what is it good for?

"You have to know that your life is empty before you can begin to fill it."

i know nothing about war.  i was in a movie about a war once (Wicked Spring), but that taught me next to nothing.  i was the fiance who stayed behind while my man went and got himself killed in war. i learned about corsets and craft services.  nothing about real (or even movie) war.

and then came gods go begging.

this novel offered no solution.  the novel looks at the results of living in a patriarchal hierarchy that forces desire and domination into an inseparable definition.  a hierarchy that excludes the possibility of desire existing in a way that does not in some way take.  what i loved most was that it focuses on the  devastating effects this culture has on men.  sometimes it's easy to forget that women aren't the only ones who suffer consequences from the societal expectations we swim in.  this novel moved me to see that men, in some ways, are just as victimized by our culture.  

the novel referred to war as "lewd acts with boys," a figurative (and sometimes literal) rape of young men who are too inexperienced and young to understand what is happening to them.  

a bold statement- 

particularly with a brother who just signed- 

but i think i agree.

for the sake of some patriotic ideal, or some sense of honor, or open doors in the future, or something, people sign up to defend their country.  for many, it costs their lives.  for so many more, it costs them a sort of emotional death that they may never recover from.  we send these people off to war in which they go through repeated traumatic experiences that forever reshapes their emotional health and their ability to look at the world.  then we send them home and pat them on the back and fly flags for them on certain days and build statues in their honor.  in their honor.  but these people return to a world that they don't belong in anymore.  war is a world apart, and i'm not sure we do a very good job providing a bridge back to this world once they return.  

i've never been to war.  but Alfredo Vea, the author of this novel, and PLENTY of disillusioned authors that i've read and respect have been.  while this novel may not have offered much in the way of a concrete solutions, it does point to the hollow and makes it echo with very human voices.  

voices that echo for days.  

i'm not sure i'd ever thought of war in anything but abstract terms.  this novel changed that.  this novel made me look and the empty and doubt that it would ever start to fill if we just continue to feed it the same old order.