| OCR Text |
Show that I could not f u l l y open my eyes nor l i f t my head. When I arrived home, no one was t h e r e to greet or comfort me. My mother had gone shopping with Aunt Helga.- t h e i r usual p r a c t i ce on Wednesdays. My s i s t e r - i n - l a w brought the baby when I called for her to come home, but my daughter d i d n ' t seem to know me and refused to suck my withered n i p p l e s . I sat on my bed, holding her t i g h t l y , and wept. But I had r e a l i z e d something - about the war and about l i fe itself. I had discovered t h a t there i s an order, even when we don't see one - a force which d i r e c t s l i f e and binds us, only one to another, if we willAagree to p a r t i c i p a t e. I knew, now, t h a t the war had dimensions far beyond the realm of physical demographics. It affected the l i v e s of souls as well, so that c a s u a l t i e s could not be a c c u r a t e l y counted from the corporeal point of view. Miles of surrealism seemed somehow involved i n the war. Witness my dream-come-true, the night Brian c a l l e d . Witness h i s miraculous s u r v i v a l s . Witness the assertion t h a t we did not belong i n Vietnam, by a n a t i v e Vietnamese^ We, as a nation, as i n d i v i d u a l s were somehow being t e s t e d , in all our God-fearing s e l f - r i g h t e o u s n e s s . We would choose our champions, s e l e c t a s i d e , engage i n b a t t l e - psychologically, spiritually or p h y s i c a l l y . Somehow, I knew t h a t the Americans who remained at home would not be exempted from the suffering i n t o t h e ir of the war, that i t would follow them^homes through t h e i r sons and husbands and l o v e r s . Despite the h e a l t h of the economy - - a television or two i n every home on which to watch the war Machine which generated American d o l l a r s - t h e r e would be a rape of r=: American consciousness, a z = z = ^ s p i r i t u al complicity with inhumane behavior inA every American h e a r t. |
