Vic Socotra

12 April 2009

Empty Eyes

It is Easter, and I am risen, if not in the same divine fashion as some.

A sciatic nerve got pinched last Thursday and I have been lurching through the day. As usual, the events of the calendar snuck up on me. Having no children underfoot, the whole Spring Break thing never came up on the radar; the colleges have sundered the relation between Beach Week and the celebration of the Risen Lord (or is it the Festival of fertility?)

I forget.

The whole Easter thing, being ecclesiastical in nature, is a moveable feast and is not fixed to the civil calendar.

Or Microsoft Outlook.

Easter follows the cycle of the Moon, as our Muslim associates calculate their observation of the Prophet's holy days. I gather- and this is a result of cursory research- that the observance of Easter has come to be set as the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first moon that occurs on or after March 21, the ecclesiastic "vernal equinox."

Beats me. It was rainy yesterday, and I felt bad about not writing something either trenchant or frothy about the world around us. The saga of the hostages and the Somali Pirates kept popping up on the radio as I slogged through linked files.

It was enough to quite distract me from the idea of interpreting the “why” of the story, which is the point of the decade-long Socotra Project, which has it origins in a long-ago lunar cycle of letters from odd places.

Anyway, I had all the best intentions yesterday, and dragged myself unwilling from the eiderdown at the usual 0445 with a sharp stabbing pain in the lower left quadrant of my body. I vowed to get the last couple little bits of the Quar terly polished off, and rectify picture and document files in the binary system I provide to the people who do the lay-out.

I wasted too much time on the story of the capture of the German submarine U-505. The pictures were not up to my standards, so I had to go find some more, and then knit the thing together. Then there were two more articles that required actual thought, and more research.

By the time I looked up at the Russian clock above the battered mission desk it was starting to push20the lunch hour, and I was cranky and out of sorts.

I wanted to explore the pirates of Somalia, and the historical response of America to piracy. Why so many people had commented to me that they wondered why USS Bainbridge had not opened fire and killed them when Captain Phillips took his plunge over the side.

I wanted to comment that it was about insurance, and business, and only one of the five parties in the matter was interested in it. Pirates, Ship Owners, Insurance Companies and Hostage were probably opposed to a hail of gunfire as resolution.

As a nation, we have traditionally taken a hard line on this issue. No ransom for hostages, no quarter for pirates. In this case, a friend who is closer to this than I am commented in a note that it was like back in the Carter Administration: the Captain of Bainbridge probably called PACOM who called the White House, who called a meeting, and asked Rahm Emmanuel what he thought the implications might be, policy-wise, by which time the pirates had Captain Philips back in the boat and the moment for action was long past.

I remember those days well. Personally, I think it was simpler. I don't think the Navy was close enough. I have also heard that the SOF guys want to do the French thing, guns blazing, and also understand the companies, shipping and insurance, who do not want to change the existing business model. So far, the only dead are Pirates and those who were being rescued, at the hands of either their captors or their would-be resucuers.

I have every confidence the business model on that is on the way to changing.

Mr. Jefferson was incensed that Europeans were being held as slaves in the Mahgre b; considering our second President’s interesting personal situation, there is no end to irony, is there?

I reluctantly turned off the computer and ran the disc with the thirty or forty Quarterly Articles and a hundred or so original ,jpeg image files out to the printing company near Dulles that puts them into magazine form.

It was raining, of course. Coming back, I realized I could go straight on to the Commissary and get that chore out of the way, and the logical exit from I-66 happened to go by one of the two Arlington pawnshops I have been meaning to visit.

Not to get rid of anything, mind you, but to see if any of the valuables that disappeared from Tunnel last year had surfaced. Between the workmen on the big pipe replacement project and the handymen and the porters and the maids, it had been a regular parade through the place for a month or two. I kicked myself for not being more careful.

It was junk, although it meant a lot to me. I figured that because that was the case, it would not have gone straight into the melting pot.

I walked up the entrance, noting the late-model but not too late-model luxury cars in the lot. Like things people picked up on the cheap.

None of my objects were in the showcases inside. It had been a long shot, anyway and I was not disappointed. What was astonishing was what was going on in the store. The musical instruments, the workman's tools, the guns. The need in the eyes of the people lined up at the loan desk, and the plain calculating look in those of the proprietor. Unsettling.

Back in Tunnel Eight after the Commissary run with next week's dinners of chicken and rib slow-cooking in the oven, I took a nap. When I roused, it was nearly time for Prairie Home Companion. The clouds had been swept away and the late afternoon sun bathed Tunnel Eight with gold. I was restless. I could have poured a drink and got on with the usual rhythm of a Saturday in Arlington, but I decided to go out.

I was edgy on the eve of Easter, and wound up driving over to Crystal City, intending to visit the mega-discount CostCo store, or have a beer or two at someplace new.

I had heard of a topless club down there, and had never gone. The Crystal City Restaurant is the name of the place, innocuous, and sipping a Sam Adams by the pool tables watching a series of young women pole dancing, I realized why I had never been before, and why I would be unlikely to be back.

The memories of long-ago bars of Yoko and Hong Kong and Itaiwan and Olongapo came back as a brisk slap with the smell of stale beer and intricate tattoos on the bodies of the young women whose faces featured glittering but strangely empty eyes. I wondered wha t mine looked like.

I emerged from the place feeling a little empty after the one beer and found the sun was just on the verge of going down. I like this time of year, even if the temperature can be a little chill.

I wondered about the eyes of the pirates, since I assume they must resemble those of pawnbrokers and pole-dancers. Anyway, that is my working theory.

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