solstice, noun. def 3. (figurative) a turning or culminating point; furthest limit; crisis.

War is much maligned. People forget the good things about it.

There is a clarity unlike any other in the midst of war. When a lethal projectile whizzes madly past your left ear you absolutely don’t give a good healthy damn what happens on the next episode of Friends. When bits of your comrade’s spleen are splattered on your face, dripping down your cheeks like lukewarm slush, there is no thought at all given to whether you will or will not qualify for credit at Best Buy.

What is important in war is absolutely clear. Staying alive is important.

It occurs to me that this is something I (very likely) will NOT be able to do. Stay alive, that is to say.

My thoughts sizzle across the sacred landscape of my mind as my face is half-immersed in mud stew. I’m unsure if my mouth still exists but my nostrils are just above the sludge, so I can breathe. There is no pain. That’s what scares me. There is no feeling at all. For all I know I am a torso and a head. A bloody, useless, immobile stump-of-a-man. Good as dead. I see, but it is mostly dark; smoke writhes amid intermittent flashes of light. There are no explosions. Well, there are. I just don’t hear them.

I’ve forgotten who I am, where I am, whose damn fool cause I’m dying for. Perhaps some playful bit of precision-shrapnel has sliced through my cranium and surgically removed the Identity Zone from my brain. I know something happened in a village awhile back--I think it was real ugly, but it won’t show itself. I remember other stuff clearly, though.

I remember reading that war correspondents actually develop a kind of “addiction” to war. Billy Q. Journalist packs his bags and flies off to cover a conflict in some third world crud hole. Every day he is surrounded by unparalleled human drama; he can’t know if he will live through the next five minutes; chaos and death are doing their best to shatter the dreams of ordinary people; there is political intrigue, moral outrage, horror, nobility, madness and irony. All of it whirls about him like a sense-storm, life is condensed, intensified, everything is felt exponentially. A cup of coffee (even a bad cup) tastes like sex. A hug from a smelly woman who doesn’t speak English is like some kind of male, multiple orgasm. There is so much to write about, so much to believe in and to be moved by. This is history being made before Billy’s very eyes. Then, one day, he returns (if he returns in a conveyance other than a pine box) to his normal life. There is Starbucks right where he left it. There is a remote control for his television. His Hyundai has air conditioning. How can this haven of ease and affluence compare to what he has just experienced? This world is mundane. Overfed, relatively safe people are worried about bald spots and not enough ice in their Cokes. Billy Q. Journalist (crazy as it seems) longs to be back in the middle of war. Praise the Lord and pass the irony.

In the village--there was a lot of screaming; I remember that now.

As for me, I don’t think I’m addicted to war. It’s hard to think of anything I hate more right now. I signed up for some insane reason. What was I thinking? “Be as dead as you can be?” Yeah, I’m livin’ the dream now. I’d slice off an ear for a Happy Meal (if I have an ear to slice--a thing I can’t be sure of, one way or the other). Right now, I long for the mundane. Traffic jams, unpaid overtime, crummy reruns, underwear stuck in my crack…these are a few of my favorite things.

War. Huh! Good God, ya’all! What is it good for?

Ooh, ooh, I know, I know, teacher! Call on me!

Well. Maybe this is it. The worst it can ever get.

It’s not so bad. So silent. The flashes are kind of beautiful, really. Just for me, a final fireworks show. But it’s not the Fourth of July, it’s the friggin’ solstice. The longest night of the year. Go ahead, Alanis, sing it: “Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?” (Funny. Pop lyrics, I remember. My name? Nope.)

The winter solstice. The sun is at its greatest distance from the equator.

OK--I’m gonna die. I’m knock knock knockin’ on heaven’s door.

I can do this.

Whoa! The earth just rumbled like it’s about to crack apart. You feel that? Some guy’s skeleton just landed next to me. His helmet’s still on but he’s nothing but bone underneath.

That’s not logical.

He’s grinning at me. And his eyes. My God, they’re spinning spheres of fire and his hair is smoke--no, worms, crawling, crawling over his scalp. I hear him when his mouth opens.

“Time to go, Frankie boy,” he says.

Frank. That’s my name.

“It’s been a good time, but all good things must end.”

No. This is not happening. It’s an hallucination. That happens when you’re dying, I’ve heard. People see things, hear things.

“You wish,” Satan’s little helper says.

The screaming…have to stop the screaming.

And his bony fingers close around my spirit-hand, which he pulls on. He is pulling my spirit out of my body.

“It was a high old time, raping those little village girls, Frankie, wasn’t it? Gunning down the senior citizens. You told yourself you didn’t know what you were doing, you were caught up in the moment, no one would ever know. But you knew, didn’t you? Of course you knew, there’d be hell to pay. I love that line!” The skull laughs, a full, glorious, horrible laugh that rings through eternity.

And it occurs to me that death isn’t the worst it can get.