HARD TO IMAGINE

If this turns out to be a rant I apologize. I have been watching PBS, the Ken Burns special on the Viet Nam war. If you’re old enough, you remember. I had completed my military obligation, came home from Southeast Asia before Americans started dying there. I was in college, didn’t have to worry about the draft. Americans don’t like to be reminded of the war we lost so we dwell on the ones we won. But the puzzle pieces fit together now since the big players are all dead and there are no special interests to sustain the myth. My generation experienced the war in many ways, from patriots who believed the propaganda to patriots who did not; from those who lost friends and loved ones to those who did not. As I watch the story unfold the feelings and memories leave me disillusioned still.  

What weighs most is the 50 year interval and how things haven't changed. Every president from Kennedy to Ford acknowledged privately that the war in Viet Nam was unwinnable. But the choice was either, appear to be weak or send more troops, drop more bombs. In hindsight, the egos and blind ambition were so transparent it’s hard to imagine anyone trusting those people. Lies are when you say something you know is not true. If you believe your own fairy tale, it’s just a mistake. Government officials lied, the generals did both. At the end of the day, getting reelected or leaving a legacy was the first priority, more important than tens of thousands of American casualties. In the beginning, the “John Wayne” charicature general promised that with 40,000 troops he could win the war in six months. Three years later he went to the president with a two year plan, asking for a quarter million troops to win the same war. Nine years later, we abandoned the unwinnable war. 

Now, 50 years up the road from that, we have been waging war in Afghanistan for 15 years, calling it something else. With some similarities to Viet Nam and some differences, we are currently preparing to send thousands more troops with a two year plan to win the fight against the bad guys (who change allegiance, reinventing themselves as need be). Is this deja vu or what? Our leaders are mostly indifferent to the lessons of Viet Nam but they are all committed to whatever it takes to be reelected. The logic I’ve been hearing all along is this: “I’m the one who will do ‘Right’ but that can’t happen if I don’t get elected.” One glaring weakness of a democracy is that we are free to elect terrible, incapable or corrupt leaders. I don’t think it’s a question of politics, rather a failure of human nature. 

This little monologue could spin off in any direction but I don’t have the stomach for it. I’ll watch again tonight and have the same mixed feelings. As a young man I was both naive and malleable, wanting to believe the pro war propaganda. When you’ve been naive and realize how you’ve been exploited, unforgiving cynicism comes easy. From the president down; from the top general down, I have no reason to believe they have learned anything from history or that any of them care at all about the world their grandchildren will grow old in. 

A PLACE TO BEGIN

Charles Caleb Cotton was an Englishman, an eccentric cleric and a popular writer, back when Englishmen wore powdered wigs, sailed sailing ships, nearly 200 years ago. Remembered more for short works and quotable aphorisms, I have no other reason to remember him. I do remember, “When you have nothing to say, say nothing.” I knew the quote but had to look up the source. When I think I should be writing but draw a blank, I remember his, “Say nothing.” 

I know some very good writers who would disagree. They say the blank mind is a wonderful place to begin. If you write rubbish for a while, just keep writing and something will come together. It’s as much about playing with words as it is about story. At the moment I’m more in tune with Cotton than my writer friends. Unmotivated rubbish is about all I’m good for. 

Maybe it’s a good sign; I should be glad it doesn’t hurt so much and I can do some things. Recovering from my bicycle crash is slow going with a lot of recovering still to do. I can move my arm all around but can’t put enough pressure on a sharp knife to cut a piece of cake. My ribcage only hurts when I take it for granted. Physical therapy begins tomorrow; expect that will disturb and excite some sensory neurons. But without some adversity I wouldn't know the difference. 

PLUS 21

“I woke up still not dead again today.” In a recent interview, 84 year-old Willie Nelson shared the hook line from a new song and some carefully worded views on the times. Libby Casey, a reporter for the Washington Post asked him several loaded questions about the current administration which he deflected. Willie is a savvy political animal when it comes to biting the hand that feeds him so he danced around issues saying, simply, “Something ain’t right.” Obviously his views on marijuana are at odds with the Attorney General and he made a few good natured jabs in that direction. Printed in small type, under her paper’s header, she showed him their motto for the year: “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” You could see the gears turning but it didn’t take long for him to grin and concur. It doesn’t take a journalist to make the point: a free press is the critical, active agent against tyranny. Every President in my memory has complained about negative press coverage but that in itself is proof of its worth.

As much as I like his music and warm to his charm, Willie is neither a solution nor a fix. He might not answer your question at all but I don’t think he’s a liar and if he was paid to perform, he will deliver. As tarnished as he may be, his integrity sparkles. I take him for what he has always been, a transparent, self serving hedonist with a good heart and a soft spot for the underdog. I liked it when he reflected on the importance of living in the present. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow never comes: do something important with the "Right Now." I think that reality is unavoidable as you near your destination. 

Today is Bike-Crash plus 21: three weeks of painfully slow healing but healing none the less. I can’t do anything very well but most things, I can, within reason, still do. I still love my bicycle: we crashed because I failed. Someday I’ll appreciate the lesson I’m supposed to learn from it: and I woke up still not dead again today. 

12 ZEROS

There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said better, by someone smarter, more knowledgable than I. But nothing is more human than ‘Story’. For me to process both the way I feel and what I know, I need narrative: I need to frame story from my own experience. Sometimes my stories are meant to be shared and other times, it’s all about me. In this case I’m not sure which; we’ll see. 

A week after landfall, Hurricane Harvey has generated nearly 20 trillion gallons of rain. How do you reconcile a double digit number with 12 zeros behind it? Most of that deluge is still contained in and around Houston, Texas where property loss and human suffering are compounding like interest on a payday loan. Every news & weather report show new and different accounts of the same story: it won’t be over for a very long time. 

Human nature can be unavoidably obvious and subtly cloaked, all in the same breath. Nothing new about natural disasters, they happen but the world is a big place. Some population somewhere is being devastated one way or another, all the time. The way we react depends on degrees of separation. Tsunamis in Japan and earth quakes in Nepal; suffering and loss were immeasurable. But when viewed from a distance, across borders, cultures, religions and languages; if we give more than a passing thought it is of course about “those poor folks” but more about “thank goodness it wasn’t here.” In either case, I am unaware of any spontaneous efforts to raise money or send aid to Asian victims of nature’s wrath.

If we don’t love or know someone ravaged by Harvey we certainly know someone who does. Sympathy is one thing, empathy is another: their pain is our pain. Twelve years ago, Katrina touched me by only one degree of separation. I can’t forget the sense of helplessness and the overwhelming burden of shoveling mud out of the house, into the street; removing worthless jetsam, once treasured, reduced to toxic rubbish?  Then, after you have literally spent yourself in that grueling ordeal, how do you start life over? I don’t think it’s about choices or free will, I think it’s inherent, programmed into every cell in the body. We are compelled to find food and rest, we move and do rather than lie down and give up. At the end of the week or the month, I had a place to go, high and dry, in a community with a strong economy and functioning infrastructure, removed from the chaos. 

I identify somewhat with the protagonist in Stephen Crane’s novel, “The Red Badge Of Courage”. Henry Fleming was not a hero in any sense. Still by proximity and coincidence he prospered from the carnage. I have a real, personal experience with wind, flood and human tragedy but I didn’t have to bear its weight. That hurricane-disaster story is being replayed in Houston the same way a Broadway musical is recast and taken on tour, city to city, decades after its first performance. We know it will happen but pray it will be somewhere else, to people we don’t know. 

News media, being what it is, gives us a scripted account that emphasizes devastation and glorifies human resiliance. It draws high ratings and tells the story we want to hear. Instinct serves us well when the tribe is under siege. Media stresses the nobility of selfless individuals and to some extent I agree. But that collective, altruistic response, expressed by individuals is deeply rooted in our common genetics. We don’t make the decision; it makes us. 

I have no skin in this game. I feel the pain because we have tribal ties and I’ve seen for myself. There are plenty of individuals and organizations in motion, moving to assist and provide for those people in need. There is nothing significant that I can do now. But six months or a year from now, when the news has moved on to some other crisis there will be opportunity. An old man can be the extra hands and eyes that someone in south Texas needs. I did that in ’07 in Waveland, Mississippi after Katrina. There was still plenty of work to do, plenty of people who needed help. I don’t have a plan but I trust, something will come together. The fact that I think about it, that I want to do something is more about meeting my own need than about how it will serve someone else. 

I’ve been reading Yuval Harari’s book, Sapiens; A Brief History of Humankind. He makes the point that; “It is an inevitable rule of history that what seems obvious in hindsight is impossible to predict beforehand.” So I will keep putting my best foot forward in the hope that something good comes of it.