Anchorwind
2013 VA Art Show
Category Number: 12
Category Name: Color Photography
Title of Piece: Road to Ruin
Category Number: 13
Category Name: Digital Art
Title of Piece: Alone 237 | Belongs
Category Number: 15
Category Name: Military Combat Experience
Title of Piece: Our Flag Was Still There
Category Number: 37
Category Name: Special Recognition MH
Title of Piece: The Arrival
Category Number: 2
Category Name: Poetry [Inspirational]
Title of Piece: Alone 202 | Earthnow look upon the glowing earth
and from sea to shining sea
did you notice us invisible
otherwise known as lonely
see the ones do little for many
and others do much for few
but we do all for no one
including me and you
you’ve been of us and left
but no one’s gone that long
you shake your head and judge us wrong
but we hear you sing our song
the path is seen and clearly lit
shining brightly as a star
we would only need abandon
being true to who we are
seek refuge with us lonely
for we walk on stable ground
and seek out us invisible
when in light you hear our sound
Category Number: 4
Category Name: Poetry [Other]
Title of Piece: Alone 238 | Fadesanother battle: same old fight
somewhere in all this is our heart
no solid ground from which to fight
as the world beneath us fell apart
the fires of war forges friend
those that help us out of the grime
us wounded always see those end
never able to heal in time
old scars still open, new ones earned
less than hopeful to just survive
try to apply our lessons learned
for more than alone and alive
for us wounded we storm the day
in vain we fight without our say
we fight against all the decay
helpless as our world fades away
Category Number: 6
Category Name: Essay [Inspirational]
Title of Piece: What is Honor?Honor is the highest personal achievement one can achieve. It is the trait that others look at the most. Honor is the state of maintaining the best possible reputation.
Honor is powerful. As an ideal, people kill and have been killed in its pursuit or maintenance. People can live their entire lives in pursuit of honor only to make a terrible decision and lose what they worked so hard to earn in the eyes of their community. It is hard to gain, easy to lose, and harder to regain. It is recognized on both individual and organizational levels, and men have risked it all to defend the honor of their family/clan/tribe/etc.
It is misunderstood by those do not feel they need it, and guides those who do. Some prefer death over dishonor. Men who seek it, but do not have it, can feel its absence.
You will be judged by whether or not you have it. Honor is the ultimate single standard: You are [an honorable person] or you aren’t Honor can be lonely, for it only attracts other honorable people. It makes men do things they would rather not.
Honor does not play favorites. Honor does not make exceptions, but exceptions are made to maintain Honor. Honor does not bow to tradition, but honorable men respect the traditions of the land. Honor penetrates deeper than surface rules, and Honor is not quick to judge. Honor is not convenient. Honor is its own reward. Honor helps men sleep at night.
Without Honor, there can be no trust. A system filled with dishonorable men will corrupt and crumble from within. Without Honor, there can be no respect. When important decisions must be made, when lives are in immediate danger, when we must rely on someone – we turn to the honorable first. Honor does not give hand outs for those who meet the standard, and the standard of Honor cannot be exceeded.
Honor is not profession specific. Honor knows no age, time period, gender, nor race. Honorable men may go unnoticed, but dishonorable men will attract much attention to themselves. Honor is what gives peace a chance. Honor is what allows ‘innocent until proven guilty’ to run its course. Honor is what prevents men from ‘lowering themselves to their level.’ Few have pity on those given a second chance to be honorable, and fail.
Honor is the ability, and willingness, to do the right thing because it is the right thing. Those who consistently demonstrate a faithful commitment to doing the right thing will earn the respect and admiration of their fellow man. Honorable Men live and die by single standards, but there are an infinite number of paths to dishonor. There are an infinite number of ways to betray the trust of their fellow man, to do the wrong thing.
Some of our ‘friends’ do not have it, and many of our ‘foes’ do. The only reason Honor is important, is because not everyone has it. Some say in order to know a Man, you must fight him; this is such because in a contest, the dishonorable will identify themselves. Be honorable.
Category Number: 7
Category Name: Essay [Patriotic]
Title of Piece: EgocentrismPurity is the embodiment of evil. It is so because purity, as a concept, has no room for the human experience. We are imperfect beings that gradually learn from our mistakes [in theory] and improve as a whole. Many groups claiming purity as a goal have already defined what it means to be perfect and thus actively work to slow or halt the progress of people. As purity demands obedience, and breeds intolerance, it emphatically reinforces binary thought processes, which is a large contributor to our stunted growth.
The most obvious example, in my mind, is a theistic church. It doesn’t matter what the name of the deity is: the behaviors mimic one another. The deity serves as the answer to all questions, and as the foundation of so many peoples’ decision-making structure, the damage done by this intangible concept is empirical and readily available. Since the deity cannot be questioned, challengers are easily dismissed in the aforementioned binary thought process. This dismissal is further entrenched by consistent reinforcement, at local and organizational levels, to continue to refuse to consider alternatives. This purity of thought, categorized by the refusal to adapt with the environment, restricts personal growth. This restricted growth, depending on the individual in question, may directly [attempt to] influence the lack of growth of anyone [s]he interacts with. The sheer volume of individuals this applies to is staggering.
Beyond many religious organizations, the dangers of Egocentrism can be seen in politics as well. Be it employment-related, local, national, family, or international scales, politics continuously demonstrates that it is nothing more than the art of self-service. Politics is the calculated maneuvering to get as much as one can without giving anything in return. Skilled politicians are capable manipulators that entice populations of people to engage in a similar binary thought process as we see with religious organizations. We can see that people will make decisions that may go against their own interests or values in pursuit of pure politics. We can also see that followers of political figures, partisans , tend to determine ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ partially based on the source of the action, and the more zealous the partisan, the more severe the judgment and filtering process. This behavior, judging based on personal interest and affiliation, is another significant growth restrictor.
If Egocentrism was simply a growth retardant and nothing more, it might be a more easily curable malady. However, Egocentrism tends to lead towards notions of superiority, and the roads that they lead to are destinations of the worst aspects of human capabilities. We need to look no further than Patriotism to see this in action. There are a vocal segment of individuals who believe superiority may stem from birth within a set of political borders, that being born somewhere makes one better than someone else. Whereas a rational patriot may cheer for the accomplishments and people of its own country, but still treat others with fairness, irrational patriots slip into another binary thought process: The Friend and Enemy evaluation. It’s simple: if it’s not my friend, it’s my enemy. We see this perception of enemy status applied to anyone that does not neatly fall within the bounds of purity, particularly with things easily understood as different: accents, skin color, culture, et al.
This automatic-enemy status shows us the weapon of Egocentrism: Dehumanization. In their pursuit of purity, they succeed in forgetting or ignoring that the person that does not tread identical path is also a living human being. In doing so, they may war and worse with a clean conscious – even encourage the atrocious behaviors in the name of the cause of purity. Egocentrism, the act of attempting to control the environment for self-gain or face the consequences of dehumanization is evil in action.
There are those of us who do not feel we possess the authority to attempt to control the environment. There are those of us who believe that inclusiveness is more important than purity, that everyone receiving something is more beneficial then someone receiving everything. There are those of us that do not see a contrary ideal, but a concerned person. There are those of us that understand we are our own worst enemies, and that so much of this is preventable.
In the world I can see, Egocentrism is the law of the land. Everyone is out for themselves, and those with common goals form allegiances to accomplish such. The problems arise when the accomplishment of the goals comes at the expense of others, when the pursuit of the part takes precedence over the pursuit of the whole. Those of us that prefer harmony to purity must surely be a minuscule minority, judging from volume and quantity of representation and the challenge of then attaining the desired harmony that much more impossible, and makes us who continue to try lonely. Even those of us that succeed, are considerably more likely to succeed in very small scales: a single room of a single house for instance; such success is akin to a single grain of sand in an ever-expanding desert as all it takes is one egocentric individual or organization to upset the balance and force others to become such as well.
It is difficult for one who wishes to neither harm nor be harmed to relate to a world full of people with their weapons constantly pointed at one another and possessing the willingness and ability to use them. It is difficult for us, the wounded veterans, to demonstrate our support through our dissent and caution. It is difficult for us, the patriots who have seen the horrors of our actions, to fall so easily back into that which we cannot see, touch, nor question. It is difficult for us to reclaim our humanity whilst simultaneously trying to prevent others from losing theirs.
We, as American citizens, are capable of being spiritually healthy without being harmful to others’ spiritual health. We, as American citizens, are capable of engaging in opposing political paths without degrading each others’ persons. We, as American citizens, are capable of understanding that our patriotism to our homeland does not make others inferior by default. We, as American citizens, are capable of ending the cycle of egocentrism and dehumanization. Our love for our country need not come at a cost of others and their love for theirs, but will we end the cycle? Or will another generation of us veterans have killed and be killed in vain?
Category Number: 8
Category Name: Essay [Other]
Title of Piece: StruggleThrough the nightmares and wastelands, we struggle. Through the confusion and glare, we struggle. High to low, death to death, we struggle.
Depression gives us vast, seemingly endless, desolate wastelands to traverse. We search through the all-too-familiar terrain for a way out, a hope that hasn’t been extinguished by experience. While we may not be specifically driven, we are often restless and our nightmare infested reality taints an already bleak landscape. Abstract optimism can only be a torch against the darkness of cynicism and bitterness for so long and then we die.
We are then reborn with an energy level that we could have only wished for in our quest to escape the wasteland, but now we look upon our surroundings and find too many sights to process coherently. Everything is so bright and is moving so fast, it is hard to capture it all. We grasp at fleeting images, resolute in our mission of maintaining what is real and what is not. We require little food, little sleep, only time: time to attempt to accomplish in mere moments what we could not do in long stretches before. We race to keep up with ourselves, compelled by voices and sights we do not truly comprehend. Through the confusion and the glare, we press on until our body gives out and we die again.
We arise, perhaps against our own will yet again, to survey another wasteland. A familiar sense of dread fills the dead space where the energy once was and we struggle. We struggle with the added burden of having survived another cycle of death and rebirth, another failure to break the chain. We struggle with our own worth and our place in the world. We struggle with our ideals and dreams versus what we can see at our feet and upon the horizon. We struggle to keep fighting for the sake of not giving up.
With an unyielding vigor we race across footsteps we’ve set before, with a determination to do it: bigger, better, faster, and stronger. The voices encourage and argue, confirm and deny, reveal and conceal. It is maddening. A new idea! Is it? Am I meeting an old friend again for the first time? Keep working. Prevent a perpetual pantomime by producing profound proactive personas, presuming for us people to preclude potential punishment. Keep working.
The pain slows us down. Our failures suck the wind from our sails. The spirit was willing but the flesh is weak and the mind is fragmented. We seek peace, as through the nightmares and wastelands, we struggle. Through the confusion and glare, we struggle. High to low, death to death, we struggle. No one wishes for peace as earnestly as those who fight, and none fight with the duration nor the intensity as those who fight within ourselves.
Category Number: 17
Category Name: Monologue
Title of Piece: …and our flag was still thereThere are no Purple Hearts for our wounds, they’re too deep. How do you represent the loss of spiritual, mental and emotional health into an award? No one officially counts us as casualties anyway. A medal would legitimize intangibles and we can’t have that; never mind intangibles are what got us there in the first place and when the bubble that was built around us popped, our flag was still there.
Weapons of Mass Destruction? Were we sent to find them, or be them? It depends on who you ask. We imposed our will upon those who wished it not, and when they looked up after their prayers: our flag was still there.
We became a part of the machine, to invade another man’s kingdom and make widows and orphans of his citizenry. If we thought to question it all we need to do is look to our left or right and see our flag was still there. Drive on, soldier.
We drove good: fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, dreamers, patriots, rebels, doubters and the faithful to arms. We channeled our anger upon those whose behavior would mimic our own had we been placed in a similar situation. With a righteous fury we kicked doors down, block by block, to ‘secure’ objectives and ensured that the last thing they saw was our flag was still there.
We felt not the full weight of our flag. As one mission bled into the next, and time blurred into something incomprehensible – something discussed as an abstract concept but as if it was a relic of the past – we had not the mental space to mourn neither the losses inflicted upon us nor the losses we inflicted upon them. Everywhere we turned another cog busy turning, always turning, everything churning along. A machine: trained, controlled and our flag was still there.
Us lowly cogs were detached from the larger machine and sent back to our respective factories. Good Job, soldier. Then, and for many of us only then, it all starts to catch up. The burden of consequence, the reality of the product our assembly line produced: the futures that are no longer, the livelihoods that will never be and the absence of glory that never was. Some bury the burden away: religion, politics, duty, substance abuse, suicide. Some of us break completely, too wounded to function, but are unable to escape our burdens and above: the anxieties, the guilt, the despair, the voices and the shame, we reflect upon our lost decade; we look up as did those whom we stared down the sights and pulled the trigger, and see for better and for worse: our flag is still there.