War Movies

I have been watching war movies. For a while there, I sought the fantastical, the strong current of fictions begging greater leaps of disbelief than I’d ever sought before. Escape is fine, I suppose, but then at some point you recognize the beehive is still humming, the noise ceaseless & demanding. The wound will bleed until you dress it, even if its dressing takes years. & so, without thinking about it until now, I seem to have tightened my aperture on moments wherein death underwrites life, provides starkly its backdrop, soundtracks it. It doesn’t really matter if the movies are based on true stories or not-- it is the existential limn I want, the protracted praxis of life’s defense. How tightening your grip on the world is actionable, necessary & clarifying. 

The thing about clarification when grief can still render you nearly catatonic is that it proves opaque at best, an oasis seen from a distance, such that you know it exists but between the present & the moment of its release there are all those miles to cross, coughing sand & blowing wind. I don’t know. It ought to be enough to sense the deep slowness of change without dissecting it, without dipping a hand to nudge the rudder. But slowness enwreathes the heart when it wants, weighs upon it & whispers it dolorous tunes. The day can spark firebright & fulgent, all birdsong & sunlight, but if the wrong song gets in my head or I stumble upon the wrong picture, the heart constricts, the dullness washes over & only with displacement or duty elsewhere can I hope for redirection. I know it will change, it will loosen the grasp. I try to couple fondness with those flashes of grief, to refute the soloing sadness with accompanying beauty, cherished memories, love. & it will come to work, some day. In the meantime, it reminds me that we don’t feel the thundering echo of the demolition unless the thing torn down was very grand indeed. It is astonishing, how fundamental love is to our felicities, each & all. The thing always worth the fight.