Hornblower Hamstrung

In my dream I was a British Navy captain, of a sloop it seems; she was smaller than a frigate, of 26 guns only.

She was a capture from the French, nee "Princesse de Cleves," but now "Aurora."  She was tethered to a grimy dock on the Thames, roughly midway between London Bridge and the Observatory at Greenwich.  In fact, it was always so; in all my time as captain she never moved under her own power.  And yet, one bright spring morning I stood on her quarterdeck and peaked up at the sun through her forest of cordage, and all seemed right with the world on that day.

On another day, we were compelled to host a small group of dignitaries on board for dinner in our cramped quarters.  We were so short manned that I was left alone to polish the silver myself in advance of the repast.

The strangest thing.  The Navy permitted me to share my cabin, indeed to share my bunk, with a beautiful young woman -- Pamela Liffey from the North Country.  She was slender and blonde, and her disposition was fiery and headstrong.  I loved her, and yet she never let me embrace her in the dark.  It was like a game we played between us; I would reach out to her over and over, and each time she rebuffed me.

Thus I was, and became known throughout the Service as, an emblem of futility.  I was The Little Admiral in Lead, painted white and black, and blue.

 

A Small Story With Profound Implications

I feel compelled to explain yet again why I feel "cosmologically shattered," "ontologically shocked," "existentially adrift," whatever you may call it in our common big-word vocabulary.  The feeling is most pressing in the dead of night, but it often spills over now into the daylight hours as well.  (I welcome technical tax work in part because it offers a respite from such thoughts.)

A small story may suffice, but it will only suffice for those with an open heart and an open mind.

Peter Levenda is a genial and unprepossessing man of about my age.  He is, more than most, intelligent and articulate.

Peter is the author, with a bona fide rock star of whom I had never heard -- Tom Delonge -- of a "high strangeness" trilogy called "Sekret Machines -- Gods, Man and War."  The last volume -- "War" --has just been published.  Peter is making the rounds, in part to promote it.  He appeared just yesterday on a radio talk show hosted by Las Vegas journalist George Knapp, during which Knapp asked him to recount the following story.

Decades ago, Peter was having a normal day in his house in a little town in northwest Rhode Island.  The day was normal, that is, until he noticed that there was a black Cadillac of a certain age parked near his house, with two men inside.  One appeared to be looking at the house, or at him, through a camera with a telephoto lens.  Peter decided to approach the car and ask the men what they were doing, but the Cadillac abruptly drove away.

More intrigued than frightened, Peter jumped in his car, in the driveway, to give chase the best he could.  But immediately after he got in, another car, an old wood-paneled station wagon or "woody," pulled in behind him, blocking his path.  In it were two young, smiling women.  They got out of the car and asked Peter if a certain "Mr. X" lived there, using a name that was peculiar and unusual.  Peter noticed that the women's clothing was "off" somehow, of a different cut and perhaps of a different era.  He informed them that he did not know Mr. X, at which point they got in the car and it "disappeared."  Thus Peter's goal to follow the "Cadillac men" (dare I say "Men in Black?") was thwarted.

This incident of high strangeness was a burr in Peter's consciousness, but it faded over time.  However, several years later Peter was posted by his corporate employer at a stint in Malaysia.  One day in that capacity he was rushing through the bustling Singapore airport to catch a connecting flight when he felt a tap on his shoulder.  He turned around to discover that he had been tapped by one of the two women in the woody!  As quickly as she had appeared, after a smile and a subtle wave, she disappeared into the crowd despite Peter's efforts to confront her.

Peter's story involves no saucers or grey aliens, no cattle mutilations or sightings of Sasquatch in the Oregon forest.  And yet it is another, more subtle sign of the Tearing of the Veil, a sign that we are not alone and we are not in charge.

I grow weary of otherwise intellectually curious people who say "Why should I think about such things when there is nothing I can do about it?"  I want to say to them "You are worried about climate change, for example.  Should you not also be concerned about the world that your children and your grandchildren will inherit, with or without the company of overlords that are beyond our comprehension?"  We should, in the 21st century, be more than high-functioning, but blind, mole rats.

 

Dead Reckoning

Or rather I should say "the reckoning of the dead," or "the reckoning that awaits the dead."

Some of the nuns (but by no means all of them!) told us that those unworthy to stand in the Light of the Lord will see that they are unworthy and recoil from the Light.  Surely, with all of the remorse that I have accumulated in this life, I will be among them.  What wilderness awaits me then as a consequence?  And what company will I keep in this the Netherworld?

Justice requires that, in making this reckoning, we see ourselves through a clear lens.  Otherwise, the worst among us, including the members of our political class, in their narcissism and supreme self-regard, would pass through the Gate of Regret.  And those who deserve Heaven -- the Dalai Lama, Fred Rogers, and countless single mothers, widowed and divorced, would join me in the ranks of the Netherworld.