12/18/06
Driving out to the store the other day I noticed a Victorian child’s toy theater in the window of our local antique shop. It took me back to Christmases in my early childhood when, every year, I would find a Pollock’s toy theater book in my stocking.
My cousin Barbara and I would cut out the various pieces to make the theater from the thick card pages, and paste them together - then we’d cut out all the little figures and paste them on the thin wooden skewers which we’d inveigled from cook.
Then we were ready to begin.
At the back of the book there were scripts for the plays – but we never bothered with those. We created our own dramas. Dramas that got progressively more violent as the shadows lengthened. By the time we were called to the table the theater was always a ruin - and one or other of us had retired in tears.
Looking back on it now I can see that the toy was designed solely for the purpose of turning young Victorian males into boorish pricks.
We were on our way to the store in a hunt for items that Linda desperately needed in order to create a traditional Thanksgiving here in our little German ‘Old Town’. That particular day it was a search for the elusive cranberry.
Both Linda and I think Thanksgiving is a much nicer festival than Christmas. Christmas has become a total corruption of everything it was supposed to represent. There is now little, if any, Christ in Christmas. Madison Avenue is now the reason for the Season.
Everyone suffers from what I call the Gift Guilt. You must know what I mean.
‘Did we spend enough on Aunt Clara’s gift?’ ‘What did Uncle Robert give us last year?’ ‘Cousin George spent thirty eight fifty on that book we got from him. The shirt we got him this year only cost fifteen bucks. Do you think he’ll notice?’
It’s a horror show!
The worst fights I can remember at home always occurred at Christmastime, when everyone was stressed out.
Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is the way that Christmas ought to be. Full of good cheer, warm friendship, and bonhomie. At Thanksgiving all one expects is a full stomach.
How’s this for an idea - let’s change the Christchild’s birthdate (once again) - and move it to Thanksgiving?
-oOo-
Anyway, this year we were attempting to create a real American Thanksgiving for Adam.
Adam is a young American friend who was coming to stay with us for a few days, with his wife Maria, and their young baby.
A few months ago Adam was standing next to his best friend - when his friend was vapourised by a mortar bomb. The explosion removed part of Adam’s leg, They couldn’t find enough of his friend to put in a casket, so they made up the weight with some sandbags and rubble. There’s a lot of rubble in the streets in Iraq.
Adam is now back in a military hospital outside Frankfurt, trying to adapt to only having part of a leg.
He is consumed with guilt. Guilt that it was not he that was killed. Guilt that he is not back with his platoon. Guilt that he has somehow let his country down.
He is taking strong medication to diminish the pain in his leg – and also to ease his depression.
He is a very gentle soul. Very young. Very idealistic. Very naïve.
He joined the army because he wanted to get a college education. The recruiting officer who inducted him promised him one. If you’re poor it’s the only way to get to college. Now he’s looking at a very bleak future. He’s just hoping that the army will make good its promise. If you’re poor, and lame, the American Dream can very quickly become a nightmare
Here I am, sitting at my computer, writing this ‘What’s New?’ column. I have a Jackson Browne CD in the computer, playing softly as I write.
A line in one of the songs cuts through my train of thought.
‘Who are the men in the shadows?’
Who, indeed? It starts me thinking.
I can sense this turning into a ‘Soap Box’ column
I’ve always been a writer, so I have a well-developed sense of ‘What if?’
In fact every story I’ve ever written began with me thinking, ‘What if…?’
So, sitting at my computer, a mug of coffee rapidly cooling on my desk, thinking about Adam’s visit, I ponder just why the hell we’re in Iraq.
Whose dumb idea was it? It surely wasn’t because Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of the Twin Towers. It can’t have been because he was a tyrant. Not only did we support him and supply him with weapons - even train his damn’ army, but we also support far worse tyrants all ‘round the world.
We knew before we ever invaded Iraq that he didn’t have any Weapons of Mass Destruction. So…why did we go in?
Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that the short answer is MONEY!
War makes money for a lot of people. People like the guys who own or run large corporations. They all wring their hands about how much money they’re losing – how business is terrible – how their year-end figures are down. But what about those ‘black’ government contracts? Contracts that don’t show up on any books? What about those, eh?
Someone is making a bundle making all those weapons, all that ammunition, the uniforms, the vehicles.
Not to mention the oil!
Yes, it’s definitely a ‘Soap Box’ column…or, maybe, a science-fiction story for the next book.
The Jackson Browne CD comes to an end. The player rumbles and coughs…and Jackson’s world-weary voice begins the first song again.
My fingers are beginning to move over the keys of my coffee-stained Mac.
I feel the tentative beginnings of a story.
A story about a society gone mad.
What if…the whole political structure that we espoused were just window-dressing?
What if the large corporations had gotten together and decided to work together for their own common good – at the expense of the citizenry?
What if, to them, national boundaries were as insubstantial as cigar smoke.
What if they had decided to create a vast organization that was multinational and which used politicians as mere puppets.
What if they fostered elections as a way to keep the people quiet;. As a diversion – in the same way that certain South American tyrants have fostered soccer as a way of channeling the dissatisfaction of their populace?
I know it’s all conjecture, and supposition…but what if ‘the men in the shadows’ were real? What if the politicians we voted for were being manipulated like characters in my old toy theaters?
What if the two-party system we have trusted over the years were a total sham?
What if young men like Adam were sacrificing their lives for no other reason that to feed the greed of a power-hungry multinational machine?
What if the men in the shadows were planning to carve up our world like a Thanksgiving turkey?
Nah! That’s all too far-fetched…even for a science-fiction story…
…Isn’t it?
