Notes towards a new anti-war 'epic' ...

[Phil Talbot]

The anti-war movement sets itself in opposition to BOTH these violent
forces. We believe that when it comes to the question of terrorism,
war is not the answer.

[Phil Talbot]

 Remem’branceDay2023..Susan’REJECTEDme’ (remembrance night 1980) [?](idontblameher!)
So... I moved on to Catherine (4betterOr4worse?!) ... & then ...?

[Phil Talbot]

Catherine ‘ditched’ me in 1986 (Susan in 1980), I DO NOT BLAME THEM!, but, I/i never stopped loving (either/both of) them ... this does not make me a ‘stalker’, nor any other sort of ‘pervert’/‘weirdo’ ... just a fairly honest, fairly decent human being, who does his best to ...

[Phil Talbot]

‘Time’ was running out on ‘Israel’ ... (& all its ‘apologists’ ...) ...
(‘Free, Free, Palestine ...’)

[Phil Talbot]

& you/one/I/i watched/listened 2\to/watched  football/boxing matches ... & ‘para(o)lympics’ &one/you/I thought-felt: is this not a better way (of ‘competition’) than, eg, killing babies in incubators in Gaza?! ... !)

[Phil Talbot]

(‘Dear’) John Milton, eg,  [paradise regained 3 71ff]:
They err who count it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to overrun
Large countries, and in field great battles win,
Great cities by assault. What do these ‘worthies’ (sic!)
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peace-Able nations, neighbouring or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their conquerors, who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wheresoe’er they rove,
And all the [‘potential’]  :)works of peace destroy,
...

[Phil Talbot]

Anyway ... to restart the/a/‘my’ story more or less ‘anywhere’ ... Clare/Claire[4whom’s name I do not know a ‘correct’ form_ofX’press’on] and I/i went together to watch the film\movie Killing Fields in the mid1980s ... Co’k [4whom I do not have a ‘polite’ form_ofRef.] took this as a great ‘insult’, even ‘act of infidelity’ - we were ‘supposed’ 2 go 2 ‘premiers’ together then ...
[All of this was a ‘long’ time ago, & of no real ‘consequence’ in the ‘HERE-AND-NOW’, of course. {co’k: ‘I have a busy life ... and have moved on ...’}]

[Phil Talbot]

[‘Dear’] John Milton [ParadiseRegained, 3, 387ff]:
Much ostentation vain of fleshy arm,
And fragile arms, much instruments of war,
Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought,
Before my eyes thou has sent; and in our ear
Vented much polity, and projects deep
Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues,
Plausible to the world, to me worth nought.

[Phil Talbot]

[waste-land ‘stuff’ ...]
Lines 31-34: Eliot’s note refers ‘us’ [the ‘readers’] to the libretto of ‘Tristan & Isolde’ ... opera by Richard Wagner {1813-1883}. A ‘traveller’ is singing about a ‘sweet-heart’ he has left behind: “The wind blows fresh to the home-land. My Irish girl/lady, where are you lingering?”

[Phil Talbot]

NoOne could say: I was first2345... with ms.s.f. No ‘insult’ 2 her ... With Catherine ‘it’ was different ... I saw the ‘blood’ of the ‘first time’ not coming ... but then again ... she could be transformed into \ travestied as a ‘bad.faith’d bastard’ ....

[Phil Talbot]

& you/one/I/i .. looked at/  considered the ‘wider’ scheme of things ... & I/i/1/you thought: ‘...’ ?!

[Phil Talbot]

Nicholas Hartman, Dunkirk - the Necessary Myth ...
p2, ‘Dunkirk ... will do as a symbol of the transformation of a continent.
In 70 years the town/city was bombarded three times byGerman guns, in 1871, in 1917, and ... in 1940. Now [late 20th century]the dangers it faces, such as they are [as Europe continues with its longest period of peace since nations were invented] it came from prosperity, from a frontier that nobody bothers to defend, beside a channel under which they dug a tunnel [completed 1994].

[Phil Talbot]

AnyWay ... I was walking on a beach with/beside/insomesortofproximity2/to ms.o’kelly ... some-time in OldeStoneAge/mid’80s ... & she was ‘touching me up’ (from/via ‘behind’) ... & some local observer/wag/passing.stranger/random person said: GetOffHisArse! {or rather, more likely(laddish): ‘ger’of’sRs!} & it occur(r)’d 2 me/myself/I/i/eye @ that ‘instant’ (‘n time) that ... hear-here was a way of pro-seeding/ced-in’ ... reasonably ‘good faith’ ... because/b.coz/B.’costume’ ... etc etc etc ...

[Phil Talbot]

AnyWay ... Reference texts included: The Sorrow of War, by Bao Ninh [something lost in trans-literation?], English version by Frank Palmos, from original translation by Phan Thanh Hao, originally published as THAN PHAN CUA TINH YEU, by nha xuat ban hoi nha van, (Writers' Association Publishing House), Hanoi, 1991.
First published in Great Britain 1994 ...
This Minerva edition published ... by Minerva Paperbacks ...

[Phil Talbot]

And so ... (in my ‘scatter-brained’ consciousness) ... it was Samantha/Sam. (& I was olde enuf 2 b her grand-father!) who ‘gifted’ me the most ‘profound’/‘intriguing’/thought-provoking ‘idea’ of Christmas Day 2023, viz: don’t school children too rigidly in (more or less) ‘equal-aged’ classes ... spread the generations ...
This ‘fitted’ my ideas of ‘comprehensiveness’ on one ‘level’, but on another ‘level’ suggested ... a wider scale of ‘possibility’ ...