Flashback
Memory is a weird and funny thing. It is that in good, in bad, in ugly and in beautiful form. I was listening to a month or so ago distinguished writer and publisher Kari Kallonen. Kari has written many biographies of Finnish gents whose been serving in the Legion étranger (That’s the French Foreign Legion) and fantastic book of Lauri T?rni aka (Larry A. Thorne). Kari said in one interview that most of us doesn’t have much of experience of death as an issue of life. I found myself thinking. “I guess he's right…what the hell kind of life I’ve been living”? The first memory of my entire life was death related. By the faith I came a familiar of death as a teenager. Also, by faith and by cheer choice of work I’ve been close to issue numerous times, more than I can really count. It was the end of 1998 I was on my way to lunch break and some poor chap decided that it was enough life for him. He jumped off from high rise building balcony only wearing his under pants and tank top. I noticed that I had a very clinical approach towards the subject. Death is a natural point in any life, human, plants, animals, planets, and stars. Everything and everybody have a beginning and an end. In that case I just thought that he wasn’t very happy, not happy at all and decided to go off that way. That period was the type of time when I was extremely unhappy with myself in a certain way. I was back in Finland and life wasn’t going well at all for me. I remember the face and voice of my colleague when I went back to work from my lunch break and said that “I saw some guy jumping off from balcony and smashing into asphalt”. My young female colleague was horrified and asked. “Oh, my God! That’s terrible! How are you? Are you ok? Must have been awful for you”. My response was, “Nah, I’m ok, but the guy on the street, he is very much dead obviously”.
Flashback
I was doing some grocery shopping at the local grocery store when I happened to hear a little conversation between two young ladies. I didn’t see them as they were on the other side of shelve. The other was saying with a very dark voice, “It’s terrible how hard human life is”. Obviously, she had or was experiencing something rough perhaps. Anyway, I remember smiling and then boom! I was back in the middle of the most terrible day in Iraq I experienced. Our convoy was ambushed by insurgents. One vehicle went kaput due to IED so, there wasn’t any other choice than stop the convoy. Have a gunfight and get the chaps from broken vehicle to the remaining vehicles. In the heat of all that action, a great friend, and our colleague I call “Bob” had the unfortunate to get hit by the enemy fire. He was lethally wounded. After an intense fire fight, we managed to evac the guys, including Bob, inside the remaining vehicles, and sped off. Literally in the middle of nowhere and with the wounds he had, Bob was fading away. A true man and a fighter Bob died in my own arms. That’s the kind of flashback I got in the middle of picking up cookies from the grocery store’s shelves. As part of the secret agreement was lifted a couple of months later (was this weird faith?) I decided to make a short non-budget film with a friend of mine Pekka Salo to honor the memory of Bob. Pekka’s son Antti filmed the whole thing.
If you are interested, you can review the film from the YouTube.