“What would I be required to do as a shipfitter?“ I asked him.

“Until you’ve completed your apprenticeship,“ he replied, “you’d be required to assist the other, more experienced shipfitters in making minor repairs to the ship, wherever they’re needed. You’d also be required to stand sounding ’n’ security watches, which consist of taking measurements of the depth of the water that normally accumulates in the bilges at key points around the ship, to see if those particular areas need to be pumped out or not. While on watch, you’d be expected to report your findings to the officer-in-charge on the bridge, every hour on the hour. Other than that, you might be asked, on occasion, to help clean your own compartment, the passageway outside the shop, or the head we share with First Division.

“Well what d’ya think?“ he asked. “Would you like to become a shipfitter?“

“Yes, I would,“ I said without thinking, for I wanted, so badly, to do something constructive for a change.

“Good!“ he exclaimed. “I’ll see what I can do to get you transferred. I think you’ll find your tasks as a shipfitter, a bit more satisfying than those you’ve been asked to perform in First Division.“

Left standing in a quandary over whether or not I should have accepted this offer, I began to have serious doubts about the reality of these encounters with my soul. As I looked back upon the last stunt she’d pulled on me, I wondered if maybe I wasn’t getting a little too carried away with all of this imaginary stuff, and if instead, I wasn’t really getting sucked down into some schizophrenic nightmare by a Siren I had inadvertently helped to create. Then too, I wondered if maybe I ought not to be ignoring her and all of her nonsensical little tricks, rather than allowing her to hornswoggle me like she did.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to forget about her and get back to living some semblance of a normal life. Why should I let some imaginary little sprite, that no one else could see anyway, ruin my life. I had to be strong; I had to stand up to her and stave off this tendency, I’d inherited from my father, to be driven mad. I had to pull myself together before it was too late. And I could do that with a fresh start in another division on the ship.

Like a branch on a huge sycamore tree, did I extend a clenched fist into the dark night which overshadowed my soul. In a Herculean effort to free myself from the chains that fettered me to the earth, I cursed the day I was born. I cursed my parents for having pulled me down from the heavens into this wretched life. And I cursed God for having allowed this travesty to take place. I hated my parents not only for what they’d done, but also for the life they’d squandered away. I hated them. “I hate you,“ I finally screamed out into the night sky with a clenched fist.

Like the bursting of a long awaited thundershower upon parched earth, did I break down and cry. “Forgive them God,“ I sputtered in between sobs, “for they know not what they have done.“

As I caught sight of the ship, out of the corner of my eye, I flew into yet another rage. With a clenched fist, I reached out, only this time to condemn the crew of the ship. “I hate you,“ I screamed out in between fits of sobbing. “I hate all of you lousy bastards.“ But in my heart of hearts, I knew I didn’t hate them either, for they too knew not what they had done. Only I found it harder to forgive them since I, who was like them in so many ways, would ultimately have to forgive myself.

Sobbing uncontrollably, as I stumbled along, I beat my chest with clenched fists. “Ah,“ I screamed out. “I hate you. I hate this body. I hate this life.“

As this psychic storm brought relief to my desolateness, I found myself standing right smack dab in the middle of the shipyard, laughing, of all things, while I finished crying, for I had just grasped the true meaning of forgiveness. In releasing my hatred for my parents and the crew of the ship, I had simply released my own hatred of myself. In the past, I had failed to see that what I hated in them, I actually hated about myself, for I was treating myself in the same manner they were mistreating themselves and others, only in ways yet barely visible to me. And since none of us knew what we were really doing to ourselves or to each other, I had to forgive them for their trespasses if I was to find forgiveness for mine. In letting go of the hatred that’d clenched my fist, I freed forgiveness from not only my hand but heaven’s as well, for what is loosed on earth shall be loosed in heaven. More importantly, I freed myself from the chain of hatred, which binds us all to instinctively taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in a heinous repetition of history from one generation to the next.

Like a drunken man who has come to his senses, did I slip onboard the ship, hardly noticed, and slither down the ladder to my sleeping quarters. Instead of lying down, I decided to stay up and write Mary a letter. Only this time, after recounting the events of my trip into Tokyo, including my encounter with Jun, I purposely left off telling her, as usual, how much I loved her. Thus did I deal with the other chain that bound me to the earth like the roots of a huge sycamore tree.

“It appears they suffer some grand delusion that we are the good guys who’re going to save the rest of the world from bad guys, like the Communists. They misled me, for awhile, with this white lie of theirs, until I discovered they were only protecting their delusion—some fantasy called the American dream which, for many throughout the world, has become a nightmare.

“For the real fight’s not out there, over in Vietnam, it’s in here, within ourselves. It’s the struggle with our own delusions, the lies we live by, especially the one which has us so convinced that what we need is more of what’s out there in Nature.“

“I don’t understand,“ I interjected.

“Since time immemorial,“ he went on, “have we fallen for this lie, that our future lies hidden within our material progress. And yet, in our pursuit of this delusion, we’ve only succeeded in impoverishing the earth and its people. Thus have we helped to create a bipolar world, consisting of the haves ’n’ the have-nots, who have further polarized themselves over the issue of materialism by squaring off on either side of an iron curtain into two heavily armed, ideologically opposed camps or isms.

“As I chipped away at all the hype ’n’ hysteria surrounding communism, I began to see it as a rather ambitious attempt by the have-nots to right the wrongs of capitalism, which has only succeeded in globally impoverishing the many for the benefit of a few. However, in their struggle to purge from the masses the sins of capitalism, that is, its rugged individualism, greed and failed trickle-down economics, the communists have only succeeded in creating a totalitarian nightmare instead of a utopia. As this nightmare invaded the collective consciousness of the world, it struck fear into the heart of the American dreamer and created mass hysteria. For this Red scare threatened to take everything away from the American dreamer in order to redistribute the wealth, he’d misappropriated in the first place, more equitably amongst its rightful inheritants, the have-nots of the world.

“That’s when I saw the nightmare and the dream as two sides of the same coin, for both of them have resorted, in the past, to propaganda, economic ideology and guns to force their inhumane ways of life on the rest of us, the guilty bystanders caught up in this Mexican standoff. Whether we choose heads or tails, we lose—the many are impoverished for the benefit of a few—for a single coin was given to us long ago to benefit not only the individual but also the collective.

By now, my discomfort with the Navy had grown to such an extent that I began to wonder what my body, in its more infinite wisdom, was trying to tell me. As the underground resistance to my life in the Navy had spread throughout my body, I found myself feeling more like a stubborn mule that refused to budge no matter how much I cajoled or prodded it, than I did the human being that’d gotten it into this mess. O how I wished I could see what it saw in its earthy wisdom. But alas, I seemed hopelessly trapped in an inescapable morass or nightmare, from which not even I could free my own ass.

Although the mule has received a bum rap as being a dumb animal or “dumb ass“, like the jackass who sired it, more often than not, it takes after its mother, the mare who gave birth to it, in the way it generally behaves. However, if it senses a command’d shove it beyond the boundaries of appropriate behavior for a mule, it’ll quickly revert to behaving like an ass. Seeing such orders as a lie to be resisted with every wily trick at its disposal, thus will it play dumb, ignore the command, or refuse to budge, choosing instead to sit down on its haunches and bray at our stupidity while we—with our superior intellect—stumble off into the very nightmares our more asinine instincts refuse to go.

And so did I assume a more mulish role onboard the ship by playing dumb, ignoring commands or pretending to misunderstand such orders. Whenever I caved into the demands of the lifers and tried to lead an exemplary seaman’s life, I’d grow increasingly agitated. As soon as I returned to my mulish escapades, I found happiness again. Subjected to a form of behavior modification by my mule, I quickly learned to pay closer attention to his wily ways. Like the mule, then, I could see that this life was not for me, that it was out of bounds for me—against my truest instincts. But I couldn’t see any further than the end of my nose or the instinctive reactions of a dumb ass, for unlike my mother, or the more marish part of me, I was incapable, at the time, of verbalizing what I felt.

“I know the feeling,” I interjected.

“From the first day of my enlistment,” he rejoined, “they drummed the idea into my head that I had joined this outfit for one reason only: to fight for my country. But they lied to me, for I ended up spending four long years fightin’ to save my ass from them.

“Don’t believe a word of what the lyin’ vultures say, for they prey upon human flesh with talons made of lies. Resist the temptation to become one of them. And whatever you do, don’t let ‘em rob you of the most precious gift you have, your humanity, for the wraiths’ll claw away at it until all that remains is the shadow of what was once you.”

“What d’ya mean?” I asked outta the very real fear that such a thing could happen to me.

“For four long years,” he went on to say, “they tried to convince me this way of life is a necessary evil. They almost succeeded until I went to Vietnam, supposedly to stop the spread of communism, and saw the truth for myself.

“It appears they suffer some grand delusion that we are the good guys who’re going to save the rest of the world from bad guys, like the Communists. They misled me, for awhile, with this white lie of theirs, until I discovered they were only protecting their delusion—some fantasy called the American dream which, for many throughout the world, has become a nightmare.

“For the real fight’s not out there, over in Vietnam, it’s in here, within ourselves. It’s the struggle with our own delusions, the lies we live by, especially the one which has us so convinced that what we need is more of what’s out there in Nature.”

“I don’t understand,” I interjected. “Since time immemorial,” he went on, “have we fallen for this lie, that our future lies hidden within our material progress. And yet, in our pursuit of this delusion, we’ve only succeeded in impoverishing the earth and its people. Thus have we helped to create a bipolar world, consisting of the haves ‘n’ the have-nots, who have further polarized themselves over the issue of materialism by squaring off on either side of an iron curtain into two heavily armed, ideologically opposed camps or isms.

“As I chipped away at all the hype ‘n’ hysteria surrounding communism, I began to see it as a rather ambitious attempt by the have-nots to right the wrongs of capitalism, which has only succeeded in globally impoverishing the many for the benefit of a few. However, in their struggle to purge from the masses the sins of capitalism, that is, its rugged individualism, greed and failed trickle-down economics, the communists’ve only succeeded in creating a totalitarian nightmare instead of a utopia. As this nightmare invaded the collective consciousness of the world, it struck fear into the heart of the American dreamer and created mass hysteria. For this Red scare threatened to take everything away from the American dreamer in order to redistribute the wealth, he’d misappropriated in the first place, more equitably amongst its rightful inheritants, the have-nots of the world.

“That’s when I saw the nightmare and the dream as two sides of the same coin, for both of them have resorted, in the past, to propaganda, economic ideology and guns to force their inhumane ways of life on the rest of us, the guilty bystanders caught up in this Mexican standoff. Whether we choose heads or tails, we lose—the many are impoverished for the benefit of a few—for a single coin was given to us long ago to benefit not only the individual but also the collective.

“Only when the individual and the collective realize their indebtedness to each other will we tear down the iron curtain that so divides our collective psyche. As the collective must put everything it possesses into the development of the individual, so must the individual give back to the collective all it has given him. Only then, will we truly be free.

“Only then, will we realize that our future lies not out there in our own self-centered materialism, but on the other side of the iron curtain within the collective unconsciousness of our beings. Only then, will we see the iron curtain as the veil of matter, which has so blurred our vision—our materialism as the wall, which has so divided us. Only then, will we take the next great step and cross the threshold to embrace our humanity, a life given to us for the sake of each other, as exemplified in simple living and the right use of the material goods of this world.”

“I see,” I muttered as he paused for a moment to get some assurance from me that I had understood what he had just shared with me.

“What we sorely need,” he continued to preach from his soapbox up on the bridge, “is an amalgam of communism ‘n’ capitalism around the issue of materialism, a single coin that combines the best of all three. But I’m afraid that what we’ll get is the appearance of a winner and a loser. In that case, we’ll all lose. And though communism may recede into the shadows of our collective imaginations, like a tyrannosaur, the truth of its ideals will rise again as the disparity between the haves ‘n’ the have-nots worsens under capitalism, that other dinosaur which may not pass on until it has devoured everything and transformed this Eden into a living hell.

“So don’t be fooled into believing the real battle’s out there tween one delusion and another, for the real war wages on within your body, even now as I speak. It’s there, the final outcome’ll be decided. The enemy’s not out there, he’s in here, for we’re our own worst enemy.”