No Country for Hemingway

“One would give generous alms if one had the eyes to see the beauty of a cupped receiving hand.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I looked up and saw a black-rimmed college student reading a most mysterious book.  I peaked at the title.  The title was in English.  After seeing Chinese all day your eyes just sort of gravitate to English.  The young man seemed nice enough but in his hand sat something sinister.  It rattled and tapped at my bones.  He was reading, “A Farewell to Alms.”  I gave it a second glance and sure enough it said in plain English, A Farewell to Alms by Ernest Hemingway.  I laughed.  I think Hemingway would be pissed at this.  Okay, Hemingway would probably sip some rum and give a hearty chuckle.  Despite Hemingway’s reaction and in this kid’s defense you must know that there’s a negligible difference between “L’s” and “R’s” in Chinglish.  I mean take a Chinese person and tell them to say “arms” and you’re gonna get ”alms” ninety-seven percent of the time.  “Arms” and “Alms” just start sounding alike after a while.  They sort of run together that’s all.  No harm.  I can’t pronounce ninety-seven percent of Chinese words.  No foul.  But I want to go on thinking that this kid is secretly harbingering a vendetta against alms.  “People everywhere,” he would say, “keep your kopecks and dimes.  The poor don’t need you and your money.  Save yourselves from these penny peddlers.”  For the rest of my life I’ll always wonder what alms ever did to him.  They must have had a falling out.  But in a world like ours one can’t be too sure of nothing.

Lost in this muse I looked down at my own hands and I remembered what book I was reading.  In my hand sat Cormac McCarthy’s, “No Country for Old Men.”  A gory portrayal of a world gone mad.  A world where the human psyche is stretched to its pathological end.  The chaos in McCarthy’s novel is fueled by the depravity lingering in your heart… I mean my heart.  The main character cannot be reasoned with.  He is a man who neither finds delight in Good nor Evil.  A numb human in a numb world reminding us of who we are.  In McCarthy’s book things like chaos, greed and power make the decisions, the decisions that shape life.  Basically, it is our world, I mean, yes of course, their world.  Okay, so I don’t know whose world it is but I definitely know that it is a country that has more arms than alms.  Read the book.  See the movie.

China’s national holiday is a week long festival.  Happy Birthday China . . . I wish you the best, in this, your 60^th year.  Sipping coffee I began to wonder if the title to Hemingway’s 1929 novel, “A Farewell to Arms” could ever be a reality in our world today.  Or if McCarthy’s title was right in suggesting that this is “No Country for Old Men.” I don’t know.  Can we ever say farewell to our security and protection?  I’ve lived in a few different places, on few different continents, and it sure doesn’t look like we can.  It sounds silly to imagine a world with no arms.  A gum-drop-world with Smurfs, Seven Dwarfs, a chocolate factory, a ginger bread man and a mermaid named Ariel.  A world without arms is a naïve concept for anyone levelheaded and serious about the world and its politics.  A cute ideal contrived by someone who is misinformed and way to far out-of-touch with reality.  Pat me on the head and tell everyone how fanciful I get sometimes.  To be honest I agree with you . . . I don’t think it will ever happen either.  We simply have too much stuff and too many interests that needed to be protected and reinforced at all costs.  I mean, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were pinheads (Glenn Beck’s favorite word).  And don’t get me started with that Jesus guy.  What we really need is another petty officer with a commander that has plans and strategies and yes more guns, always more guns.

Like I said, I’m in the largest country in the world.  Impressively, it’s about the only country that’s not in an economic crisis.  China’s growing faster than a thirteen year old in puberty.   And on this holiday (birthday) they held a parade featuring perfectly goose-stepping soldiers in Tiananmen Square showing-casing innovative hardware that included fighter jets and newly modeled ballistic and cruise missiles.  A heap of arms.  I mean, who really thought Hemingway’s Adieu to Arms stood a chance in their world . . . our world.   Hemingway wrote about World War One . . . the War to end all Wars.  That didn’t happen.  Heck, in our own country the irony played out like this: an arms race ensued while high school students from Boston to San Francisco read and reported on Hemingway’s book.  It was US against the Russians.  And not much came of that race either, just more fear and gunpowder.  But this time it wasn’t just gunpowder, well, ask Japan what it was.  Nobody won.  Unless you considering winning getting more BANG for your buck then the next guy then I guess you could say we won.  But I do not consider that winning.  After Hemingway’s book nobody paid much attention to this.  Surely nobody said farewell to anything that resembled life-taking-machines that we call arms.  Since his book we’ve fought the Germans, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Iraqis and the Taliban just to name a few.  We sure like to fight . . . or they like to fight.  Why do humans like to fight?

Sipping my Arabian coffee bean in my Chinese bookstore I thought I knew a thing or two about world history.  I reasoned that it resembled our Eucharist . . . that is, dripping with blood.  If history weren’t splattered crimson then I presume there wouldn’t be much interesting to report or read.  Yet knowing this, I guess I remained innocent enough to think that we would still give our alms to our poor even if we went ahead and killed each other in the process.  But now I’m not so sure.  It’s starting to look bleak out there.  I sure wish we would race someone to collect more alms . . . but then again you don’t collect alms . . . you give them away.

The other day I saw something else that reminded me of Hemingway.  But in a completely different way than the one I’ve been telling you about.  I’m reticent to mention it because some of you will get more riled and jazzed about this than about pressing your pennies firmly into the hands of poverty and that makes me sad but I have to tell you anyway.

My eyes flashed like a Caribbean sunset as they feasted upon a bottle of Havana Club Rum.  A Caribbean drizzle drooled down my cheek.  If Hemingway liked anything then Hemingway liked his rum.  They said he’d have a tumbler with his breakfast, a milk biscuit with strawberry jam.  I’ve never seen a bottle of Havana Club before because you can’t buy it in America.  Something due to a grand misunderstanding between nations.  Something about a trade embargo reinforced by missiles.  But lucky for me and old Hemingway China is in cahoots with this little island called Cuba.  You know as they say: Countries that drink together are Countries that stay together.  I couldn’t look away.  It had Hecho en Cuba (Made in Cuba) sealed on its neck.  No Country for Cuban Rum…is… No Country for Hemingway…and…No Country for Hemingway…is…No Country for Me.  Nobody ever wrote A Farewell to Cuban Rum but somebody did write A Farewell to Arms.  All the more, somebody should have written No Country for Trade Embargos…and the sequel to that should have been No Country for Arms.  What a tragic world we inherit.

The moral of the story must be: Give your alms and arms away . . . just in different ways.  Drink a little rum (if your old enough and even then in moderation) and read both McCarthy and Hemingway.

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“Shall I not inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly rewards by the roots” -Muhammad

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Now listen to and imitate this song: “Tip Your Way” by The Felicia Brothers