RANDOM DISPATCHES OCT 28-NOV 8TH

RANDOM DISPATCHES OCT 28TH- NOV 8TH

Despite the leaps and bounds the Internet and technology has made over time and across the world, there are still moments and places where you simply just can’t get a signal/connection. Rolling around A-stan is like that. Sometimes, when the muse beckons, I can only write it down and file it away for later. I like communicating in real time as much as possible-giving the raw and uncut. Below are some random dispatches that I wish I could have sent out in “real time”. As for photos and videos, they’re coming too…might have to just send stuff back home to be uploaded. I think that my collection of videos pieces both personal and work relate , I might turn into one long stream of conscious piece –like if you were watching an episode of “Robot Chicken” –just one vignette after another…
So without further adieu…

VOTE: Elections…? What Elections…?
October 28th

Greetings from the Zabul Provence –I’m somewhere near Shajoy and Shinkay –not too far from Highway 1-(for you War elders-just like HWY 1 in Vietnam)…I’m at a FOB named after a Marvel X-Men character that is located in the desert and ringed by low mountain ranges. Once again I’m thinking this is Camelback Mountains in AZ or those canyon mountains in LA/vicinity. Some of these mountains stick out like giant ant mounds serving as some backdrop for some sci-fi movies like Conan The Barbarian, Red Sonja, Dune(starring Sting) or better yet-them Star Wars upright Imperial Stormtrooper carriers-who’s name I’ve long since forgotten. Given the lack of female beauty to gaze upon-my mind conjures up images from the classic sci-fi magazine “Heavy Metal” –imagining some beautiful Afghan woman clad in a sexy bikini styled burqa wielding some crazy broadaxe or sword riding across the desert on some battleclad camel or yak to kidnap me from the infidels. TAKE ME ! TAKE ME!
Yeah man…the desert sun will run amok with your mind and imagination out here in Talibland.

OCT 30TH
I got another taste of war upclose but nothing personal when Mr. Taib from a neighboring village where he was either bullying or getting support from-launched 6 mortars into the FOB. Unlike, KAF were you got a sexy British woman’s voice saying ROCKET ATTACK, ROCKET ATTACK- you just got that whistling in sound and them BOOM! So Mr. Talib was walking these mortars into the FOB-2 struck the heliport runaway and the rest sprinkled amongst the motor pool damaging a Stryker and landing in an open area. Thankfully nobody was hurt. I ran out my tent to watch the last 2 mortars land about a ¼ mile away. It was very Hollywood SFX style-black plume of smoke and some flash of flame. Later that evening, Mr. Talib was overheard on the radio telling one of his employees to lie low while our aircraft(s) flew over the area trying to triangulate where the mortars came from. Just like some war style CSI. A “meet and greet” party was dispatched to the probable area with hopes of having a bullet party with Mr. Talib. Apparently, the party started late and Mr. Talib left. The area is sparsely populated but there’s a lot of real estate to cover-over 200 square miles with only several hundred soldiers.

Life on a FOB can vary-some are being built into megabases to serve outlying smaller FOBs and COPs. Smaller FOB’s are usually near some villages and are there to provide a presence to the local population in cultivating goodwill/unity/trust=winning hearts and minds. COPs(Combat Outposts) serve to give Mr. Talib some bullets and mentor ANA (Afghan National Army) and ANP (Afghan National Police) toward self governance/reliance. Unfortunately, corruption is a way of life here and the ANP are the most notorious. They also have a lot of Taliban sympathizers amongst the rank and file and have over time turned on ISAF/NATO forces. If I have to be around ANP-guaranteed, I have one in the chamber and be looking screwface at ‘em. Dirty Bastards. The ANA has a beef with them too but the ANA are far from being choirboys. The relationship is one of parent and child here-the Afghans ask for things and we give it to them-knowing full well in a lot of cases-the money is going somewhere else and not to the people who need it the most. A lot of the villagers have to “wear the mask” as the great poet Langston Hughes once described about the relationship between blacks and whites. For the Afghan villagers it’s US and the Taliban. In some places, they have to walk a tightrope-the Taliban visits to collect/bully or often use their village as a base of operations against coalition forces, if someone snitches or sees that they are helping the coalition forces-the consequences are dire. At the end of the day, like the hood – “folks gotta live there long after the police/army/soldiers leave…
Yeah now about them elections…
I was looking forward to covering them at the same time a bit nervous about the possibility of some serious violence jumping off at the polling stations. Then there was an issue of how close we could get to the polling sites since we (US) would be lying in the shadows and providing area security while the ANA would be doing the polling station security…Abdullah₂ smelled the rat and pulled out. I know those U.N. workers must have been pissed as hell after flying in all those ballot boxes/ forms/ etc. So election fever now cooled. Karazi is a product of his environment and won’t change overnight. So here we go further into the muck with this schmuck…

HALLOWEEN OCT. 31ST
The food out here is pretty good. Steak, crablegs, 3 flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream on Sunday-3 squares a day-the food is better out in the field than at KAF. Trade off between being behind the wire and outside it. Being outside, you are definitely more freer to be your own boss as you embed with various units to do stories on their exploits and activities. Sometimes you fall into that grey area of being combat camera. Afterall, we all did train together at Fort Meade, MD. Splitting the same hair how many times??? Anyway, besides the familiar creature comforts of KAF-hot showers, the boardwalk-a combo of Afghan shops selling trinkets and our Pizza Hut/Subway/Tim Horton’s and the various NATO country shops-familiarity breeds contempt. Not to mention the crowded rooms in these one level modular housing units and the rank aroma of the “shit pond”-a human waste pond that is an environmental hazard down the road from us. KAF’s infrastructure is overwhelmed by all the troops/private contractors/etc. here. And with Obama mulling over troop increases-a lot of them will be there at KAF. Lines are everywhere-the Green Beans coffee spot and Tim Hornton’s are caffeine crackhouses-folks need that war fuel. I wonder how much of that shit pond waste is result of coffee? That would be a good episode for the show “Mythbusters”.

So, it’s Halloween-the dining hall is all done up in Halloween party favors-goofy jack-o laterns, skeletons, black cats and witches. The nearby mountains and the forthcoming full moon are a perfect setting for some type of zombie or ghost story to unfold out here. I peer out in the desertscape imagining zombies or lackeys from those Brendan Fraser “Mummy” movies rising up to give the FOB some combat action. Yeah…a zombie movie that takes place at a FOB…hmmm…It dawns on me-I gotta get with some Hollywood/indie producer and pitch the idea! Not only that but the idea of Afghanistan as the next Hollywood backlot-Afghan Spaghetti Westerns or remakes(find the next Dari/Pashtun Clint Eastwood-even better if he was some ex-Taliban fighter) the next Afghan Marilyn Monroe/Dorothy Dandridge/Penelope Cruz…YO- maybe I could get the ouija board out and conjure up the spirits of Hollywood Moguls like Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn or Cleveland’s own; Lew Wasserman and start a movie studio here…or holla at Oscar Micheaux for some self distribution advice bet he would of dug the cinemin swivel. Why not an Afghan Film Academy? Mentor and train Afghans in the cinematic arts to cultivate their identity through film/video and support those Afghans who are already in the cinematic struggle-See/look for the upside the war! My mind is racing while looking out at the desert. This country is beautiful/deadly/sad and yet full of potential. Now if there was a way to remove all the mines or at least set them all off to make it safer…hmmm…we can crash spaceships into the moon in search of water…wow…priorities…makes you wanna holler…shout out to Marvin.

William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” is playing at the recreation tent. Me and my buddy go to watch. I was never one for that film-along with classics such as the “Damian” series and the other two “Exorcist” sequels-sh** was too scary-too real-especially coming from a religious upbringing –hellfire and brimstone and the devil walking amongst us always got me spooked. I can attest to otherworldy experiences especially as a kid. That aside, and it being almost 30 something years later, being in a combat zone on Halloween-it was time to see this flick from beginning to end-and to confront those childhood memories of my sister watching it on Showtime and sneaking downstairs and seeing bits of it that seared into my mental visual archives. Watching the pacing of it, reminded me how much we are a oversaturated information/media culture-we are so used to faster cuts edits-more information crammed into a short amount of time. I was getting bored with it on some level but on another level- Regan and her family were reminiscent of folks I knew growing up in the idyll suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio. The streets of Cleveland were only a few blocks away but Shaker was a masala of socio-economic class/ levels-mostly black and white. Regan was a composite of a lot of those middle/upper class girls I knew and even liked at one point. So when Regan got the spirit and started to wild out-it made think of some of those girls who had growing pains or dysfunctional household issues with their parents. I can’t attest to no cross in the crotch theatrics or somebody’s Mom having an up close and personal revisit to the yoni she created. Still, given today’s glut of SFX and oversaturated depictions of violence, Friedkin’s film still resonates in its rawness. I also wondered how did those actors feel participating in such a project and did they unknownly open themselves up to dark energies or spirits? Whoever the actor-British(?) that was the demon voice in Regan, his dialogue and lines were funny and eerie. The sound design and editing for that time was edgy-the subliminal frames and use of agitating sounds (beehive and hyenas? Dogs fighting?) was creepy. In the end, good triumphed over evil-if only briefly while Regan went along her merry way-none the wiser about what went on inside her. Folks who perform exorcisms in real life got some real extra spiritual cojones. That’s the “ish” I need to tap into when contact with Mr. Talib presents itself.

After the movie, the artillery guys-I imagined in their own way-to say “Happy Halloween” -fired some outgoing illumination rounds. These can light up an area almost plain as day. They fired several toward the area where the mortars came previously. Orange in color, they hung in the sky it seemed and slowly floated down like a disco ball. Some Sergeant told me later that they shoot those in order to deny Mr. Talib any “tactical ground”. I laughed to myself and thought; “The hills have eyes! Talib knows where we are and he ain’t stupid-ignorant but not stupid”. Right then, another round of visuals struck my mental. I imagined leaving the wire and going up into the hills where Talib was- armed with some jack- o-laterns, a camoflagued boombox cued to the late great MJ’s “Thriller” and bullet candy. What a sight that would be! Talib’s eyes go big/wide as Mantan Moreland’s and me with my chesire/impish grin saying “TRICK OR TREAT”? I am not gonna front, sometimes I think this war needs a little fun and some theatrics. Psyops in another life I’d be.

I slept kinda uneasy after seeing the Exorcist-mental was rewriting old scary source code-eradicating the old and putting new perspective on the chapter. The Geto Boys; “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” was on the mental. I promised myself to download the song next time I could but I was able to look up the lyrics to fill in where my mind forgot. A classic- especially on Halloween-watching the Exorcist- in the spooky desert/mountains of Afghanistan.