Book X- Cousteau

"We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking: the population big bang, the North-South divorce, the climatic changes of all sorts, the elimination of thousands of species, the new dictatorship of materialism. All these evils must be cured urgently, and the only medicine is a recourse to Utopia. In a remarkable speech at the Ateneo Veneto on April 6, 1990, Federico Mayor, Director General of UNESCO, said: "Since the Renaissance, one has often ascertained that today's utopias are the realities of tomorrow.. Utopia is the necessity to get over and break the barriers of the established order."

Jacques Cousteau
United nations Conference on
environment and Development,
June 1992, rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Chapter 1: San Sebastian

Hemingway, like Cousteau, loved the sea and a good beach of course. He wrote as much in The Sun Also Rises which he lifted from Ecclesiastes. He was talking about San Sebastian, that most cosmopolitan of cities by the bay. When hot, he said, there was a certain early-morning quality to the place; that the trees seemed as though their leaves were never quite dry and the streets felt as though they had just been sprinkled. And it's true, at least in summer. On the other hand he didn't mention the ocean breeze off the Bay of Biscay, which is fundamental to the climate of the city. Plus, for my taste, he used that 'early-morning' sketch too many times in his book.

Like Hemingway's main character 'Jake', I also left Paris because of a Jew. But he was a she, and her name wasn't Cohn. She did, however, want me to go to Spain and meet her in Pamplona for San Fermin, just like the book. My plans, to write a speech honoring Jacques-Yves Cousteau for an American oceanographic institute, however, took me no further than the Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra in San Sebastian, but only an hour away. It was a challenge since Cousteau wasn't a particular interest of mine and he had no connection with the area that I could tell, while Hemingway was a regular. Beside, my friend Carole was a fan of Hemingway, not Cousteau, and swore that I looked just like the old curmudgeon.

She wasn't particularly pretty, nor did she have that Rue du Faubourg Montmartre chic that Ernest preferred; nevertheless, she had a cocky panache that I favored in women. Not to mention marvelous pointy breasts mounted on a teen body that she displayed bra-less with coyness, jiggle and verve that like powerful magnets drew every eye. But, as with Hemingway's heroine, Brett, she was chasing a Spaniard - which I had suspected - who was young and handsome in his way, with a long black ponytail of hair. I'm bald, but secure in the knowledge that tails were conceived by nature to cover things otherwise embarrassing. Nevertheless, in my youth I had vainly fought thinning hair, even tried dyeing it. I found it tough to keep it trimmed though, much less freshly painted. Unfortunately, hair sort of defines who we are; the hat we can't take off. Despite the Spaniard's hair and its statement about where he was at, what his needs were, and whom he was trying to please, my pate was mute.

Her lean little man didn't fight the bulls, but he had this thing about running with them at San Fermin like Hemingway and his comrades, all dressed up with the rest in their white outfits and red bandanas. I'll say this about Cousteau, I don't think he ever ran with the bulls. Smart man, although swimming with sharks would have given most people pause. The whole bull business smacked of idiocy since honest citizens got gored and killed doing such things. She wanted to be chased by her Spaniard, he wanted to be chased by the bulls, and I wanted to be free of the whole foolish mess. She was half my age and like Hemingway's Jake, I couldn't get it up. Unfortunately, nothing as poignant as a war wound, where there was a certain role to play. Mine, like the good Senator's and twenty million others, was simply a dysfunction relieved with a little blue pill, which was expensive: the cost of two erections equaling a substantial meal at the Brasserie Mari Galent in the Hotel de Londres. The pills, as spam reminded me daily, was cheaper on the net of course; nevertheless, tricky on international deliveries and chancy due to scams. My priorities had changed with age, but I probably should have followed Hemingway's seminal advice about not exhausting the supply. Therefore, taking only modest turns at sexual encounters, I leaned towards the corpulent and orally erotic, which favored red meat and wine, rich desserts and periodically, the gout.

Cousteau wasn't much of a writer; I guess that's why I wasn't attracted to him. He was a film man at heart, always looking outward, never in. So I didn't have much to go on for the speech, which was the point of this whole endeavor. Matter of fact, I didn't like the way Hemingway wrote either, never did, too dry and simple; purportedly his way of searching for that clean, pure sentence I suppose. Both authors left something to be desired.