistment,” [...]

A Different Kind of Sentinel by Sir E. J. Drury II A review Having survived the war in Vietnam, without physical injury to himself, the author “had nonetheless incurred the deeper wounds of a house divided against itself.” As a child, had not he experienced his real father’s schizophrenia and, later, his stepfather’s alcoholism as [...]

Encounters of the Soul Kind

While an animal encounters no one, not even its own self, we humans are more fortunate, or unfortunate depending upon how you view the matter, in that we can encounter our Selves on four different levels. In encounters of the first kind, we gain some small sense as a child that “I” exist, though not [...]

A Different Kind of Sentinel in Review

There are some fascinating ideas here. The author uses the springboard of a navy hearing to create a memoir of a difficult life; a bit Joycean both in the collapsing of a personality down into less than a day’s worth of time, and in the sudden drops into fantasy. These are not, unsurprisingly, handled as [...]

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