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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 [...]

The Respect a Wild Animal Has for Fire

Over the next thirty days, I was made to perform the most inane work imaginable, tasks strictly meant to be punitive. Many an evening was I forced to scrub oily decks down in the bilges, on my hands and knees, with an old brush and can of scouring powder. Or worse yet, was I made [...]

The True Meaning of Forgiveness

I was so overwhelmed by my own existential pain that, to this very day, I can recall little else about the trip back to Yokuska. O how I did long for a way out of the nightmare that haunted me, both day and night. O how I ached for the physical presence of Mary, as [...]

A Formidable Barrier

Around this time, I bought some civilian clothes so that I could go down to Waikiki Beach, in the evenings, and blend in with the rest of the tourists. For the sake of my humanity, I needed to get away from that menagerie of animals back onboard the ship, as much as possible, to avoid [...]

The Willful Destruction of Government Property

Left standing outside the XO’s stateroom, I felt a bit like Jesus, who’d gotten shuffled from one authority to another, in much the same manner, as each one realized he had no authority over He Who Is. In that one brief moment, I felt as if I were in contact with some incredibly powerful force, [...]

The “S” Word

Having sat there in silence, for a few moments, I finally blurted out, “I didn’t know what else to do. I was so disappointed by the Navy’s failure to satisfy the insatiable longing for self-fulfillment, that has afflicted me since puberty, I could not bear the additional pain of the remorse I felt after having [...]

To Eat or Not To Eat

While I had certainly reached a low point in my life, I had not the slightest clue as to how I could escape this black hole. Caught up in the vortex of this hell, I cried out in anguish one night, “O God, please help me, for I’m at my wits end. I must get [...]

A Like-minded Friend

Turning, I caught sight of this dude standing there, with his dungaree pants cut into ribbons from the knees down. Shocked, I approached him. “What happened to your pants?“ I asked with a slight snicker. “I cut ’em up,“ he arrogantly replied, “to protest the deplorable condition in which my clothes repeatedly come back to [...]

How It Feels to Forget about One’s self

In many ways, I was just like the other guys on the ship, for I was still too much into the habit of putting down my feelings—a pattern of behavior I’d acquired from my stepdad who, in turn, had acquired it from the temple priests of the Great Gray Mother. And like the others, I [...]

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