Things They Carried

I just flipped over the final page of O'Brien's work and for some strange reason, I continued to hold the book in my hand. Perhaps, it is the smoothness of the cover, with those little dents and stuff, that makes me want to cling on to it a little while longer. Perhaps, this is one of those few books I click with.
(sorry william) When I read Othello, or Regeneration, or EMPIRE OF THE damn SUN, the story is constructed through words, compiled via layers of foundations and ideas into the framework of my mind. But this book, it is just different.
Surely, it may be sliiiightly more vulgar and crude than the other texts, yet in a very cultured way, my mind my memories my being somewhat melts into the book. For that 7 hours, Tim O brien was me.
My friends seem to find a fondness in the short stories that showed the emotions of war. One included a guy called Lemon being blown into a tree, causing a comrade to sing 'lemon tree' while plucking his corpse down. Another preferred a story about a girl who flew in to visit her boyfriend medic and ended up mixing with Green beret commandos, causing her to go wild, desolant from her boyfriend, making a necklace from human tongues and eventually running away to the forest.
On the other hand, I personally liked the story about his first love the most. Its roughly about losing his first love at 9 (yes age 9) and how he found solace in dreams, not as an escape but as a means to be with her again. I liked it. Nothing much to do with the Vitneam War, no mines, no bombs, no guns, just plain life. I felt the click. A nudging pry that opened my old wound apart, a logical analysis of what happened to my very first one too. After I knew we can never be together, I slumbered to dream, never at once daring to admit I slept not to rest but to search.

Nostalgia. I like it.

Soon a war of my own shall start. One that has already been lost once and I may very well be crushed a second time. But still, I'l rather find solace in defeat rather than solace in dreams.