Historical Perspective by Constantine Gochis

 Prescient for such a very short observational story. Dad was warning me about the state of the world for a very long time. I heard him. I even believed him. I didn't think it would come in my lifetime, though he said it would. This was written in June 2005.

   

        Woody Allen has added his insights to the general clamor.  Among other things he advises against putting too much stress on incidents such as the 9-11 attack.  He says that this and all other instances of man killing man must be viewed in historical perspective.  It has always been thus and thus it will alway be.

Of course, many other men have made similar statements. Old Joe Stalin for one. He is credited with the epigram, "the death of a single person is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic."  What consequence is the murder of a few thousand people in the history of human interactions?

I cannot quarrel with Woody.  I like his work.  I agree with him that what we are witnessing is nothing more than a repetition of history. Men do not change nor do the patterns they create. The machinations of governments are the same as they were when Israel sided with Assyria almost three thousand years ago and was wiped out by Babylon for making the "wrong" choice.  To coin a phrase--"Seems like Deja-vu all over again."

The history of empire can be traced to success in commerce and the development of weapons that make those aspects of opposing nations obsolete--the Egyptian and Persian chariots, the Greek Phalanx, the Roman Gladius (short sword), gun powder and now the hydrogen bomb.

Now this together with the suicide bomber forecasts an interesting dilemma.  The MAD doctrine (Mutually Assured Destruction) no longer restrains combatants.  One cannot localize and identify a dangerous enemy.  He can be anywhere among us, armed not only with ultimate weapons but with the mental pathology to use them though he himself dies.

And the world needs only the striking of the match to create a holocaust.  But surely, not all humans will die. And peace will return after the war as it has in the past.  The philosophers, historians and mountebanks will reflect on the millions wiped out, and dismiss the numbers as another phase in the history of mankind.  And as it was in the beginning the soothsayers will look to the future and propound prophesy as it has been before:

"And behold a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death. And hell followed him. And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth, to kill with sword, with famine and with death and with the beasts of the earth." (Book of Revelation, chapter 6)

If Dad were alive, he'd be beyond apoplectic (if that is even a thing). He was pretty well already there in 20025, nearly 20 years ago. Today, not only can we not localize and identify a dangerous enemy, we are inviting them in and no one is allowed to object. Iran nearly has the bomb and we attribute logic to a nation that is rageful of the West. That Bible from which he quoted was held in little esteem two decades ago, and now it is considered less than comic book, though it describes us perfectly, and our faithlessness. And when the new worst comes, we will be surprised. Oh, well, I guess. 

They Were Real and Wonderful Days by Constantine Gochis

 We meet up with Dad's writing alter ego, Diogenes.

I am not always surprised to encounter by street bum friend in front of my house, but today I find him, ignoring my arrival, not eagerly solicitous for his periodic stipend, but sitting on an abandoned carton perusing intently a copy of People Magazine. It is held aloft so that I can easily read the headline:  "Journalist Hunter S. Thompson Kills Himself".

For those of you who do not know Diogenes, he is a classic bum who has been on my tab for years. His history extends from the heights of affluence to the nadir of penury.  Additionally, his sagacity has always been a source of knowledge fro me, sometimes surcease from the petty trials of life; hence, I always supply him with what he reveres most--spare change.

I interrupt his reverie, somewhat annoyed that he does not greet me. I hail him jovially, disguising my annoyance.

"What ho," I say, "What news from the Rialto?" I am confident in the knowledge that he is sufficiently erudite to know the source of the line from a Shakespeare play. He was--Diogenes I mean--a man of intelligence and education as well as a CEO in industry before his wife abandoned him for the love of a poetess, making a bum out of him, financially, as well as in his incarnate state.

Diogenes does not respond immediately.  He reaches into one of many plastic bags and produces a book and a copy of a newspaper review. I would say the review was annotated, but that is incorrect.  It was lined in black ink throughout.  The book is the late Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in San Francisco".  I am curious as to what distraction would divert Diogenes from his usual purpose of small change or an occasional dollar bill.

"You know," he says without preamble, "I am in San Francisco at the time Hunter writes about, but I never see or feel the glory the reviewer sings about, the Reformation he extols.  It is of course a hymn to a glorious era.  I grieve now that I had no visionary awareness, though there were intimations.  I am not a bum at this time, and whenever one of the faithful hands me a flower, I get the feeling I am somehow at the root of their naked poverty.  My guilt deepens; corporate evil at work. I feel opprobrium in the air.  It is true. The wealthy must do some reflection on the meaning of life, see the visions so talked about, when tripping--albeit in the argot of the gifted enfants du Paradis, loosely children of Paradise--'cool man, make love, not war."

Diogenes reads from the review of the glorious meeting between the author and the reviewer in those halcyon days.

"In March of 1968, armed with two LSD capsules, I got there about 9 p.m. Hunter drank beer crushing the empty cans and throwing them along with cigarette butts into the empty fireplace.  The fierceness with which he hurled the cans and flicked the butts punctuated his non-stop rage about politics and religion and society. . . Hunter's position was, 'get the bastards before they get you!'"

Diogenes continues.

"We went to the men's room and sat in the middle of the floor, facing each other. Delicately, I removed the capsule from my pocket and tried to open it so that the tiny granules would be equally divided.  But things were swimming around. The granules slipped out and fell on my sweater.  Hunter and I looked at each other and shrugged.  And then we started sucking on my sweater.  Hunter stopped for a moment and said, 'What if some stock broker swine comes in now?'"

I said, "Indeed Diogenes, that is poetry," though I felt he was putting me on. I took the page from the Diogenes and read further. The reviewer had a kind of apologetic conclusion.

"And yes, to some degree it does show that anything was possible then. I don't want to minimize our drug fueled epiphanies.  They were real, and they were sometimes wonderful.  It was ignoring that actions have consequences. It was our denigration of the straight.  But it was about betrayal, mine, Hunter's for the sake of protecting our precious trip."

I looked sadly at Diogenes.  Had he been beguiled by the evil one? He had always seemed, despite his travailes, a straight arrow.  I felt that despite my chagrin at his apparently new found liberalism, he should have some reward.  Accordingly I increased my donation.  But I had to know the why of his defection.

"Diogenes," I said to mitigate my sadness, "when you finish the book, may I borrow it?"

"I don't intend to read it," he responded quickly.

"Why then did you buy it, or at least find it?"

"Of course," he concluded, "so that I might burn it."

Terse. Laconic. To the point, as always.