17 February 2023:

Vic, You mentioned the homeless encampment in Washington at McPherson Square as being across the street from the renowned Army-Navy Club, a historic structure and institution that reflects old relationships from two venerable organiztions that once held individual Cabinet possessions in our Government. My lovely wife and I had brunch there last weekend. There were no “homeless” living in the little park across the street. It is “Farragut Square,” three blocks west of McPherson, as indicated in the reflection of L’Enfant’s 1791 design for the capital city. 50 campers were removed last week by the National Park Service and DC police. You may have spent too much time in the legendary Daiquiri Lounge in the Army Navy Club’s elegant second floor.

– Concerned Reader

From: Marlow
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2023 10:13 AM
To: Socotra House Letters
Subject: something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear

Vic & Company: Some Offline Thoughts Sent From My iPhone To You
-Marlow

Our early careers were about the fate and the impending destruction of the world. Bla bla bla MAD bla bla bla deterrence . . . Our real work, had we stopped and thought about it, and our meticulously planned flight crew go folders of codes, notes and strip charts was that of, truth be told, salvage divers not strike planners handmaidens, and for those of us in the post first strike SIOP BDA Vigilante squadrons looking at the believe that whatever you do in your life it will get back to you, if you live long enough it will the baddest of the bad Armageddons and trying to assist our crews in choosing the right safe bingo fields when Ma Forrestal or Ma Kitty Hawk had become a non-return option during their mission. This part was always in unscalable crew-by-crew silos channels as cross-crew sharing by their squadron spook was no longer an option. For me post BOOM BOOM BOOM to the 1000th power, I wanted to be a world wide road racing motorcyclist — not some sissy 1% milk fat, 9 to 5 office occupant.

To continue . . . if some Cold War URL type of mal-intent spoke back then abruptly to me out of the blue, I’d turn, smile and say “how can I help you” to his “I thought you guys were supposed to know everything,”

I might reply from time to time, “I don’t.”

In all honesty, not objectively 100% of the time, I’ve tried for no ego, no boastfulness, no shame for being a fallible human prone to subjectivity, when confronted with a factual fog empty of insight.

Stripped as I was then, yet decades later I, and methinks you, may still be trying to see ourselves through those returning fog banks today as they drift over us unseen by our digitally hooded 👀

No?

We do not move through these days they move thru us. Wish I had known that back then, don’t I. Dammit.

You?

Back then I believed as a mystery of simple faith that if the balloon went up, there’d be no more war. Foolish me. It made no difference what I thought of war — I now know it’d have endured till we its ultimate practitioners had risen again.

Lather rinse repeat . . .

Squeaky clean of ree-al-it-tee . . .

……

As these days’ ends approach, I find my sentimentalities and superstitions being scrubbed clean off, if not wire brushed for the clingiest ones. It’s a abiding constancy of my new life phase.

Think I’ll go shopping for a new cologne to cover up this disinfectant soap smell.

Something’s…ly clear.docx
20 KB
Download
Open in Pages