It’s complicated!

In life, not everything is cut and dry e.g. Santa vs Santos, Kissinger praised, Kissinger despised.

It’s complicated. Not just in diplomacy i.e. the enemy of my enemy is my friend etc… That path, pretty soon, leaves us with no real friends. I have good friends for a good five and a half decades. Being 6th graders, we shared a desk. We even read a fictional story about a desk (personification) pleading to students not to scratch, to taint it with ink etc…( by the time we were in Middle School, we already used ballpoint pen).

We learned to trust students sitting around us, like soldiers in the trench. The bombardment in this case was Chinese letters (“khau”), French ( la bouche), English (mouth), and the assault, our Head of Security in the school with his ever-ready spanking.

Nothing was complicated then: follow the instructions, listen to the teachers. Attendance matters. School insulated us from a hot war. Simplicity inside, complication outside where there were invasion of the dollars, of ammunition and foreign goods. Black market and Black soldiers ; Mini-skirts and bell-bottom pants. ” hair to his knees…Come Together….right now…”.

The yin and the yang. The warring and the anti-war. Clamming down and rebelling against (they made us boys sitting in the back of scooters – both legs on one side – traditionally female’s form – for fear we may stand up and throw a bomb. The result? we complied every time we approached a check point. But only then).

Our freedom was curtailed in the name of fighting for it. Quite an irony! Then comes “practical” Kissinger ( to preserve order as long as necessary, by any means – especially bombing – necessary). The results? Hollow skulls in mass graves and sorry names on the Wall.

Dark decade. It’s complicated. You can argue either way, as long as you have a following.

Then a handshake, shown in B/W 16mm news reel, signified the beginning of the end. ” They i.e. South Vietnam- are at your disposal, under your sphere of influence diplomatically speaking. ” China won. China built. China replaces the old Soviet as a heavy-weight contender, diplomatically speaking. Beijing firewall is the new Berlin wall.

Leaders promised each other to answer the phone, and not let it go to voice mail.

It’s complicated. School was simple. Schooling in real world diplomacy is complicated. Still the same desk. Same ink blot. Desks still cry out (in the House, Santos’ is unoccupied except for immigration aids). The plea was and still is, “and it is Christmas, Happy New Year”. Let Peace be on Earth.

As children, our world was much simpler and more exciting: the days before Christmas. Waiting for Santa. As adults , as we occupied bigger places (“to hell with this place”, says Santos about the House of Congress – after overspent his credit limits and welcome), things get more complicated.

In the words of Kissinger, “we tried to preserve order as long as necessary, by any means necessary”.

When we learn to let go our early life, perhaps we can peal layers of present complexity. I relate well to truth seekers like Norman Mailer who referred to “4 assassinations later…” as he sarcastically sums up modern history. What we don’t understand, don’t like, we eliminate. Killing is simple. Living is complicated. Now I “get it”. Glad you point that out. Glad to still be alive to “get it”.

Excuse me. I am going to call my friend who told me “the world has changed and moved on. It’s you who don’t want to change”. True. Last night, I dreamed of helping a little boy with his laundry to cram into an already heavy load. Then this morning, I remembered that refugee boy, a stuttering boy with only a dirty pair of shorts tossed and swung on a basket in S China Sea, to finally arrive at Jubilee Prison-turned-refugee detention center in Hong Kong.

May he see better days, somewhere in England, where he was immigrating to. May he learn well the Alphabet, from A to Z , stuttering but comprehensible enough to get by.

Words like “mouth”. Like “I am hungry”. What’s more complicated than hunger and simpler than the sign that homeless man held : “Happiness is a cheeseburger”.