“Jump or Fly” (unabridged)
Inferno “…I saw Sisyphus enduring hard sufferings as he pushed a huge stone…up to the top of the hill. But just when he was about to thrust it over the crest …once again the pitiless stone rolled down to the plain. Yet again he put forth his strength and pushed it up…” -Homer’s Odyssey It’s hard to find beauty on a military base. The people – even those who conform to contemporary aesthetic canons – tend to resemble the architecture: imposing, cold, expressionless, and “operational”. Every time I walk past door 154, “the gateway” which ushers all new recruits and officer cadets into the profession of arms, I wonder if the inscription above the mouth of the Inferno should not grace that portal as well. At this university of state-sanctioned violence, veteran-instructors instill their sense of urgency about past dangers into the hearts and minds of hapless privates who march around as if hell is on their heels. There they go now, resembling Viktor Frankl’s