Resuming is what I seem to do, for I have been hit by this bullet before.  Only minutes ago I unpacked my one set of clothes from my backpack onto my bed and took up residence at my roommate’s computer terminal in one corner of our apartment where a dining room might otherwise live.  This is an action I’ve performed many times.  A week ago about this time I resumed city living after a long weekend among the largest trees in the world, eating a large supply of nuts and fruit and drinking stream water that I, not some city agency, had filtered.  Last monday brought the resumption of the arbitrary though standard work week, and I hopped back into position as its lowest cog each day until they said it would be socially acceptable to leave.  But what’s so wrong with routine, right?

During my truck ride hours ago in the central Californian heat, windows down and heater on full-blast to cool my engine, I resolved not to resume.  To myself I began a short list of improvements set to commence in the coming weeks and months.  Among them were the renunciation of all smoking and alcohol and swearing and an implamentation of my languishing fitness regimine.  I would also order my haphazard finances, even picking up extra work if I must to solidify my fiscal position.  Suggestions of this kind I often make to myself in the torpor of my own skull.  I do so, not only to regain the inches around my waist and arms that atrophy due to underuse and malnourishment or the girth of my depleted wallet, but to in some way raise my own existence.  To exist more!  As encouragement to myself I posted a warm motto as a welcome message on my cell phone, so that as I beckon my phone to resume its post, it would remind me to do the same.  The motto is this: (wait for it…I am turing off my cell right now to quote it verbatum…here it comes…”Cingular”, sorry…it should be up any, ah!

“BE ALIVE” 

That’s it!  This small piece of homely plastic urges me to do something that it has no ability to do.  Or rather, my previous self urges me to do something that it cannot do anymore than this reminding device can.  I will visit more poetry festivals and jazz clubs in order that I might fulfill its demand.  I will listen to undiscovered talent I have missed out on daily, the ones in comedy clubs and blues bars.  Even the opera, nobody goes there anymore.  I will know the scene’s insides, will predict this city’s heartbeat.  I will watch only the finest foriegn films and eat on pennies a day in order that I might afford this new upbuilding regimen.  Another improvement suggestion I supply my consciousness with is to help somebody.  Vague, I know.  Soup kitchens and big brother type programs are the only such places I know to start, but start I just may, this time.  Finally, grad school and writing jump into frame for places I might put my time instead of the perhaps overused options of drinking something or smoking something and talking to someone about something.  These just may be the foothold I’ve been lacking to boost once more higher.

And boost I did, boost I did, I tell myself.  Once, there was boosting aplenty.  In every drawer, inside other peoples’ skulls, and between the covers of every book hid potential boostingness, the boostingness necessary to gobble up my lethargy and spur me on to this existingness I’d read about.  So, in this spirit I will away, good citizens and see if I may dodge a bullet today! 

This in spite of obvious shortcomings.  Against all the standards by which other trees prove their worth, these fail miserably.  They bear no fruit and provide little shade.  One can decorate them with Christmas lights, but only in jest.  They are not useful as lumber.  Little boys can’t climb them and lovers can’t swing beneath them.  No tree houses; no shelter from the storm.

But this is the very essence of their magic and precisely why they represent L. A.– they are good for nothing…except being sexy.  Their frons jut out and shimmy like jazz hands.   In the wind, their shake is like the swish of a well worn skirt.  Our skyline is peppered with their frozen explosions, tethered by their thin trunks like birthday balloons to the wrist of a child. 

But truth comes in the night.  At night, when the Santa Anas blow, the wind gives breath and the palms wisper.  You can’t escape their chatter, but you can hear what they say only if you listen closely.  They’ve been repeating the same mantra for years.  They tell the lie every aspiring starlet hears.  “Fame found here!”  Theirs is the siren’s song.

In an article entitled “Outsourcing the War”, The Nation reported:

Jeremy Scahill…testified May 10 before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on the impact of private military contractors on the conduct of the Iraq War.

“… there are at least 126,000 private personnel deployed alongside the official armed forces. These private forces effectively double the size of the occupation force, largely without the knowledge of the US taxpayers that foot the bill.”

“[W]e face the widespread use of private forces seemingly accountable to no effective system of oversight or law.”

“These forces work for US companies like Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp as well as companies from across the globe. Some contractors make in a month what many active-duty soldiers make in a year. Indeed, there are private contractors in Iraq making more money than the Secretary of Defense and more than the commanding generals. The testimony about private contractors that I hear most often from active duty soldiers falls into two categories: resentment and envy.”

“[American Soldiers] are in a war zone where they see the private soldiers whiz by in better vehicles, with better armor, better weapons, wearing the corporate logo instead of the American flag and pulling in much more money. “

“In closing, while I think this Congress needs to take urgent action on issues of oversight, accountability and transparency of these private forces operating with our tax dollars and in the name of the United States, there is a deeper issue that often gets overlooked. This war contracting system has intimately linked corporate profits to an escalation of war and conflict. These companies have no incentive to decrease their footprint in the war zone and every incentive to increase it.”

After reading his testimony I don’t see what the big deal is.  Where is the salient difference between private war contractors and our own defense department?  Sure, the private war contractors have a record of being prosecuted for war crimes far less often than their enlisted and less paid counterparts; so they get more freedom and more money.  No downside there.  And, they don’t have to be factored into the total number of fighting or dying men and women; so they don’t get to be buried in Arlington, nor will their names be announced by PBS.  Sorry, no publicity; big deal.  Even Mr. Scahill’s final warning about defense contractors needing war to survive holds true for the Dept of Defense.  Both private contractors and the D.O.D. require conflict for sustenance.

The private firms skim off the top by recruiting from the ranks of the military itself.  They even have a name for it, “going Blackwater”, which means to cash in on one’s military experience.  Soldiers will sign a contract with some independent contractor or other instead of re-upping with the armed forces.  This tells me the kind of person who gets recruited by Blackwater is the same as gets recruited by the Army, but with a little more experience.  Basically our military is the minor league farm system for the professional private warriors:  the mercenaries.

Mercenaries go fight (by definition someone else’s) war for money.  Judging from the recruiting literature available online, it seems the best recruiting sales pitch the armed services have is to promise money or some other quantifiable bonus (tax credits, no cost college loans, etc.).  It must work; it is the most visible and repeated promise. 

Besides the monetary gain, there is little else promised to a prospective soldier.  There are occasional references to “protecting America’s freedom”.  Then there is the ever-appealing vague improvement promise, but these appeals are indistinguishable from the promises made to me by recruiters at my first job.  ‘Develop your leadership potential’ and similar hogwash rings equally hollow in the for-profit and defense sectors. 

I suppose these must be poor kids if they are willing to risk their lives for cash, but some folks are willing to put themselves through hellish treatment to win the proverbial carrot.  We’ve seen this in reality TV, mixed martial arts, etc.  Is the only difference between going to war and being a contestant the odds and extent of potential harm? 

We don’t call our service men and women mercinaries, because they are our military and we are at war.  Why do we, the American populace, allow the lie and lie to ourselves that ‘we are at war’?  In his article, “Are We at War?”, Zizek says, “The problem is that America is, precisely, not in a state of war, at least not in the conventional sense of the term (for the large majority, daily life goes on, and war remains the exclusive business of state agencies). With the distinction between a state of war and a state of peace thus effectively blurred, we are entering a time in which a state of peace can at the same time be a state of emergency.”

The point is this: we are sending mercenaries to wage war so the ‘American’ way of life can remain unaffected (or else the terrorists win).  What is so shocking about these mercenaries is they are home-grown mercenaries, farmed from our own country.  We are not at war, the kids in the military and the career soldiers contracted out are at war.  Average Americans are not at war; our military is simply gainfully employed. 

I have never seen a quite unassailable, respectable fact that was not the first cousin, at least, if not closer, to personal opinion.

You are familiar with the expression “go-between;” even the human brain is a charming go-between!  I was born without any looming confidence in any go-between on the face of the earth, I am afraid, an unfortunate situation, to be sure, but I have no business failing to take a moment to tell you the cheerful truth of the matter.  Here, however, we move quite closer to the crux of the constant turmoil in my ridiculous breast.  While I have no confidence whatsoever in go-betweens, personal opinion, and unassailable, respectable facts, I am also, in my heart, exceedingly fond of them all; I am hopelessly touched to the quick at the bravery of every magnificent human being accepting this charming, flimsy information every heartrending moment of his life!  My God, human beings are brave creatures!

Should it be so difficult to offer a brief, affectionate salute to this unfathomable artist?  Is it not highly tempting to take off one’s hat to someone who is both free to move in mysterious ways as well as in perfectly unmysterious ways?  Oh, my God, this is some God we have!  (…)This is merely my forward opinion in the matter, but it is far from merely impulsive.

–Seymore Glass, Hapworth 16, 1924 (reprinted by Buddy Glass in a story by J. D. Salinger)

What anecdote jumps to mind when you think of this man?  None.  Most of my generation doesn’t know who he is and couldn’t care less.  Maybe we would care if we knew more about him, his story, his passion.  Or do we (the youtube generation) hate everyone from the “greatest generation” (our own personal grandparents excluded)?  Or are we dazzlingly apathetic?  I don’t know.  I wouldn’t underestimate either our ability to empathize or despise.

By now his rags to riches story is cliche.  We’ve heard it so many times it’s lost its punch.  His father died when Israel (Irving Berlin was born Israel Baline) was young.  In addition to other odd jobs, he sang for the money not to starve.  He made a career out of writing songs for stage and screen.  Among the more famous songs he penned: the jazz standards ”Cheek to Cheek”, “How Deep is the Ocean?”, Broadway tunes such as “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)”, cannonized Americana “God Bless America” (a song so popular it rivals our official national anthem), and the song that was the best selling single in the world for almost 50 years, “White Christmas”.  It is said he did all this without the ability to write in any key other than F-sharp major (A.K.A. D-sharp minor) because he could only play on the black keys.

His highs include opening his own winning Oscars envelope (the only one ever to do so) and having lunch with Winston Churchill.  Lows: the death of his 20-year-old wife after she contracted a fatal disease on their honeymoon, the death of his son on Christmas day, and finding out that he was given an audience with Churchill due to a mistake (Churchill mistook Irving for Isaiah Berlin, the political philosopher).

His story seems too outstanding to be true and his songs are so long standing it’s easier to believe they always existed.  We take for granted men like him struggled thru hardships while we are unwilling to do the same (for truly what did our fathers fight to secure for us if not ennui).  Thank you, Mr. Berlin, for representing my grandfathers’ generation.  Happy birthday.

Note: You are welcome to engage in full scale assault on anything written here, but please refrain from ad hominem attacks.