my emails to ryan have been a useful focus.
thinking back through this year:
joy came with recognition of the enemy:
gihad.
once I knew where the fight lay
I could get on with it with a glad strong heart.
man is nothing if not a war-monger.
but the fight must be the right one.
the enemy must be the real one
when I lost sight of the enemy
I wandered disconsolate through the fog
purposeless and lost again . . . . . .

if we cannot locate the real enemy
we invent a pretend one.

then who is the real enemy?

only it isn't as simple as that . . . .
because the real enemy is the very urge to fight in the first place.
this is the enemy.
and so the gihad (noun) must be against the very urge to gihad (verb)

the real war must be against the pretend war against peace.

isnt this what freud meant by the death wish?
only he thought of this as a neurosis
when really, seen aright,
it's the very source of strength and life . . .
(onward christian soldier . . .)