Kobe Can't Be Gone

Sunday Mass was about to begin. We, the servers, and our priest, were standing in the back waiting for the organ to play and announce our procession. But a couple of folks were mentioning a death, one that had only happened.  I assumed it was a parishioner.  After all in a place which features not only Sunday or Daily Services, there are baptisms and there are funerals. It is an expected wave of ordinary comings and goings of the existential sort.

But just as someone said it was Kobe Bryant, a young and strong and famous man, there was a communal heart drop. And among the prayers, there would be an intention for his too soon gone soul.


I am not even remotely a sports fan. I go to the odd game, more baseball, than anything else.  If I like a game, that is the one I do, and I enjoy the natural or historical surroundings of the various fields. If I have been to a basketball game, it was maybe once, and not likely to watch any team of note. Yet, my heart dropped with the others when I heard the name Kobe Bryant. You'd have to have been living under the proverbial rock not to know who this is, who this was. I knew two things for certain, that he was a profoundly talented player on one professional team for his whole 20 year career, and another that was less a shining thing, courtesy of the very press who will now spend the next many days raising him to the status of demi-god, in just as much a furor as when they sought to topple him in the pre-"believe all women" days.

Not only did my heart drop, but I felt--terrible, like it was a personal loss. How could that possibly be? But even more than that, another feeling, that it could not be possible for him to be gone. I am guessing that a lot of the people, more attached to him than I am, who are gathering near the site of the Calabasas helicopter crash site that took Bryant, and his 13 year old daughter, and seven others, feel that sensibility even more profoundly.  Yes, it surely is about his being accomplished, and, at 41, his beginning a new career in businesses and charities and succeeding in all of these. It might be about what used to be called the "American Dream", the idea that any one of us could, with hard work, and of course, some particular talent, rise to the heights of human achievement.

I speak only for myself on this day of his death, less than 12 hours ago, and perhaps some others can say the same. It is about the truth of things we all know but avoid acknowledging as we move up the ladder of love or success or whatever is our desire as we go through our days. That nothing protects us in this life from its end. And that we must face, even if it is for a moment in time accept that we all can be, and will be gone. I learned something new about Kobe Bryant today that I did not know. He was apparently a Catholic.  One of my fellow servers said that he heard Kobe was a regular church attendee.

If that is so, and his belief was stronger than mine is sometimes, then being gone from here is not a permanent condition and Kobe Bryant's family has not lost him completely, or forever.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Rest in Peace, Mr. Bryant.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Almost Biblical, but Not If You Look A Little Closer

As the incredibly lengthy credits of the possibly last installment of the Star Wars movies ran, my companion movie goer said something I remember as "It was almost biblical".




My immediate reaction was to agree. Good over Evil. The nearly demonic Emperor Palpatine was not merely defeated, but Kylo Ren (birth name Ben Solo) turned from the Dark Side back to the Good Side, and joined Rey to destroy him all courtesy of the Force, that mysterious field of galactic energy that binds all things together and can be harnessed by the Jedi Knights. There was sacrifice. There was death. There was resurrection. Now, just wait a minute!!!!

It was biblical in appearance, but in its substance, it lacked the one feature that gives the Bible its essence. There is no God. I can see someone--even myself--trying to stretch it, "Well, the Force is kinda like God." Except it really is not. It has a duality, good and evil. Ah, shades of Mani! Two forces, one good, but not omnipotent, god-like, but not God, (who biblically is all powerful and all good) and the forces of evil, a devil, the devil, battle it out. And mankind, at least in this Star Wars version of things, can harness the good, or the evil, which, in my mind, makes man the center of all things, the very thing which got him (and her) into trouble in the first place in the actual Bible story.  The Manichaean heresy started not very much after Christianity itself, in or about the third century, and has popped its head up in various guises since and here throughout the Star Wars fantasy to this perhaps final chapter.  It has popped up, sort of, in the Star Trek universe also. After all, Spock was brought back to life not by man per se, but by a planet that was created by man's science. That force too had been sought by the evil (Klingons) and was wrestled back from them by the good Federation. Medicine has gotten so good in that universe that even when you are dead, the little tricorder thing that is used for everything can bring you back, if it hasn't been too long since you kicked the bucket.

Man is the Measure of all things, and ultimately can harness the Force itself. The Force, ultimately, is subservient to man, for good finally, if Rey's return to the place where this mythic universe started, Tatooine, the Jedi Master, formed by another Jedi Master, and so on.

The paradoxical thing, and probably this is purely personal, thus anecdotal evidence of the power of temptation itself, is that I like these science fiction universes. The idea that any of us could control that which governs good and evil, the intricacies of the threads of the universe, well, heck, that is mighty attractive. For those of you old enough to remember the old commercial, for Anacin (does that still exist?) it's a kind of hubris fueled analog to "Mother, I'd rather do it myself!" Or, to analogize, "There is no need for a God. I'd rather do it myself." And so, everything, our culture in every aspect nearly these days, is immersed in doing it all for itself, with a smug smile at not merely taking fire from the gods, but banishing all gods, the false and the one True.  As Dr. Phil might ask one of those sad souls who needs to air the dirtiest of family laundry on national television might respond, "How's that working for you?"

So, what's the bottom line? I am not sure, to tell you the truth. I still like Star Wars. But maybe. . . .that's not a good thing? I don't know. Maybe it's food for thought, at least?

And my guess? Not the final Star Wars film. After all, a new Skywalker has risen. 

New Year's Eve '96: A Constantine Story

It being the beginning of 2020, I have found myself re-arranging and, though I no longer make "resolutions" I have privately proclaimed a plan to be more fruitful in my endeavors, to eschew a tendency toward laziness and, as part of that hoped for plan to be more diligent in placing some of my father's short short stories onto this site. As it happened, a re-arrangement of a drawer revealed a few of the stories, which somehow had strayed from the usual place I maintain them. It also happened that one of these was my father's less than cheerful reverie about New Year's 1996, that harked back to one during World War Two and back again.  It follows. 




"What do you do on New Year's Eve?"  The question is old and familiar.  At one time it evokes either joy or terror.  In my formative years, there are holy days of obligation. Saturday night is one.  Not to have a date, not to have a "great time" is a sin requiring the penitential rending of garments.  Failure is never admitted to one's peers, lest shame and opprobrium result.  Worse, it is a diminution of the precious "macho" image.

Naturally, when I score big, I share the experience volubly, gilded for maximum effect.  Though modesty forbids excess pride, some joys defy restraint. When I strike out, I do not talk much. I simply adopt a serene and satisfied expression and listen to others' lies.

New Year's Eve is another story. No failure is tolerated.  Thus, like presidential elections, the planning begins immediately, following whatever constitutes the last celebration. 

I notice that today the question evokes none of the trauma of yesteryear for me.  This can be attributed to the wisdom of old age, or more accurately, the serenity of hormonal emanations.

I do not d very much this year. I feel more likely that what I have to report is a very bad hangover, induced by several martinis, interspersed with champagne, which I share with some equally sedate relatives.  We decide on two highlights for the evening. Some TV station is scheduled to present a Guy Lombardo retrospective, and of course, there is the descending ball at midnight in Times Square, New York.

Of course, we do neither.  We open another bottle of champagne and tell "sea stories".

I am a little sad that we miss the descending ball.  Guy Lombardo's music does nothing for me, and, if I remember correctly, I do not like him when I dance to his orchestra many a New Year's Eves ago.

Times Square is different. I go there when I enter my teen age status, with some guys I hang out with.

We go early, though there is not much we can do in reference to the passing of a tired, limping year. Cronus is divested of his glory by an impudent son. The inexorability of Time.

We have no money.  We simply get into the swirling masses, a solid undulating ocean of humanity.  We are caught in the viscous flow, no longer capable of independent movement, a living demonstration of the reality of Fate.

There is no space unoccupied.  Battalions, massive formations move in opposite directions.  A lone cop, just ahead, tries to maintain separation of the hordes, swirling tide flows of chaos.

Frustration and anger bring crimson to his great bulging neck.  For some inexplicable reason I am in violation of his purpose.  He reaches out to grab me by the collar but the force of human momentum tears us apart.  My collar is rent, but I am safe, and relieved.

In those days cops do not have a sense of humor nor is there the blessing we now have of juvenile offenses and the tolerance of the exuberance of youthful excesses. 

We get to see the descending ball, and with a million other people, welcome the infant year January 1, 1934.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruta0hMs1Z4

It is the last day of 1944, in Naples, perhaps a decade later.  I am on the way from one place to another.  I do not remember where or why.  My pistol and carbine are weighing heavily on my restless soul.  It is again the venerated day.

An importunate war interferes with the proper obeisance to a holy day that will never return.  I enter a bar that is emitting some sounds of gaiety.  I am mistaken.  It is practically uninhabited.  I sit at a table and order brandy.  The sounds I hear come from an old Victrola.  There seems to be only one record in the repertoire, the mournful crooning of the ubiquitous Bing Crosby dreaming of his "White Christmas."

This is my least favorite song and crooner of all time.  This terrible, monotonous dirge has been everywhere in Europe since the first GI's arrive.  Even the Italians add their traditional undulating rhythm to the unremarkable ditty.  So, in pain, I order another brandy to palliate my suffering.  Then I order another for the road back to my monastic billet and the merciful sack.

I am startled awake by the sound of widespread gunfire.  There is the sound of anti-aircraft explosions. The city, and the word is total darkness.  It is the Apocalypse.

I roll off my cot and search blindly for my weapons, retrieve them and rush outdoors.  There are GIs everywhere, firing pistols and rifles into the air and shouting, "Happy New Year! Happy New Year".  It is 1945 and I have almost slept through the arrival of the newly arrived interloper.  I read somewhere that a falling bullet can kill as surely as a directed one.

Last year, in LA, seventeen people meet their maker in this manner.  This year, the police list no fatalities.  In the Naples of 1945 and the world, people were being killed wholesale, most, intentionally, so who would quibble on a few sacrifices in honor of the Great God Janus.  Such statistics would only be the concern of the Graves Registration people, anyway.