"How to Tell A true War Story"

This post shares a title with a short story by Tim O'Brien I began reading the other day. The essay is nestled between other stories like it -ones about his tour of duty in Viet-Nam.
Though each can stand as an independent work, major motifs carry throughout; namely watching his friends die suddenly and with seeming randomness.
I have read the essay in question before. It's theme is as follows: "If someone is telling you a war story and it has a moral, it's false. If it makes sense, if it has any shred dignity, decency, or humanity in it, it cannot be true. For it to be true it has to be horrific, and senseless and ugly. You cannot learn anything positive about your fellow man from a war story. End of discussion."

Infrequently, I'm asked by certain people to tell them a story. Unless I am in a jovial mood to begin with, I am often stumped. Unable to summon a personal memory on command, I usually consider falling back on the Greek mythology I collected in my younger days. So strange how the story of Mercury stealing Apollo's cattle and the tale of Cupid and Psyche are more readily available - are often more easily grabbed from the cluttered walk-in closet of my memory - than actual events that have happened to me in my own personal life.
Something that happened to me once, that filled my entire world for an hour or moments at a time, that I observed and stored, adding to what I am - something that has affected who I am today? hmm- drawing blanks. How about something that never happened, but people used to explain their surroundings thousands of years ago? Yeah, that's more easy to come by.

Maybe its because on some level, I agree with Tim O'Brien. Real stories often have no moral, or their meaning is hard to sort through, opaque, or perhaps irrelevant and uninteresting to someone who was not changed by it. "Why would you want to hear about it? -What use could you possibly have for something that didn't stress you out, keep you awake at night, or thrill your senses?"
Real morals to our everyday fables? So subjective. Our world is too existential. Maybe that's why I first reach for something that's been told a thousand times. Something more timeless than you or me or minutes of our lives. Something with a prize already wrapped and ready for you to take hope and put on your shelf. Surely that is better than some tattered thing about how my best friend and I were walking in the woods behind his house Junior year of high school when we literately stumbled across this sculpture -some welded giant green goldfish with sparkling scales and fins flapping in invisible water on a five foot pole six inches round. You wouldn't want to hear about how the bottom ended with the jagged line a hacksaw had left -how it was taken from the entrance of a new housing development that was being built just down the road, how it was stolen and then hidden in the woods behind my best friends house. How we hefted it and put it in his basement living room and forgot about it, leaving it to do something else. How his parents called the right people and that it was returned. How it turned out that it cost upwards of 1,500 or so, and how the artist who made it was so grateful that it had been returned honestly after only a few days that he gave my friend's mom the gift of a new piece to put in her garden - a dragon fly or something.

What would be the point of that?

Yes, surely there is no meaning to be leaned from that. Nobody could possibly learn anything from it, or find it interesting, or use it to teach their children anything.

Surely.

Changing Minute Hands in an Empty Library.

I am at the Community College's library.
Less than a block away from the Grand Rapids Main, I feel it is a rarely noticed gem.
Usually bustling during the weekdays, Sunday finds it empty and full of natural light. I stare out the rear window to heritage hill, across the snow-plowed piles and a parking lot. I am alone on the second floor. It is quiet. So quiet. My slide guitar laden music is playing loudly in the headphones I checked out from the front desk. Hours of isolation spent, sandwiched by meals with family and friends. A well way to spend a Sunday afternoon, if you ask me. Light work and personal projects.

About a month ago I made the horrific realization that I had lost a flash-drive with many important works on it. Mainly, it contained the second half (rough draft) of the manuscript I turned in for Creative Writing, as well as the spit-shining-polished final draft of the first half. Easily over 50 man-hours.
This piece had earned hearty praise from my professor, who's opinion I value highly. Visualize doing something you have followed and admired for years, and having a small time expert/part time mentor rave about it. Your reaction is not an ego boost, but rather a instillation of faith in your own talent. The praise telling you that you are good at what you do. Even showing promise.
And I lost most of what I turned in.
Surprisingly, I am not as down as you'd expect about the whole thing.
I remember what I wrote about - just not in the exact same words. I can rebuild the broken wall - the house will just end up looking different than it initially would.
Early in his career, Ernest Hemingway wrote the Nick Adams stories - but then lost the entire collection during...I think it was a cross-country move. Not one copy of them remained. What we know today is the rewriting of those stories from memory. Sure Hemingway was a literary icon - but his story gives me hope.

Waves destroy sandcastles. Hurricanes destroy cities. What causes us to rebuild? Keep living and raising children after our parents have died? Wash off the mud.