Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 4
Happy Veterans Day,
professor. If ever a man deserved the
salutation, it is you. I’m happy we’re
in touch again, and regret that the excessive heat of the summer interrupted
our happy dialogue about Grandpa Jung and Minoan Civilization. (I still have the books on each that I
borrowed from your fine library.) I am
also glad that you are seeing well enough to enjoy the delights of art and art
history again. I hope that some day you
will teach me a bit more about the subject, for
though I can see some things very well (at times even into the mists of the
past and future), I am but a poor observer of beauty, and candidly, I don’t
feel like I’ve experienced my fair share of it in life. [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases]
Yet there is beauty in the
world, always was, and always shall be.
It took you, a soldier and scholar of the highest caliber, to teach me
this most important, most beautiful of all truths. Of course you told me all of this the first
time you spoke to me, the young misfit cavalry sergeant in an effete
I must confess that today
is ambivalent for me, because I am afraid there will
be many more veterans to come soon. I
feel our country’s balance slipping away, just as surely as I can feel the loss
of my own balance when Master Yu throws me in training. I hope we don’t have to learn a lesson that
comes with a great fall.
Armistice Day, the eleventh
day of the eleventh month in 1918, was supposed to remind us that war was
insanity, that a war had just been fought to such extremes that future wars
were inconceivable. But on the twelfth day of the eleventh month
of 1918, all parties went back to their habitual plots, counterplots,
territorial tiffs and military mobilizations – until they wound up in another
inconceivable war. I think, sir, that
the fact that we keep having inconceivably bad wars is a damning testament to
our poor powers of conception!
“It’s all a cycle, of
course,” you said as I sat with you and Frau Guenther, enjoying Columbian
coffee and talking about the
Oh well, enough. It’s not only depressing, it’s boringly
obvious. For the rest of the day I will
allow myself a great treat: I will recall
your rich baritone voice describing the taper of Ionic columns in
The creative fire you have sparked in
me, in my university studies years ago and in our conversations this year, has
made you my Prometheus. It has been your
fate, poor man, to become a Titan. I
have known very few of them. I must admit
that I aspire to the same rank, but do not yet have the mastery of self
necessary for it. “Oide seauton” “Know thyself,” said
wise Apollo at
I hope you will forgive my intrusion into your retirement, but I was lured by a lifelong respect for you, and a faith that you could point me the right way in a few of my ideas. You did so, as I knew you would all along, then rightly left it to me to work out the details in my own way. I hope I will one day have the pleasure of publishing a book about our lives and times. It is already written, for the most part. You will, God willing, receive a copy in hardback. In the meanwhile I hereby promise not to talk any more nonsense about politics and war, and the nasty gray area between the two.
One
day you and your beautiful wife must let me demonstrate the flow and force of
the long staff – or the nimble play of flails – in the peace and quiet of your
garden. It’s as close to a display of
art as I can manage, I’m afraid… Perhaps
if you enjoy the Homeric display you can reward me by explaining just what
“existential” means, or whether Grandpa Nietzsche didn’t just
invent that word after his poor head got sick.
I’ll hearken to your answer and never forget it, or you.
With deepest respect,
Captain Eric Holmes May
MI,
PS: You may remember that before I took my
bicycle ride to
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