| There is a dream I have…
That on one of my birthdays That I move through the day That those I love share the joy That on just one of my birthdays That every hour is spent in productive try I cook and everyone’s happy But it has never happened yet. There are broken dishes, tossed aside presents There are pools of tears that run so deep and still There is a dream I have. Most likely it will occur around my grave. |
 The thump-thump of the helicopter blades, for once, took me away from, not toward the war. It was July 19, 1969 and I was leaving. I was going home. After nearly two years of service in River Squadron Five, America’s most heavily decorated military unit in all of history to that point, countless hours on the muddy, bloody Bassac and Perfume Rivers, and too many dead in my wake, it was all coming to an end. I waved to my friends who were staying, as the Huey UH-1B lifted off from Mobile Base One: they were fellow Navy men and women and the Vietnamese soldiers who we had trained to crew the river patrol boats as America began its withdrawal. There were mixed feelings swirling with the rising rotor wash. Almost 22 years old, still smelling of cordite, my stint in combat was over. All that remained was a short flight to DaNang, then a PanAm flight to Travis Air Force Base. A cab ride at over a hundred miles an hour then another plane to Washington D.C. I hardly noticed California, and before I knew it, there were my mom and my dad, my sisters, my brother and I was home. It was so easy. Still in my combat uniform, I was in a 1963 Chevy turning into my folks’ driveway before I knew it. There were flowers and grass; waxed floors and a kitchen table. A color television was on. Something was happening on it; I was the only one watching. I couldn’t figure it out really. My dad said that Neil Armstrong was about to step out of the Lunar Module. I kept watching. I put my hand to my face. There was still the smell of the guns. The smell of the war. “That’s one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” I hadn’t even sat down yet, and we were on the Moon. I watched, transfixed, as though from another world. My parents and family were moving my gear into the house, a coffee pot was brewing. I looked at my watch and knew exactly where I should have been: twenty clicks downriver at thirty knots, steaming on station. I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin post the flag and saluted along with them. They started to move around on the Moon, I went downstairs to my old room. Moving slowly, uncertainly, as if the gravity was strange. I sat at my old desk. It seemed small. I opened the drawer. There was a letter I had written to a girl friend before leaving for Vietnam two years ago. The handwriting did not look familiar, the sentiments seemed silly now. I read the letter through, refolded it and put it back in the drawer. My mom was watching me. I looked at her. In some ways I had forgotten that I had a mother, it would take time to readjust. Neil, Buzz and I were exploring a strange new world together. They were on the Moon, but I was much farther away than that. The world of peaceful exploration and the world of smoke and death were light years away from each other, and yet, in the years that have passed, those two made a smoother reentry transition than I did. To this day I still expect rooms to explode. I still expect sudden violence. I learned to get along and to prosper, but I still can’t ride on a boat without distant thoughts and still can’t look around at night without a sense of worry, still concerned with ambush. On every meaningful milestone of the Moon Landing there are always those TV specials that show the first footfall. The lander coming in, the dust blowing up, and the famous, simple quote from the First Man on the Moon. But every year on July 20th, I remember another landing and all the others who waved good-bye to a soldier going home. I wonder where they are in the dust of history. I’ll never know who came home after me and who did not. I’ve been to the Wall six times and will go again, looking for names, feeling the letters cut in there; finding some, not finding others. And then there are those names I can’t  remember. Every time I meet someone, or hear the stories of other veterans, I’m still looking for them. My tendril thoughts like fingers on the Wall, feeling for some reminder, something to jog my memory. Like those footprints in the Moon dust, those faces are imprinted in my mind. Like Neil and Buzz, I remember where I’ve been, and footprints aren’t all I’ve left behind.
Written: July, 1976 |
They have changed that’s for sure.
It all started with a kiss, actually.
Lips so soft, transporting to another world
Where everything was candy and the heat
Oh, the heat. It warmed the worry
It took away the fright, it cozied the night.
It brought forth a deluge of things
The best things, everything, it just kept
On bringing them. As though everyday
Things were love uninterrupted, a child
So rich in experience, years upon years
Of challenge of failure of rebirth of changing
Of everything always changing changing.
And now those kisses are more than ever,
Although briefer, now in passing,
Perhaps casual, some might say taken for granted.
Kissing like our parents, they might say.
But we can only hope our parents kissed with
Feelings like these. Oh, we can still dig in there
And kiss like lovers lost in ardour, steeped in lusty
Provocations, as though depths to be plumbed
Were crazy red with excitment. But now all of that
Can be just brushed, lips to lips, within each other’s
Breath, touching lightly and still feeling it all.
No one knows what a light kiss can be
Unless the light is on them. And even then
It takes time, oh time,
To revel in the light.
Written: 5/11/10
They really seemed like nice people. Raising families, going to George Washington
University, making sexy YouTube videos… who could ask for more from a citizen? So what if they had this problem of being “seeded” here as sleeper spies? We have American citizens building dirty bombs, underwear bombs, shoe bombs, not to mention the wild assortment of criminals, abusers, tax dodgers, and college board cheats. What’s so bad about a few harmless (and ineffectual) spies added into the mix?
I would much prefer those happy-family spies to the Wall Street monsters who almost brought America down every time. I would much prefer a beguiling young female hoping to get a little attention on YouTube to the dirty lobbyists work to subvert every piece of reforming legislation … not to mention the politicians who cynically accept their funds and say that they could NEVER be influenced to do something harmful to their constituents. Really? Some would say that most of them could never be influenced to do something GOOD for their constituents.
It would much better to have the Russian spies back and send the big franchise
carmanufacturers who, in almost 100 years of building cars, have never been able to build a production car the gets over 50 miles per gallon, when back in the 1920′s there were independent cars easily getting that and better.
Russian spies would never pass a law discriminating against foreign residents who are just walking down the street like the Arizona legislature just passed and the Governor just signed. It could be used against them.
Russian spies would never drive drunk as do the 1.5 million Americans who arrested every year (not to mention the carnage these DUIs perpetrate). The Russian spies would never take a chance like that. It would against all of their training.
And, what’s worse? The U.S. just detained a 12th person in the spy case. This one is 23-years-old and (good news) he’s too late for the swap.
So, let’s make a different swap. The Russian spies come back and resume their cover careers, college educations, and make some more YouTube videos and we send all the really, really bad people off in their place. Assuming the Russians would take them.
It could be a little lonely here in America after that swap.
You make everything harder
And more complicated and always,
Always you make things verge on argument
About territory, dominance,
A sense of judgments, double standards,
Family ancestry, about
Various forms of learning disabilities,
Constant criticism, and who’s better than who.
You dredge up old contests about bicycles,
Cars, houses, what happened when,
Who was right who was wrong, you
Relish those moments when you were
Victorious over the alpha male, or when
You were so mistreated and retreated
Cut off all ties for almost a year.
You bring these back as though they just happened,
Those moments of my failures, my weaknesses,
And you grab the shaker like a weapon
And pour salt on those wounds and rubbing it in
You laugh wickedly as though in ecstasy
Beyond bounds and control.
And then you walk away,
Out of the room full of the righteousness
That only a happily closed mind can conjour up.
I am left alone standing there with nothing
Left to say. Almost.
“I was only asking if there were
Any more paper towels, Honey.”
The only agency that truly oversees our economy is the Federal Reserve, imperfect though it may be. The only agency that oversees the educational system of our nation is the Department of Education, imperfect though it may be. History has taught us that these two institutions do more good than bad, especially in “downturns” in their respective spheres of influence. So, after the bubble burst of 2008 and 2009; after the calamity of “No Child Left Behind” in the public schools, what do Republicans do? They call for the abolishment of the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education, and, far more troubling, they encourage and enable the takeover of the GOP by the Tea Party.
In research into who the major gatekeepers are for the new Republicans it turns out to be conservative talk show hosts. The main thrust of their anger seems to be President Barack Obama and his “socialist” health care policies. But wait, Obama’s health care plan was modeled after Mitt Romney’s. But perhaps, as reported in the national press, this right side trashing of Obama is really about race: shock over having a black man in the white house. So up is down: as America lives up to its Declaration of Independence those who hold it high for their own purposes when they need it, tear it down when its tenents are actually come true.
But what is really weird is that as the economy has tanked, as a direct result of the “hands-off” policies so long championed by conservatives, instead of a shift to left the exact opposite has happened: a noticeable shift to the right. A recent paper, as reported in The New York Times, noted that in both the United States and in Europe “periods of low economic growth tend to associated with a rising vote for right-wing and nationalist political parties.” Like the National Socialists in Germany in the 1920′s and of course the Tea Party in the 2010′s.
The GOP is gripped by extremists: just look at Utah and Arizona. And the people who should be looking for alternatives in the Democratic Party, the only party that has balanced the modern U.S. budget and the only party that has actually lowered the welfare rolls, are mezmerzed, as they drive back and forth to the unemployment office, by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
It’s a curious irony of human nature that we run from what’s good for us and embrace what’s bad for us. And, most of all, we love an easy answer.
But history and it’s lessons are happy to repeat themselves over and over. It’s just that, in this case, repetition can be very painful indeed.
Click on this image to watch the launch and insertion into orbit.
When Americans think about spaceflight they think about the space shuttle. The shuttles have been around so long that when we think about them we take them for granted, so a review of the statistics on this program and its “oribiters” is more than appropriate:
First flight: Columbia April 12, 1981
How many flights: 132
How many orbits: over 20,000
How many days in space: 1,300
How many people?: 924 (include multiple trips)
Catastrophes: two (Challenger and Columbia destroyed)
The number of experiments, the tons of stuff lifted, and all of the benefits of the space shuttle program may be summarized in books and articles but it will never truly be accurately recorded. To be fair, the American space shuttle program will probably be listed in the top ten achievements of all time for the human race. At least to date. It has been truly amazing. No other country has even come close to our achievements in space and to our willingness to share: to give everyone a lift, as it were. So many other countries have hitched a ride, inspiring their people as well with astronaut heroes of their own; this inclusiveness is unequalled in history.
The space program is something that every American is and should be very proud of: paid with public funds, fought for over the years by courageous leaders, and manned by men and women of great skill and courage. It has been the “new frontier” that President Kennedy invisioned and now it is coming to an end. Apparently.
Somehow I doubt it, though. Recently, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, among many illustrious others, have called on the new administration to reinvent its space program to re-include manned launches and missions; to re-include the Moon colonization plans of the Bush Administration (they did one or two things right), and to reinvigorate NASA, one of the greatest sources of research and talent in the history of our country.
The mission launched yesterday (May 14, 2010) may well be the last one for Atlantis, but as America wakes up to a potential loss of this great program, I predict through shear necessity and geopolitical reasons (the only way to space is on a Russian vehicle?) the report of the death of the space shuttle may prove to be very premature.
We’ll see. But, in the meantime enjoy it while it lasts.
He seemed to have everything. The physical prowess and beauty. The talent to claim the world’s rapt attention over and over. The financial freedom. The beautiful home. The gigantic boat, “Privacy.” The happiness of wife and children. Friends all over the world. He seemed to have that inner peace we all seek. In other words, he seemed happy. He had, we thought, the one thing we all would trade everything for: happiness. Studies have shown that given the choice of anything and happiness (undefined) people always choose happiness. “If you could be rich or happy, which would you choose?” Everyone chooses happy.
So there he was, on top of the world. We could not see everything but what we saw mezmerized us into a vicarious awe. Wow. Look at Tiger Woods. Tall, handsome, the best golfer in the world by far, beautiful wife and family, rich beyond all want, popular, and most of all happy. Wow indeed. But, the cloven hoof was there beneath the golfer’s robe and soon enough our tent of envy collapsed in a heap of hurt. And now he is the brunt of jokes, cartoons, lawsuits galore and more to come, the epitome of hypocrisy, anathema to all of his former glom-ers, and now alone, lost in a sea of confused regret, without anything except all of those things that never mattered anyway.
Wow. Look at Tiger Woods.
But, then again, look at Tiger Woods. Unique in skill, but ordinary in other ways. Given so much he wanted more. Who doesn’t? Everyone has everything he or she needs for a happy life, they say. But some always want more. In truth, each day we are given what we need. The air to breathe. The food to eat. The opportunity to help others. The chance to give love. Clothes, some shelter, a beautiful world. Even in the darkest corners of a depraved and deprived world, parenthood, kindness, sharing, hope and effort are always there. The raw materials to build the world. The richest person in the world is the one who is happy with what they have. The poorest person in the world is the one who always wants more. Tiger is the poster boy of true poverty.
He only came on the scene, what, 13 years ago? He became a professional golfer in 1996. He’s going to be 34 on December 30. In a world of Martin Luther Kings, and Mahatma Gandhis and Eli Wiesels, Tiger is a pitiful flash in a paltry pan. Or should we say, Eldrick Tont Woods, now? “Tiger” has taken on quite a different connotation since his bimbo cascade prurience.
Imagine, if you will, that you were Tiger watching the world’s Tiger on television and knowing the real prowling cat behind the myth. I wondered why he hung so far back at Obama’s inaugural. He always seemed to have just a little too much passion and a little too much “let me out of here” in the pictures and interviews we saw. When he made a putt, sometimes, he would seem to be humping the air with a little too much ardor. This picture will now haunt him. When asked a question that probed into the darkness too much, he struck out with the sneering sarcasm and cynical wrinkled lip of one who knows where all of this is going. He was telling us, “there are two of me.” We just didn’t want to hear what we were seeing.
A prodigy at the age of two. At three he shot a 48 for nine holes. He won everything and he did it at a younger age than anyone had ever done it. A precocious prodigy. A fruit that ripened too early. He was defending titles when others had not even won them yet. He is the only child of Tida and Earl. He is African, Chinese, Native American, Thai, and Dutch, or “Cablinasian” as he puts it.
He came from nothing, as we Americans like to say. He is a self-made man. Much credit is given to his Dad, but it was in time-on-task, not money, from which the credit came. So, there you have it. Dreams of his father came true. He was the king of the world. But now, like Ozymandias, we stand before his crumbled statue, carved in stone, and read:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Tiger is also a self-unmade man, sad to say. Chasing women and using them like golf balls by the dozen, he became lost in the woods while the balls are now out on the fairway for all to see.
Will Tiger Woods recover? Sure. He will play more tournaments and he will be the golfer who won the most money and the most majors. But, now, with his shattered visage half sunk in the sands of selfishness, he will never be the greatest golfer who ever lived. Jack Nicholas, always included his wife and children in all of his successes, and even now still sparkles in the sunlight of his altruistic achievements and dedication to others, will continue on as the greatest golfer ever to trod the globe well passed the Woods Era. Tiger could win twice and many tournaments and a hundred times the money, but Jack will always be the greatest now. Tiger has proven himself unworthy. Not by lack of skill. Not by lack of success. Not by lack of effort. No, Tiger has fallen by his lack of true goodness, really. He thought he owned the game. Like so many before him, an veritable army of shallow “invincibles,” he has fallen down in a cloud of selfish, cruel dust. All of his riches, victories, fame and glory cannot reclaim what he has tossed. His children will never look at him the same way now. That is lost forever. The chance to be that Dad who never let them down, who was always there, who loved their mother from start to finish. Gone. That is the dust that covers him now.
What should you and I take from all of this? Getting love, gets trouble. Giving love, gives happiness. Tiger went out there and “Got some luv….” If he had gone home and given love things would have been quite different, true? Life, truth and love… these are difficult struggles, no instant gratification, no easy answers, no texting for relief.
Happiness is a battle with selfishness. You can’t have both. One side must win. What is that saying? “Truth will out.” So if you know from the beginning which side will win, what’s the problem? Tiger knows. Now. What do you think he would do if he could do it all over? But there are no mulligans in life, Tiger. As Jack Nicolas always said, we all have to just “Play the ball where it lies.” And, as everyone knows, those penalty strokes hurt.
12/15/09 (1147)
