M.B. Dallocchio

How often do the poor in the US get to stand in front of their nation's Marie Antoinette's and shove the stale, mass-produced cake of lower class reality back into their mouths?

To walk through unknown streets in cities where you are merely learning the language is to force yourself into a new state of hypervigilance. You are a traveler, and hopefully not just a tourist, and must appear calm, but maintain your bearings. Not to get too lost, too off course and without alternatives, without an escape plan in the event of a dangerous situation.

She smiled, and said, __ake care that the voice of God and the Devil sound one in the same in the desert. Trust your instincts. You were not put on this earth to be naïve, blindly optimistic, or passive; you are here to be vigilant, to survive.

Travel can sometimes push us to lose ourselves and find ourselves at once. The shedding of old prejudices, dead skin, and the opening of one__ eyes is far better than what any mainstream news outlet could ever tell you.

The open road. Seemingly my only friend for years upon end since leaving war. The road embraced me, let me breathe, and more importantly, did not judge me.

With even the slightest upset, detachment soon followed. I didn__ lose sleep over men, and I was too restless to be tied down. The grass didn__ even have time to grow around my feet before I was planning my next escape _ whether it was to another state or out of someone__ life.

It is not enough to hope for something to happen and throw it into the universe. You, too, must also work to make it happen.

Whether it__ an Iraqi widow mourning her dead loved ones standing helplessly in the rubble of her former home or a dying soldier in an Iraqi city street asking, __hy, God? Why is this happening? Where are you?_ I can__ help but wonder the same. You realize that there is no justice, no karmic retribution swift enough, and that happy endings are a terrible, terrible lie. We are all subject to the same blind boot stomp and our luck is merely where we happen to be standing when death inevitably comes roaring down upon us.

That seductive aroma of unchecked power was more than enough to commit genocide and mass sexual assault while unashamedly carrying their nation__ flag draped around a crucifix. People completely devoid of introspection, flaunting their entitlement and a self-importance that masked an endless pit of dejection that demanded more gold, land, and power. The Spanish crown was a plague of miserable dimensions for Chamorros.

Czechs simply don__ say they__e going camping or spending time outdoors. They say, in Czech, that they are going __nto the nature_ as though nature, p_íroda, is beyond a place in the woods or other forms of terrain, that nature was a state of mind and had the ability to reverse the crippling, chaotic aspects of life.

I left a piece of my soul that will always rightfully belong in the desert.

Adversity has the remarkable ability of introducing the real you to yourself.

To stay alive, you have to keep moving. Running, relocating, driving, doing everything in your power to stay in motion and make it to safety.

Veterans being sent into unjust wars for corporate profit is a perversion of trust, at best. I found the emotional manipulation of both sides, the propaganda at play so incredibly revolting that I couldn't stand to idly wave a flag or flaunt yellow ribbons without asking serious questions regarding motive.

Aside from clinically-diagnosed psychopaths, I have not met one person in war who thoroughly enjoyed killing. If someone ended up bragging over a kill, it was safe to assume that their story was mere fabrication or that they were one bad day away from an inpatient psychiatric ward. No matter how much someone may appear to deserve to be killed, something dies within us when we kill. It's contradictory, the antithesis of our species survival instinct.

In movies, war only looks romantic. __ell my gal I love her_ close-up shot, and fade out. It doesn__ work as beautifully and neat in real life. Flying chunks of human flesh and screaming orphans really put that Hollywood take into perspective and there is nothing clean or sterile about any of it. When people die, it__ fucking horrible.

It was a frightening metaphor for what the United States was becoming _ a Titanic of rich, proud dimwits heading for the iceberg of anti-colonialist backlash.

A wave of saudade swept over me as I realized home never existed at all. The concept of home felt far from my reach, and I felt sick with longing.