Zaltho Foundation

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"Winter Rain"
Claude AnShin Thomas

It was a cold, damp night as only I have experienced during European winters, soaking into my marrow, jabbing its fingers into all the old wounds of war!! I was staying with Francois in Paris, on my way home from the Balkans where I had been for the past 2 months - walking for Peace; standing, talking, ringing the bell of Mindfulness for non-violence.

I had been there again, in the mouth of the beast, that place where conditioning, training and propaganda transcend reason - a place war.

I was still quite within myself hoping that the stuff of my experience would begin to cohere into realization, expression. Now I was just quiet with it like an empty blackboard then suddenly it would be filled with the sounds of fingernails being dragged across its surface.

Tears would well up in my eyes, burning my nose and I could no longer sit with the anxiety - pushing at me from the inside, throwing my feet, my legs into motion, jumbling my thoughts, stretching my nerves bungee cord tight at the end of a bridge jump.

I rose from my seat on the floor and started to put on my jacket and boots. Francois asked of me: "Are you alright? Where are you going?"

"I have to walk, I can't sit any longer, I have to get outside and walk or it feels like I'll just explode!!"

"Would you like me to come with you?"

And although that familiar voice, that post Vietnam voice that was absorbed into every fiber of my consciousness, was saying "Fuck her man, she doesn't really give a shit. She's just patronizing you. She'll be just like all these back in the world mother-fuckers. She'll bail out man, she don't care you know, nobody cares. They don't know man, and they don't really want to know. She'll bail out like all the rest - can't handle it !!"

But in spite of this voice what came out of my mouth was: "Yes, please, I'm not much, not much company, can't seem to talk just now, but I don't want to be without companionship because I feel so dead inside just now, so alone. I don't want to be without companionship, not this time."

She put on her boots, coat, hat and we left her flat and began walking. A light rain was falling and there were people bustling all about - here, there, across the street. Smoking their cigarettes, wrapped up tight in their winter coats, filling the cold night air with there warm breath, visible. Yet to me they were just shadows highlighted in silver.

As we walked the crowds began to thin and I emerged from deep within my isolation gasping for breath asking if we could stop someplace for a coffee. We found a small cafe and walked in. The heat felt good and there was a quiet corner available that offered me a clear vision of the room and an exit near through which I could leave quickly. We ordered, the coffee was delivered to the table and I drank it through my silence screaming and my tears. All of this so familiar to me.

The scars of war that for so many, many years I attempted to hide under layers of denial, illusion, shame, and fear. Looking at myself in the mirror, so ugly, wanting only to Rip Van Winkle, or disappear. And now the waking up. You know, when the suns so bright it hurts your eyes!! Touching the scars with a kind of friction massage that makes you want to scream - exposing them to light and fresh air that they may stop festering. Learning to make peace with my unpeacefulness. That I may never again have to find myself.

Here I am, look at me, I am not a wound, I am wounded and healing.

In June I visited another War Zone. Sandbag bunkers, hooches, barbed wire perimeters, guards, dogs, guns. These were people like me, my peers in our unholy war, the Vietnamese Civil War, and this was Hawaii, the Big Island. I met with them, these discarded souls, in their place and at chow, "C" Rations, green cans, O.D. , P-38's, cold food, and I talked of us being the "Light at the Tip of the Candled"!! And asked how they talked about the War. There statement was: "The wars over man, there's no point in talking about it you know what I mean? We're just about getting on with our lives here, you know what I mean?

I finished my "C's" in silence, like out in the bush you know, there were no words, no more words even though I was screaming in silence: "What do you mean the wars over? What the fuck are you talking about, getting on with your lives, what are you fucking blind or what? Look around you, look at this place, its a fucking Fire Base, Fire Base Paper!! But there were no more words. So I just left and cried for 2 days.

< Back | Short Stories & Essays

"Winter Rain"
Claude AnShin Thomas

It was a cold, damp night as only I have experienced during European winters, soaking into my marrow, jabbing its fingers into all the old wounds of war!! I was staying with Francois in Paris, on my way home from the Balkans where I had been for the past 2 months - walking for Peace; standing, talking, ringing the bell of Mindfulness for non-violence.

I had been there again, in the mouth of the beast, that place where conditioning, training and propaganda transcend reason - a place war.

I was still quite within myself hoping that the stuff of my experience would begin to cohere into realization, expression. Now I was just quiet with it like an empty blackboard then suddenly it would be filled with the sounds of fingernails being dragged across its surface.

Tears would well up in my eyes, burning my nose and I could no longer sit with the anxiety - pushing at me from the inside, throwing my feet, my legs into motion, jumbling my thoughts, stretching my nerves bungee cord tight at the end of a bridge jump.

I rose from my seat on the floor and started to put on my jacket and boots. Francois asked of me: "Are you alright? Where are you going?"

"I have to walk, I can't sit any longer, I have to get outside and walk or it feels like I'll just explode!!"

"Would you like me to come with you?"

And although that familiar voice, that post Vietnam voice that was absorbed into every fiber of my consciousness, was saying "Fuck her man, she doesn't really give a shit. She's just patronizing you. She'll be just like all these back in the world mother-fuckers. She'll bail out man, she don't care you know, nobody cares. They don't know man, and they don't really want to know. She'll bail out like all the rest - can't handle it !!"

But in spite of this voice what came out of my mouth was: "Yes, please, I'm not much, not much company, can't seem to talk just now, but I don't want to be without companionship because I feel so dead inside just now, so alone. I don't want to be without companionship, not this time."

She put on her boots, coat, hat and we left her flat and began walking. A light rain was falling and there were people bustling all about - here, there, across the street. Smoking their cigarettes, wrapped up tight in their winter coats, filling the cold night air with there warm breath, visible. Yet to me they were just shadows highlighted in silver.

As we walked the crowds began to thin and I emerged from deep within my isolation gasping for breath asking if we could stop someplace for a coffee. We found a small cafe and walked in. The heat felt good and there was a quiet corner available that offered me a clear vision of the room and an exit near through which I could leave quickly. We ordered, the coffee was delivered to the table and I drank it through my silence screaming and my tears. All of this so familiar to me.

The scars of war that for so many, many years I attempted to hide under layers of denial, illusion, shame, and fear. Looking at myself in the mirror, so ugly, wanting only to Rip Van Winkle, or disappear. And now the waking up. You know, when the suns so bright it hurts your eyes!! Touching the scars with a kind of friction massage that makes you want to scream - exposing them to light and fresh air that they may stop festering. Learning to make peace with my unpeacefulness. That I may never again have to find myself.

Here I am, look at me, I am not a wound, I am wounded and healing.

In June I visited another War Zone. Sandbag bunkers, hooches, barbed wire perimeters, guards, dogs, guns. These were people like me, my peers in our unholy war, the Vietnamese Civil War, and this was Hawaii, the Big Island. I met with them, these discarded souls, in their place and at chow, "C" Rations, green cans, O.D. , P-38's, cold food, and I talked of us being the "Light at the Tip of the Candled"!! And asked how they talked about the War. There statement was: "The wars over man, there's no point in talking about it you know what I mean? We're just about getting on with our lives here, you know what I mean?

I finished my "C's" in silence, like out in the bush you know, there were no words, no more words even though I was screaming in silence: "What do you mean the wars over? What the fuck are you talking about, getting on with your lives, what are you fucking blind or what? Look around you, look at this place, its a fucking Fire Base, Fire Base Paper!! But there were no more words. So I just left and cried for 2 days.