Fastnet Sole

German Bight Dogger

Shiplap, ship shape, old sea shanties, tall tales ‘n’ high seas. Think of mermaids and their siren calls; Billy Budd, Master & Commander; The old man and the sea with his recurring dream of lions prowling the (North West) African coastline. We all came from there, us, us humans, homo sapiens. Humankind, as we currently manifest, originated in (the East of) Africa — there are, as Bob Marley sung, Buffalo Soldiers, stolen from Africa, in the heart of America. East! East of Eden, don’t get me ranting upon the Grapes of Wrath (it’s not what the consensus view reads into it, but it is what I naively [and formatively] did once read into it). The middle passage, Omeros and the Caribbean. A House for Mr Biswas, then on to R. K. Narayan’s The Painter of Signs. Odyssey and Iliad were set upon the sea, the Greeks were want to say, caught between scylla and charybdis, the Americans will say, between a rock and a hard place but the Brits (who [once] rule[d] the waves) put it best when they say, “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” Think of the Mary Rose, the Spanish Armada, the sinking of the Belgrano in ’82. The regattas, sailing and yachting (if at nothing else, ‘team GB’ still do well at Olympic rowing). Over the pond, the pond in which the unsinkable Titanic sank, there’s Moby-Dick; down under [sic] there’s Quicksilver, Rip curl and the megalodon. The sea shaped Conrad who wrote in Lord Jim, “there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.” O hail the bad &, in Bristol fashion, batten down yer breeches. Transmitted on the dot (like clockwork) @ (e.g.,) 05:20 G.M.T.—on FM and on longwave—are weather reports from coastal stations for the following maritime waters (relayed in clockwise order):

~ ~ ~
Vi·king (named after a sandbank)
North Ut·sire (an island)
South Ut·sire (an island)
For·ties (a sandbank)
Crom·ar·ty (an estuary)
Forth (an estuary)
Tyne (an estuary)
Dog·ger (a sandbank)
Fish·er (a sandbank)
Ger·man Bight (a bay of Northern Europe)
Hum·ber (an estuary)
Thames (an estuary & a river)
Do·ver (a port city)
Wight (an island)
Port·land (an island)
Ply·mouth (a port city)
Bis·cay (after the Irish Sea)
Tra·fal·gar (after Cape Trafalgar, in Spain)
Fitz·Roy (after Robert FitzRoy)
Sole (a sandbank)
Lun·dy (an island)
Fast·net (an isolated rocky stack)
I·rish Sea (after the Irish sea)
Shan·non (an estuary)
Rock·all (an isolated rocky stack)
Mal·in (named after Malin Head, Ireland)
Heb·ri·des (islands)
Bai·ley (a sandbank)
Fair Isle (an island)
Fae·roes (islands)
South·east Ice·land (an island)
~ ~ ~

G.M.T. (GMT) [Greenwich Mean Time] {UTC +0} — now, Our Man in Soho, an indolent pseudo-pornographer of Conradian concoction, was goaded into an attempted anarchistic act [sic] that centred on the blowing to smithereens of the Greenwich Observatory (in actual fact a work of fiction based on a newspaper report of such an intended act) (The paymaster in The Secret Agent? As clearly as I can, I shall say, “Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and…” the horseman of the North were (are[will be]) heard to murmur as they rode (ride), “The sign is a risin’, O hail Pew-Tin, our home’ll be in the promise land, Rainbow Country” — recall, truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction).^[1] This much I know: categorically, writers like E. M. Forster, Graham Greene, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi and most certainly too, Zadie Smith will have listened to (or had on in the background at the very [very {very}] least) renditions of this trio of audio files:

A theme tune to begin…

“The Shipping Forecast” (BBC, Radio 4)

…an anthem to end.

The aforementioned coastal stations (also listed clockwise around Great Britain) are here set out below:

~ ~ ~
Ti·ree [Automatic]
Storn·o·way
Ler·wick
Wick [Automatic]
Ab·er·deen
Leuchars
Boul·mer
Brid·ling·ton
San·det·tie [Light Vessel Automatic]
Green·wich [Light Vessel Automatic]
St. Cath·er·ine’s Point [Automatic]
Jer·sey
Chan·nel [Light Vessel Automatic]
Scil·ly [Automatic]
Mil·ford Ha·ven
Ab·er·porth
Val·ley
Liv·er·pool Cros·by
Val·ent·i·a
Ron·alds·way
Ma·lin Head
Mach·ri·han·ish [Automatic (0048 only)]
~ ~ ~

By the by, The Shipping Forecast is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 because its longwave signal can be received clearly at sea all around the British Isles regardless of time of day or radio conditions. Zebedee Soanes, one of several Shipping Forecast readers, once said that for the non-nautical, “it is a nightly litany of the sea.” Indeed, for many who’ll be safely tucked-up in their beds when these broadcasts are read, can romantically conjure up in their mind’s-eye lone fishing-boats far out in the North Atlantic with no protection other the starlit sky and the wireless radio. And ~ lest we forget ~ the final list of this post (3 of 3) consists of the ‘inshore waters’ of the British isles that The Shipping Forecast bulletins also covers:

~ ~ ~
Cape Wrath to Rat·tray Head [inc. Ork·ney]
Rat·tray Head to Ber·wick-up·on-Tweed
Ber·wick-up·on-Tweed to Whit·by
Whit·by to Gib·ral·tar Point
Gib·ral·tar Point to North Fore·land
North Fore·land to Sel·sey Bill
Sel·sey Bill to Lyme Re·gis
Lyme Re·gis to Land’s End
Land’s End to St Da·vid’s Head
St Da·vid’s Head to Great Orme Head
Great Orme Head to Mull of Gall·o·way
Isle of Man
Lough Foyle to Car·ling·ford Lough
Mull of Gall·o·way to Mull of Kin·tyre
Mull of Kin·tyre to Ard·na·mur·chan Point
Ard·na·mur·chan Point to Cape Wrath
Shet·land Isles
~ ~ ~

Go Vegan My Daughters & Sons

I Yam What I Yam

I bow down to a life upon the ocean swell.

— …- . .-. / .- -. -.. / — ..- – //

...oh_how_eye_howl. — **…oh_how_eye_howl.**

— § —

NOTES

[1] _^ (return) They say a pictures speak volumes..

I will wait

I shall be patient

Послушай меня | “Poslushay menya”

“Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.”

Послушай меня // (Poslushay menya)

..suffice to say, “Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it by threats, persuasion, or bribes.” Delve, why not, into a pictorial take on London’s Soho of yesteryear: “Beautiful “&” Sublime.” By the by, and you can quote me here, Winnie Verloc almost definitely did not end it by suicide. If that were meant to be a known, he’d have set that on the train to Dover, a head out of a window prior to entering a tightly excavated Victorian tunnel. No, to leave symbolically a wedding ring and jump over the rails of a cross-channel ferry is an improbable way to go (I mean to say decapitation is far quicker than floundering and drowning on the greasy dank gray, unforgivingly cold, English channel. She left the golden ring to foster an enigma, she was free and, in a cathartic act (freed as she was by no doing of her own from brother and mother), elected to begin anew — a freedwomen, phoenix-like from the ashes of the inept Professor’s making — and to Paris (the city that’d become known to Harold Bloom et al. as, “La Ville Lumière”) she undoubtedly did sojourn.

toodle pip

I’m the captain

The rise of fear and misinformation around COVID-19 has allowed promoters of malicious matter and hate to engage with mainstream audiences around a common topic of interest, and potentially push them toward hateful views. – Professor Neil Johnson

USA Today / Trump Tower / Trump calls Black Lives Matter mural 'a symbol of hate.'

This isn’t not is the Titanic

There’s a feeling when say the circus leaves town. You walk over the rubbish strewn waste ground that had, until yesterday been bubbling with the hum of humans, scents of glossy candyfloss and a sensation of collective anticipation—to gawp from the stalls at the leotarded trapeze artists, to stare at the caged, dead-eyed lion (would tonight be the night it finally flips and severs the head of the comic compere?) and to see again the star of the show, the wild-eyed clown, comically nicknamed “Commander & Thief” (‘i’ before ‘e,’ accept after ‘c’). The grass is now threadbare in more patches than one, the trees around the periphery of “The Rec” (for recreational ground) have reverted to reclusive and solitary form; no longer serving as impromptu urinals and supports to hold whilst being rogered by Ray or orally relieved by Phil (some idiot had carved out “JH 4 JH” on to one such trunk, the wound had yet to darken). A poster, once pinned erect, vivid, bright and gay, announcing the troupe’s tour dates with your home town’s name in bold (with drop shadow to boot), now lays sodden, soggy and washed out upon the ground (unlike one, it hadn’t become a souvenir and, lovingly encased in laminate, been Blu-tacked upon some child’s boudoir wall). It is emptiness. It is the inner realisation that the thing that had once so dominated your thoughts and attention… no longer exists. Yeah memories remain, but they are, when all is said and done, fictitious little affairs of your own making (whether you know this or not—I mean to say, depending on if you have bothered or not to read up on what lies behind dreams and the machinations of cognition—you and your brain will soon remold and reshape actual happenings into figments utterly removed from what once immutably was). This is that feeling: “I’ve got the feeling, but [I’m] los[ing] the spirit” / … / …

The hair's a-flare — **“The hair’s a-flare”**
And yes, objectification is wrong, but did not my man Anderson break with protocol and quip, “the man’s an obese orange turtle on his back, flailing in the hot Arizonan sun”? Two wrongs don’t make a right, my ‘man’ man would say, but come along now my son, the emperor is naked and has long been the arch master in the art of name calling (e.g., [not i.e.] Wild Bill, Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, Lyin’ Ted Cruz and latterly, Crazy Bernie and Sleepy Joe).

Let us not forget either these other performers who all, in their own walk on ways, played pivotal roles in this now concluded ~~tragicomedy~~ circus:

01. — Spicier
02. — Conaway
03. — Huckabee

Don’t walk away in silence
Don’t walk away

NOTES

Pompayo Pets Poodles

— pomp > prevaricate > prostrate

Mask Wars ~~ Whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself. Walter Raleigh — “Whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”
— Walter Raleigh (1554–1618)

Mask Wars -- All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. — “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
— George Orwell (1903–1950)

Mask Wars -- The Truth is out there... — (a) Honeytrap = a stratagem in which an attractive person entices another person into revealing information or doing something unwise. 1.) beauty is a subjective thing and 2.) the hand hold, it was all about the hand hold, my faded dancing queen, my rebellious player of sympathy for the devil. (b) Sugar daddy = a rich older man who lavishes gifts on a young woman in return for her company or sexual favours. 1.) company can be acquiescence and 2.) time is a relative thing, I mean, did you read my ode — with its strophe, antistrophe and epode — to my infatuation with my incarnation of Ms. Robinson in my (under)graduate days?

Mask Wars -- They who are cruel to animals become hard also in their dealings with fellow humans. We can judge the heart of a person by their treatment of animals. — “They who are cruel to animals become hard also in their dealings with fellow humans. We can judge the heart of a person by their treatment of animals.” (Quote de·gen·dered.)
— Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Mask Wars -- The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at those they have around them. — “The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at those they have around them.” (Quote de·gen·dered.)
— Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

Mask Wars -- The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. — “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.”
— William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.”
— Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

In a clumsy sort of way they did what they probably should’ve done anyway (so did say several of the British newspaper opinion pieces). In the fanfare surrounding the volte-face the following was said: “today China is increasingly authoritarian at home, and more aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else … if the free world doesn’t change Communist China, Communist China will change the free world.” We were reminded of the fact that in the 1970s (former US President) Nixon said he feared he had “created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world up to the CCP.” It was starkly stated yesterday that this was “Prophetic.” I am reminded of something I learnt in an IR class: “Thucydides’s Trap.” * We were recommended to watch a talk in which political scientist Graham Allison sets out his thesis. Namely, the increasing antagonism between a rising China and the incumbent superpower, the USA, may portend to worse that the current posturing and pan-Pacific posturing. Tick-tock [Macedonia vs. Persia] … tick-tock [The Fall of Rome] … tick-tock [Europe vs. Ottomans] … TikTok [Colonial power struggles inc. Germany vs. England & then Japan vs. America too]. The punch–excuse the pun–line is that in 12 of 16 past geopolitical cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been war.

According to Allison in 2012

The defining question about global order in the decades ahead will be: can China and the US escape Thucydides’s trap? The historian’s metaphor reminds us of the dangers two parties face when a rising power rivals a ruling power — as Athens did in 5^th c. BCE and Germany did at the end of the 19^th c. Most such challenges have ended in war.

“Thucydides’s Trap Has Been Sprung in the Pacific.”
— Financial Times, August 21, 2012.

According to Gideon Rachman in 2018

As tensions between the US and China rose in 2018, so did discussion of Thucydides’s trap (a term coined by Harvard professor Graham Allison to capture the idea that the rivalry between an established power and a rising one often ends in war). This cycle of reaction and counter-reaction might seem to justify the gloomy determinism of Prof Allison’s thesis. But it remains open to question whether patterns of state behaviour that emerged in ancient Greece will still prevail in the nuclear age.

“Year in a Word: Thucydides’s trap.”
— Financial Times, December 19, 2018.

‘Graham Allison has been a source of inspiration for me as a student and diplomat. As with Essence of Decision, Destined for War again provides us with his penetrating insights into global politics in the 21st century and beyond.’

In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

‘Graham Allison is one of the keenest observers of international affairs around. He consistently brings his deep understanding of history’s currents to today’s most difficult challenges and makes our toughest foreign policy dilemmas accessible to experts and everyday citizens alike. In Destined for War, Allison lays out one of the defining challenges of our time — managing the critical relationship between China and the United States.’ In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

The reason is Thucydides’s Trap, a deadly pattern of structural stress that results when a rising power challenges a ruling one. This phenomenon is as old as history itself. About the Peloponnesian War that devastated ancient Greece, the historian Thucydides explained: ‘It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.’ Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries ‘great again’, the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war.

Over the past 500 years, these conditions have occurred sixteen times. War broke out in twelve of them. Today, as an unstoppable China approaches an immovable America, and both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump promise to make their countries ‘great again’, the seventeenth case looks grim. Unless China is willing to scale back its ambitions or Washington can accept becoming number two in the Pacific, a trade conflict, cyberattack, or accident at sea could soon escalate into all-out war.

In Destined for War, the eminent Harvard scholar Graham Allison explains why Thucydides’s Trap is the best lens for understanding U.S.-China relations in the twenty-first century. Through uncanny historical parallels and war scenarios, he shows how close we are to the unthinkable. Yet, stressing that war is not inevitable, Allison also reveals how clashing powers have kept the peace in the past — and what painful steps the United States and China must take to avoid disaster today.

I’ll let you know something. Once it was said — muttered and murmured mutedly in order to check for rhyme as it was being etched — on the eve of a known near-certain to be humiliating death — I think here of (a) Icarus (Ancient Greek: Ἴκαρος // sun of Labyrinthine) and (b) the punch-(excuse the pun)-line of the song that begins: “Well they tell me of a pie up in the sky / Waiting for me when I die / But between the day you’re born and when you die / They never seem to hear even your cry” — with an exclaimed uplift of a twist at end (?), the following sombre lines:

❝
Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!
❞
— Walter Raleigh

You see, it was the speaker of those now hallowed lines that said too — in a tome he wrote whist entombed within the rock-like stone walls of The Tower (the Kentish rag-stone of the time now largely reupholstered in Portland stone–i lapse in to remorse, not reverie, as I think of Brighton Rock, Lyme Regis , the Portsmouth Maritime Museum, the third floor exhibition of The Museum of London, Docklands, the National Maritime Museum’s rooms on the Elizabethan era of voyage, discovery and conquer &, Cardiff Docks oh, dear fictitious reader, it’s all moored to the Quay of why and I ask you to pay heed to the following question too: can you tell heaven from hell?) — that, “it is not truth, but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.” Is this, I wonder, a case in point:

Mask Wars -- Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. -- Francis Bacon — “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.”
— Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

D’ya get me? careless whispers; grapes so divine.

The state of man

The fall of man

The demise of man

— § —

NOTES

* The ancient Greek historian Thucydides had observed that the Peloponnesian war (431-404 BCE) was a result of the growth of Athenian power and the fear that this caused in Sparta.

In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. When war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world came to a crashing halt.

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. … Read on.

“The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?”
— Graham Allison, The Atlantic, September 24, 2015.

Relevant reads, oh my fictitious one!:

Bidoonism, A. (2020, March). Mask wars. Retrieved, https://bidoonism.com/2020/03/19/mask-wars/.

Bidoonism, A. (2020, July). Short-termism. Retrieved, https://bidoonism.com/2020/07/22/short-termism/.

fire|🔥|نار

feisty, fervid & all-consuming

❝
All hushed and still within the house;
Without – all wind and driving rain;
But something whispers to my mind,
Through rain and through the wailing wind,
Never again.
Never again? Why not again?
Memory has power as real as thine.
❞
— Emily Brontë

Simonetta and Dante

❝
I never really came alive until,
I more or less died —
I’d floated along by hushed breeze and sail
I’d slept whilst they rowed.
You’d emerged in a place so far away
You’d grown in harsh heat —
You felt real thunder and deep disarray
You searched hard for light.
We locked eyes and made our haven from all
We found our true selves
We then got split, but vowed this bond won’t quell
We’ll find by inked delves. . .
❞

**“The Birth of Venus”**
by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) (c. 1485) @ The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

**“Primavera”**
Left to right: Mercury, the Three Graces, **Venus**, Flora, Chloris, Zephyrus
by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) (c. 1482) @ The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

**“Venus and Mars”**
by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) (c. 1485) @ The National Gallery, London.

Literature — art at its most sublime.

**“Pallas and the Centaur”**
by Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) (c. 1482) @ The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Now I don’t pretend to know much ado about nothing but Pallas is meant to be a Greek God, one of the Titans: a male. A centaur is a mythical half man half horse and thus, male too. So, who’s the lady depicted in the picture above? My inept investigations took me via a typo from the mythical Titan to the Italian painter Titian (a.k.a., Tiziano Vecellio) (c. 1488–1576) who also painted Venus (et al.). . .

Tiziano_-_Venere_di_Urbino — **“Venus of Urbino”**
by Titian (1534) @ The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

Self-Portrait, c. 1567; @ The Museo del Prado, Madrid — **Self-Portrait**
by Titian (c. 1567) @ The Museo del Prado, Madrid.

. . .who lest we forget is the god of Love (the subject of this posting). Titian, incidentally and interestingly was called by his contemporaries, “The Sun Amidst Small Stars” (which is the last line of Dante’s (see ^ up) poem Paradiso), According to the art scholar Gloria Fossi (2000) Titian’s technique of the application and usage of colour has had a profound influence on Western art. From Titian I got to Bronzino (a.k.a., Agnolo di Cosimo) (1503–1572), well because, he also painted Venus (et al.) and like Titian was of the Venetian school. . .

of an almost photographic quality

A wonderful Italian nose and a royal two finger salute

of an almost photographic quality

Angelo_Bronzino_-_Venus,_Cupid,_Folly_and_Time_-_National_Gallery,_London — **“Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time”**
by Bronzino (c. 1544) @ The National Gallery, London.

. . . they say Bronzino’s somewhat elongated figures always appear to be calm and a little too reserved (i.e., lacking the agitation and emotion of those painted by some others) and believe it or not I sensed that in her fingers and in the leggy long-backed cheeky cherub. Well from there I found my way to Western painting (hovering over the link on the Bronzino page I saw a pic of the girl with the pearl…) and just had to see what was included in this, the people’s canon:

Hercules_&_telephus — Ancient Roman wall art, artist unknown (c. 6 BCE – 9), prosaically titled: **“Herakles finds his son Telephos”** @ The National Museum, Naples.
— this mural depicts the discovery of the child Telephos by his father, Herakles. Telephos, a minor figure mentioned in Trojan War stories (painted here being suckled by a doe). To the left sits a colossal personification of Arcadia, an impressive female figure who stares off into the distance (oh yeah, that ‘far-away-stare’ look). Follow the lion’s gaze, see where the lightening rod is striking (air-brushed out or added as a salacious afterthought?), see the udder suckling and the tender fawning of the knee…

Meisje met de parel — **“The eyes”**
by Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), titled: “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (c. 1669) @ The Mauritshuis, The Hague, Holland.
— sometimes referred to as the Mona Lisa of the North… oh wow, you see into my soul don’t you. You, the finest pear of pearls the waters of the Persian Gulf ever did relinquish to the arid surrounds of the oasis of the soul.

soul meets soul — **“The bum”**
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), titled: “The Valpinçon Bather” (1808) @ The Musée du Louvre, Paris.
— I didn’t get it at first but this is the chap who got titillated by notions of the Orient.* Oh Edward Saïd! Oh Wilfred Thesiger!

The_Kiss_-_Gustav_Klimt_-_Google_Cultural_Institute — **“The kiss”**
by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), titled: “The Kiss” (c. 1907) @ Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.
— it certainly once, A3 sized and lovingly laminated, hung above the very epitome of my very own Delta of Venus (a.k.a. the Nymph of Nizwa).

Grant_Wood_-_American_Gothic_-_Google_Art_Project — **“The connotation and the implication”**
by Grant Wood (1891–1942), titled: “American Gothic” (1930) @ the Art Institute of Chicago.
— don’t dig, in this instance ignorance is bliss.

Literature — art at its most sublime.

NOTES

* Orientalism — us and them — who am I? who r U? Ways of Escape, wanting to be somewhere (anywhere?) other than here, but here’s not a geographic location, it’s a mindset that cannot, I fear, be vacated until the end of days. Ingres, who evidently had a penchant for the Orient, painted these paintings also:

“Roger Delivrant Angelique” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) (1819) @ Musée du Louvre, Paris.

“Study of a Male Nude” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) (1801) @ The École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts

“The Turkish bath” (Le Bain Turc) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) (1862) @ Musée du Louvre, Paris.

**“Odalisque with Slave”** (L’Odalisque à l’esclave) **
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) (1839) @ Fogg Museum, Boston.

**“La Grande Odalisque”**
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) (1814) @ Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Hard to marry such colour and enchantment with this photograph of Ingres; yet in the self-portrait said to be by him in his 78^th year, I detect an amazing head of youthful hair and a hint of a cheeky flair:

**“Self-Portrait at Seventy-Eight”**
by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) (1858) @ The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

sketches by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres — **“Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, don’t look around the eyes, look into the eyes”**
Sketches by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. (1780–1867)

** An odalisque (اوطه‌لق) was said to be a, hmm, let us say ‘chambermaid’ in the time of the Ottoman empire. And on I’m driven to forage and dig, an internet hunter and gatherer am I. I subscribe to this self-imposed penitence, relentless is the yearn, incessant is the burn, bereft of zest, I am. So here (the anonymous) you(s) go:

**“Odalisque”**
by Jules Lefebvre (1834–1911) (1874) @ Art Institute of Chicago.

“Carmen Bastián” by Marià Fortuny (1838–1874) (c. 1871) @ Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.

“Nude young man with spear” (Desnudo de joven con lanza) by Marià Fortuny (1838–1874) (1860) @ The Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi, Barcelona.

“The Odalisque” (La Odalisca) by Marià Fortuny (1838–1874) (1861) @ Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.

بس خلاص

Steadfastness

{ and ramblings }

O David I,’m in awe of U, you battle The Grim Goliath of Grozny more valiantly than do oh so many.

Olga Baranova, David Isteev, director David France and, Maxim Lapunov. Dig 4 more. — Olga Baranova, David Isteev, director David France and, Maxim Lapunov.
— Dig 4 more.

READING № 1

Gessen, M. (2017, July). The gay men who fled Chechnya’s purge. The New Yorker.

BBC / Storyville

BBC / Storyville

Storyville — ‘Welcome to Chechnya’

READING № 2

Baum, D. (2016, April). Legalise It All: How to win the war on drugs. Harper’s magazine.

READING № 3

Aikins, M. (2009, December). The Master of Spin Boldak. Harper’s magazine

what-the-duckery — I spy with my tired old eye . . .

penguin-too — …we torment ourselves, ceteris paribus, more than we do anybody else.*

* I’m in one hell of a hole. I put myself here, or I should say I took the actions that led to my downfall and thus accept that I bare the responsibility for being way down in this here hole. I’ve read some of Dante, I’ve read and reread both Crime and Punishment and The Heart of Darkness. I’m saying I know that some of us humans have a predisposition to manically obsess with the what could’ve beens and the why’s it have to be this ways? To allow themselves to become transfixed with fretful foreboding (the fear factor; the indices of fear). To have flown so high to have delved so deep, to have touched the lips of paradise and to have slept on the cold dark dunes beside the ember glow of the Queen of Sheba whilst shrouded in a sea of near absolute silence below crystalline constellations; to have conquered everything I could ever possibly have wanted and imagined and for then to have so abruptly… tea, bee, see.

[‘continued’ not ‘confirmed’]

Intravenous

a hit for the heart (& head)

❝
In the shimmer with a glimmer, came a slight breeze
softer than cotton, was its faint whisper
the crop swayed, my mind jogged
from this did flow, the following sentiment:
Even the richest red poppy-petaled flower —
with the very most resplendent, voluptuous and succulent gum-filled pod,
— does fade and evaporate to nothing
when I compare it to thee.
❞

I kept hearing “Es Jay double-yous” and I thought to myself, ‘you what?’ and said aloud to him, “what can I do!” So, like many nowadays would do and, according to him, what I should do, I went to the internet and looked it up:

Social Justice Warrior
A pejorative term for an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism.

So “SJW” is a negative frame of reference for hmmmm, let us say — and by no means exclusively — people of a left-wing liberal persuasion. The quid quo pro would be, I guess, ‘the neo-conned’ of the right-wing (you know, the type that were deaf to Ms Christine Blasey Ford’s heartfelt testimony). Man Alive! We’ve uninvited and unwanted grinders ‘n’ grabbers telling us what’s wrong from right — I’ll add to this compendium of delusional luminaries Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Jair Messias Bolsonaro &, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. From where this compulsion to delve into this particular warren came from, I do not know but, I just got [digitally] distracted as per bloody effing usual. (Today’s rabbit hole however, was literal and epic.) I think it began by me reading something to do with the build up to America’s 2020 presidential elections and the mention of Qanon in relation to one L. Boebert, restaurant owner and devout gun carrier. From there, I got to some New York Times podcasts which both expressly considered how the internet is changing humankind as we know it:

Thank (human) Nature for the New York Times.

§ / Caliphate
Rukmini Callimachi seeks to understand ISIS (داعش).

1 of 12 | 06:28

2 of 12 | 23:47

🔈 ∰ Listen to all

§ / Rabbit Hole
Kevin Roose investigates what happens when our lives move online.

1 of 9 | 5:18

2 of 9 | 27:49

🔈 ∰ Listen to all

Both journalists ^ are deeply dedicated and totally impressed me. I’d like though to emphasise just how profoundly I was moved by Rukmini Callimachi’s professionalism and her meticulously investigated and cross checked information. It’s a world away from click bait and polemic knee jerk presumption. I do say and do mean, Thank Nature for such individuals. A world away too, are are the articles collated here:

From the Longform archives I stumbled upon a 2015 two-part interview with the said Rukmini Callimachi:

❝
Faces open phones
Snapchat has filters
Instagram takes selfies
Facebook now ‘auto’ tags
TikTok takes the bloody lot
❞

Qanon -- a glitch within the rich — Yep. . .

I read it on reddit.

4chan — ‘anonymous’ English-language platform for forums..

Think about it, we most of us (a) don’t want to be conformist and conventional — we don’t want to accept the fact that in all likelihood we are automated animals with next to no free will — (b) we want to be a creature of some distinction and significance yet (c), we want to affiliate with others who think like us and see the world as we do. I won’t harp on about echo chambers and Cambridge Analytica but rest assured nearly all of those silly young boys who got radicalised and for a semester or so wanted to make their computer game lives come true and transform an insular existence to a communal one, did soon realise that dreams and fantasises are better off staying as such. Just consider the lunacy of new year’s resolutions: in principal everything’s paradise, in practice its pedestrian and prosaic (it is banal, boring, dreary, dull, monotonous, mundane, repetitious, run-of-the-mill, tedious, tiresome, uneventful, unexciting and so very fucking humdrum and bereft of excitement).

You see, the so-called dark/deep web ain’t at all as hidden and unknown as some would like it to be (and dare I say, some believe it to be). You really would be delusional if you thought TikTok (ByteDance) wasn’t lovin’ it, loving the fact that they’ve scored the biggest coup against the decadent capitalist West since inception — i.e., the December 1949 clashing of egos in Moscow between Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin. Unbridled, unabridged, verbatim they’ve now a trove of data — much of it innocent and inane, not withstanding — gait, voice and 3D facial info of titanic terabytes. No ICT/SM entity worth its silly.con isn’t tracking every move we make, every step we take, in private/incognito mode. Just because a coder says do not cache/index in the meta-head, does not mean that every deliverer of the internet isn’t caching and logging and instantaneously mirroring every upload, change, view and comment. The notion of total deletion is fanciful. So, you see: Qanon and 4chan etc. etc., the light-right, alt-right, neo-conned and digital Es Jay double-yous are simply providing ICT/SM entities (and critically: the agencies of the state with whom they are symbiotically in cahoots with) priceless reams of data.

I know nothing, and I ain’t supposing that I here by do but, I do somehow see the need to be different (against the powers that be) but affiliate and bond with others — what every Qanon believer, 4chan /w3/ contributor/viewer and loyal follower of angry-man-with-a-web cam wants (whether or not they know it) — to be partially reminiscent of the hero-worship the LSD-addled Jim Jones did attract in his heyday.

Angry man

Very angry man

And yes, I know that many were essentially kept prisoner and that well over 300 young children in that now overgrown Guyanan jungle ~~commune~~ (no,: “camp”) were given no choice in the act of revolutionary suicide that they sacrificially performed. If ever there was a reincarnation of the mythical Kurtz, J.J. of Jonestown was surely he.

This is the end. . . my beautiful friend: the end. Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain, where all the grownups are insane:–

laudanum — “It acted like a charm, like a miracle!” But was rendered to naught when you came into the field of view.

^ = Another day where I’ve been wholly blown off course by the internet and my plans of getting familiar with the cognitive sciences ahead of the coming semester are fast fading… ‘cognitive dissonance’ is a term I do keep hearing and one that I am keen to get to grips with.

Cantos

Any good I’ve done has been spoiled by —

Cantos

❝
I have tried to write Paradise

Do not move
      Let the wind speak.
         that is paradise.
Let the Gods forgive what I
         have made
Let those I love try to forgive
         what I have made.
❞
— Canto 120, E. P.

— (& diggers can dig, & judgers will judge, it is
      all but just a handful of dust after all.)
a fateful mistake; a tragedy of titanic proportions.
      Of my own making? Certainly, yes.
      Tea /
            Bee //
                  Sea ///

Bittersweet

~ ~ ~ irony
Symphony

At the outset of the 2015 BBC documentary Bitter Lake, Adam Curtis suggests that,

❝
We live in a world where nothing makes any sense and those in power tell stories to help us make sense of the complexity of reality, but those stories are increasingly unconvincing.

❞

The contention argued in Bitter Lake is that Western politicians have manufactured a simplified story about militant Islam into a “good” vs. “evil” argument. This argument, which is informed by and a reaction to Western society’s increasing chaos and disorder, is neither really understood by the governments and think-tanks that have manufactured it or the people (the citizenries) to which it is being peddled.

📹 Bitter Lake (2015)

“The Nightmare” by John Henry Fuseli.

“The Nightmare”

“I have a suspicion that the politicians’ revival of the old behaviourist ideas and techniques will be helped and reinforced by a powerful ally – the machines we have built. The computers.” — Adam Curtis”

↘
Bidoonism’s Adam Curtis collection

Post Script

1. Eric Hobsbawm
Hobsbawm focused on the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. His best-known work is his trilogy about what he called the “long 19th century” (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914). Read on …

2. Edward Saïd
Saïd focused on the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, and contends that “orientalism” is a powerful European ideological creation that is the key source of the inaccuracy in cultural representations that form the foundations of Western thought and perception of the Eastern world {نحن نعيش ، نموت}. Read on …

Orientalism

Western Conceptions of the Orient

Edward W. Said

3. Horses for courses 🐎
Proverb • British
— Different people are suited to different things.

4. Bidoonism ❱ Politics &c. ❱❱ History
According to me, “history’s basically histrionics… because, to attract attention, we inevitably state it melodramatically. Read on …

Love is. . .

Love is the weather. …

❝
Love is the weather. Betrayal is that lightning that cleaves and reveals it.
❞
— Toni Morrison

❝
Love is or it ain’t.
Thin love ain’t love at all.
❞

Mask Wars

~ by J.H.K.

Almost half of the British population believes that COVID-19 (often referred to on the street as Chinese Corona) is a “man-made creation.” According to the Independent, research suggested that many think Covid-19 is a Chinese weapon or created by the “New World Order.” — **“Mask Wars”** ~
According to London’s FT, Freemasons, Norwegian salmon and even Bill Gates have been blamed for an upsurge in coronavirus cases in China.

To wear or not to wear

According to Dahlia Lithwick of Slate, “refusing to wear a mask is a uniquely American pathology.”

❝
The rise of fear and misinformation around COVID-19 has allowed promoters of malicious matter and hate to engage with mainstream audiences around a common topic of interest, and potentially push them toward hateful views.
❞
— Professor Neil Johnson (2020)

We Live To Die

live-free-or-die

Diatribe

— A forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.
— “Billy began his diatribe against Big Brother.”
— Castigation / obloquy / tongue-lashing / vituperation /

You see, well maybe you don’t but, clearly now, I do. It is all to do with the controversy over corona. One could launch and embark upon a (philippic) tirade. One could set sail and set forth a (monotonous) monologue. I have ruminated (long & hard) & now have more than a little desire to fulminate. Why? well because of all that’s going on, what it portends to and what’s at stake. Losing one’s religion, becoming faithless ain’t no run-of-the-mill thing.