This sculpture portrays the existence I faced during my first deployment (to Iraq). I never felt bad or immoral, just as if my soul descended to a deeper level within myself. I performed my day to day duties using the golden rule as my compass. The gas mask represents the isolation one feels when ones moral foundation is under attack. It protects life against poisons, but also creates a narrow field of vision. Anything not protected is corroded. However, the corrosion itself presents as a beautiful patina on this sculpture. Sometimes even the harshest of life's lessons can have a silver lining in the wisdom and advanced perspective they leave us with. The model used for this bust was female, and this piece is a tribute to everyone from any race and gender who have survived and endured.
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I figured that here is a good a place as any to share a poem I wrote at the beginning of my first deployment, when I was beginning to grapple with some large existential questions. This was before I suffered the first of many concussions that would eventually pare my writing and reasoning skills down considerably. So, don't feel bad if you don't know what the word "isostatic" means. I had perfect verbal SAT scores. Here's the defintion: an adjective referring to isostacy, Equilibrium in the earth's crust such that the forces tending to elevate landmasses balance the forces tending to depress landmasses.
Destiny rolls in unmeasured tread In an expanse of isostatic souls. Poised in bubbled trepidation, Unseeing the thundrous onrush Of seraphic omnipotence (a winged Billow of lightless flame, rippling Bullwhip fingers, unleashing furious Justice and eddies of mercy, and Reaping the fruit of existence) Souls of men tremble and drift like Terns in an Arctic wind, calling out Petitions and praise, swept up into Billowing heights of black storm-power. Woe to that soul, safe in God-blessed Blindness, unaware of existence's Bleak monstrocities, who feels Secure - swift will the knotted grips Of death crush complacence and cripple All illusions of self-ordained significance. But the humble soul will by act of Soft consignment realize what place The winking raindrop has amidst the hailstorm, And allow cavernous drafts to exhilarate it In escalating heights, before transfiguring it To an Act of God; and the stubborn dew Must, never less be flung the selfsame way, Though what peace it holds will be by the Godhead destinely determined, despite. What, then, becomes poor mortals, affronted By the puzzle of their own being, caught In conflicting covenants of timelessness And temporality? Usher in a hush of grace, A sun-gilt brink of precocious height, Upon which souls will poise for flight: A torrentuous plummet to dismal depravities, A consummation, another fight, Exposure to elements divine, Repeated Confluence of men and myth; fire lizards Douse water, to confound their essence, And raise cacaphonic cry, to ken what Strength animates these limbs. Children Behold mothers, stooped painfully Beggaring a harsh world to sustain them still longer, If only for the sake of love; And the men of the mountains sit serenely, Facing east, meditating mornings onward On what brings the sun, so regular to rise, Hoping that their patience may outlast Their plight, fearing that a sudden dark, Dusk into day, may prove the circle a Slanted joke, a boundary line between Slavery and insanity.