Day 239: Working in a bar over Christmas

Working in a bar over Christmas is like being drafted to fight in a war. The only difference is that in a bar no one actually gets shot. Well, you hope no one gets shot. In all other regards, though, it is the same.

You march into battle day after day, on a prolonged campaign that cannot possibly keep taking from you, yet does, for the longest weeks of your life, with dwindling supplies and declining ranks and wave after wave of enemy piling in at you in inexhaustible numbers, and you stand and you hack away, you hold the line, you pray to whatever gods you find in those lonely moments that the onslaught will cease.

It lets up in the early hours. You gather your wounded, redig your trenches, stock up on supplies. You make hasty repairs. You crawl into some hole and spoon food from a can and sleep for two, maybe five, hours … and then you return for another day, the enemy hordes descending at first light, rattling your barricades … and before you know it you’re overwhelmed in combat once again.

There is the same adrenaline rush, flinging your arms in fluid motions, moving your body elegantly in time with your fellow comrades, lost in the flow of the moment as rarely happens - is not required to happen - back in the mundane tranquillity of civilian life.

There is the same battle against bodily pain, fatigue, despair - the battle against time itself - that grinds and gnaws at your brain second after second after second. Please let it be over. Please let it be over. I cannot do this. I cannot go on. No, I can. There is no choice. I’ve got this. We’ve got this. We will beat it. We will win. No, I was wrong, I can’t, no more. On and on, as the seconds become minutes become hours.

There is the kinship that develops under extreme stress. The reliance on your fellow soldiers. The ones who you know will be standing where you need them to stand, moving where you need them to move, the ones who you know, when you are back to back with them, fighting the last ditch defense, will not fall if you do not fall. And living through such times in the crucible of horror forges a bond deeper than personal friendship, or preference. People whom you might not know in peacetime, with whom you might not be friends, yet whom you trust with your life. Regardless of background, age, or class, you stand together, and you fight together, and you are kin. You were there, on those days, and they were there, and the people back home will never understand.

There is the journey to other bars, other battlefields, on excursions to swap equipment, scrounge supplies, trade resources. Hail, brothers, sisters, how goes the war on this front? And perhaps it goes badly, and you see in their eyes, and there is nothing to do but nod, ask their stories, listen while they tell of exploits that will be written in the annals. Or maybe their war goes well, they’ve barely been hit, the brunt was taken elsewhere down the line. Yet still they prepare, they gather, they wait. Who knows where the next attack will fall? And there’s always tomorrow. And the day after that.

There is the leadership under pressure, the hierarchy, everyone given a job to do. Some you know will do their jobs well, others, less so. There are the privates who blame the commanders, the commanders who blame the privates, the NCO supervisors skirting both worlds.

And there is, among the suffering, the terror, the misery, another side to it. The quiet sharing of a smoke or a cup of tea. The evenings when an anticipated attack fails to materialise, and the troops end up sat around on upturned crates, chatting, looking at photos from the outside world, savouring the calm like never before. 

And even in the hell of the melee, in the darkness, with bodies and liquids flying through the air, the clamour, the din rising all around, every direction you look another companion bogged down in close-quarter fighting, a million personal struggles against the forces of darkness and despair - even at such times there are the strange snatches of serenity that arise during combat. Existence utterly in the present moment. The physicality of objects. Coming to and looking at faces pressing on all sides, at the commotion, the panic, and seeing it all to be empty, your body weighing nothing, your ego stripped away, simply existing, noticing wood, metal, glass, skin - the way a light shines overhead - the simple and ineffable beauty of the world.

Life pulses. It breathes. You are part of the flow of the universe. Inside the loudest noise there is silence. Within the busiest action is calm. All goes liquid. All smooth. You are here and you do what must be done. And you do it and you do it. All of you together. And the night passes.

And finally there is only one more day to go.

...... 

Music: Have You Passed Through This Night? by Explosions in the Sky. Exquisite post-rock with that beautiful quote from The Thin Red Line, perhaps my favourite war film, and my favourite Terence Malick film, encasing the director's dreamy, languid spirituality within just the right amount of mainstream film structure. Mm, yes, and it's a good song.