eleven eleven
Nov. 11th, 2011 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenThis morning at work I had trouble with a first registration; there was a missing easement in the epitome, and I said to one of the associates, can you give me a hand. He's a good guy, he said I'm busy now, come in at half past ten. Sure, I said, it's a date. Don't even, he said, waving down at his hungover self, and waving me out. I went back at ten thirty, and we went through the easement, and I made some notes for my drafting, and I stepped out into the pen and the fire alarm went.
I said, "What..." - and then no one said anything, and someone in the pool said, wait. It's eleven. I certified my copy of my easement. I hereby certify this is a copy of the original, sign and date here. Eleven eleven eleven.
I remember Armistice Day from school. I've had a horrible week. Round about Wednesday, Shim was trying to cheer me up. He said, we're away this weekend, and on Friday you'll come home, and the week will be over, and we'll have dinner and a drink and watch "Goodbye, Farewell, Amen". We've been rewatching M*A*S*H in bits and pieces, not exactly in order, but sort of. We'd been saving it. Not on purpose for today; we got to Friday and here we are.
So we did, and we did. And here's the thing: I don't know much about Armistice Day. It's one of those days where I'm a foreigner. Remember your grandfather's wars? No - my grandfathers were fighting their own wars, in other places. And what strikes me, watching this old show that I love so much, with my dear and uncool love, is it's about all the ways there are to fight wars. I love that, I do: I love that Hawkeye fights it until the end, the war and the army mentality and the senselessness of it all but also his own mental illness, fighting, fighting, always fighting it. And Margaret, fighting the army, fighting the world, fighting the men that tell her, don't love yourself, don't love sex, sit down, shut up. These are real battles, the show tells us. This is a war.
I'm okay with that, I find. And now that there are only the very few actual survivors of the First World War left, then perhaps that's what it becomes: about all wars, all wars that we go on fighting. I recently read Joseph Heller's many-years-after-the-fact prologue to Catch-22, in which he talks about some stickers he'd seen printed off and put up around buildings in New York: "YOSSARIAN LIVES". I said to Shim, well, yes, Yossarian is like Scrooge and Spock in that way. He lives forever, fighting his war, beyond context. I don't know if Hawkeye is the same, but perhaps.
I have another post in me about M*A*S*H - about politics and pacifism and sexual politics and rats and socks - but this one is just about that moment of confluence, that small moment where I think that although I love novels and television and, well, stories, fiction, that's not bad, it's all how anything ever makes sense in the end. I don't know how other people do it, but this is how I do.
This is the bit from "Goodbye, Farewell, Amen" where the announcer comes on the radio. (Add ".avi"). A little later, Klinger will ask: "Where's Vietnam?"
Goodnight.
I said, "What..." - and then no one said anything, and someone in the pool said, wait. It's eleven. I certified my copy of my easement. I hereby certify this is a copy of the original, sign and date here. Eleven eleven eleven.
I remember Armistice Day from school. I've had a horrible week. Round about Wednesday, Shim was trying to cheer me up. He said, we're away this weekend, and on Friday you'll come home, and the week will be over, and we'll have dinner and a drink and watch "Goodbye, Farewell, Amen". We've been rewatching M*A*S*H in bits and pieces, not exactly in order, but sort of. We'd been saving it. Not on purpose for today; we got to Friday and here we are.
So we did, and we did. And here's the thing: I don't know much about Armistice Day. It's one of those days where I'm a foreigner. Remember your grandfather's wars? No - my grandfathers were fighting their own wars, in other places. And what strikes me, watching this old show that I love so much, with my dear and uncool love, is it's about all the ways there are to fight wars. I love that, I do: I love that Hawkeye fights it until the end, the war and the army mentality and the senselessness of it all but also his own mental illness, fighting, fighting, always fighting it. And Margaret, fighting the army, fighting the world, fighting the men that tell her, don't love yourself, don't love sex, sit down, shut up. These are real battles, the show tells us. This is a war.
I'm okay with that, I find. And now that there are only the very few actual survivors of the First World War left, then perhaps that's what it becomes: about all wars, all wars that we go on fighting. I recently read Joseph Heller's many-years-after-the-fact prologue to Catch-22, in which he talks about some stickers he'd seen printed off and put up around buildings in New York: "YOSSARIAN LIVES". I said to Shim, well, yes, Yossarian is like Scrooge and Spock in that way. He lives forever, fighting his war, beyond context. I don't know if Hawkeye is the same, but perhaps.
I have another post in me about M*A*S*H - about politics and pacifism and sexual politics and rats and socks - but this one is just about that moment of confluence, that small moment where I think that although I love novels and television and, well, stories, fiction, that's not bad, it's all how anything ever makes sense in the end. I don't know how other people do it, but this is how I do.
This is the bit from "Goodbye, Farewell, Amen" where the announcer comes on the radio. (Add ".avi"). A little later, Klinger will ask: "Where's Vietnam?"
Goodnight.
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no subject
on 2011-11-12 07:51 am (UTC)♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
on 2011-11-17 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-11-12 03:21 am (UTC)One scene from PATTON: two German army generals are bickering while the Allies are breaking out from Normandy. One says, "there is no way the Third Army is being led by Patton--he's still in England and he'll lead the assault on Calais soon." The other asks him, "How can you believe this nonsense?" "I don't want to argue with Herr Fuhrer." Power destroys the worth of truth. Power loses wars, not win them.
no subject
on 2011-11-17 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2011-11-12 06:53 pm (UTC)Yes. This is how I feel, too.
(I actually saw "Yossarian lives" graffiti-ed in more than one place in SF. It was deeply, deeply satisfying.)
<3
no subject
on 2011-11-17 10:05 pm (UTC)(hey, you <33)
no subject
on 2011-11-13 03:55 pm (UTC)So Armistice day becomes for me, a curious situation. I can think briefly of my grandfathers, and of Uncle Bill who's role in the wars I've long forgotten... and that leaves my head free to ponder over all the others that other people had lost.
Last night for my NaNo fic I had to look up wars to which the US army had offered help. Having watched the big show on the Beeb last night my thoughts were already a bit off, but I ended up noticing that for the last twenty years, it's all been the same places at war.
I want the human species to be above this, but I do think it won't happen until we're ready to do so. And I'm sorry, I don't quite know what this comment was trying to achieve O_o;
xx