Fickle Food

Fame is a fickle food
Upon a shifting plate
Whose table once a
Guest but not
The second time is set.

Whose crumbs the crows inspect
And with ironic caw
Flap past it to the Farmer's Corn –- 
Men eat of it and die.

Emily Dickinson: Fame is a fickle food (1659)

The sound caught me off-guard, a squishing sort of slurp followed by the sharp tang of salt—hot and viscous—as his blood splattered across my face. I did not know his name; we were just getting acquainted. Now, I never would. The bullet had flown into his face with such thunderous power nothing of the features remained, except for an eye that now dangled at the end of its optic nerve surrounded by a frame of splattered flesh. A moment before, he’d just asked me of my reason for being there—was it business or pleasure?—as we sat cross-legged on the cool terrazzo floor of the airport—waiting—thankful for the slow circulating fans that had stirred the fetid air around their rattan blades, without concern or notice of what had just happened. What had just happened? I knew I had no clue, other than to twitch my gaze from one side of the lobby to the other, as I had crouched behind a stone column that had become what I thought would be a safe haven. How foolish; weapons with that kind of power could eat through cheap concrete just as easily as through bone. The chunk of collapsing lead lay spent within the bloody detritus that now convulsed its life into an ever-widening sticky thickness of blood—its purpose complete. What purpose—I asked myself—could the person have had who, somewhere, pulled the trigger of that leaden emissary, igniting the bright spark of death?

I had never really understood the use of weapons. Don’t get me wrong. I know a Beretta from a Walther PPK; I’ve read my Ian Fleming. My basement held its strong box where my own Browning 380 auto lay surrounded by two boxes of fresh ammunition. Yet that security really seemed too primitive and permanent for modern times—no conversations had a hope of continuing after its interrupting cough. Then again, it was the cough that had turned my attention here—the gurgling splutter of ragged breath, drawn through bloodied foam where a mouth had been. I was after all, a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune. How could democracy and capitalism hold their own if the premiere publication of the expatriate community avoided its duty to deliver timely insight about this place? I was the conduit of reason through which good men found out what they might do to stem the tide of tyranny. What was needed to counter this barbarism was what I did—capture life at its most raw and put it, un-bandaged and screaming, into print. At least that is what I had thought as I muttered into my tape recorder behind a concrete column that afternoon in Burkina Faso. Before the next round found me, before it snatched away my sight and left me unable to move—the doctor told the people around my bed that I was lucky that the sniper had misjudged his prowess, skipping a round off the other column across from where I crouched—I had been unaware of my vulnerability to such things. Now the doctor didn’t to me but rather spoke about the person in the bed with the gunshot wounds; it sickened him ill to realize there was nothing he could do with the vestiges of my arms, torn to ribbons when the automatic fire had skipped its way along the tiled walls. There was nothing he could do to help me walk…without ankles or feet. He had done his best; he had kept me alive at his little clinic, when they had scooped me up off the floor, my blood smeared along the terrazzo next to the jumbled morass of blood and bone that had been my unknown traveling companion.

I lie here now wondering what I thought I knew, what value I delivered to an unbidden audience. I heard they gave me the Pulitzer for the words they found on the tape recorder; my editor was always a real stand-up guy. I know that people seem only interested in learning about “life gone wrong”; no one wants to have someone play back a day from a Thomas Kincaid landscape. We need to have someone help us through the horror, telling us its story, giving us fresh meaning to the carnage. We must be somehow distracted from that larger work—seeking the meaning of our own lives.

I wish someone would tell me what that means. Come back and see me, won’t you? I’d rather not have you here when mealtime comes, when I have to let the nurses feed me with that pureed crap they call a liquid diet. I’ll be so glad when this is over; it is going to be over soon, isn’t it?

Written on American Airlines flight 2442 returning from business with Sun Microsystems and time with my brother Bob in California, 13 August 2006

Sideways…and back

He didn’t expect it, since he’d always taken it for granted. Second sight, some called it; he’d just thought it was thoughtful clarity, personal insight. He’d always finished other people’s sentences, certain he knew what they meant, even if they had trouble explaining. Many’s the time he’d said, “I know just what you mean” and really did, though he knew others just thought he was being nice. Nice—what a crock! Hearing other people’s thoughts, seeing other people’s problems had had its advantages—it was a great way to be the center of attention at conferences, it made him a wonderful first date—so thoughtful and insightful! But then he’d know what always came next—an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia—not of space, but of mind. He’d retreat to his own world, to the hermitage of his own thoughts.

The man sitting in the green velvet armchair in the corner spot at the neighborhood Starbucks never really seemed to be in the way—he always had a quip, a sympathetic wink that seemed just perfectly appropriate. But now, he seemed a little freaky, a little too slick. Not that he went too far, or got in anyone’s way; it just became too easy to let your heart’s problem out in his presence only to find it delivered back, all nicely tied up—like a birthday present complete with green velvet ribbon.

He didn’t remember when he noticed the difference. He was just as thoughtful as he’d always been as he’d make his regular order—tall mocha extra whip…like he needed the extra calories! Ever since he’d started his consultancy, he’d been moving less physically, though his personal pace only seemed to quicken as the challenges he faced quickly retreated in his professional rear view mirror. People came to him desperate for solutions; he’d listen and as they spoke, the answer would announce itself. They always wanted him to tell them his insights slowly, make him beg for details, or contradict his nearly immediate proposals. But he’d never seem to notice; when we first started he hadn’t even written down anything, thinking they’d wanted to get help right at the moment they asked. But now it seemed, more often than not, that they just wanted to complain, to explain why their future seemed so opaque to anyone’s understanding. He’d tried to explain that it wasn’t so—he’d start to give them an explanation of how he saw their solutions. “No”, they’d say, “you don’t get it—you’re just looking at the ‘wave tops’, you don’t get the complexity I’m facing”. But complexity was only apparent at close range, he’d wanted to tell them; just pull back, get a little altitude and everything smoothed right out like in Google Earth.

But all that didn’t matter now. The soft, comfortable embrace of fabric still seemed like an enveloping hug. Yet it wasn’t the comfort it once had been. The caffeine just turned up the clarity, sped the processing and sharpened the focus—like he’d needed any of that! Nowadays, he ordered a decaf mocha, just savoring the richness of coffee bean and cocoa nut. Now he spent more of his attention along the track the other way—seeking sleep, rest and mental recuperation. But sleep without dreams didn’t get the answers out of his mind, it seemed to only keep them piling up. What to do? Where to go so he “did no harm?” For giving people answers only made them mad. He would have asked himself or someone else like himself. Where’d that be?

Making lattes and cappuccinos helped to take his mind off. He could let his mind just focus on their faces; the ones that matched their drinks. What he couldn’t bring himself to do was to admit how he knew them. It was the fact that they told him before the words found their way to his ears. He’d become a legend in the neighborhood—the barista who always seemed to be psychic with just the right drink for their day. He’d just chuckled and said he heard that…but the guy in the corner armchair—what to do about him? He didn’t seem to know that he wasn’t alone or did he? He could never be certain but it seemed to him that every time he let his mind wander over near the armchair, he’d hear his own voice and it scared him. What were those thoughts, what was he going to do with them?

Sideways and back,…what did it mean? He knew, of course. It was the way he worked when he tuned in to others’ take a parallel perspective and then step back in time to let the story play itself out slow. It gave one time to look at all the angles, realize the point before it faded with the rush that always overwhelmed most professional’s reflections. But what did that have to do with him? What was the young man behind the bar trying to tell him, when he wandered over in his mind and offered help?

The young woman stood in the rain, the warm downpour washing her skin with its soft tickle as the cotton fabric of her dress soaked itself to the curves others found so mesmerizing. She tipped her head back, opening her mouth wide so that the sweet clean of the storm overhead could fill her taste with its crisp ozone neutrality. As she swallowed, a slow smile spread across her freckled face. It was a smile usually called a smirk by those who knew her well. She’d always disagreed. Her smile was just the personal sense of knowing, not the compliment others thought they gave when they called it beatific—she called that thought “just stupid” and refused to put such a vacant thing onto her face.

He never came back to the corner green armchair; some said he’d moved or been transferred to another city. But the barista behind the bar knew where he’d gone; he’d gone to join Lao Tzu who’d done the same thing one afternoon back in the sixth century B.C. He’d just gotten on his ox and ridden off…never to be seen again. In Christian lore, he would have been one who had followed Enoch and “walked with God until he was no more, for God took him…” But it all meant the same, one way or the other those who saw the future often seemed to decide to go and live there. How? By stepping across the timeline and back a bit so they could decide just where they wanted to come in. He’d thought about it once or twice himself, but that’s all it’d been. How could he know for sure it’d work? What if he couldn’t come back? He put a sleeve around another latte and sighed. He’d miss that man in the velvet armchair.

She felt him watching her, but she didn’t mind. It was what she did, after all. She took another mouthful of rain, as her auburn curls twisted themselves around her ears, showing off the Celtic knot silver earrings she loved so much right now. But then she decided it was time to greet him. After all, he’d been here so often by himself in other people’s thoughts, solving other people’s problems. Trouble was, he was always in such a rush. He’d never stopped to notice her. So she’d tried to get his attention; sometimes she had gone skinny dipping in a mountain pool as the waterfall plashed in the background, other times she had tried lying nude on some powdery-white sandy shore adding to her skin’s freckle count. It didn’t matter—he’d been intent on something else, gazing off into someone else’s world seeking clarity, finding answers for other people’s struggles but now…something seemed to have happened. He was looking right at her and -- by God!-- if he didn’t have a smirk on his face! All right, he’d earned it. She shrugged off the simple pullover dress she’d put on earlier and opened her green velvet eyes. “Yes”, she said, “this is sideways…and back. Welcome!”

Written: on an Air Tran flight enroute from Boston to Norfolk, 5 Sep 06.

Trusted Counsel…

It is not an easy task
This giving of trusted counsel.
It means that what you say matters
Whether or not it is popular
Or easy
Or safe.
But it is trusted counsel.
It is the counsel that tells a commander
Frightened by the events that have just happened
That have woken both of you in the middle of the night
To tell you something horrible…completely unexpected.
Oh, you know that such things can happen,
You think of them in your dreams
Whenever you practice the work you do in exercises.
But to have them really happen, right in front of your eyes
Right where all eyes turn…
To you for answers.
That’s trusted counsel.
So he speaks and says, “all right, PA, whadayathink?”
And in that split second you know
Know that the words you speak will be words that he will act upon,
Words that may haunt him for the rest of his life,
Words that may result in the sudden conclusion of his career
That is so much senior to your own.
But you make it…you tell him,
“Sir, you have to tell them now.
You have to tell the truth.
You have to tell them that you will find out what has happened
So that it won’t happen again.”

You listen to the stammer,
The choked up sound of that voice you know you trust.
You look in those eyes that have seen combat, death, love and then you see it…
The change in his face, the look in his eyes and he says,
“OK, we’ll do it.
We’ll do what’s right, damn it!”

And you reassure him,
Work your heart out to be sure the hounds of the fourth estate get it right, make sure they know the honor,
The courage and the determination of that man you’re speaking for.

Yes, that’s trusted counsel…
But right now, somehow, we’re forgetting to do that as we should.
We’re listening to those olden voices we said we were protecting against.
The ones of prejudice,
The ones who name call,
The ones who are certain that race and religion tell more about a man
Than his actions and his heart.
We must not shirk our duty in these days of terror.
We must ferret out the sounds of hatred,
Of long-dead vengeance waiting patiently to be unleashed
On the unsuspecting future.
We must not let ourselves believe that we can be company to those
Who would elicit our help in settling scores from battlefields long gone.
We must give trusted counsel…
That helps our communities have trust in each other,
To say to those who would try and make us hate,
“You’ve come to the wrong address, my friend. We hold these truths
To be self-evident…”

There are those who would advise our commanders to believe the lies
The same lies they are encouraged to believe in
During some accident or tragedy.
The lie that says that we can hide our fear,
Masquerade our hate, and relabel our lust for power.
Yes, we know it is wrong to blame some airman
For the Broken Arrow that came from an icy road.
So too is it wrong to let someone take away trust, credibility and collaboration through the use of tools that were not built for manufacturing fear.

If we do not stand up for what we know is right,
If we do not help communication to triumph over information
We will have only ourselves to blame
As we slip into the darkness of another Age
Where ignorance triumphs over hope.


When the scourge of Muslim nationalism first reared its horrid head
No one really noticed what was going on.
Good people let them have their way,
Worked with them against other enemies.
But when their evil work was done, an entire way of life,
Half of the Christian Church
The one we now call the “Church of the East” was gone,
After one thousand years of prosperity, success and warm-hearted helpfulness.
No branch of the Christian faith worked so well with others,
Finding ways to work together across the faiths,
Sharing the gift they had in such a way
As to be the answer for the other’s needs.
And yet…it is gone now except for a couple thousand people
Hanging on in northern Iraq.

Our nation has been here less than three hundred years
Yet we have given to the world new hope, new comfort…
Trusted counsel…

Let us not betray that trust by keeping silent when someone asks,
“So whadaya think, PA?”





















--Thoughts on hearing the closing arguments of the defense of journalism in Snow Falling on Cedars, 6/11/02