Monday
On American Flight 144 to Dulles. I have many errands in D.C. and
the area. I’ll tell you about them soon.
The man next to me in row 6 was a middle-aged fellow with thick
glasses. He reminded me of a younger version of Dr. Eldon Tyrell,
inventor of the replicants and their brains in Blade
Runner. Not quite normal, and a bit off base in his comments
to me. Like many annoying people, he started off his interaction
with me by saying, “I know I’ve seen you before but I can’t think
where.”
“TV,” I said. “I am on all of the time.”
“I don’t watch TV,” said this man, like many another annoying
people before him.
He told me his story. His father was a Czech Jewish man who was
an ardent Zionist and emigrated to “Palestine” before World War II.
He lived on a commune, a kibbutz, but the kibbutz foundered when
its engine — a single cow — died.
So, my neighbor’s father joined an Israeli rebel brigade similar
to the Irgun. Then, after Independence and fighting in all of
Israel’s wars, the dad came to New York and lived in a Hasidic,
ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn. My neighbor went to an
ultra-orthodox Jewish day school, then went off to college to study
to be an engineer. He said he was the first in his school to go to
college. The others went into their parents’ business or else
started their own businesses. “They made more money than I did
until I became a partner at Blank, a huge consulting firm.”
I wondered how he knew how much money they made but I just said,
“I am about my father’s business.”
“Really?” he asked me. “What was your father’s business?”
“Just a line from the New Testament,” I said. “My father was not
in business.”
I went to sleep for a very long time. My neighbor does not eat
airplane food because he is strictly Kosher and for other reasons
he did not divulge. He offered me his meal. I declined but thanked
him. The meal was not worth eating. A pitifully dry, tasteless
chicken.
When I awoke, we were nearing Dulles. The man asked me, “Are you
Jewish?”
“Of course,” I answered. “Don’t I look Jewish?”
“You quoted the New Testament,” he said.
“I don’t know what to say. There is a lot of wisdom in it.”
He man smiled cleverly and said, “I looked you up when you were
sleeping. You’re quite a controversial guy.”
The cheesy Internet age.
My driver, Bob Noah, was cheerily waiting for me. We went to a
nearly empty Georgetown Safeway (it was almost midnight). I bought
a few nothings and then went to my apartment and watched the
Military Channel about the battle of Crete in World War II. What a
story! What brave men were involved on both sides. Really
astounding people, the Germans and the British. I need to learn
more about it. A British officer named (I think) Leacock was a
super hero there. Crete looks beautiful but I won’t ever go
there.
Tuesday
Up and off to the new Walter Reed
Army Medical Center for badly wounded warriors from Iraq and
Afghanistan.
It is a cheerful building. They have put the medical part, the
rehab part, and the administrative offices all very near each
other, which is surprisingly uplifting.
What can I say? There are still men and they are still fighting
and they are still losing their limbs and getting killed and they
are almost all out of sight except within the military family.
What can I say except God bless them and we are humbled before
them. On our knees before them. No legs. One arm. Other arm
shattered. Still smiling. Still there. Still Americans. I walked
down each hall in a state of shock that men can be as brave as
these men are and that we do not have moments of prayer for them as
a nation day by day.
There are “Fisher Houses” where the families stay. I met a woman
who is there because her baby has a severe heart problem. The Army
flew them to Bethesda to work on the baby. I held the baby in my
arms. Two hundred and fifty heart beats per minute. God bless that
child. God bless the parents and the Army.
Army Blue, Army Blue,
Hurrah for the Army Blue…
Then back to the Watergate for a long nap, and then off to
dinner at Morton’s in Georgetown with Karl Rove and Aram
Bakshian.
Both men looked well. Karl is working extremely hard to get a
conservative government and to get the conservative point of view
across. He is an amazingly hard-working man. We talked about the
election. I guess it’s all confidential except that Karl is
optimistic. Aram and I did not say much. We are optimistic if he’s
optimistic.
Wednesday
A fine TV show on Fox with the
magnificent Jenna Lee about the Eurozone problems. “Help them out,”
say I. “If Europe goes under we’ll go under, too.” We had a lot of
fun.
Then, Bob, my pal and driver, and I headed out to the Eastern
Shore. I felt extremely upset after a talk with a doctor about
someone close to me who had serious mental problems. I felt
suicidal.
But I slept in the car, and soon we were in Oxford. Like a
homing pigeon, I am endlessly drawn to Oxford. It has cute houses.
The perfect Anglican church right on the Bay, and great sunset
views. Maybe I should have a home there. No, that would ruin it.
Besides, I cannot handle all of the homes I have already. Oxford
would be too much.
Bob and I admired a vintage 1956 Mercury Montclair Coupe of aqua
blue, then drove back towards Easton. We drove down Bailey’s Neck.
Wooded. Green. Mansions. Water. Perfect.
Then to the Tidewater Inn. The night was glorious, Seventy
degrees. No humidity. No insects. Crabcakes. Was I really suicidal
a few hours ago? Now, I feel great. Many men and women came over
and greeted me. I like being known.
I slept all of the way back to the Watergate.
Thursday
A show on CNN, also about the Eurozone. Then, a visit to the
National Museum of Natural History. I spent about an hour looking
at a display of an immense globe that showed the infinitude of
ocean currents, some ten thousand feet below the surface, carrying
water hither and yon in marvelously complex patterns. This happened
by accident? This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this
brave overarching firmament… I know I have that a bit wrong. But
all of this happened by chance? I strongly recommend a visit to the
Natural History Museum.
Then, the National Gallery of Art, where I rendezvoused with my
lovely Nan from New Haven and gave her a necklace. We have been
close friends since 1969. She has everything she needs. She’s an
artist. She don’t look back. Dylan. I was so happy to see my
Nan.
Then, dinner with two lovely middle-aged Polish/American women
who are extremely successful in business. One of them brought her
staggeringly beautiful daughter. Just a living doll.
The women told me about their grandfather in Poland in 1944.
Someone in his village had killed a Nazi soldier. The Nazis wanted
to take all of the young men of the village and kill them. But
their grandfather, a landed nobleman, hid his son and went to a
church with the other men. They were machine gunned, then the
church was set on fire. “The only way my grandmother could identify
my grandfather was that he had a silver cigarette case in his
breast pocket. When the beams of the church fell down, a beam made
a dent in his cigarette case. I still have that case,” said one of
the granddaughters.
And there we were, in America, eating deluxe food and beaming at
one another in America’s stupendous freedom land. The granddaughter
wants to be a rock star.
I wonder why I am drawn to these tales of Poland. None of my
ancestors was from Poland. Mysterious but what a brave, smart,
good-looking people.
Then, home to watch a documentary about Bush 41. What a man.
Major league heir. Great war hero. Baseball star. Fine President.
Modest. Loyal to this day to RN. He sees the flaws but also sees
the greatness.
I went to bed with my head swimming about how many spectacular
men and women are out there. What a piece of work is man, how noble
in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and movement how
express and admirable. Now, to sleep.
Saturday
This has been quite a day. We
are back in Beverly Hills but our poor old Cleo, an ancient German
short-haired pointer, is very weak and sickly. Extremely and can
barely walk. So we have decided to euthanize her. This is a bitter
pill and I spent the better part of the day in deep shock and
sorrow.
But then, by a miracle, at about 7 p.m., just as the vet pulled
up at our house, Cleo sprung off her bed and started walking around
in a sprightly way.
We had the euthanasia canceled and instead went to see Ridley
Scott’s new movie, Prometheus. Ridley Scott is the man who
gave us the best postwar movie, Blade Runner. He has to be
taken seriously.
Just buying the tickets online, finding parking in Century City,
getting into the immense theater — all of that was exhausting. I
am sure I was the oldest man in the theater.
But it was a spectacular movie in its look and feel. Well worth
seeing. In fact, absolute must viewing. The story made little
sense that I could make out, but the space ship was fabulous and
the sounds coming out of the speakers were breathtaking. It helped
that it was in 3D. That was truly an experience. The terrifying
giant worms were really an ordeal.
I find it fascinating that these sci-fi movies, made under the
capitalist system, in studios led by capitalists, are relentlessly
anti-capitalist. Blade Runner had as its main villain not
the replicants but the capitalist Tyrell (not Bob Tyrrell).
Avatar had as its main villains capitalist mining
companies. The heroes were semi-animals. (Maybe they have something
there.) And in Prometheus the villain is an extremely old
capitalist magnate who has spent a trillion dollars to find eternal
life, not caring at all how much human life is lost. I am sure I am
missing a lot here but I simply cannot recall a movie that has
heroes and villains where the villain was not a super rich
businessman. What was that James Bond movie where the villain was a
Rupert Murdoch lookalike? Well, in Hollywood, bastion of
capitalism, fortress of money worship, they grind out movies —
great ones sometimes — where the villain is almost always a
successful businessman — sometimes in outer space.
Envy plays a big role in human and artistic affairs.
