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91
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on May 28, 2023, 12:54:51 PM »
1940

Robert Hewison, Too Much, p301:

' ... the romanticism of the war years showed ... that people were searching for some kind of healing and reintegrating myth, "a myth", as John Lehmann put it, in 1944, "in which we in England felt we were about to recapture for one moment of astonishing intensity, in 1940, when everything seemed to be falling into place"

and what happened in 1940?

... a real threat of 'absolute' defeat - The End - avoided ...

and nb, unifying effects of shared external 'enemy' ... whatever the internal differences, common acceptance of need to see off external threat ... brings us together ...

... what separates 'us' from each other is seen as less than what separates 'us' from 'them' ...

+nb primitive nationalism ... and blood rites ... 'our blood' ... 'their blood' ... nations 'forged' in blood-letting rituals ...

All Nationalism involves some sort of 'blood letting'.

Gruesome quotes from/by Franz Fanon, etc, about 'slashing the hands that control us', etc

... shedding the blood of the 'other' ... killing the occupying power ... or preventing the foreigners from occupying 'our' land ..,
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South Tyneside Stop the War / Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on May 28, 2023, 04:15:22 AM »
Focussing in on Dunkirk - but not the 'Dunkirk Spirit' British 'nationalistic' kitsch sort of stuff. Instead, a 'rescue' attempt/effort, not a 'triumph' ...
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From King Charles' Coronation to the Birth of Europe's Fourth Reich
Declan Hayes, Strategic Culture


   Let us, who walk on two legs and not four, salute those unsung legions who fell to make this knock-off Caesar appear to be great.

Although MI5's BBC outlet recently gave us a full roadmap to King Charles 111's Coronation, this article aims to add further to the festivities by discussing its religious hypocrisy, the charlatans who will be in attendance and its wider strategic significance as midwife to Europe's Fourth Reich.

First off, former banker and Banderite apologist Justin Welby, who styles himself as the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, will decree that Charles is the boss of bosses, the Don Corleone of their Anglican Cult, and as such, is the Defender of Their Protestant Faith, a title first bestowed on the philandering King Henry V111 by Pope Leo X in 1527, which the Anglican cultists quickly hijacked for their own mercenary reasons. Although that is bad enough, it is their attempt to co-opt other, more genuine and established faiths into their Coronation pantomime that riles me, as it riled Stephen Karganovic.

First off, the BBC tells us that the circus will include "Greek Orthodox music in memory of the King's father, Prince Philip", whom the late Princess Diana, Queen of Hearts, dubbed as Phil the Greek. But Phil the Greek abandoned the Faith of his Fathers and, more importantly, of his sainted mother, Princess Alice to embrace, in name at least, the string of high-class Anglican mistresses marrying the late Queen Elizabeth brought him. Though it would be a stretch of the English language to call me a Royalist, I have the profoundest respect for Princess Alice, who can be seen here, dressed in the habit of a Greek Orthodox nun, at the wedding of Queen (then Princess) Elizabeth to her wayward, penniless and generally useless son.

Given Princess Alice's resistance to Nazis in her native Greece and her support of the Greek Jews and Orthodox Christians during the Nazi Occupation, I have no doubt that she would stand foursquare with the Orthodox faithful of Syria, Ukraine and Jerusalem, where she is buried in its Russian Orthodox Cathedral alongside her aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna who is a saint in the (Russian) Orthodox Church.

If King Charles really wishes to honour the Orthodox faithful, then he could invite Patriarch Kirill to say a prayer for his granny or, if he was not suitable, my good friend Archbishop Theodosius Hanna, whom the Israelis regularly crucify, would make an excellent compromise.

But no. Shortly before I got Patriarch Aphrem of the Syriac Orthodox Church to address the Irish Parliament, this man of God, who had only recently survived an attempted assassination in his native Syria, opened the Cathedral of St Thomas in London which King Charles, to his credit, attended and to which the late Queen, to her credit, sent a telegram of congratulations. However, the CIA, not to be left out of festivities, got Umar al-Qadri, a semi-literate Irish-based Pakistani-Dutch imam, who spends an inordinate amount of time State-side with his Yankee pals, to do his song and dance routine on St Thomas' High Altar. Not only did this usurper not belong there but, once Patriarch Aphrem and the rest of the Syrian delegation arrived in Ireland, the theologically illiterate Al-Qadri, on the word of his Yankee handlers, made all kinds of incendiary theological accusations against the Syrian delegation, which was headed by its then Grand Mufti, one of our era's leading Quranic scholars.

Though ignoramuses like al-Qadri belong nowhere near King Charles' Coronation, these are the types of ecumenical oafs MI5 recruit to give credence to this Coronation circus. Clowns like that utter imbecile Clown Prince Zelensky, whose thugs are terrorising the Orthodox Christians Princess Alice so faithfully and courageously served. King Charles, if he wants to be a King rather than just a play-acting Zelensky-style plastic King, should call out Ukraine, Israel and all others who mock the religion of Princess Alice, Archbishop Hanna, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, and St Philoumenous and who persecute its faithful in ways the gone-to-seed Westerners, who will pack the pews of Westminster, can never even begin to appreciate, just as they cannot and will not even bring themselves to utter a prayer, let alone a pardon, for Catholic pacifist Julian Assange who, less than a mile away from their Coronation jamboree, lies chained in prisons dark but still in heart and conscience free just as other faith-driven English Catholics did in times gone by.

Given that Ursula von der Leyen would sell whatever remains of her soul for a chance to be in the spotlight, religious clowns will not be the only jokers in attendance. Seated like house-trained puppies on their pews will be the gangster separatists of Scotland and Ireland, Ireland's and Scotland's Sopranos, compared to whom even Hunter Biden and his Nazi bio labs look law-abiding. Though these Celtic Sopranos should, like the red and black bearskin soldiers who will pepper the proceedings, be aptly described as Soldiers of the King, they lack the courage, honesty and integrity of those countless Tommies who fell for King and Country in some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.

Those thieving, self-serving, child-raping curs don't even deserve that patch. They are there to network, to climb MI5's greasy pole, to skim and to keep the whole corrupt system the trappings of Royalty personify ticking over.

Co-opted as they are, these Scottish and Irish gangsters are way out of their depth. MI5 know that the jig is up for their Royalty, at least in the form the late Queen Elizabeth knew it. And so they are re-inventing the Royal circus show to make it more relevant, not only to the English and Australian blue rinses who lap all this vomit up but also to the World Economic Forum, the CIA and the EU prison yard's other shot callers, who care no more about King Jug Ears than do most of his subjects. Their objective is, as it has always been, to opiate us all into their cages, to herd and blinker us, so as we are sheep to this, their Judas goat.

Let's hope that the rain keeps off and King Charles and his Loyal Scottish and Irish skivvies have a good day of it, and that Ursula von der Leyen gets plenty of selfies to justify our American friends keeping that old mare in clover and, if God wills it, that Clown Prince Zelensky and al-Qadri manage to gatecrash the proceedings and bore all and sundry to death with their flat earth dirges.

But, in all this, let's recall that marvellous hymn of those English Catholics who kept true to the Faith of Our Fathers' Holy Faith and who, though "chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free." Let's recall the Irish Fenians, who put the fear of God and more into Queen Victoria, Joyce's "flatulent old bitch". Let's remember how James Connolly, who fought alongside Fenian fanatic Tom Clarke against the Soldiers of the King in 1916, not only castigated the flunkeys of Royalism in this fabulous essay but quite accurately positioned the role of monarchy in our society.

Speaking of which, Friday May 5th is the 42nd anniversary of the death by hunger strike of Bobby Sands, for whom I voted early and often, and for whom I led a series of high-profile protests, all in the face of systematic Sinn Féin sabotage. No doubt, those Sinn Féin leaders assigned to Licking the Royal Bum in London will throw Sands and his brave comrades a few shibboleths, empty words from empty people who serve Empire, the same Empire Connolly castigated when, from the steps of Liberty Hall he, and his fellow heroes of the Irish Citizen Army declared: We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland.

And so it is today in the words of Shakespeare's King Henry V with "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers". There are, as the late Queen Elizabeth proclaimed, dark and sinister forces afoot in England's green and pleasant land which is now a part of Europe's evolving Fourth Reich consumed, as its Third Reich predecessor was, with slaughtering Slavs, opiating the Chinese and making its own children be the modern-day equivalent of the Famine Queen's chimney sweeps. No more than the Famine Queen's own sullen subjects should we be beguiled by the Coronation's pomp and circumstance that sugar-coat the Fourth Reich's war crimes in Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and even England's own green and pleasant land of corrupt politicians, fake clerics and this empty Royalist pomp and circumstance.

Like Queen Victoria's chimney sweeps, Britain's coal miners and England's Tolpuddle and Tyburn martyrs, we have a choice in this. Sure, those of us who like a bit of pomp and circumstance can marvel at the marching bands and the broad posteriors and bursting seams of the multi-chinned pot bellies packing the pews of Westminster. We can watch Welby anoint Charles in this oh so English version of Hollywood's The Godfather before getting on with our day and settling in for the English Premier League's 3pm kick-offs.

Though we can marvel at these circuses, we should be in no doubt about their function or the role Ursula von der Leyen and a thousand other flunkeys play in them, as they Judas Goat us along into their Fourth Reich, which already has a strong Neanderthal axis in the CIA's fascist spawning grounds of Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic pimple states.

This Fourth Reich, as seen from Kiev and Jerusalem, demands an absolute monopoly on power; out-of-court reprisals; blanket censorship; the liquidation of almost all independent media and the destruction of all political opposition; an all-encompassing total state propaganda; and an active search for traitors, Orthodox Christians and fictional Russian spies, saboteurs and sports people.

For all the bullshit that King Charles' handlers get him to spin, here is the reality. The CIA's Radio Free Europe (sic) boasts that Poland's fascist regime refused to allow Vitalia Diatchenko fly to a tennis tournament because she is a Russian citizen. Twitter and the CIA's other media outlets rigged it so that Creepy Joe Biden won the U.S. Presidential election, just as they are currently rigging the 2024 election to ensure Trump does not win and Robert Kennedy Junior goes the way of his assassinated uncle, Jack, and his assassinated father, Bobby.

Don't be fooled or co-opted by King Jug Ears. He is but a mask, America's Mickey Mouse even down to the ears. The reality this Royal swan song masks is being played out in Kiev's Kristallnacht and in the killing fields of Eastern Ukraine, where Russian Orthodox soldiers are fighting the same Satanic forces their grandfathers faced 80 years ago,. It is being played out in the narrow back streets of Bethlehem, whose Orthodox Christians are mired under the Israeli yoke and in Gaza, whose Orthodox Christians suffer the same unspeakable privations as their Sunni friends, neighbours and relatives. In Sudan, where MI5's intrigues continue the genocidal work of Gordon of Khartoum and in a thousand other places, whose tragedies are celebrated in the finery King Charles and his moll, Queen Consort Camilla, so ignorantly adorn themselves with.

Let King Jug Ears adorn himself with his Star of Africa, his Cullinan diamonds, his St Edward Diamond, his Black Prince ruby as well as his throne of plundered amethysts, sapphires, garnets, topazes and tourmaline gems and as he plonks his well-polished, Anglo-Saxon posterior down on Scotland's Stone of Destiny, think of the fate of all of those who have suffered as this"rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born", of Julian Assange who rots in King Charles' dungeons for defending the Syriac Orthodox Christians of Iraq, of Alina Lipp, Germany's own Bambi, of Darya Dugina, Vitalia Diatchenko and so many other Russian Orthodox Christians, of the French Catholics who will be battered off Parisian streets as King Jug Ears performs his sluggish pantomime, of the Congo's legions of child slaves who mine cobalt for King Charles' self-serving Green Energy initiatives, of all of those who stand with Clarke and Connolly, with the Tolpuddle and Tyburn martyrs, with the Orthodox Christians far away in dear old Cyprus or in Kenya's dusty land and who tell King Charles, his moll Camilla and his whole entourage to stick their sham c

Let the blue rinses enjoy their day, the bands, the marching, the finery and the distended bellies of the great and mighty. But let us, who walk on two legs and not four, salute not this MI5 charlatan but those unsung legions who fell to make this knock-off Caesar appear to be great. That, at least, is what I will be doing on this Saint Jug Ears Day and every day "from this day to the ending of the world".
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South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on February 28, 2023, 11:34:52 PM »
Peace Now, Stop the War Online International Rally, February 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_nPNRswYIs&t=45s
95
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on February 28, 2023, 10:38:19 PM »
AntiWarFilms?
1. Things to Come, 1936
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knOd-BhRuCE
99
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on January 20, 2023, 05:36:53 AM »
Repetition is a Form of Change  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 [= 9 January 2002] 7:48 pm
You can't read the same message twice - you change, it changes.

You cannot read the same message twice - you change, it changes.

Aristotle, Rhetoric.
'It is difficult to punctuate Heraclitus's writing because it is unclear whether a word goes with what follows it or with what goes before it. Eg, at the very beginning of his treatise, he says:
"of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending".
It is unclear what "forever" goes with.'

the same is present living and dead awake and asleep young and old for the latter change and are the former and the former change and are the latter
disconnections combinations wholes and not wholes concurring differing concordant discordant from all things one and from one all things
changing it rests and resting it changes
we step and do not step into the same rivers
we are and we are not
 
It is wise to listen, not to me, but to the words. The words say: 'All things are one.'

Although the words stay the same, they seem to change.

Though the words stay the same, they seem to change.

New Member  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:27 pm
Hello ... pleased to meet you all - albeit marginally ... in a place on the edge of things that have no end and which is central and marginal and everywhere between at the same time and ...

Love Philip. 

The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:36 pm
Although separated and virtual strangers, we walk and talk together and blend in thoughts, emotions and feelings and find missing parts in others and giving missing parts to others and we take upon us, together and alone, the mystery of things - all things strange familiar simple complex mixed singular high low bitter sweet sorrowful joyful ... and although it can seem like meaningless nonsense it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense.
 
Does it make a difference ...?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/12/02 10:06 am
Does it make a difference whether this message is read or not read?
The act of writing it has brought some difference
(change)to the universe - and who can say what consequences that will have? (Tiny, trivial seeming acts can [perhaps occasionally, perhaps often, perhaps always] have wide-ranging consequences.)
Readings would further complicate matters - and responses even more so. 
Plotinus on Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:07 am
Plotinus [Enneads]:
Heraclitus who, by example, urges us to inquire into limitless matters, posits necessary exchanges from opposites and talks of paths up and down and around and
"changing it rests"
and
"it is weariness for the same to labour freely and to be ruled"
and he leaves us to conjecture and omits to make his argument clear and to reach conclusions, perhaps because he realised that we should inquire for ourselves as he himself inquired

Reality is complex, messy, not clear-cut.
So the way(s) into greater understanding of it cannot be simple, tidy, unambiguous.
Heraclitus rambles through the borderlands between coherence and incoherence.
Strange stuff emerges from that marginal zone.
 
Lifting the veil ... opening the doors of perception ... and all that.
It can be done - and doesn't require drugs.
But it is (perhaps) a mistake to imagine that what is revealed when the veil is lifted is more real than what is perceptible when it is still in place.
Reality is (most likely) multi-layered - all in all.
No level of reality is likely to be more real than any other

... and when you think you've got it sussed, then is the time for caution ... scepticism ... humility ... that way you go on learning ... or developing ... or just changing ...
Of reality we know nothing firmly ... it changes.
 
It seems unwise to speculate at random about the widest matters. But what esle can we do?
 
Ramble.
(1) Wander disconnectedly in discourse, talk, writing.
(2) Walk for pleasure and with pleasure, with or without a definite route, and with or without a clear destination

Flame and Vortex.
Both flame and vortex are example of dissipative structures - the maintenance of which require a continuous input of energy, and the effect of which is to dissipate that energy.
In a vortex, the energy is the potential engery of the water, which is dissipated as the water falls.
In a flame, the energy from chemical reactions is dissipated as heat.
As soon as the energy stops, the form disappear.

Shifting sands. Seething seas. Swirling skies.
Sea sounds. Synaesthesia. See sounds.

Of reality we know nothing firmly.
It changes.

... changing waterways churn on while I ramble on ...
 
The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:36 pm
Although separated and virtual strangers, we walk and talk together and blend in thoughts, emotions and feelings and find missing parts in others and giving missing parts to others and we take upon us, together and alone, the mystery of things - all things strange familiar simple complex mixed singular high low bitter sweet sorrowful joyful ... and although it can seem like meaningless nonsense it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense.
 
Re: The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:45 am
With few exceptions (perhaps none), every person experiences conscience, self-respect, remorse, empathy, shame, humility, moral outrage, etc - to varying degrees, at various times and places.
Out of this grows what seems to be a worldwide morality, including notions of altruism, justice, compassion, mercy ... even redemption.
Unfortunately, small-scale personal familiarities, and a limited sense of common interest, narrow the range of moral sentiments - making them selective: applied to 'us' but not to 'them'.
People give trust to strangers only with great effort.
True compassion, applied to all humans (recognised as fully human - and of 'us'), is in short supply.
 
Re: The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:52 am
... meeting as an anonymous strangers in lonely crowds ... throwing love around ... and it changes ... and perhaps it grows ... and perhaps it blooms ... tomorrow ... or tomorrow ... or tomorrow ...

Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/2/02 9:29 am
Leonardo: 'Everything proceeds from everything else and everything becomes everything else and everything can be turned into everything else.'

[If you look for long enough, everything might be seen in a young woman's smile ... or an old man's frown.]
 
Re: Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/6/02 7:29 am
Leonardo:
The artist can call into being the essences of animals of all kinds, of plants, fruits, landscapes, rolling plains, crumbling mountains, fearful and terrible places which strike terror into the spectator; and again pleasant places, sweet and delightful with meadows of many-coloured flowers bent by the gentle motion of the wind, which turns back to look at them as it floats on; and then rivers falling from high mountains and the force of great floods, ruins which drive down with them up-rooted plants mixed with rocks, roots, earth, and foam and wash away to its ruins all that comes in their path; and then the stormy sea, striving and wrestling with the winds which fight against it, raising itself up in superb waves, which fall in ruins as the wind strikes at their roots.

+++++

Drafts ...

Names change ... labels change ...
Or, as the existentialist (concluding naturally, she believed) put it: 'Time passes, people change.'
True enough.
All in all ... it changes ... but the essence of it all remains the same ...

So...
The quaker, the catholic, the anglican [words meaning many things (and not necessarily indicating faiths), while also being merely nominal signifiers of particular, relatively insignificant, individualized human beings] wandered in and out of relative obscurity, and each others' and other people's lives, and noticed a few things that nobody had ever noticed before, and never would again, and missed many other matters that they might have noticed, but didn't.
While the voices sometimes sang in their ears, saying that this was maybe all folly.

'Six hands at an open door...'
But...
There might have been more, and the names might have been different, and ...
The time might not have yet come ...
Or it might have been and gone ...
Or, next time, after a reshuffle, it might all be different ...

One name might have been Zed ... who was a typically British delightfully mixed up mess ... iridescent, polyglottic, cosmopolitan ... a free-wheeling wild daisy ... daisy ... on an old-fashioned upright English bicycle ... riding to the unifying international news agency building through a changing London docklands on an island of sorts (which was nominally a home for dogs) and near the time centre at Greenwich ... and nearby lived mostly ignored people who would not recognise her as a fellow English rose because their own blooming possibilities had been neglected ... (and not far away in time and place, under a futuristic light railway bridge,  a multicultural ideas spreading news agent was murdered by ethnic nationalists with closed minds who couldn't escape from their past prejudices) ... Z was a far from unnecessary letter ...

Another might have been M  ... a sharp-tongued, snub-nosed Scottish socratic ... passionate and compassionate ... much concerned about The Issues ... who liked dialectics in non-standard dialects ... and complained that talking to him could be like talking to herself ... and who wrote letters with reverse strip-teases in them ... she sat in bed writing to him and put on an extra jumper and extra socks and ... well he was cold-seeming ... and he had once sat on a bed with her when she was wearing a partly transparent nightie and he had pretended very carefully not to see through it ...

Or there might have been another A ... a very sophisticated Irish named (and double-barrelled) self-styled working class lass ... who encouraged him to go with the flow with kind words and curving flowing limb motions ... and who walked alongside him in a slightly absurd part-falling manner (which might have had something to do with the vaguely ridiculous thick-souled shoes she was wearing) ... but with her, as with others, there seemed to be a mountainous obstacle course in the space between them  ... which even a veteran rambler could not find a route through .. or around ... and perhaps it was better to maintain a distance between ... 

And ...
You get the odd glimpse of the infinite complexity of it all ... but then you lose it ... and you go on with your small-scale guess-work ...

So ...
Call them what you will ... ally, catty, philly ... or make them up as you go along ... angels, imps, aliens ...  or (as it actually seems to go) rearrange bits of the previously existing into new patterns ...

They travelled.
Chilly awakenings under canvas. Buses that never turned up. Dreary, slow, often-stopping local trains. The dizzy kaleidoscope of landscapes and ruins. Cities that changed before their eyes as they stopped to stare for an instant. Seascapes and skyscapes. Ships coming in not laden with gold. Flowing patterns of lives in motion in a world in motion, with the increasing density of everyday experience seeming to render all experiences increasingly transient and superficial.

And...

Each found places there were satisfactory for a while, then unsatisfactory.
So they went to other places - or to spaces between things that, for a while at least, they could call their own.

And then one day, or it might have been many days, they seemed to find themselves among people clutching gods of sorts that they did not quite believe in any more, or which, one way or another, or in several (even many) ways did not satisfy all their needs of belief.
It seemed to be a time of general and particular confusion ... or of reconsideration ... or of reviews  ... out of which a new synthesis of older ways of thinking might emerge.

If the hypothesis of a fully transcendent creator implanting motion in the system of extended bodies were judged no long sustainable, then it would seem an instrinsic characteristic of the extended or spatial world that everything within it is constituted of particular proportions of motion and rest - which suggests that motion must be essential to and inseparable from the nature and constitution of extended things. The proportions of motion and rest within the system as a whole must be constant, since there could be no external cause to explain any change in the system; but within the subordinate parts of the system the proportions of motion and rest are constantly changing in the interaction of these parts among each other.

Spin spin spin out the ever-changing (and ever so easy to misrepresent and misinterpret) system of Spinoza, or something like it.

Minds in turmoil, how they longed to embrace simples. Many times they rushed towards them, desperate to hold on to solid forms. Many times they fluttered through clutching fingers, sifting away, like shadows, dissolving like dreams, and each time the griefs cut to the hearts sharper, and they cried out incoherent words, which winged into the darkness.

Now down they came to the water's edge, streaming tears ... drops of sea-stuff returning to the world-wide waterway.

Rumour has it that if you throw a cup of water into the sea and return a decade or so later to scoop up a fresh cup of water from the same (which is not of course the same) bit of the sea, then, despite all the churning and mixing that has occurred in the sea over the decade or so, the cup will contain some molecules of the water you threw into the sea at the earlier time. It seems unlikely, but statistical probabilities suggest it - there are more molecules of water in a cup (whatever its size) than there are cups (or the equivalent volume) in the sea.

'I don't know what to say.'
'No words. No words. Hush.'

Hush.
Sea sounds. See changes.

So we made for the outer limits, where the worldwide waterway seemed to flow towards its end - though of course it was an illusion. Some said it was where the Cimmerians previously had their homes, a realm shrouded in mist and cloud, where the sun could never flash rays through the murk. Others said it was a just a small northern town in the middle of winter.

Wandering on, bedlam melodies wandering through our minds ...

... we get by and keep on keeping on with a little help from our friends all is on little loves and small acts of kindness and big hugs pulling mussels from shells and pulling muscles in other words squeeze me you know how to do that Annie and get your gun she's passed it's a miracle her paint's all over town and Alison my aim is true I know this world is killing you and her and him and me and OK I was just Cathy's clown on a hillside desolate will nature make a man of me yet visions of swastikas two new pence to have a go and fall wanking to the floor and frigging in the rigging while there are footsteps on the dancefloor the next time I'll be true I heard on the grapevine that rumour had it that I just called to say I love you thank you for giving me the best day of my life and thank you for calling inquiries while I got stuck in the moment records stick stuck records bells on our fingers ask not whom we toll them for we shall have music wherever we go on go on go on at last the go on show at last but not the end there is no end to wandering I would go out tonight but I have not got a thing to wear but don't you forget about me as you walk on by if you see me walking down the street walk on walk on by with love in your heart and take a walk on the wild side and you just know that bitch won't fuck again but say it ain't so Joe say it Joe eh Joe Hey Joe where are you going with that gun in your hand excuse me while I take another face from the ancient gallery and kiss the sky often mistaken for kiss this guy kiss me kiss me you know how to please me yeah yeah kiss me in the milky twilight you wear that dress and I will wear those shoes and she was last seen the last time I ever saw her face wearing stop me stop me if you've heard this one before hey hey hey what's going on we're sailing off the edge of the world living like Fu Manchu there's nothing else to do maybe baby we know where we are going once in a lifetime on the road to nowhere or funky town or kook city and live life from a window just taking in the view all around the world looking for you and you just stayed in your room that day that day when we took off our clothes and you were crying and the stupid things you said and I said we were birds of paradise and you saw the whole of the moon pink pink pink moon no matter where I roam I will return to my British roses before the sky closes on them and open on others and no one will ever take me from she and she been a long time been a long time been a lonely lonely lonely long time under the northern skies waiting and wondering and wandering on for more life in a northern town wandering on and maybe tomorow maybe someday we'll get by ...

... jigsaw feeling ... has me reeling ... which may be lurching desperately ... or which may be a kind of dancing.

What triangles ...
The solitary sage of Walden (or there or there abouts - or some other place of concorde) pointed out that triangles of extraordinary size were set up when two people by chance (as it might seem) separated by many earthly miles looked at the same distant star at the same earthly instant ...

What polygons of unthinkable complexity are formed when the consciousnesses of three or more (billions maybe) are linked up deeply for a single instant.

And each individual consciousness is limitless ... set off at any instant in any direction in any individual mind, and you'll never reach an end to the association networks ...

Beyond the outlines ... barely experienced, poorly remembered ... fragmentary details ... the bewildering spread of the simple seeming event ...

Figures in a blended inscape and outscape ...

Cathy and her clown walked together near the water's edge. Blurs from some perspectives, dots, or even less from others. Viewed from some places and times they become recognizable human forms, though mostly in outline, devoid of many details. Further perspective shifts reveal complexitity upon completity. It is possible to conceive of a multiverse perspective ... all possible perspectives at the same instant.

Two little people on a coastal walk in a small town, on the margins, but at the centre of things ... So it is with all: any point, any person, any event, is central and marginal and everywhere in between.

She is small and short-stepping. He is tall and long-striding. The long and the short of it. Big he who is not so big and small she who is not so small. They do not seem well matched. Their mortions are not very synchronized-seeming, as she is too fond of pointing out for his comfort (and hers perhaps too). She walks close to him, often bumping into him rather clumsily. Mostly she talks, he listens. A deluge of words. Waves crashing on to the shore. Her voice rises in pitch and and increases in tempo as she continues. She seems anxious to get things said, while she still has the chance, while there is still time.

They walk in no particular direction, to nowhere in particular. Separate random walks are taking place, which, since they are walking together, in however an unsynchronised and clumsy and bumping manner, become a shared walk. They walk on the edge of land and sea, near a pub called the Water's Edge. Human naming systems help to make a sort of sense of things, providing reference points and an order of sorts.

They seem on the edge of things, in a marginal zone, a place of transition. and they are nearing the edge of their time together. Soon they'll separate, perhaps forever. So it seems she has to get her words said. She talks of people on the edge of things, marginalised people, known as the underclass for want of a  more human label, whom she's encountered in the early stages of her training as a probation officer. It seems important to her to let him know of what she has witnessed. He's a bit puzzled by that. She's leaving him behind, but wants to fill his mind with her thoughts and experiences. She's planting trace memories perhaps.

Another way of seeing it ... on the shores of the cosmic ocean a strangely beautiful well-matched asymetric couple mess things up.

(This much seems true: new life comes from asymmetry - the evidence is all around. Fear death by symmetry - when all the complex, messy slightly disordered asymmetrical unities break up, and 'it' becomes a spread of equally distanced particle fragments drifting ever further apart.)

Random walks

The myriad contingencies of a short walk in a small town.

But when you consider them with an open mind everything can seem to connect and every part seems integral to the whole.

Sitting in my small town room, given strange powever by technologies, the workings of which I do not understand and never will, I seem to travel far, and seem to perceive many things.

Common culture. It is in us all. Flowing through us all and being transformed by us all.

All in all.

All things might be written in a single book of love, of which creation is the scattered leaves.

Organisations can form in the underground [and they can be forces for good - not terrorist networks], and they can communicate in undertones, and without the constituent parts having much  conscious awareness that they are a part of a larger whole.

Birds flock together at appropriate times, but probably are not much aware that they are flocking.

Perhaps we are often acted upon by organising forces beyond our understanding.

This long watch, which dog-like he kept ... Soon the long wished for signs might relieve his passive toils ... beacons gleaming through long recurring nights ... Beacons .. which might only be cigarettes ... These walls could recall strange things .. and much else...
Like a shrunken leaf ... that is not really dying ... all recycles .. flows .. changes ... feebly feeling  ... like a dream that walks by day ... the persuasive breath of memories involuntarily recalled ... mostly stirring the heart with songs .. sometimes sensed as beautiful .. sometimes not ...

Like shapes in dreams he wandered through the years, seeming random, planless, his forethought in chains ...

But the vision of the birds might yet work its end into bliss ...

But contraries might yet blast darkly first...

This way the part-time seer hymned, dubiously mixing doom and bliss, dark mingling with light ... and much confusion and obscurity ...
Sharing with the way-haunting birds, which seemed to signal something ... he was responding to the strains .. which could not be merely sounds .. there had to be some meaning, some purpose in everything ... the singings sounded of sorrows and glad days ... and of good times that might yet shame the bad.

Meanwhile ... a most unpleasant surprise was in store for the platonic prick ...
...just as the likely lass began yawning as he was telling her all sorts of amusing stories that had happend to him at different times and places, and even referring once to the Greek cynical philospher Diogenes, the weird sister appeared from one of the back rooms. Whether she had torn herself away from a cold collation, or from the little green drawing room, where some postgraduates' conversation had become more alarming to her, whether she had come of her own free will, or whether she had been thrown out of her previous environment in embarrassing circumstances, which she might or might not later reveal ... whatever the cause or collection of part-causes that had brought her from some other place to this place, she apeared to be cheerful and in the best of spirits. And she was holding on to ther arm of the devil's advocate, or one who was assuming that role, for the time being, and in the particular circumstances in which they now all found themselves. Yet he appeared unhappy. Maybe she had been dragging him along with her (and even perhaps attempting to pull him to the floor) for some time. Whatever the cause, assuming there was one, the poor putter-of-the-case-against certainly seemed discomforted, for he kept attempting to turn around, while his eyebrows beetled in all directions, and his eyes seemed to be searching for a way to excape from this amicable arm-in-arm promenade with the weird sister.
It was, indeed, quite an intolerable situation. The platonic prick saw no ther way out of it than to gulp down quickly, with forced convivialtiy, two cups of coffee, with were, of course, laced with red wine, while he kept on telling the most unlikely stories. The devil's advocate became ever more disconcerted, but still could find no way of excape. The weird sister laughed and scowled at the fun of it all. The kindly quaker remained, as often, seemingly calmly silent.

Bridge buildings ...

Ally and philly were sitting together in a bar, which might have been called The Bridge (but that was actually another place, another time) and she began openly to speak her mind to him for once ... The wonderful flow of words enters him and fills him and swells him, and the words change her in his mind ... she'll never seem the same again. After an hour or two, he feels obliged to say something about himself, but when he attempts to interrupt her word-flow, she says, 'No ... I'll speak' ... and the wonderful warming and expansive words continue to come out of her, and to close the space between them, and to fill him with a her glow, which he will never forget, even though, for various reasons, they do not see much of each other afterwards.

She was possibly the least malicious person he had ever met, but ally was the one person to speak negative things about catty into his ears - telling him that catty 'was just not worth it' and that he 'could do better than that woman'. And when he thought feelingly about it then, and for a long time afterwards, he saw multiple possible meanings in what she said ... but he could not accept the proposition that any human being was 'just not worth it', because all are worth it, or else all are worth nothing ... and maybe that was just quibbling ... but ... that was the way it was with him.

Years later, (this year in fact) pally ally cropped up in India and Pakistan (this is no fiction) at a time of tension, when some feared the possibility of a nuclear war.  She was part of a leading world stateman's 'travelling entourage' (her words) ... to most a unnoticed face in a crowd ... but to the platonic prick she was a symbol of peace  ... she carried love with her and no hatred that he could imagine. And oddly enough (or not) tensions on the Indian sub-continent reduced afterwards, and the threat of nuclear war faded. Of course many others were involved. The key seemed to be: not the 'great' men's [there were, alas, still too few 'great' women on the world's stage] words and deeds ... nor even the charms (which were considerable) of his known female peace symbol ... but all those millions of little loves of little lives of mostly kindly mostly decent people who didn't actually want to slaughter others, or to be slaughtered themselves - maybe they all worked together, without quite knowing it, to calm things down.

Meanwhile, the curious cat cared so much about the marginalized people whom she worked with (and for) that it once (or more) almost broke her. She saw hellish visions of 'bottomless pits of need and deprivation' ...
And there can seem to be no end to the suffering in the private hells of even an affluent society.
But even with such dispriting thoughts in mind to discourage her, she returned to work and did little things to help people and to fill up the void bit by bit.

In the near past that was a long time ago cat wrote many letters to phil and complained that he never wrote enough to her ... it was a complaint that mixed fairness with unfairness, as most do ...
In her letters, as far as he could remember, she only ever quoted him one line of poetry, from Tennyson's Ulysses:
   '... I am a part of all that I have met ... '
As she might or might not have gone on to point out, the reverse it also true:
    ... All that I have met is a part of me ...

The surprising thing was that while Cat and Al studied much the same subject in much the same place at much the same time, and wandered more or less contemporaneously in much the same streets of at least two other cities ... and had much in common ... and must have crossed paths occasionally ... and had even perhaps caused each other some hurt of sorts, via their connections through Phil ... they never fully met (unless a trick was missed) .. which is something a shame, because they had much good to share with each other ...

It can seem like nonsense, but it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense ...

All this was a long time ago. But what is a long time? The long and the short of it all. Big he who was not so big and small shes who were not so small. I remember little but much. I forget much but little. And I would do it again but in different ways. Repetition is a form of change. Nothing is the same twice, so nothing is the same ever. Say hello, wave goodbye. Wave goobye, say hello. In every meeting, the image of birth, a sort of coming together. In every parting, the image of death, a sort of falling apart. I never knew you well enough, you never knew me well enough. So it goes. Undertanding of other people is, like all understanding, never good enough. On it goes. On we go. Finding out more. Making new patterns, remembering and forgetting, building up and breaking down. Say hello, wave goodbye. Kiss and hug if you want to, do not kiss and hug if you do not want to. Something was taking its course, that much is certain, if no more. Whether we follow a course to birth or to death is uncertain. And that uncertainty clouds the issue of whether we act freely or follow courses determined for us. But there does seem to be free will on the local human scale. At any possible world junction there are many, perhaps limitless, possibilities open to us, and every instant brings us to a new possible world junction, when a small act of choice can make a huge difference. But if, whatever choices we make, the overall course of things is towards a break up of all unities, and so towards oblivion for all, then individual destinies seem trivial. If it is not to be futile, then we must find courses that lead somewhere, to some betterment, some resolution, some harmony, some development, or just some continuation. Maybe it comes down to faith, but that might just be wishful thinking.  But you never know - and maybe there's hope in uncertainty. No one, the pessimists or the optimists, really knows.  Humans are perhaps just too limited in understanding, and probably, however developed they become, always will be. That is the way it seems to be and maybe will remain. And so one cannot escape from the voices singing that this might be all just folly. But then folly is not the same as futility. And folly is at least amusing and out of amusement might come a more profound kind of comedy, which is a movement towards harmony, and when the motion is towards harmony then perhaps the easier it becomes to make approaches towards some ideal harmonic state - even if it is never reached. And actually achieving complete harmony might not even be desirable, because that might be the end of it all - after which no more for worse or for better.

It seems foolish to speculate at random about the widest matters ... but what else can you do?
 

100
South Tyneside Stop the War / Re: Nostalgia? In The Beginning ...
« Last post by Phil Talbot on January 02, 2023, 11:59:46 AM »
South Shields Polling Stations [of the X] 05.05.05   

1. 'Hey Jude ... take a sad song ... and make it better ...'
 
2. Trinity Walk. Portacabin.
It would appear that while christian church buildings are being used in South Shields as polling stations mosques are not. This may or may not reveal some things about 'inclusiveness' in the town.
 
3. Portable. Sunderland Road / Hepscott Terrace.
The 'supervizor' appears.

4. Elsewhere blue pencil 'marker' issues are raised locally with the 'supervizor'.
Meanwhile, in between lectures, even more cryptically, George makes a run for it.
   
5. As promised, the candidate turns up with agent to visit the residents' association. It is mentioned how rare this is these days.
A blue agent apears too, surprizingly, as an added bonus - though as with most of the campaign, the Tory candidate is conspicuous by his absence.
[There is much merit to be found in true 'one nation' Tories - and, although somewhat remote from such places by background and habit, they are, in fact, more in touch with the council estates these days than the arrogant elitists in New Labour, typified by the sitting M.P. Miliband.]
 
6. A special school is not hard to find because locals use their intelligence and give accurate and honest directions - which is more than New Labour and local education officials did when closing down other 'special' schools in the town.

7. Mysteriously there seem to be 13 additional voters on the register - as reported verbally - in this church polling station.
 

8. Portacabin beside rubble of a good school demolished by New Labour. Removing traces of the past is, of course, a typical 'Orwellian' way of rewritting history.

9. Soul-less bleak [almost nihilistic] New Labour post-modern 'panopticon'.
 
10. A pleasant church environment - though there are some complaints about the heating.
 
 
11. Portacabin. Portaloo tested [water-pass test passed].
Questions remain as to whether residents nearby have voted in person or have been encouraged to block-vote postally.

 
12. A good old modernized old school - built up as it should be by care-taking educationalists ... bit by bit ... evolutionary ...
[Not smashed to rubble then hastily prefabricated elsewhere.]

 
13. 'Rules is rules' she said, or words to that effect, 'so I cannot give you that information'.
Unfortunately she apparently had not been properly instructed in what the rules actually were, so denied information she could have supplied.


14. A homely, mix'n'match, 'can do', friendly, pleasant, sort of place.
 
 
15. Rather a stark seeming undecorated environment, but they are efficiently at 'action stations' here, and you know they are doing their jobs well.
 
 
16. Children's art work at this school suggests alternative party designations. Guess who are:
The Dolphin Party?
The Dodo Party?
The Rat Party?
The Koala Party?
 

17. Dynamic wall paintings at this youth centre - but the younger people seem to have been kept out of the place for the day, which, in a round a bout sort of way, actually tells a tale about the 'disengagement' of young people from this election.
 
 
18. The decoration of this school is an exceptionally stimulating visual feast inside - and visually impaired people are well-catered for too.
 
 
19. It does the job, but away from the polling area people who should know better are spotted not learning much in this teaching centre.
 

20. An illegally parked car - carrying 'suspect device' New Labour posters -is actually being investigated by police near the 'grassy knoll'.
 
 
21. It is assumed, of course, that in accordance with electoral law, the people displaying the New Labour election material on buildings near this church establishment had not been paid to do so.
 
 
22. Political fads [to say nothing of 'con tricks' like 'New Labour'] come and go, but pubs and churches tend to outlast them.
 

23. In an area filled with greater artists' names, there were accusations -that could be neither proven nor disproven - that much lesser artists had lived down to their lowly reputations and had sketching out murky seeming marker tricks with coloured pencils.
 
 
24. Another splendidly decorated internally 'visual feast' school environment.
[Were Miliband to educate his child in 'our' town - as he almost certainly will not - there are actually many excellent schools here - the construction of which predated his parachuted arrival here. Unfortunately, he and his New Labour cohort have destroyed a lot of good schools - and the 'panopticon' replacements seem dreadfully out of place to many in 'our' town.]
 

25. It might only be mis-matching by chance, but there does seem to be New Labour 'stooging' going on in this portable arrangement.
 

 
27. Making poverty history is an ongoing task for good faithed people of all faiths.
 

 
26. Old community educational acquaintances are not forgotten.
[Statitistics suggest that maths, pastly and presently, is unfortunately not one of the better learned subjects in South Shields educational environments. Written evidence suggests this was Poll Orientation Station 27, and previous 26. Such details do matter, as vote counters and 'weapons of mass destruction' inspectors will attest.]
 

28. 'Disabled' people's access to this church hall is well-marked, but when tested the access door seemed to be locked.
[Equal Inclusive open access is not equal inclusive open access if you have to ask for the key.]
 

 
29. An extra member of staff lightens the work load - but adds to the electoral cost - in the not in fact overflowing methodical polling station.
 

 
30. 'Belly of the Beast' to some. 'Poll Tax House' to others. Just another council building to most. Sun is out and atmsophere is in fact very pleasant, surprizingly so to 'sceptics'.
 
31. Early evening. Sun is out.
Some real voter enthusiasm was found at this school near a park [perhaps because - perhaps for the first time in too long time - some people had taken the trouble to involve people in the surrounding area as 'active citizens' - rather than mere 'lumpen' voters whose indifferent 'support' could be taken for granted].

32. One popular mission group meets another, and although we do not perhaps quite see eye-to-eye we seem to recognize each other as people of essentially good faith.

33. Sea breeze breaths of fresh air flow through this community centre - not quite strong winds of change, perhaps, but potentially indicative of better possibilities to come.

34. Births. Marriages. Deaths. Votes. The bare registry office details scantly account for the complex inter-connecting endlessly varying small-town human realities.
[No New Labour I.D. card scheme could adequately capture those human realities either - and like all New Labour schemes would surely enough be tarnished by 'fakery' one way or another.]

35. A bit on the side at the town hall.
Good work being well done there.
[Mean-times, the main town hall clock - stopped in the morning - was working by this late stage in the day.]

36. Poor Robinson Crusoe lived in miserably unsplendid 'Thatcherite' isolation - there being 'no such thing as society, only individuals' in the Thatcherite world view.
But at this sort of island drop-in place there were sure enough and trustworthy signs of community regeneration going on - almost inspite of New Labour's continuation of the Thatcherite dogma.

37. Jolly sounding chatter - and other more silently noted matters - at this portable.

38. A rather special infants' school, well worth going round-and-about and down-hill and up-hill to search out and visit.

39. An excellent modest small children's play centre on the edge of an estate - almost hidden away, as if deliberately it seemed. [Local reports had it that the centre was scandalously neglected and under-valued by those more interested in more eye-catching costly and grandiose projects].

40. An unexpected beacon of enlightened common sense and dignified civic virtue appears at a portable place.
[Needless to say, this is not a description of a chance meeting with David Miliband.]

41. It looked like a pub, but was in fact fully and properly instituted as an efficient and warmly welcoming polling station.

42. 'You cannot go in there,' she said and threatened to set 'security' on us. But she was out of order to speak to us like that, and - mistakenly or deliberately - she was taking liberties from/with honest citizens, as officials later confirmed.

43. I thought I saw a 'Nicky-5-Live-Campbell-Woz-Here' piece of graffiti on the wall - but Watchdog said it was only a reconstructed studio scam.
These idle seeming radio and tv imaginations put aside, polling at this place was briskly done and efficiently handled.

44 ... [without properly kept records memories of matters of fact become blurred]

45 ... [without properly kept records memories of matters of fact become blarred]

46 ... [without properly kept records memories of matters of fact become Blaired]

47 ... [without properly kept records people like Mr Blair and Mr Miliband can get away with misleading people on matters of fact - including about deadly important matters in fact]

48. Were they jokingly misleading us or seriously mistaken in this 'cave' when they said that electoral rules stipulated that rosettes were not allowed items of dress in polling stations?!

49. Friendly greetings were taken to and from this last visited community centre polling station.
Regrets and apologies were issued indirectly to the half-dozen other polling stations we did not have time to visit ...
[Candidate's and agent's own poor time-management on election day meant we were not able to visit all polling stations as we had hoped to do.]

50. We all make mistakes, and margins of human error are allowed for. So when Nader later announced in his speech to the count that he had visited 50 polling stations that day, he was not telling the exact truth - he actually accidentally misled the voters, having been accidentally mislead himself by a careless counting error made by his agent Philip!

[Footnote that is more than a frivolous footnote:
Mr Miliband never had the decency to acknowledge that he misled the people of South Shields when he told us there was 'overwhelming evidence' that Iraq possessed 'weapons of mass destruction'. There was no such evidence.
The stacked up ballot papers of electoral evidence might record this as a minority view, but in my view he did not deserve the vote of confidence/trust given to him by those voters who re-elected him.]
 
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