(Pre) Determined?

      What have I done to deserve such a fate, asked The Beatles?  And while their song dealt with a relationship going sour, I often tend to ask myself that question but in a positive way.  So many others, especially as winter approaches and cash begins to tighten, have been dealt a far tougher hand than me, for what appears to be little reason.  However you want to say it --luck of the draw; ours is not to question why; God works in mysterious ways, even Einstein's "God does not play dice with the universe"*-- sometimes life proves more difficult for some than it does others.  Much of this thinking began for me with a bit of serendipity, a friend of mine recommending that I read his friend's books, one of the books being the author's time spent as a medic during the Vietnam War; and the other being his return to working at Disneyland and going from clown make-up artist to creating the Main Street Electrical Parade, a light show which would be viewed by a hundred million people.  Perhaps the idea of thousands of lights passing by people was purely by chance, or perhaps it was influenced by his memory of tracer bullets flying over his head.  Looking at such a life, one has to wonder about "the stars aligning"  and why for some and not others.  Life can go either way, or every which way.  The swerving car hits you or narrowly misses you; the person you were meant to be with walks into your life or continues on by; the job you wanted appears by chance or never comes up.  For author Sherman, his first experience as a medic saw the soldier in front of him killed by a sniper.  Here's how the author put it: He was walking beside me one minute, then lay flat dead.  "Never even felt the ground hit him."  Not at all like the long-winded death scenes in old movies, where the hero's sidekick, cradled in his arms, leaves a list of regrets and apologies and remembrances.  Hollywood showed some decorum in the way it knocked off cowboys and soldiers.  This "dying before you knew what hit you" had no poetic appeal whatsoever.  Whatever happened to that long last letter home?  "Tell Mom not to cry for me, Billy."

      And while I enjoyed reliving the memories of Disneyland and hearing names such as Melodyland and Katella, it was his book on Vietnam that I found more interesting, an experience foreign to me (the draft was winding down at the time and shifting to a lottery system where I randomly garnished a high number, virtually sealing my fate that I would not be called to serve).  National Geographic had another version of war, and another subject foreign to many, that of the Marines being the last to integrate and to allow black men to even apply for service, something which didn't happen until 1943.  Said part of the article:  As the nation prepared to fully engage in WWII, the need for recruits rose exponentially.  Iconic civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph saw an opportunity to ignite the issues of equity and access.  He had organized and led the first African American labor union—the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters—and was planning a march on Washington for more defense industry opportunities and better treatment of Blacks in the military, where racism and segregation within ranks was still rife.  Even then the Commandant, Major General Thomas Holcomb, rejected the possibility of Black recruits: “If it were a question of having a Marine Corps of 5,000 whites or 250,000 Negroes, I would rather the whites,” he is reported to have said.

      My friend who recommended the books above has a father who served in WW II, and who remains mentally sharp even as he nears the century mark.  He still marches in the Veterans Day parade in his town, unassisted, although he is now one of only three from that era to still do so.  I vaguely remember him,  not as a veteran but as a father to the middle school friend whose house we played at or rendezvoused for other adventures.  And now that I have been lucky enough to grow older, I reflect more on the many people I've met throughout that journey, some of whom have lived all over the world while others have never left their childhood home.  Some have lost friends and family at a young age while others have parents still doing well in their 90s.  Life's a gamble and tomorrow never knows...or does it?  As Yogi Berra used to say, "the future ain't what it used to be."  Seven come eleven...

     It was thus that I happened up two books, one being on hikes around the world, and the other being on the death industry, both fitting for the thoughts swirling around me.  Picking up Hike (by Eyewitness Press), it began: Compiled by a team of eager outdoor enthusiasts, this book features a curated selection of 125 spectacular walking trails across the globe.  Some have been chosen for their stunning scenery, some for their intriguing history, and others for the inspiring challenge they present.  (We say: dream big)  No route has been deemed too short or long, with the options ranging from a half-day boardwalk stroll around a spongy bog in Estonia to an epic six-month trek along the Appalachian Trail in the US.  Upon opening the book I expected to find many of the trails I had already explored throughout my life, especially in the states or countries I had visited.  So imagine my surprise to find only a single one I had trekked.  What the book did show me was how little I had traveled or even known about the landscapes of this planet since I had expected to find Hadrian's Wall or perhaps hiking up Yosemite Falls or Angel's Landing, not hikes in Norway or Greenland, Bolivia or Ethiopia.  What a world awaited, it told me; how much more there was to discover.  It was similar to a friend inviting us over for dinner the other night and my wife and I sitting down with an entirely new group of people; some were neighbors of our friend, and some lived just down the street, but each of them were interesting in their own way with many stories and languages from the countries they had lived in...the talks during dinner had little fluff as discussions ranged from the impacts of moving while a child, to stuttering and its origins, and even to a lively back and forth on spiritual vs. religious beliefs.  In all, as with the hiking book, my wife and I realized that a world of new experiences --countries, people, childhoods-- lay just in front of us, waiting to be uncovered.  One of the guests from Singapore still had a friend in China whom she had known since kindergarten, both of their lives now so different and separated and yet their friendship as strong as ever (from her I learned about Hokkien, just one of the 320 languages --vs. dialects-- spoken in China).  "Perhaps I should have never left," she told me, "for my friend seems so content," this from a person who has lived in 5 countries and speaks 4 languages ("I love a challenge," she giggled).

     The other book was titled All the Living and the Dead, which was subtitled "...an exploration of the people who have made death their life's work."  Sounds a bit morbid, eh?  But what author Hayley Campbell seemingly wanted to convey was that we shouldn't fear death, since, in her opening quote by James Baldwin said: Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives...in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.  Later in the book, author Campbell added: I have thought, often, of a woman I met years ago, who told me about her mother dying in hospital.  She didn't go to see her because she didn't want her final image to be one of death, so she let her mother die alone.  She was sixty and had never seen a dead body before, and she imagined that a lifetime of memories could be replaced by a single one in a hospital bed.  She believed that it was the image of death that would irreparably break something inside her, rather than face her loss.  I think there is urgent, life-changing knowledge to be gained from becoming familiar with death, and from not letting your limits be guided by a fear of unknown things: the knowledge that you can stand to be near it, so that when the time comes you will not let someone you love die alone.

     It's a bit of a losing battle, or as Michael Bryne put it in Vice, "Earth is just waiting for you to drop dead."  To be a bit more graphic and morbid, here's what author and neurobiologist Moheb Costandi wrote in Mosaic: Decomposition begins several minutes after death with a process called autolysis, or self-digestion.  Soon after the heart stops beating, cells become deprived of oxygen, and their acidity increases as the toxic by-products of chemical reactions begin to accumulate inside them.  Enzymes start to digest cell membranes and then leak out as the cells break down.  This usually begins in the liver, which is rich in enzymes, and in the brain, which has a high water content.  Eventually, though, all other tissues and organs begin to break down in this way.  Damaged blood cells begin to spill out of broken vessels and, aided by gravity, settle in the capillaries and small veins, discolouring the skin.  Body temperature also begins to drop, until it has acclimatised to its surroundings.  Then, rigor mortis --"the stiffness of death”-- sets in, starting in the eyelids, jaw and neck muscles, before working its way into the trunk and then the limbs...In the relentless dry heat of a Texan summer, a body left to the elements will mummify rather than decompose fully.  The skin will quickly lose all of its moisture, so that it remains clinging to the bones when the process is complete.  The speed of the chemical reactions involved doubles with every 10°C rise in temperature, so a cadaver will reach an advanced stage of decomposition after 16 days at an average daily temperature of 25°C (77F).  

     So there's knowing that we will die (a fact), and now knowing what happens when we die, and also asking ourselves whether we want to see or face dying, either our own or that of others.  What we don't seem to know is when.  My wife's mum used to tell my wife and I about hearing the doodlebugs during the war (WW II), the English slang term for the German V-1 and V-2 rockets which had a limited amount of fuel or a timed cutoff, their rocket "sound" suddenly going silent which meant the bomb was going to fall perilously close to where you were.  She was 14 at the time, huddling among the many others seeking shelter in the Underground, the subway system that wove its way deep throughout the innards of London.  Said the piece in the London Review: Those early Nazi drones, launched from mainland Europe, killed thousands of people, caused heavy destruction in towns and cities already partly ruined by conventional bombing, and badly hurt morale in London...V-1s and V-2 rockets destroyed or damaged more than a million homes...Ziegler (Philip Ziegler, author of London at War) quotes Everlyn Waugh: "No enemy was risking his life up there.  It was as impersonal as a plague, as though the city was infested with enormous, venomous insects."  The article was comparing the V-1 to the current Iranian Shahed-136 drone missile being used by Russia against Ukraine, a relatively cheap (about 1/10 the cost of a typical "defense" missile from Germany) and noisy pilotless drone that Ukrainians nickname "the moped."  It is so slow that it can be shot down with any heavy-gauge machine-gun.  But while Ukraine has allegedly shot down 200 such drones, their intelligence says that Russia has 10x that amount of "moped" missiles and is creating a factory to produce more of the easy-to-make antiquated drones.  The missiles are fired in volleys, over and over, and are responsible for much of the recent infrastructure damage to Ukraine, one goal possibly being to make Ukraine use up its expensive anti-missile weapons in shooting down these cheap ones.  The attacks seem unlikely to help Russia om the battlefield.  But they might, as the V-1s did in London, cause great individual suffering and a slump in civilian morale.  In the longer run, if the heating goes, there will be another exodus of refugees.  But there's a strong chance that it will make the Ukrainians who stay more stubborn and vengeful.

     Speaking of stubborn, the pictures on this post show that despite two recent snowfalls with nights in the low 20s, many of our trees have yet to fully drop their leaves.  I was so used to raking day after day each fall, coating my flowerbeds with the warmth and nourishment of the mulched leaves.  But this year, it is a slow process.  The leaves are turning their bright colors as the chlorophyll withdraws and the trees begin to move into a hibernating state; but a quick look around and fully half of the trees surrounding our city still have enough leaves on them to block views and sunlight.  It is a rare beauty but one that puzzles me.  In the 2019 movie The Aeronauts (based on true events), actors Eddie Redmayneeath in the cold, thin air as their hot air balloon continued to pass 26000 feet in altitude.  Once the heart-pounding scene (for both viewer and actors) is over, the two characters sit down to reflect on what just happened.  Said Jones: Tell me about yourself, to which Redmayne replies: Newton said that we build too many walls and bridges.  Jones: I don't want to hear about Newton.  I want to hear from you.  Redmayne pauses for quite awhile, then says: All my life, I've found comfort in science.  It helps give meaning to the many things we can't control.  It brings a degree of order the chaos that surrounds us.  But whilst we may be able to explain the science behind an aureole or the falling snow...it's not possible to account for its beauty. 

     It is said over and over that few veterans will talk of their experiences, despite the books and interviews that appear.  My brother's friend was a Navy SEAL and only once did I hear a brief half-sentence tale when he was drunk with celebration in his 40s.  My stepfather was the same way.  One brief sentence if one was lucky; but never again (author Sherman was a medic who served in Vietnam but did so as a conscientious objector and refused to carry a weapon).  The exploits of civilians and POWs, such as the recent book The Escape Artist, show one side of the horrors of war and what an uncertain future looks like when it continues to stare you in the face a bit too blindingly.  Not so much for the soldiers who faced sights many of us will never witness and for the most part found themselves suddenly slammed into adulthood, a reality shockingly stark and yet so beautifully depicted in the German remake of All Quiet on the Western Front.  And for newly-recruited black Marines mentioned above, there were additional burdens revealed in the National Geographic piece: Said 98-year old Carroll William Braxton in the article: "I remember I was wearing a hat, and this MP threw it on the ground and stomped on it.  And he proceeded to call me every kind of “n----r’ you can think of, and it seems like he was never going to stop.”  Added John Lee Spencer Jr., who enlisted in 1944, and now lives in a retirement facility in Wilmington, North Carolina: “From the minute I got off that bus from Raleigh, I knew what to expect.  Racism wasn’t the word for it.  It was downright ugly.  It was evil.  It was bad.”  The Japanese 442nd Regiment, commonly recognized as "the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of the US military," faced much the same.

     The recent elections here in the US brought home a sense of healing, that our population had realized that it was perhaps time to honor what these veterans had sought for, that rather than continue to create and open a wound it may be time to begin healing.  Our country is wounded and scarred from battle, as it has been over the centuries; but there appears to be a sense of pause in the air as if it's a time to question what sort of future we want to work for, a time to recognize just what the many veterans fought for and defended, even when chastised. Many died and many silently still live.  A soldier never knows what tomorrow will bring; and for those trapped in a war they don't understand or a flood or famine which they have no control over, the glow of life may seem dimmer and filled with even more questions.  Those of us not facing this --comfortable in a warm room and fearing only the errant car or a slip on an icy sidewalk-- should count ourselves lucky.  God perhaps doesn't play dice but if so, those of us still alive should remember that we're somehow fortunate enough to still be at the table throwing bets.  Edwin Starr maybe summed up what we should feeling when it comes to war and death when he asked, "what is it good for?"  Absolutely nothing, he answered.  A year later, The Beatles may have answered the even more universal question of "what's it all for?"  ...And in the end, the love you take...is equal to the love you make.    

*First off, Einstein never uttered the "with the Universe" part; and trying to find the actual date Einstein said or wrote this to is about as difficult as nailing down a proton.  Still, here are two links about the quote: 1) to talk about his non-religious beliefs and what he likely meant when saying it (from Business Insider); and 2) how his quote was directed to the theory of quantum mechanics (from Quotes Explained).