08 January 2004

Fourteen Points and Eighty-eight Bucks

So I am a slug this morning. I got up at the usual time, blasted out by the uncaring alarm. The radio was still playing softly across the bed. I had left it on when sleep overcame me and I had a vague recollection of classical music in my forgotten dreams. I had no need to reach across the space where she sleeps when she is here to turn it on. I wandered back the empty packing boxes that accuse me of sloth and inaction and punch the button on the top of the coffee grinder.

It whirred and hissed, turning beans into fine powder. I dumped it mostly into the filter basket and turned the red switch on the side of the coffeemaker. In eight minutes the BBC would be on and the coffee would be ready to jolt me into the day.

I smoked a cigarette on the balcony and thought about what I would write this morning. I am still wrestling with the collapse of the Axis of Evil and wondering if we had blundered into victory or if our leaders were smarter than I give them credit for. I also wondered that when the hopeless lose even that there is nothing left but a bottomless well of anger and need. The path is clear for their angry young, and despite our complacent best in enhancing security, there is no coexistence of an open and free society and those who would personally blow small parts of it to pieces.

Then I wandered back into the bedroom. If I had known at that moment I would have considered the fact that President Wilson, that utopian, had taken the new year in hand in 1918. The awful War to End War was still raging, and the Germans were still resolute. But Wilson drove up the Mall to a hastily called joint session of Congress to tell the assembled Senators and Congressmen about his Fourteen Points for peace.

It was a breathtaking piece of chutzpah. The Americans had just joined the fight, and the first troops were only now on their way to the front. Wilson had kept America on the sidelines- "He kept us out of War!" was the campaign slogan, but speaking to the Congress he told the European residents of the abattoir what would be the price of peace:

"Free Europe from the menace of Prussianism!

Take Alsace-Lorraine from German domination!

Prevent Russia from becoming part of the German Empire!

Restore to Italy those portions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire inhabited by people who are Italian in heart and blood!

Bring all the Polish peoples into a common Government!

Restore Belgium!

Free Serbia!

Free the small nations devastated by the Teuton hordes!

Give the separate nationalities of Austria-Hungary, Turkey and the Balkan States the right to govern themselves!

Restore Northern France to French control!

Assure the of freedom of the seas!

Establish free trade among the nations of the world!

Reduce arms!

Establish a League of Nations to enforce peace!

Ban secret agreements forever! that will threaten the peace of the world!

We are still fighting some of these out. The Poles are free again, and the seas are free to the extent that the belt-bombers do not swim that well. There are still secrets, and the small states are still sorting themselves out.

The Turks lost their empire, and gained a secular state. The end of the Caliphate contained the seeds of the Islamic resurgence and militancy that followed. The end of the Ottomans was the last of the Muslim states. The West, exhausted, stood triumphant and on the brink of giving it all up. The mentors of our young killers were already born when Wilson spoke, and the seeds of our own new misery were born in the vengeance of the Versailles Treaty.

But I did not think of that. I lay down under the eiderdown and listened to the hypnotic voice of Dan Damon, half in that dream state, wondering if I would hear my voice. The check from the BBC had arrived the day before. It was in the amount of $88.36 cents, payable to the voice of Vic Socotra. I marveled at it. It was written in hand, countersigned in two colors of ink on a pale blue field. It was a marvelous bit of archaic eccentricity. The number of dollars were the same as the keys on a piano.

At an hourly rate it was handsome, since it had taken only a half hour to record the stories. I could make an excellent living if I could record all day, five days a week.

Dan covered the world for us, the dawn racing across the dark ocean toward North America. I floated in the dark. I wish I could drift off again, and write later. It is hard to combine the job and extra hours in the morning. My body seems to wear down its reserve of energy as the week goes by. By Thursday I am moving slow in the morning, the battery drained and needing the coffee to jolt me into action.

I have an extra $88 bucks and decided it was about time for a new 14-point plan. Something to tell the Muslims over and over. Clear, explicit.

Easy to remember, easy to measure.

Then I melted into the part of half sleep and half waking, sailing the freedom of the sea.