Question

Are there writers in the war?



Other generations have their war writers. I mean not the essayists, debating policies, or the journalists, corresponding from the lines. War philosophers and cameras. I mean the voice of the war, voices made in it. Hemingway was not a soldier, but he was there. And we had Mailer, and James Jones. We had Tim O'Brien, even Anthony Swofford.

It is a little unlikely to imagine. Armies are different these days. Service is not compulsory, so educated elites do not fight. Working-class soldiers have made writers before, but something else is off. Romance is not anymore in war, and causes not grand. That too is old. But do writers go to wars? The writers we know cannot think of it.

Yet they are there. Certainly, already they are there. Some of them will be killed and never write but some too will write. True we will get war memoirs, and Iraq thrillers, but thought too, literature. So they are there already. They are being made and it becomes a strange thought, them sitting between the bullets and mortars, laying in barracks, the ones who will write, eyes wide, polishing their weapons.

The Grass Is Always Greener

We were at the park, looking for a good place to eat a picnic. We spotted a nice patch on the side of a hill, lush and green, half in shadow, half in sun. But when we got there, the grass was sparse and spiky and the ground was mostly mud. We did this a few more times. From a distance, the park appeared deeply green, thick with grass, but upon arrival this turned out not to be the case.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I had always thought this expression concerned humans' innate covetousness. That our greedy brain is skewed to see yourself as impoverished and everyone else as rich. But the events in the park made me realize a simple fact: seen from a distance a patch of grass will truly appear greener. Due to foreshortening, the further afield you look, the more grass is condensed in a smaller area of vision. The grass actually DOES look greener, and since a color is merely an impression, if something looks greener, well it IS greener.

This is, perhaps, a minor distinction. But it changed the meaning of the saying for me. Before, I had always thought that it was commentary on the weakness, the sinfulness, if you will, of the human heart. Now I realize it is simply a matter of optics, of physics. Ancient peoples were obsessed with the tricksy quality of reality, with spirits and imps and talking animals with suspicious intent. For modern people, deceit is mostly a human invention. We love to talk about how people lie to each other and about how we lie to ourselves. And of course we do. But don’t forget: the world also lies. The grass is greener on the other side. But when you get there, it is mostly mud. You have not tricked yourself. You have been tricked. The universe fools us.