Chapter Forty-Five
“The golden mean comes
from seeking meaning
without turning mean.”
“B-17…no shit, B-17…”
“Wrong, chucklehead…twin bangers, not four strong.”
“Yeah, four props…”
“But that baby’s smaller, got just two props, Marty. Makes it a B-25.”
Aircraft ancient and new were now crowding the Saturn blimp’s thickening skies. A droning vintage World War II bomber had just swooped in over the Golden Gate Bridge, two P-58 fighters hot on its tail—likely on coastal reconnaissance from some Reno air show. High above them climbed another rockin’ Virgin jumbo jet, headed for Heathrow with a red-roaring glow on its nose and wailing quartet of engine cowlings. Bucking that eastward tide was a huge white charter dirigible splitting the vertical difference as it glided seaward out the Gate—to a zep load of upper-bracket sightseers’ delight.
Not far behind that was a sputtering biplane towing its long banner for an SUV dealer’s fire sale on dinosaur Excursions and Navigators—vanishing in the chowder like any more heinous smoke over Pacific Heights. All that was missing above us were the Blue Angels doing low-wire, super-near-collider maneuvers along the water front, or Silvio Petirossi rising from the Bay depths to shoot those daredevil loop-the-loops in his Pan-Pacific monoplane.
With Reese Paulen spinning off to field another earphone call, I scanned the skies like a tower controller for a free-floating glimpse of the red Saturn craft. In the process, I locked fleeting eyes with two curiously familiar figures, glancing upward once more as I pegged them as table neighbors earlier at the MeccaJava Café. No evasion necessary, however, for bounding up to them at a beach fencepost was this propeller-thin goateed activist with wavy dark hair, pulling a small spindling of neon-green flyers from his zippered fanny pack, handing them all around.
Whatever, waiting for Doc and another of his spooky phone calls, I trash canned mine,kept prudent distance—searching wide for the Saturn ship, signs of what may have brought two greaser-leathered lugs like these down here—though staying near enough to overhear. But okay, time was fleeting, like the vintage planes….this slope was getting altogether too slippery. Time to claw back some reality, single out some actuality. Way too deep in the cortisol sea, with not precise coordinates. Yet no turning back now—no other way out. Yessir, turn this absolutely zero-sum world, this whole damn ship around. Time to reset the scenario, check the tactics and strategy—time to recheck yourself in the nick of time…to clear the air, what with truth or consequences flying on by…
“It is a B-25, fella, they call it ‘The Lindy Hop’… and all these flybys have to stop, now…same with the Mustangs and 747…” The activist continued with the avid spotters and anyone in earshot. “Here, read this. Clues you in on chemtrails. They’re contrails’ evil twin—all the vapor tracks from those planes flying overhead? You think they just dissipate, but they don’t, comprende? Much of the time, they spread out into man-made clouds, more and more carrying aerosol particulates. Take a few of these flyers, pass them around. We must put a halt to all these over flights…”
“Right here? It’s called Crissy Field for a reason, Dudley. This whole deal started out as an airstrip, —pioneer planes took off into the onshores for years and years—military and mail flights, ain’t no stinkin’ ass cropdusters. Bad enough that you enviro-Nazis turned a damn good runway into this frickin’ glorified sandbox. Now you wanna fence off the skies while you’re at it, when you should be goin’ after all those goddamn radioactive cellular towers! So take off, wingflap…”
“Hmph, figures,” Paulen said, a parting glance back to the plane spotters as he pulled up alongside me, earpiece’s blue jewel light dimmed down. “A veritable arial blitzkrieg redux…”
“Again with the Nazi hook, huh?” I in turn looked back for refuge at the yacht club, Palace of Fine Arts, anywhere in between, re-thinking about the steakburgers at Liverpool Lil’s as I fidgeted with my belt… maybe gain some satiation, if not salvation over there…
“There’s that, but I’m rather referring to ‘Lucky Lindy’,” Doc sneered, watching me futz with my waistband.
“You mean…Lindbergh the hero pilot?” As in here we go again, but where?
“No, Charles Lindbergh, the most notorious all-American anti-Semite this side of Joe Kennedy and Henry Ford.”
“All the same, Eretz…what’s that?” I veered, the WW2-era warplanes doing same up toward wine country.
“Why, the very Promised Land of milk and honey, nothing less…”
“Including blintzes and egg creams?”
“Seeeriously, Herbert, someone like you should know these things.” he replied, staring me down. “Now, as the children of Abraham once heeded God’s call to ‘cross the river’ and boundaries, the Jewish people at long last regained their ancestral homeland.”
“Uh-huh, regained, but at what cost? For sake of argument, that is,” I dodged, er digressed, trying to elevate the spit we were swapping without straying too far off course.
“A priceless achievement at any cost!” With that, Paulen sailed the flyer he had been folding into a paper airplane upwards, catching a tailwind. We in turn headed back out onto the Bay Trail, collars up, chins down, leaving the bombardier-jacketed flyboys to a spate of dust devils. We thereby distanced ourselves from East Crissy Beach, from those other two MeccaJava expats. as the particulate warfare foot soldier re-donned his gasmask and continued distributing his leaflets.
Following the gentle path curve along Crissy’s churning tidal estuary, we pressed on toward a wooden piling footbridge over same. Across the way, beyond the broad sweep of the outer beachfront, extended a long trigger finger of a sand bar that roughly banked the estuary bend, squaring up on its far side to meet the bay shoreline. 
“So be it—hit me, Doc, I’m all ears,” I dodged, er digressed, trying to elevate the spit we were swapping without straying too far off course. “I mean, Mideast positions are only hardening, disputed borderlines inking indelibly in, so how are we supposed to talk honestly about solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian stand-off? What exactly are we talking about with this anti-Semitism deal, professor? What, in the final analysis, are the red flags and ground rules? How about you tell me what you think it’s all about? Is it economic, political, cultural, is it sociological?”
“All of the above,” Paulen looked askance at a family of pasty skinned English mid-bridge, quizzically pointing all over an unfolding tourist map. “Yet even more on the order of historical. “So let’s cull today’s bark from the roots here.”
“Right, separate the anti-Semitism from the anti-summitism…”
“Very well, allow me to itemize outgoings the world’s oldest monotheistic religion has endured,” he continued, tapping my forearm as his lectern. “Picture fleeing Egypt en mass because pharaohs labeled your bondaged people ‘unclean’, with polluted blood…”
“R-r-ight again, their Exodus and all the rest of it,”. I nodded, at least until some backseat butinski worming in between my ears…there…as in hearing him out, sounding him out…
“Well, the destruction of Jew’s Egyptian temple found many of them migrating toward Jerusalem—the whole Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrati lot of them. Only to suffer the thorough sacking of two distinctly separate Temples over time, forcibly evicted from their ancestral birthplace and homeland by rampaging Romans.”
“Force majeure, huh? Duly served notice or…” So…there…high time to seek common ground, but not by just splitting the differences…
“Hardly, try being mercilessly attacked—to where the second sacking in 70 CE triggered the Jewish Diaspora: some 5,000 years of global wandering, wrongly persecuted for hazing and crucifying a fellow Jew, when it was the Romans all along.”
“Whew, kicked under the welcome wagons, huh? Mighty heavy baggage to be shlepping around whatever the case…” Easy now…cajole some, corral some in return…
Winds that once launched a thousand mail planes now whipped across Crissy sands, erasing the stick scribbles of clammy fingered Montessori muppets—blowing over umbrellas and lawn chairs, sending sun junkies ascatter, coolers, cookers and cocoa butter in hand. Wakeboarders kick-slapped back to shore ahead of looming riptide ambushes, a pair of top-heavy paddlers struggled to guide their oars and kayak up toward the parking lot showers, carnival-colored towels, Snuggies and beach blankets flapping by. A wave-soaked water dog leapt over a rolling beach ball on its way up to its whistling master here on the Promenade, shaking us off en route. Sure enough, things seemed to be getting a little bit dicier as Doc and I trudged ahead bridge-ward.
“No laughing matter, Herbert. Little wonder the Diaspora yearned for a homeland, nation-state of their own, keeping the faith throughout. Can you personally blame them?”
“Hey, don’t look at me…” Instead backfoot dumbing it down, otherwise playing it down….
Thereupon, we left the local extremers: hard-bod triathletic trainers, hardcore windsurfers rallying to catch the 18-knot afternoon flood, living on energy shots, Odwalla protein bars and untold gateway drugs, livin’ to lower their booms on the next killer gust—playing the man card with linebacker forearms in a flurry of full-body wets. Further along the spit, rad kite surfers battened down their parachute-scale parasails for some pre-flight tuning, rigs spread about like pup tents in an REI clearance, devoutly trimming their vivid RRD, Mystic and Ocean Rodeo kite sails, sex waxing their wafer-thin shortboards, stoked to take on this bodacious, gnarly St. Francis course at goin’ on 60 mph. One after another, the kite surfers mounted their sticks, setting sail to grab a quick gust and glide on out. The whole airheaded scramble left me a bit on the tipsy side, not to mention tripping on the third plank of the estuary’s crossover bridge. That’s about when we came upon more bizarre globes.
“Yet it wasn’t until the latter 1800s when prospects of renewing an ancient ancestral homeland truly began to stir,” Prof said, keying on my every tell. “National movements were rising across Europe, as were religious intolerance and anti-semitic pressures against even well established Jewish communities.”
“You mean like the Dreyfus unfairness…” Let on some, but without let up…
“To say the least. So Jews were more fervently seeking a safe, secure nation-state of their own, just like other domestic groups around the Continent, personified by Hebrew philosopher Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, who in 1891 envisaged an independent Zionist home back in the Levant.”
“Then didn’t somebody suggest Uganda or East Africa elsewhere as potential alternative locations?” As in …devil’s advocate or evil’s adversary?…
“All of the above,” Paulen looked askance at a family of chalk-skinned Brits mid bridge quizzically pointing all over an unfolding tourist map. “Yet even more on the order of historical. So let’s cull today’s bark from the roots here.”
“You mean, end of the war to end all wars?” As if threadbare irony would somehow iron this out…
“Rather the proposal by Zionist Theodor Herzl of the World Zionist Organization to foster a secular nationalistic home in the Middle East for Europe’s Jews—particularly those under threat in France and Germany. He published ‘The Jewish State” in 1896 and founded The World Zionist Organization a year later—declaring for Jewish self-determination and a homeland living freely and safely as a self-governed nation. His calls did commence manifesting in 1917, as Britain’s Balfour Declaration provided for the establishment of a Jewish state, encouraging Euro Jew emigration to League of Nations’ Mandate Palestine.”
“But why Zion? Just asking…” Sure, better to work the edges, just nibble the middle…
“Because Zion is the Jerusalem hill upon which King David’s fortress was built after he defeated Goliath and reigned through 960 BC. Over the centuries, this ancient citadel became a physical and spiritual symbol for displaced Jewish peoples’ return to their homeland, inspired as well by David’s psalms.”
“Hence the land rush was on,” so I grinned lamely. “How sweet it was, huh?”
“Your words, not mine, my friend.”
“Hey, I’m not drawing comparisons, am only trying to relate,” I spouted, shrinking in their triple-ripped presence. Enough already, but locked-in syndrome—if I bail now how does that make me look and feel…or fare? All right, nose up, course correction. How did I stray into a no-fly zone like this? How can I trip him up if he is tripping me out here with blessed history lessons? Nothing to shake a joystick at…dead reckoning…something tells me I gotta bank 180 degrees, peel off this flightpath altogether real soon…start elevating some levels, if ever to deliver the payload. It’s not about the lecture, remember, it’s all about the lecturer…
We left behind those physio-maniacs, as well as some xx-xy maxonified women stretching on a sandy, curvaceous little trail shoulder, loosening up the ol’ bi’s and quads, slammin’ their hammies against a chill wind, a little tackle and tickle co-ed football playing out around them on Crissy Beach fringes. Further beyond the wooden footbridge, we gazed upon cordons of clustered EcoGlobes. Mid bay, racing boats with shark gray Kelvar sails tacked about yet another Chevron tanker crudely steaming in toward the Richmond refineries, horning the swarm of weekend watercraft out of its channels, crossing paths with a Red & White tour boat bobbing over the cropping whitecaps.
Barely beyond the Haas Memorial footbridge, wind-blasted sand permeated pockets, zippers and collar tops, pinged like a grain gun off the trailside cordons of thematic EcoGlobes, which came fast and biofanatically. Planet by colorfully earthy planet, the message rang through clean and clear. That is, enough of a distraction to nearly get us clobbered by an incoming double-wide competition stroller—new age daddy in full stride, wind at his back, all three wheels a blur of magnesium spokes, his strapped-in heirbawlers too velocitized to either gurgle or scream bloody murder.
Yet wide open as it was, this stretch of the Bay Trail itself narrowed with a clot of shorecombers protesting and picking up lingering tar balls and oil turds that had slipped in under yellow floating booms. Seemed Crissy beach had recently been soiled in the wake of a crude Bay Bridge tanker spill. Reflective orange vested, the concerned eco-greenies sopped up this fossil mess from the usually sparkling clean reclaimed sands. Helping them were a team of those Escape-Alcatraz triaths who were out clearing lanes and final training for next morning’s swim, bike and run.
“Nevertheless, by 1921, the likes of upstart Golda Meier had called for a ‘land without people for a people without land’. Namely Mandate Palestine…since it was no longer under the vanquished Ottoman Empire.”
“Problem was, people were already there, am I right?” Gotta somehow keep it loaded…
“Alas, Jews ancestral homeland since late antiquity had long been populated primarily by Muslims, Christians and Druze under the rubric of Arab nationalism, and were commonly called Palestinians.”
“Oops, so the land rush became a cold rush.”Also gotta be keeping it light… But I’d backpedaled, too late, quick to blame my imbalance on blind sight, my increasingly sand-pocked corneas, contracting pupils and irises in the face of these granulated trail gusts. Neither my conjunctive nor sclera proved any match for this gritty onslaught, which cumulatively rattled my rods and cones, gave me a sore case of optic nerves and chiasm, further clogging my perspective on our shifting scenarios.
“Hmm, how revelatory of you,” Doc huffed, over the squawking and flapping of ducks and gulls on the long Tidal Marsh to our left, as though making mental notes for some monograph.
From the Haas Memorial footbridge on, wind-blasted sand permeated pockets, zippers and any exposed orifices and cavities, pinging like a grain gun off the resuming trailside cordons of thematic EcoGlobes, which came biofanatically fast. Planet by colorfully earthy planet, the message rang through clean and clear. These linked balls were teed-up like on a big-sky driving range, nearly as uniformly big around as a Tatooine orbiter or Kirsty Ally robe—the conceptual target was global warming, but seemed the further along we labored, the chillier it got.
Out here, these uniformly sized EcoGlobe spheroids on steroids extended along either trailside like strands of pearly wisdom in a ceramic tchotchke glaze. Climate. Warm it. Cool it. Stop it. Start it. Dig it.
Trash it. Retrash it. Steam it. Chill it. Open it. Put a lid on it. Do it. Don’t do that anymore. Stir up. Shake up. Wake up. Just save our blessed planet, for cryan out loud! The collective themes were aesthetically compelling; the cartoon tone charmingly urgent, globe after globe. Absent this trail flow of speed walkers and bundled-up Bay gazers, we might have studied each and every cautionary pedestal caption placard along the way.
“Still, there were major revolts, right?” I sighed, still not prying out of him the gets I actually needed to be getting—accordingly redirecting incursion, extraction…
“Let’s just say Arab resistance and anti-semitism flared as Jewish refugees surged in, largely from Eastern Europe—many Zionists seeking the entire mandate territory, Jordan River to the sea. Tribal skirmishes were rampant throughout the 1920s-30s: Nebi Musa and Jaffa riots, Safed and Hebron massacres, culminating in the 1929 Palestinian Arab riots right up to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, against British colonial authority in general, and Jewish arrivals, markets and buses in particular.”
“You mean the former temple’s sole remaining wall? As in could some familiarity breed consent?
“The very same. And It got to where a British White Paper further called for a binational Jewish state in 1939, though also began limiting Jewish immigration to the region—this, with the Nazi Wannsee Conference and Final Solution right around the corner. Yet another affront from the folks/bunch who carry water for the likes of Vanessa Redgrave, Lord Haw Haw and his blackshirt BUFascists, Oswald and Diana Mosley, let alone David Irving. Holocaust denial, my behind. So is it any wonder anti-Semitic attacks have soared in Great Britain over the past several years? Swastika graffiti, vandalized synagogues in Scotland. Verbal assaults like ‘dirty, stinking Jew’, ‘kill all Jews’ hate-mail. Or bonny Prince Harry partying in Nazi drag on the very brink of Holocaust Memorial Day? This, from a royal family whose Duke and Duchess of Windsor entertained Hitler in the late 1930s, whose current queen would not be caught dead on Israeli soil?”
“Yeah, well, get in line behind the Irish at that complaint window.” I sputtered, thinking back to Irish tri-color flag waving out on Clement Street and the Avenues. “I can remember the IRA rallies in the heat of The Troubles, NORAID recruiters passing the collection plate for Ulster ammoBar. I never totally bought into the Provo IRA violence, but never felt that made me anti…Celtic.”
“Hmph, tell me, how long has there been a global hatred of the Celts,” Paulen asked, buttoning up his collar. “Who after all has vowed to push Ireland into the sea, eradicating an entire people?”
“Ever heard of the Famine?” Try culling on back, calling him out…
“No moral equivalency, small potatoes narrative by comparison.”
“Tell that to Michael Collins and Bobby Sands.” Now, is he trying to get under my skin?! Might as well be talking to myself.
“Tell that to Danny Pearl.”
“Well, same time, refugees were all but moving locals out of the way, weren’t they?” I pivoted, however unadvisedly. “Not that the Palestinians were taking it lying down, nor migrants’ increasing retaliatory attacks?” As if to keep it real, toward reeling him in…
“I suppose you mean the Haganah, but with Jordanian acquiescence at the time, I might add,” Paulen countered, guardedly. “Not to mention that a fair share of Palestinians in villages and towns were willingly selling their land to earnest Zionist buyers, parcel by parcel.”
“I see, settling some scores or sowing/scoring some more sores?” As in …devil’s advocacy or evil’s adversary either way…
This far along, the crosscurrents seemed to undulate between ecosystems and egosystems—even in the face of this sudden microclimate shift, which was separating the weak from the merely chapped. Clearly, some of the former winced and walked away from this fusillade of overblown enviro-beachballs. But for many of the latter, there was just no stopping cold. Fleeing were the AHA Yoga classes, the holistic wellness gang, those lightly practicing their Asian bodily flow. Tailing off closely behind them were the vacationing auditors and sleep dentists—back eastern dudes and dandies buttoning up their poplin and pincord mix and mismatched casuals and khaki floods, pulling black-quilted vinyl motorcycle jackets and wraparound scarves from Mulholland duffels and RL Rugby gym bags en route to some idling livery town cars in Crissy’s extended parking lot.
“Hey, look out, would you?! You think you can just run into people, knock them around…Je-sus!”
“Deb, might want to ease up on…”
“Ease up?!” she asked in a panic, protecting her first born. “The moron veered right into us with that mangy dog…”
“Guide dog, hon…the man’s blind,” cautioned mild-mannered husband, Jeffrey. “There, there, son…”
The young mother spun around, attitude cocked and loaded, her hubby standing by her with their child in gender-neutral pink and blue Baby Bjorn infant carrier. Her kid began bawling uncontrollably as father Jeffrey bounced him up and down, bending at the knees like fixing to toss an underhand roundball free throw, gesticulating for their retreat. He, one of those late-bloomers, had apparently morphed into a doting dad who conducts third-party conversations through his offspring. Otherwise, the trail was getting more crowded with many shoreline buffs and bounders alike.
“Pardon? …Ohhh, sir, my mistake. I’m sooo very sorry! Jef-frey, help me here!”
Deb finally noted the dog’s rigid leather seeing-eye harness…as the blind young man’s minder rushed over in panic to straighten his sunglasses and guide him away. Onlookers had just wandered by after abandoning the last of the way cooler Promenade benches, a stoner peanut gallery that had been glad-handing, grab-assing the wet suits of boardsurfers passing them by, cheering them on as they grappled with their sail booms—as athletically lacking, jock-sniffingly wanting as the golf groupies clapping down at Pebble Beach. Shooed off by some real-deal surfer girls, several snarky smart-ass hikers resumed floating in toward the Marina Gate. Me? I just welcomed the distraction…
“Just another overwrought female here, I presume…” Doc turned coldly away, adjusting his earpiece to take another call. “Complete with yapping toddler…”
“Never can tell,” I weighed his way, finally sensing a little distaffection or distafflicition bubbling forth, infantigo and all. So there, you go, suspect now, yet respect…still, flesh than out, crawl all over it…
As for those EcoGlobes, to our immediate right stood a green hand-knit sweatered sphere that urged programming home thermostats to conserve energy and cut greenhouse gasses. Simple enough, said one cotton-top couple pausing hand-in-hand amid their daily bayside cardio stroll. The next globe took more of a macro approach: A fireball dramatized the heating of our planet; a cratered brown sphere warned of the 
droughts resulting from an overheated Earth. An icy white and blue one depicted the melting of the polar ice caps. Amazing, where was all this cautionary creativity coming from already?
Chill factor or not, there was just no stopping some people out here along the trail. Bioenergetic case in point: companion job-bra runners doing high-knee, scissors and flatfoot skip warm-ups in a nearby trail cut-out, as if everything currently weatherwise were just peachy beachy. A totally buff duo with marathon glutes and push-up pecs striding through gale force walls, dabbing sunscreen and Dri-blok against the wind burn. That buzz-cut personal trainer dressing down his weighty charge to pick up her gasping pace all the way back to the shower room. And these were among the mellower exercises, in relative moderation, at that.
“Just the same, as to settling, scoring? That was nothing of the sort. But of course the horrors of the Holocaust changed most everything, save for Palestinian/Arab resistance. It took World War II to right such monstrous Nazi wrongs. Europe’s Jews having been brutally reduced from nine million to six, the newly created United Nations recognized WWII Jewish suffering and sacrifices by justly charting them a homeland course toward nation-state status, side by side with same for the Palestinians—supported by the US Truman Administration, at that. Yet from cause to conflict: the resolution was immediately rejected by Palestinians and Arabs writ large.”
“As in bonhomie, bombast, or bombs away?” So over pick your perspective—your yes, or your no’s…
“Think of it as a sliding scale… what with tribal battles ensuing across the Mandate in 1947, blowing up into a regional war—Palestinian Arabs, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon—the whole bunch ganging up on an emergent Jewish nation. Nevertheless by May, 1948, the State of Israel was declared and established: at once borne of aspiration and strife, hope and border hostility.”
Before long, we hit upon a series of more instructive globes extolling the virtue of environmental volunteerism. To our left, a blur motion-spinning globe called for concerted action on conservation. Across the trail, a more conventional Earth as we knew it was slapped with inky palm and fingerprints summoning hands-on planetary healing.
Anime children beckoned around a bright blue world of energy efficient green schools; a laminate verdant ball festooned with boot and shoe prints called for teenie weenie steps to solve warming conditions. Listen to children the world over, collaged in a multitude of ‘go greener’ graffiti tongues, take action—and as a Munch globe ‘Screamed’, above all, get involved. Underdressed or no, swarms of schoolkids ate it all up, cell phone TXTing to their Friendsters, tweeting away the afternoon outing to networked Twitterheads—giddily snapping glove-framed photos to make their Facebook pages more warmingly cool. On the way, they were said by clinical studies to be frying their soft little skulls with cellular radiation, absorbing the nascentions of glioma and acoustic neuroma.
“Then again, Israel…why not The State of Zion?” This being a ripe aha moment or just a sour hah-hah aside?
“That’s one provocative question there. Alas, let’s just say armed Arab opposition was but one divisive birthing pain for Israel to endure.”
“No really, what was the problem with an Eretz-Zion?”
“Depends on where you stand, Herbert, depends on where you stand…”
Care for more?
Chapter Forty-Six. Their discussion gets
more heated yet as the trail turns colder, turning
even more personal when new questions arise…