Bertolt Brecht, Courtesy All Graphics Online
This evening I switched off the television shortly before 11:00 pm, wishing to avoid any further disastrous updates coming out of Japan, holding off the latest ill news until tomorrow. I had a bad night on Saturday, after all, which cost me countless hours of sleep, owing to a miscount in my daily regimen of prescription opioid pain relievers. It would be best to spend the late night hours reading, I figured, than viewing more horrifying tsunami videos shot on shaky cell phone video cams.
Scanning over the books on my coffee table for something light and escapist to read, I hefted into my hands the terrific 880-page Library of America anthology, Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (2002). I opened the book at random and landed on page 287, and a poem by German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, who arrived at San Pedro Harbor in 1941, Los Angeles being the last leg of his escape from Nazi Germany, after success with the theatrical works The Threepenny Opera (1928) and The Rise and Fall of the City of the Mahagonny (1930), radically political stage dramas that did not put him in good graces with the ruling political party.
The poem I stumbled across is titled The Fishing-Tackle; the uneasy relevance to the words that have gone before in this posting shall be obvious.
The Fishing-Tackle
In my room, on the whitewashed wall
Hangs a short bamboo stick bound with cord
With an iron hook designed
To snag fishing-nets from the water. The stick
Came from a second-hand store downtown. My son
Gave it to me for my birthday. It is worn.
In salt water the hook’s rust has eaten through the binding.
These traces of use and of work
Lend great dignity to the stick. I
Like to think that this fishing-tackle
Was left behind by those Japanese fishermen
Whom they have now driven from the West Coast into camps
As suspect aliens; that it came into my hands
To keep me in mind of so many
Unsolved but not insoluble
Questions of humanity.
I once did a roofing job for an elderly Japanese couple in South Pasadena. The old gentleman and his wife of over 60 years had been gardeners all their lives, she still wore one of those pointed peasant hats and he a pith helmut like he was on Safari. They were very nice, gracious people, and introduced me to thier three children when they visited to check on the old mother and father. Two were Doctors and the daughter was a Professor at USC as I recall.
One day the old man told me a story about his experience after Pearl Harbor. It seems that the Japanese were not only put into concentration camps but that all thier homes and business’s were confiscated as well. The old man related to me about one of his customers, a very wealthy white man in San Marino, he had this humble gardener turn over his home to him, mortgage papers and all.
The gardener and his family spent years in a concentration camp in Poston Ariz, but when they were released after the war was over the rich San Marino white man gave the gardener back his little house in South Pasadena, lock, stock, and barrel. Recently,
during my late Son’s time in the ICU at the hospital, I was joined frequently by his many friends and co workers from the Glendale Schools, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning. I held and consoled many of them and vice a versa, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, African AMerican, Anglo, Latino, Filipino, and Armenian.
Despite the racism, ethnocentricity, stereotyping, and all the crass jingoism that many of us were raised with, our common humanity will always emerge if we permit ourselves to feel and relate to our fellow human beings, especially in times of trouble, sorrow, grief, and especially if it’s on a personal and individual basis.
Recently,during my late Son’s time in the ICU at the hospital
DQ, are you telling us that you have endured a tragedy in your life recently? Is that why you are back in L.A.?
Recently,during my late Son’s time in the ICU at the hospital, I was joined frequently by his many friends and co workers from the Glendale Schools, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning.
I’m terribly, deeply sorry for your loss, DQ, and also apologize for not being able to take your call this afternoon (though it sounded as if you and Lela had a good talk); I was deep into my essay and my mind would’ve been too scrambled to give you the attention you deserve. I will definitely call you by the end of the week. Hang in there, man. Our thoughts are with you.
Serendipity is a bitch we should give a nice big hug to once in a while.