Intro/Prologue

I am writing this in an attempt to catch my breath, because tomorrow will be my last day to draw it. Curiosity probes me to ask you, the reader of my story, if you have ever paused to think of your accomplishments in life. Have you ever thought of them as if you could die at any moment? How do these things define you? How will you be remembered? I think there’s no way of reflecting on this with an absolute contentment. Even now, despite my youth, I am a great number of things. I am a humanitarian, student, and a teacher. I am a mercenary, mediator, and a warrior. I follow and I lead. My life was not always this way, but the deserts of Africa have a way of changing people.
My name is Marcus York. Since I’m from New York, the name never really worked for me and that could have contributed to my detachment from the city of my birth. Some would say I had a troubled youth. I delved into hallucinogens, but I truly believe that I was still a pretty good kid. Even at seventeen and eighteen I was doing community service for no reason other than the simple fact that it made me feel good. After I was released from a brief stint in prison and sentenced to community service it didn’t really faze me. At twenty-two I was picking up trash to help the environment and amend my wrongs, and picking up the wreckage of demolished houses for the only business that would hire a high-school educated former car thief.
In all honesty, I actually did suck it up and continued that way for a couple years. Once I had finished my required community service I was able to go to night-school and being the bored, single, young man that I was, finished an Associate’s degree in a year and a half. By this time I was newly twenty-four and working over fifty hours a week to pass the time in my unburdened schedule. My family did not really have anything to do with me, nor do I suspect that they wanted to, except for my two doped-up cousins who live in L.A. I visited them a few times, but their state of living was even more depressing than my own so that was sort of my last resort for human interaction. Usually I just stayed in New York, and the excess money I produced would often go to charities that needed it more than a demolitions laborer with too much time on his hands.
With no university plans in mind and a bleak dating life, I decided to throw a middle finger to my birthplace and go somewhere where I could perhaps be more appreciated. I was accused of “running away” but that’s truly not the case. I was unhappy there and it did not really feel like anything would change that except for me. I just took matters into my own hands and if my family members had a problem with that then fuck them because they never really did much for me anyway. So I left. I knew Africa has seemingly always had a perpetual list of problems, so I searched for the ones that would tug my heart in their direction. Chad’s situation seemed pretty messed up, as did the Central African Republic, and there are not many people who are bigger proponents than me against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Darfur hit home the hardest though, and in these journalistic moments the area of Western Sudan is reinforced even more as my home than I ever thought possible. My parole had been discharged for a while so as soon as I could I applied for a passport and waited eagerly for the good news.
Sudan has known war for decades. Years of ceaseless and senseless violence have plagued this nation without mercy. Most of this is sparked from the Sudanese government, though I have given them nothing less in return. The people of Darfur, however, are naturally more peaceful. These Africans are unlike their Arabian neighbors immediately to the east.
I came to them with my Yankees hat on, a white t-shirt and jeans to at least keep a bit of me warm at the end of Africa’s winter, however sympathetic that winter is to a New Yorker. I am different now, perhaps would even be considered barbaric by some, although I’m certainly more learned now than I was all those months ago. Despite the fact that I have done more in my twenty-four years than many have done in their lives, I’m not ready for mine to stop. As Sudanese tank tracks surely rumble their way to my village, I find myself more terrified than I have ever been.

My book

http://www.amazon.com/Hoplite-Torch-Prometheus-Michael-Pritsos/dp/141968860X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224539851&sr=8-1

It has five stars from five different reviews right now and has sold a good amount of copies thus far. Check it out if you're into historical fiction or just want to read something that's far from garbage.

The Pity of War: Wilfred Owen

Poetry is often utilized as an expression of feelings about a certain subject or occurrence in a person’s life. It can be used to pull beauty from things that seem dull, bringing them into the light and exposing them for more than they appear to be. Poetic language as a whole is this way. The words can illuminate anything and make mundane tasks seem filled with glory. What happens when poetic language is applied to horrors? World War I was one of the two most devastating wars in the planet’s history, yet during this time many poets emerged. One such poet was Wilfred Owen, a young soldier who expressed his emotions and nightmares onto the page as a way of healing himself from atrocities he bore witness to wrought by enemy and ally alike. Owen’s work lives on today, as the words he wrote nearly a hundred years ago are all found to ring true, but sadly his lesson goes unlearned.
Wilfred Owen’s poetry was namely that of war-time experiences. He was a British soldier in World War I, and had enlisted in 1915. He came into the war a year late but served for three years and was awarded the Military Cross in 1918. There was only a brief time during those three years that he was not on the frontline, and that was because he had experienced shellshock after being trapped in a hole with his platoon for a few days. During his stay at a hospital in Edinburgh, Owen met the later famous war-poet Siegfried Sassoon and wrote much poetry with him before he felt his call of duty once more. Sassoon’s style was heavily influential on Owen’s own, and is notable even in Owen’s most infamous works. His death came just a month after receiving his Military Cross and just under a week from the truce that ended the “Great War.” It is said that his mother received the letter regarding her son’s death as the bells of their town declared the war’s ending. Unfortunately, only five of his poems were published by him before he died, though the rest were compiled by his friend Siegfried Sassoon.
Owen’s work can be seen as dreary in many people’s eyes, and perhaps that is why he never got as much of a following as some feel he deserves. His poetry is sad, but that is because of what he has to work with. He’s not writing in a field of flowers, but on a field of battle with explosions heard for miles and mustard gas flooding into trenches. In spite of that, poetic language flows onto his page. “What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds” (Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen 1917). Lines full of despair and depressing outlooks, “each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds,” but poetry rings forth from these lines nonetheless. Metaphors are utilized in his work here, saying light in boys’ eyes is eminent when youth leave for war.
Lessons in death are given to Owen’s readers in his poetry in numerous ways. He details war through many different aspects and death is one of those that he focuses on greatly. War’s effects stretch vastly and do not just touch on one subject or a single victim in a battle. They hurt many and more people around it and cause strife in multiple aspects of society. Not only are there poems that show the sadness of youth leaving their loved ones behind, but there are also those poems that display youth leaving this world behind:
Your slender attitudeTrembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,Rolling and rolling thereWhere God seems not to care;Till the fierce love they bearCramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.Your voice sings not so soft,-Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,-Your dear voice is not dear,Gentle, and evening clear,As theirs whom none now hear,Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed
(Greater Love, Wilfred Owen 1917).
As Owen is quick to point out, death in battle seems unwatched even by God, “where God seems not to care.” He elaborates on his reader afterwards, whose voice cannot match that of the men who have fallen beside him in battle. The last line of this poem may be a reference to a horrific event that Owen witnessed himself when a young man he served with dropped his gas mask and choked to death of the yellow burning fumes of mustard gas. This event is noted in Owen’s most famous work, “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” with the lines “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning (Dulce Et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen).
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” was not only Owen’s most famous work but perhaps his most influential. In the poem he greatly details a comrade who dies from the poisonous gas on the battlefield. The Latin translation for “dulce et decorum est,” with the rest of the line reading “pro patria mori,” actually means “Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country” (www.answers.com). The fact that Owen labels this Latin phrase as “the old lie” reveals much of his feelings, if he had not already stated them enough before, about war. He aims the last verse of this poem specifically at war supporters:
If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.
(Dulce Et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen)
Wilfred Owen’s lesson was war. He wanted to educate English people, namely that of Britain, of the atrocities that war creates. Owen wanted us to remember just how horrific it is and what exactly we do to one another in times of war before anything like that ever happened again. Of course as time would have it, war did happen again, but perhaps his views swayed those of some people. After all, it was what he set out to do for his readers when he put his pen to the paper. “Above all I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity (Wilfred Owen, Preface).”

Movies

Am I the only one who seems to think that movies are tending to all look and feel alike? There are infinite minds that can compose a film from beginning to end, or utilize old tales and make them new and improved for a screen audience, yet society seems to fail with that. What's with all the fuckin' remakes? There are, of course, a few hits that come out that shake the nation a little bit. Blood Diamond and The Departed are examples of films that have showed the American public something a little different than what they're used to. Even the newest blockbuster, American Gangster, does not deliver the masses anything other than stuff we have already seen. Drug dealer lives it up, gives us a bit of sympathy because of his family life, and gets fucked in the end. Even the way the scene plays out where Frank Lucas is about to get arrested is more than reminiscient of The Godfather. It's like a complete rip-off. Other movies have this rip-off effect as well, and some more than others. Beowulf anyone? This story had the potential to be a kickass movie with plenty of violence and storyline to entertain anyone. Unfortunately they have made it in nothing but computer, which makes little sense to me considering Angelina Jolie's character looks like Angelina Jolie, as well as all the other characters matching corresponding actors. "I, am, Beowulf!" sounds a little familiar right? Maybe because it was first said like this, "This, is, Sparta!" These movies do nothing but rip off of one another and it just seems like movie-goers are not getting as great and full of an experience as ten or fifteen years ago. Previews for new movies coming out leave practically none I would want to see, including the Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp coming out about Sweeney Todd. I absolutely love both Burton and Depp, but how many fuckin' movies can these two collaborate on? With Burton's dark scenery and landscapes combined with Depp's notoriously estranged way of acting, have these two men not figured out that maybe every movie is going to be similar? Same time period as Sleepy Hollow, same actress as The Chocolate Factory, same emotions as Edward Scissorhands, and same actor and director in all three. Come on people we need new ideas. Tantalize your brains and experience something new. That's the only way that the mind actually learns and develops more from shit like this. If we're watching the same shit over and over, we'll continue to be stuck in the mode we're in now. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to be sitting here in 6 years seeing a trailer for Spiderman's remake. After all, less than ten years passed between the end of one Batman movie series and the beginning of the Christian Bale version.