The Gnat, the Hammer, and the Cruise Ship

The Gnat, the Hammer, and the Cruise Ship Jan Clausen (bio) 1 A top-of-the-line sledgehammer, swung by a ballsy giant, lands with overwhelming corrective force upon a wayward gnat. Generic gnat, illustrious hammer, best in show. Hammer o'erwhelms said gnat—then what? Everybody shrugs? Maybe some people titter, some people squirm, some people shop, some people cry foul, some people jam the phone lines calling home from Edmonton or Boston to see is Sister Maddie Cousin Trevor Uncle Bernie doing okay, while the usual suspects does hold rally, shout slogan, wear out vocal cords chanting: poor poor gnat, sledgehammers really ought to stop behaving this way. Counter-deplorers hoot Nuke the Gnat. Pierced by grandiloquent eloquence of power, TV viewers study rigor of the hammer. Yes, from where we sit, the focus is all on Hammerism. As virile virtue, imperial perfidy, Blood and Guts and Hardware cunningly commingled. An irrelevant few concern themselves briefly with the ant's pedigree. As in: was that gnat an ant, in point of fact? A wasp? A bumblebee? How would we know, since our eyes were glued to the tool and we couldn't very well study the trivial insect form as it slid beneath the compass of the hammer's awesome shadow? (As it writhed within that compass.) What if it was a butterfly, what if it was a horsefly, what if it was a beetle? Silverfish, ladybug? Even congaree?1 What difference would that make? (Congaree you would hear a crispy crunch.) [End Page 257] Maybe it was an aphid? An earwig? Centipede? The (in)(human) hammer pounces then bounces. That was one time i aint studying yoooooouuuu A hammer lands on the critter, but its surface is so vast, with unavoidable ripples, unevenness and pitting, and the target so minuscule, that the just-assaulted insect, still numb to its own demise, may feel as though the nave of a windowless cathedral—a cauldronous, echoing, light-withholding space—has clamped over it. Shift the camera angle. Zoom in tight on someone wearing the green uniform, dirt to belly behind the bluggoe curtain, praying the fighter jets is Cuban MIGs. (We can see they are F-16s.) Someone selling breadfruit on the pavement, someone pounding 'tory pulling fish guts in the market hears heavy fire unleashing on the fort and crumples in the desolating glare of what already can't be helped. "They killing him now." Sun-staved beneath a tambran tree, someone whistles a country western classic: "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille." Here come the blond legions, face black up like jab-jab. And thus, history. Etcetera. Now change the camera angle. Recount the pedigree. This family dispatched one scion of the tiny island north to withstand the dreaded rigors of that cold winter breeze, wishing the ne'er-do-well would quit liming [End Page 258] about, find a purpose in life. The plan had been for the polished prodigal, now sober and mature, to return to the family orbit. Instead, he made his way in that wealthy cold place, and one day fathered his own political dynasty. Perhaps it was in the genes, for his brother stayed home and became a power broker on the tiny, hot island. Both sons of Carriacou were very light-skinned. Boss O'Connell, lord of Albany, taking a potshot at the Jewish pols, famously said of Basil Paterson, "I consider him the only white man on the ticket." The hammer rises, falls. i ent studyin yoooooooo Let's have some timeless rhythm. 2 The Operation unfurls, news cycle spins dry, gnat-island becomes an anvil we still can't pronounce. Encountering a name that looks vaguely Spanish, we imagine we're displaying our sensitivity (to that Other America, open down dey, la la ...) as we utter "Gruh-nahda." If corrected, we feel bewildered and slightly annoyed, in the manner of Caucasians thrown for a loop when a "Native American" says he's an Indian, so we readily ignore the new information. Gruh-nahda, Gruh-nada, we pronounce on rare occasions when the topic of our nation's most laughable conquest comes up at all. When in

Aeronautics · Cruise · Hammer · Marine engineering · Structural engineering · Engineering · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Geology · Oceanography