Matterhorn Is My Metaphor Of The Vietnam

He Thought Of The Jungle, Already Regrowing Around Him To Cover The Scars They Had Created. He Thought Of The Tiger, Killing To Eat. Was That Evil? And Ants? They Killed. No, The Jungle Wasn’t Evil. It Was Indifferent. So, Too, Was The World. Evil, Then, Must Be The Negation Of Something Man Had Added To The World. Ultimately, It Was Caring About Something That Made The World Liable To Evil. Caring. And Then The Caring Gets Torn Asunder. Everybody Dies, But Not Everybody Cares.

He Ran As He'd Never Run Before, With Neither Hope Nor Despair. He Ran Because The World Was Divided Into Opposites And His Side Had Already Been Chosen For Him, His Only Choice Being Whether Or Not To Play His Part With Heart And Courage. He Ran Because Fate Had Placed Him In A Position Of Responsibility And He Had Accepted The Burden. He Ran Because His Self-respect Required It. He Ran Because He Loved His Friends And This Was The Only Thing He Could Do To End The Madness That Was Killing And Maiming Them.

For Every Veteran Who Goes Through A Divorce, A Wife Goes Through One, Too. For Every Veteran Alone In The Basement, There Is A Wife Upstairs, Bewildered, Isolated And In Despair From The Dark Clouds Of War That Hangs Over Family Life.

We Mistakenly Assume That Bodily Survival Has A Higher Precedence Than Ego Survival. This Is Simply Not Generally True. Ego Will Happily Destroy The Body For Its Own Sake. Look At Overweight Executives Headed For Heart Attacks On The Way To Getting Their Pictures In Fortune Or Anorexic Models Suffering Slow Starvation On Their Way To Getting Their Pictures In Vogue. Protecting Ego Is The General Case.

Matterhorn Is My Metaphor Of The Vietnam War - We Built It, We Abandoned It, We Assaulted It, We Lost, And Then We Abandoned It Again.