A poetic moment from Juris’s Viet Nam diary, written at the height of the rainy season in 1967: “A very civilized sound, the rain on the concrete walkways. But out past the buildings, on the other side of the perimeter and wires and snagging barbs, obscured by the thick downpour, the rain touches quietly to earth. Caught by the green flesh of the jungle it slides silently down the trunks and stalks and shoots onto the soft floor below.
“I don’t feel any more. I am cut off even from sensation. I am being absorbed.”