Yesterday, I bought a computer game about the battle of Gettysburg. Probably a mistake. I have, to begin with, a curious fascination with the battle, which borders on a fixation really. I can't say why. It's just there. Often enough, I will lay awake at night going over the historical details of the battle in my head, with generally a focus on what Lee could have done differently to win the battle. Why do I try to find ways for Lee to win this battle? That I do not know either.
Someone once theorized that I must have been a participant in the battle in a past life, likely as a Confederate soldier, I suppose. And indeed, I still remember a dream from many years ago wherein I, seemingly a junior officer, was killed whilst leading a charge against a Yankee position. It is the only dream, to my recollection, in which I have died. It was a very vivid dream, and, as I say, it has remained with me all these years.
Nonetheless, I do not believe in reincarnation, and so I surely could not have died in the battle of Gettysburg (unless, of course, I am wrong about my insistence that there is no such thing as reincarnation).
More likely, though, this is of a psychological nature, something to do with patterns and struggles deep in the murky soup of my own psyche. Is there within me a deep-seated attachment, a strange bonding to lost causes? Do I charge over and over against the impregnable hill (as William Faulkner once theorized regarding the character of southern manhood) in hopes that there will be that one time, finally and forevermore, wherein the position is carried and the day is won?
What is it about lost causes that seems to so capture, urge, torment my soul? I certainly have no affection for the Southern cause, ideologically or historically. In fact, of all the causes in the world, few would seem to have been less worthy, or indeed less reasonable. And so what is affective in the 'complex' would seem not to be its specific application to history or ideology, but the very essence of its lost-ness, without reference to anything other than lost-ness.
You see how I get when it comes to Gettysburg? Lol.
Having played the game before going to bed, I proceeded, of course, to dream of the thing all night long, such that I woke this morning in an exhausted state of mind, aware that I had not so much been restfully sleeping as charging up and down dream ridges against the teeth of musket and cannon.
Too bad, as Lee himself said at the conclusion of the affair. Oh too bad.
Someone once theorized that I must have been a participant in the battle in a past life, likely as a Confederate soldier, I suppose. And indeed, I still remember a dream from many years ago wherein I, seemingly a junior officer, was killed whilst leading a charge against a Yankee position. It is the only dream, to my recollection, in which I have died. It was a very vivid dream, and, as I say, it has remained with me all these years.
Nonetheless, I do not believe in reincarnation, and so I surely could not have died in the battle of Gettysburg (unless, of course, I am wrong about my insistence that there is no such thing as reincarnation).
More likely, though, this is of a psychological nature, something to do with patterns and struggles deep in the murky soup of my own psyche. Is there within me a deep-seated attachment, a strange bonding to lost causes? Do I charge over and over against the impregnable hill (as William Faulkner once theorized regarding the character of southern manhood) in hopes that there will be that one time, finally and forevermore, wherein the position is carried and the day is won?
What is it about lost causes that seems to so capture, urge, torment my soul? I certainly have no affection for the Southern cause, ideologically or historically. In fact, of all the causes in the world, few would seem to have been less worthy, or indeed less reasonable. And so what is affective in the 'complex' would seem not to be its specific application to history or ideology, but the very essence of its lost-ness, without reference to anything other than lost-ness.
You see how I get when it comes to Gettysburg? Lol.
Having played the game before going to bed, I proceeded, of course, to dream of the thing all night long, such that I woke this morning in an exhausted state of mind, aware that I had not so much been restfully sleeping as charging up and down dream ridges against the teeth of musket and cannon.
Too bad, as Lee himself said at the conclusion of the affair. Oh too bad.
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