KISSINGER
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The air is filled with hot blowhards and sycophants. I'm looking for something to listen to on the radio and all I get are right-wingers speaking out of their butt setting up straw men so they can watch them burn. Southern California radio sucks and it seems to have been syndicated throughout the country. A.M. or F.M. it's all the same. What happened to the promise of independent radio?
It's been gobbled up by media conglomerates. It use to be that F.M. was a trip. You could hear all kinds of weirdness, "I'm gonna let my freak flag fly." Now, it's money and corporate programming and it's no coincidence that the same dribble runs from one end of the country to the other. In truth, I knew it was over when the F.M. stations started doing the "Be all you can be" commercials.
A news station burst through the static. Word was that Kissinger was tapped to be on another government panel. Kissinger heads the list of present and former government officials I find despicable. You grow up thinking good people are successful by way of their virtue and that evil is not rewarded, then you become an adult and find out that's not the case at all. Pure ambition is rewarded whether it's good or evil. That's why religion is so persistent - the belief that fitting recompense will come in the next life since it isn't doled out in this one. So Kissinger continues to be consulted even though his genius lies in his personal double dealing and backbiting. "Screw that."
Eddie started. "What are you so worked up about?"
"Kissinger my ass. Nixon and Kissinger told us we fought the war against a monolithic Communist aggressor. Then they go to China trying to widen the Sino-Soviet rift." He was silent. I looked at him and he was staring at me. I knew I sounded too much like a textbook. I would have been better calling Kissinger a fuckhead and leaving it at that. "You know who Kissinger is?"
"Yeh, I know who Kissinger is. He's the goofy old guy in weird glasses."
"That's right."
"Kissinger is kind of like Nostradamus."
"Like Nostradamus?"
"Yeh, he could predict events."
"Kissinger?"
"Well Nostradamus could." Eddie sat up and his voice moved right up next to me and started doing calisthenics. "Man, he was right on with some of the things he said."
I didn't know what would shut him up quicker, arguing, agreeing, or saying nothing. I did the latter and waited till his enthusiasm got all sweaty and went to the bench.
Kissinger was yesterday's news. He belonged to my past not Eddie's so what should he care about a goofy old guy in glasses. And at Eddie's age I was exactly the same: I met him, or rather he met me, on the beach. Not in the water but on the beach. That first year at school I would wander down to the shore at all hours and watch the waves. I was more than a little apprehensive about my university career and perhaps a little lonely at times. I sought solace in the constant interplay of water and air, the sounds of the birds and the hiss of the surf. Perhaps I took security in knowing there was always something I could do well, even if it wasn't academics, and even if there wasn't much of a future for surfers. I had hoped that achievement in one endeavor might carry over to other fields of human activity and to some extent I suppose it is so. Often people who study languages can become fluent in several. Of course, we don't really know if it is a gift for the facilitation of language that makes them want to devote their time to the study or plain old hard work. So I had no reason to believe that being able to carve up a wave would lead to greater understanding of anything except carving up a wave. UCSB sits out on a grand peninsula. It is surrounded by cliffs that are strikingly beautiful except when someone walks off one in a drunken stupor. I would sit and watch the waves for 10 to 20 minutes and then head back to class. On one of these occasions I was watching the sun come around the coastal hills and slip under the ocean. It was dark but I could hear the surf and the night was warm. It would have been nice to wrap my arms around a soft-voiced girl with sweet-smelling hair. Instead I nearly fell on my face after bumping into him as I was heading back to the campus. In his mind, I guess that made us fast friends.
Apparently, he too was taking refuge in the sure swish of the sea.
It was a fortnight later when his voice hailed me as if I was an old buddy, "Education is really a crock, isn't it? We don't learn from others, do we?"
I regarded him with a wary eye. I knew who he was or rather knew of his reputation.
"I haven't seen one guy get up on a wave and stand but they keep going out. Look there goes another one and pow, the wave knocks him down."
I was uneasy talking to him, not that I was talking any. I was uneasy being seen with him.
"Tell me they can't see that it's unrideable? But out they go. Education is really a crock of shit, isn't it?"
He was an ROTC instructor. He was supposed to have been exiled to that position as punishment after he punched, shot, stabbed, humiliated - take your pick according to the rumor you believe - his Vietnamese counterpart when his counterpart wouldn't advance his troops and it cost American lives during a joint military operation.
"You can tell them they're not going to make it and they can hear it and then out they go. In a perverse way, it's somewhat admirable I suppose. Americans can do. Americans can do because the rules of history don't apply to us.
"You can tell them and tell them. And watch them bomb and bomb till you can't look any more."
He continued, "You ever read Greene, no probably not, it's not required. He laid it out before us but we didn't see it. Why not?
"Is it just a matter of differing opinions or is it something much more alarming like an incapacity for understanding that which we don't experience. And are we then not doomed to stumble down twisted overgrown paths in the jungle. On the other hand, if some of us, any of us have foresight as to which trail, then shouldn't all of us have the capacity to find the way?"
I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I only knew that being seen with him was potentially dangerous. He was ROTC and you had to watch who your friends were. No one wants to look like a collaborator.
I begged out of there with some lame excuse and made a note to avoid the area or at least be on the lookout for strangers.
Eddie's voice brought me back to the present, "Who's this Sino guy?"
The ROTC instructor had it wrong. It doesn't matter that you know paddling out you don't have a chance to ride the wave. You're a surfer and that's what you do. Call it duty, ambition, or just plain old stupidity, you came to surf and it's the only ocean in town so out you go. Name me a person who fought for his country honorably, even in a losing conflict, even in a conflict that he knew was wrongheaded, even in a conflict whose main purpose was to inflict pain and suffering on an enemy that may be composed primarily of innocent civilians, but an enemy that would not be an enemy except for his presence, show me a person who fought for the United States and came back with his ambitions intact who couldn't use his service to his advantage.
I looked over at Eddie trying to make conversation and told him about the Sino-Soviet rift and Kissinger and Chile.