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Showing posts from September, 2013

Crimson Tide

Capt. Ramsey : You do qualify your remarks. If someone asked me if we should bomb Japan, a simple "Yes. By all means sir, drop that fucker, twice!" I don't mean to suggest that you're indecisive, Mr. Hunter. Not at all. Just, uh... complicated. 'course, that's the way the Navy wants you. Me, they wanted simple. Hunter : Well, you certainly fooled them, sir. Ramsey :  [chuckles]  Be careful there, Mr. Hunter. It's all I've got to rely on, being a simple-minded son of a bitch. Rickover gave me my command, a checklist, a target and a button to push. All I gotta know is how to push it, they tell me when. They seem to want you to know why. Hunter : I would hope they'd want us all to know why, sir. Ramsey : At the Naval War College it was metallurgy and nuclear reactors, not 19th-century philosophy. "War is a continuation of politics by other means."  Von Clausewitz . Hunter : I think, sir, that what he was actually trying to say was a little

Pain and Penance

Physical Pain A way to true penance I can remember being aghast, seeing the rows and rows of devotees hanging by their backs. They were all suspended from a leaning pole, by hooks pierced on to the skin of their backs. Face down, arms spread, and in an angle as if ready for flight into the skies. I can remember the images of devotees with small spears pierced through their cheeks. They all seemed as if from some other planet. I can remember the images of devotees pulling the temple-chariot  by the ropes tied on to the hooks which were pierced on to their backs. As a kid I remember feeling shocked and numb. These images of self-crafted pain became imprinted on to my memory undelibally. Over time, these images somehow became a part of my inner imagery of this worldly life itself: images of living that I had encountered in my life for which I had no answers. To me these images of pain, became a part of a collage of images that symbolically represented life and its sufferings that I c