John Edgar Mihelic Presents:
Polish Roulette
in response to:
E. Hemmingway’s A Farewell to Arms
I awoke at eight. The hotel’s main support staff was absent. There were not many guests. In the off-season, there never is. I got breakfast at Denny’s. I ordered a Moon over My Hammy. I enjoy the pun, but the breakfast was over done. I had a malcontent feeling of malaise. At eleven, the bar opened up. I went in and ordered a drink. It was gin, and it soaked my beard. Going to the washroom, I ran into an old friend, Reginald McHammet.
In the bathroom, I talked to Reginald. He produced a bottle of Brandy. Thankfully, there was a Dixie Cup dispenser. We sat down on the porcelain chairs and caught up.
“You enjoying Myrtle Beach?”
“No less than I do every year.”
“Want to go sunbathing sometime?”
“I’d say yes, but I was planning to spend most of the week in an alcoholic haze.”
We both laughed. It was an uncomfortable laugh. We both knew, as we sat there in the bar’s toilet, drinking warm brandy and lounging on toilet seats that an alcoholic haze would be de rigueur for the week. You know, par for the course. I’d been at the beach for four days and I had yet to see the ocean. I had played a round of miniature golf. More correctly, I had played part of a round of miniature golf. My friends had to drag me away from a fight with a laughing animatronics pirate. I had vowed to never go back there.
“Reginald how is Texas these days?”
“Pretty much the same, flat, and a lot of people who speak English with an accent”
“Don’t all Texans have some sort of accent?”
“You’re not getting me. I was making a joke about the influx of immigrants that makes Texas one of the most polylingual states in the union.”
“I suppose something was lost in translation. I didn’t know that you were talking about the dirty browner peoples of the world.”
“Shit Howie, I don’t think that’s politically correct.”
“Well, neither is drinking brandy on a Monday in the bathroom of a hotel bar.”
“I guess you’re right.”
Our generation was never one to ask too many questions, especially if they brought up answers that we did not want to think of the possible implications of. All these superficial friendships were trash too. It made me want to vomit. It may also have been the mixing gin, warm brandy, and a Denny’s breakfast. I like to think it was the implications.
“Hey, Reginald, what are you doing right now? I have a hankering to go and do something hyper-masculine. Are there any wars going on? Let’s go fight a war.”
“Um, Howie, I don’t think I want to do that.”
“OK, I understand. I think I’m just going to go up to my hotel room and play Polish roulette.”
“Execuse me?”
“You know, its like Russian roulette, but with only one empty chamber.”
“Well, um, I guess good luck with that. It was nice seeing you.”
“Same to you, you have a good week.”
July 8, 2009
Heaney "Act of Union"
Heaney
Act of Union
I
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.
II
And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignmorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again
Act of Union
I
To-night, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independant shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.
II
And I am still imperially
Male, leaving you with pain,
The rending process in the colony,
The battering ram, the boom burst from within.
The act sprouted an obsinate fifth column
Whose stance is growing unilateral.
His heart beneath your heart is a wardrum
Mustering force. His parasitical
And ignmorant little fists already
Beat at your borders and I know they're cocked
At me across the water. No treaty
I foresee will salve completely your tracked
And stretchmarked body, the big pain
That leaves you raw, like opened ground, again
Half a league
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
A. L. Tennyson ~ “The Charge of the Light Brigade” circa 1870
Rivers noticed that Prior’s face lit up as he quoted the poem.
P. Barker Regeneration 1991 pg 66
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
B. Dylan “The Times They are a-changing” 1961
And now, we, who though we were going to live after all look back and with the cynical postmodern eye we grin at the times that are a-changing. Rivers quotes Tennyson in the hospital, and claims that he was once in love with the poem. I do not know if this is in the historical record, or if this is a fiction created by Barker, but this is the part of this novel that I focused on primarily.
For me, the character of Prior comes across as a very intelligent man. He is presented as learned and erudite. In some ways he is the most sympathetic character in the book, and I would make an argument of his being the protagonist in the novel, if it weren’t so balanced between Sassoon and Rivers. In my mind he represents the old guard. He is in the hospital with two very good poets, and he is the one that seems to be holding onto the old ideals. Tennyson’s poem romanticizes the warfare and the sacrifice that is inherent in such things. The poets that are living in the hospital with Prior have ceased to romanticize the work. Prior says that he love the poem once, but no more. I can imagine myself in his shoes and understand such a position.
This is a position that is not born wholly of cowardice. Fear of death is a logical man’s exemption from war, but there are times when the ruling classed suspend logic and reason in favor of sloganeering and appeals to patriotism. The ruling classes send the lambs to the slaughter and fight a war of bad ideas that they are mostly immune from the horrors. This has been seen time and time again throughout history. Even the commanders lie back and watch the young die for their causes. Napoleon rode into Russia with an army of half a million men. His army took heavy casualties, of cold, starvation, and wounds, but he himself was able to ride back to France.
But I digress. I think that this particular scene is a nod to the fact that the literary times were changing too. This war helped shake the yoke of Victorian sensibility and give rise to the moderns. Without it, our poets would still be romanticizing, and the young would be dying at the whims of the ruling elite.
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
A. L. Tennyson ~ “The Charge of the Light Brigade” circa 1870
Rivers noticed that Prior’s face lit up as he quoted the poem.
P. Barker Regeneration 1991 pg 66
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
B. Dylan “The Times They are a-changing” 1961
And now, we, who though we were going to live after all look back and with the cynical postmodern eye we grin at the times that are a-changing. Rivers quotes Tennyson in the hospital, and claims that he was once in love with the poem. I do not know if this is in the historical record, or if this is a fiction created by Barker, but this is the part of this novel that I focused on primarily.
For me, the character of Prior comes across as a very intelligent man. He is presented as learned and erudite. In some ways he is the most sympathetic character in the book, and I would make an argument of his being the protagonist in the novel, if it weren’t so balanced between Sassoon and Rivers. In my mind he represents the old guard. He is in the hospital with two very good poets, and he is the one that seems to be holding onto the old ideals. Tennyson’s poem romanticizes the warfare and the sacrifice that is inherent in such things. The poets that are living in the hospital with Prior have ceased to romanticize the work. Prior says that he love the poem once, but no more. I can imagine myself in his shoes and understand such a position.
This is a position that is not born wholly of cowardice. Fear of death is a logical man’s exemption from war, but there are times when the ruling classed suspend logic and reason in favor of sloganeering and appeals to patriotism. The ruling classes send the lambs to the slaughter and fight a war of bad ideas that they are mostly immune from the horrors. This has been seen time and time again throughout history. Even the commanders lie back and watch the young die for their causes. Napoleon rode into Russia with an army of half a million men. His army took heavy casualties, of cold, starvation, and wounds, but he himself was able to ride back to France.
But I digress. I think that this particular scene is a nod to the fact that the literary times were changing too. This war helped shake the yoke of Victorian sensibility and give rise to the moderns. Without it, our poets would still be romanticizing, and the young would be dying at the whims of the ruling elite.
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