His Final Surge Toward Mortality

I woke up at 4:30 a.m. on December 16th.

When I checked my phone to see what time it was, I saw an alert from the New York Times.  (I get alerts on breaking news items.)  Christopher Hitchens was dead.

Two days earlier, Christopher Hitchens crossed my mind.  I realized I hadn’t noticed a recent article from him on Slate.com.  Typically, I would find at least one per week.  I knew he had esophageal cancer, and I suddenly panicked, thinking an absence of his writing meant he’d died.  So, I quickly clicked over to Slate and looked.  His last contribution was at the end of November.  Hmm.  A longer stretch than usual between Hitchens postings. I hoped it wasn’t indicative that his health had taken a turn for the worse, spiraling down in the final surge toward mortality.

I checked over at Vanity Fair’s site, another place I would frequently (though less so in recent months) read his observations and excoriations.  I didn't notice anything there, either.

Though he could make me angry, and though I certainly disagreed with him at times, and though I perceived he could be an abrasive intellectual bully, I loved to read his writing.  He was a brilliant, towering intellect who could dissect an issue and splay it with phraseology and a pervasive assault of reasoning.

Perhaps oddly, when I was diagnosed with cancer last year, my mind very quickly turned to Hitchens writing about his own diagnosis and battle.

Goodnight, Hitch.

Behind the Kimchi Curtain

The news out of North Korea last month (of Kim Jong Il's death) gave me pause.  I was in-country when his father, Kim Il Sung, died.  And, as a Korean linguist, I went on a 24-hour operations cycle as our electronic eavesdropping ramped up to discern what was happening behind the Kimchi Curtain.  There was one line of thinking that the generals wouldn’t stand for the ascension of the oddball, quirky, fey heir to the enduring dictatorship and totalitarian regime.

When Kim Il Sung died, it was just months after international hubbub concerning North Korea’s dismissal of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  The peninsula was a precarious place then…at one of its more delicate moments since the long fermata of cease fire brought a manner of conclusion to the momentum of the Korean War.

My heart goes out to my fellow linguists at the 102nd MI BN of the 2nd Inf. Div.  No doubt their Christmas was unpleasant...and they'll be spending a lot of weeks in the field this winter.

The Big & The Bang

It's been a decade since the crash.  It happened ten years ago tonight.

I was headed home from work, after returning to the labors of office life in the wake of the Christmas holidays.  I remember walking down the hallway from my department and seeing a Security guy heading in the door.  Also, on my commute, I remember passing a cop whose bubble-top lit up as he pursued someone else.

BANG!

The next thing I remember was regaining consciousness slumped in my driver's seat, the scene marked by my blood, the bashed-in front end of my vehicle, and commotion outside.

I was sore, as if body-slammed off a 4-story building.  I slowly turned my body to look around.  Was there anyone else with me?  I didn't know.  Couldn't remember.  I called out for an answer.

I didn't know where I was going or where I was.  I didn't know if it was dark at the end of the day or the early morning. 

Somehow, I undid the seatbelt and crawled to the passenger side, where I reclined the seat as someone wrenched open the passenger door.

"Are you okay, man?"

"I think."  I tried to talk without moving my mouth.  I'd clearly chipped a tooth and maybe bitten my tongue.  "Can you call 911?"

"Someone already called," the voice assured me.

The next thing I knew, I was regaining consciousness again strapped to a board in the back of an ambulance.  Someone was cutting my clothes off.

There were others in the ambulance.  I heard talk about a Care Flight.  And I realized they would've had to pull me from my vehicle, get me on the board, and load me in the ambulance.  And, being unconscious, I know I was a sack of dead weight.  So, I apologized for being fat to those who had to carry me.

They asked me what day it was.  I had no idea.

Soon, the ambulance was under way.  Someone else from the scene was Care Flighted.

"I see you were wearing a seatbelt," said the burly EMT who rode with me in the back of the ambulance.

I had no idea what he meant until later, when I discovered huge bruises crossing my chest and belly and also my waist, exactly where my seatbelt had been. 

It seems I impacted the back of a stopped vehicle at 70 miles per hour.

Not the best of days.