ETC 2023

"Major Depression"

The dawn of my new days happened in the spring of sixth grade. I was out in the woods on the side of a hilly area. Sitting on a moss covered boulder, I felt the afternoon breeze across my skin. Leaves moving and rustling, partly cloudy skies dancing with the sun. I was awakened feeling the cosmic energy flowing through me.

In the beginning of seventh grade, my mind began to change. I rode my bicycle 3 and a 1/2 miles to and from school over a small mountain to Mountain Gap Middle School. The school year started out normal. I had my friends, sports, music, writing, books, and outdoors.

Towards winter, I begin to not care. I wouldn't listen to anybody or do anything that was required of me as a twelve-year-old. I was given discipline as punishment, exercises, chores, restrictions, and the belt at home. I didn't care. I stopped doing my school work in class or at home. I had no interest,  none. The teachers started throwing away my writings and drawings. I was constantly getting sent to the principal's office for daily paddlings. They even broke a wooden paddle on my ass. I even had to stay alone in the Pink Room. It was a room painted like Pepto Bismol without windows, only a desk. I didn't care about my grades. At the end of the year they were all zeros.

That summer, after seventh grade, my mind became clearer, and the darkness lifted. Nobody asked how I felt or if anything was wrong.

I shut down, and it still happens every few years.

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1000 Yard Stare

Trained in combat preparedness, experience comes after. Staying calm, controlled breathing as your trigger finger twitches. Taught to react, no thoughts. With practice, you get better, which increases your chances of survival. Expectation and anticipation of death was the only motivation I needed.


So many beings, spirits. I look it into a 1000 dying eyes, the ones trying to kill me get no remorse. Sweat, blood, tears, cries of agony day and night.


Machine guns, rockets, mortars, explosions.


There is a limit to what we can endure. A strong body with an unregistering perception of the mind. The amount of stress is unbelievable. It doesn't last briefly but formed by days, weeks, months, of constant fighting and defense.


Beyond thoughts, no thought as a fixed stare at nothingness, unwavering with wide eyes. A reaction where there is no function. Motions repeated.  In connection with life-and-death,  surrounding, a background, becoming who you are, who you must be. Where darkness becomes your home, seeing a distant light we can't reach.  We must live.