Speechless

What does one say when confronted by this image, this fact, of a shattered boy?

Found in rubble in a Syrian city, family missing, mute, what can you say to him that will give him hope and take away his pain and fear?

God sees him, and all like him, and weeps. 

Sound Familiar?

I was reading a history of the First World War by the late John Keegan the other day, and among the many acute observations made by him in the book was this remark concerning its horrifying consequences where the affected societies were concerned:

…

"Totalitarianism was the political continuation of war by other means. It uniformed and militarised its mass electoral following, while depriving voters generally of their electoral rights, exciting their lowest political instincts and marginalising and menacing all internal opposition."

…

Sounds all too familiar these days, doesn't it?

Hearts Aloft • The Aubrey-Maturin Narrative

(First published in the 30th Anniversary issue of the Bookshop Santa Cruz Newsletter, December, 1996.)

When I was a boy and wanted to read a book that I suspected would become one of my favorites (joining The Bounty Trilogy, Wind In the Willows, Treasure Island, and Call of the Wild, among many others), I would lift a hatch cover in a planked deck near a big steering wheel, and drop into a small compartment called the lazaret. For I lived aboard a two-masted schooner, a true windjammer, built in the shipyards of south 'Frisco in 1893, and now, at this time in both our lives, being readied to make a long voyage toward the South Seas.
   The lazaret held bundles of spare sailcloth and balls of rope yarn and thread and beeswax, linseed oil and tarred hemp twine, sheets of oilskin, coils of the best Manila rope, and much else: all critically necessary to the life of a ship and her crew. It was also my special hideout: a kind of harbor within, where I went to disappear into worlds not yet known, or not known well enough. Surrounded by the hull, water faintly lapping below (the sound still closer to my heart than any music yet heard), my imagination cast free and made passages unfettered by routine.
   And I have wondered at times if my reading since (the schooner gone long ago, wrecked on a coral atoll some thirty-five years past; the boy's gait now mostly that of a landsman, no longer rolling in unconscious time to the dance of a deck under sail) has been a kind of attempt to find those writers, those stories, that will help me return to that life and the lazaret.

*

Patrick O'Brian, a reclusive eighty-one year-old Anglo-Irish gentle- man living in the mountains of southern France, has spent a quarter-century composing a novel that, with the publication of its latest segment, The Yellow Admiral, will consist of eighteen volumes and some 6,000 pages. Begun in 1969, following the publication of a handsome number of novels and short-story collections, a biography of Picasso, and translations of Lacouture and de Beauvoir, the work in its entirety - often referred to as the Aubrey-Maturin Narrative - is set in the very early nineteenth century. Jack Aubrey, a brave and bluff man of great presence and far-flung reputation, serves in England's navy during its long and relentless war against the fleets of Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies. Through a rather charming turn of events, Aubrey's life becomes intertwined with that of Stephen Maturin, a small saturnine Irish physician, whose medical skills are matched only by his hidden abilities as a freelance intelligence agent, and it is the remarkable range of events large and small, and the most intense emotions, that holds the Narrative together. Battle - long deepwater voyages - marriage and family - spying - drug addiction - wealth and poverty: all appear, vanish, and reappear over the course of two decades.

   O'Brian's precise observation and use of historical detail is unex- celled by any other novelist I've encountered; his characters are fully-realized individuals, and his reflections on life are acute and humane (and, often, wickedly funny). The cumulative effect immerses the reader in a world both familiar and mysterious, a world so compelling that they will return to it again and again.

   The first open and unqualified expression of friendship between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin occurs in the first volume of the Narrative, Master and Commander, when Stephen learns that Jack has received a promotion, one of a number critically needed that the young officer might make the long and perilous ascent (as dangerous, in its way, as going aloft in a full gale) through the levels of command in his chosen profession. "I wish you joy of it with all my heart, sure," Stephen says.

   For those fortunate readers about to begin their acquaintance with Patrick O'Brian,, and with the wonderful story he has given us: I wish you joy of the extraordinary passage ahead.

Poetic Observations • 9

Our children are our legends.
You are mine. You have our name.
My hair was once like yours.

And the world
is less bitter to me
because you will retell the story.

From Legends
Eavan Boland

Dedication

Many years ago (over a half-century now) in the town of Papeete on the island of Tahiti, there lived a man who managed to survive by constantly scavenging garbage cans and piles of refuse and street gutters. His features were asian, but no one seemed to know where he had been born, where he had come from. No one knew his true name. He rarely spoke, and then only to himself. He concentrated entirely on his work, his face locked in a grimace.

   One day four young boys, began following him, keeping their distance, but never letting him out of their sight. Soon they began making fun of him and what he did, joking that he probably ate the garbage and all kinds of other horrible tasting stuff, and how stupid he was for doing that. They said these things often, not caring if he heard them because they knew he couldn’t understand them. They named him Chik Chak, yelling it at him as if he were a dog to be trained to recognize it. Sometimes they chanted it as they followed him, and once in awhile he stared back over a shoulder at them and anger distorted his face. Off and on for months they shadowed him.

   Then one day they left the island, never to return. They rarely spoke of the man and what they had done to him, and when they did it was only another memory from their childhoods, nothing special.

I was one of those boys.

I will continue to ask his forgiveness for the rest of my life. The Legions In the Mud posts are dedicated to him, to all those held in slums and pits and dumps, ridiculed and forgotten.

Indispensable

Anyone who uses a bicycle as their primary transportation quickly understands that constant and unflagging awareness of their surroundings on whatever kind of road they're using is key to       their survival. And while the need for protection in the form of helmets is pretty much indisputable, I will maintain that another       item – especially a particular variant of it – is just as valuable.

This bit of genius is the Take-a-Look Mirror from Bike Peddler. It can be fastened to a helmet or glasses. If using the latter, flat-sided stems provide the easiest fit, but round work as well. I've used one of these for years (literally one – I've never had to repair or replace it), and I cannot overemphasize how valuable it's been. It can be adjusted to give you precisely the angle you need to keep an eye on the traffic behind you. While it does take some trial-and-error to get that angle right, it doesn't take long, and re-setting it (not something you have to do often) is easy, since vibration from riding doesn't jiggle the mirror out of its setting. The acrylic mirror allows you to see details clearly at well more than a hundred yards distant. Best of all, this mirror allows you to dart your gaze at it for only an instant to see what you need to before turning back to the road ahead.

   Available in many bike shops as well as online, it sells for fifteen to twenty dollars. 

Poetic Observations • 8

.         .         .

The cottage had lost its roof long since and it was filled tight with lilac, not yet in bloom, while nettle and elder had overwhelmed the outbuilding behind; but there was still a stone bench by the door, and Stephen sat upon it, leaning against the wall. Down here in the hollow the night had not yet yielded, and there was still a green twilight. An ancient wood:  the slope was too great and the ground too broken for it ever to have been cut or tended and the trees were still part of the primaeval forest; vast shapeless oaks, often hollow and useless for timber, held out their arms and their young fresh green leaves almost to the middle of the clearing, held them out with never a tremor,       for down here the air was so still that gossamer floated with no perceptible movement at all. Still and silent: although far-off blackbirds could be heard away on the edge of the wood and although the stream at the bottom murmured perpetually the combe was filled with a living silence.

.         .         .

From The Reverse of the Medal
Patrick O'Brian