View On Black

 

The Dome in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress. It took a little maneuvering to get this shot, as the figures in blue (at the very top of the dome) can only be seen from certain angles.

 

From the LOC website:

On the ceiling of the lantern, which rises above the highest part of the dome, is a painting of a beautiful female figure representing Human Understanding, in the act of lifting the veil of ignorance and looking forward to intellectual progress. She is attended by two cherubs: one is holding the book of wisdom and knowledge and the other seems, by his gesture, to be encouraging viewers beneath to persist in their struggle toward perfection.

 

The decoration on the base or collar of the lantern consists of a ring of twelve seated figures, male and female, ranged against a wall of mosaic patterning. They represent the twelve countries, or epochs, which in 1897, when the building was constructed, were thought to have contributed the most to modern civilization.

 

• Egypt represents Written Records.

• Judea represents Religion.

• Greece represents Philosophy.

• Rome represents Administration.

• Islam represents Physics.

• The Middle Ages represent Modern Languages.

• Italy represents the Fine Arts.

• Germany represents the Art of Printing.

• Spain represents Discovery.

• England represents Literature.

• France represents Emancipation.

• America represents Science.

  

Thanks for looking!

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments and constructive criticism always appreciated.

Stream on Black

The Unisphere, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY

 

Built for the World's Fair in 1964

Stands 140ft (43m) tall and has a diameter of 120ft (36.5m).

 

Constructed to commemorate the beginning of the spaceage. The three orbit rings represent the tracks of Yuri Gagarin; the first man in space, John Glenn; the first American to orbit the Earth, and Telstar; the first active communications satellite.

 

More info on the sphere: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisphere

 

More info & images from me:

timvan.com/blog

 

Intesa.

THE ALTAR OF INTERFERENCE

 

Rack: Ruin, Sorry to have been unresponsive. I fell off the digital planet upstate and found it delightful. Back in the city. All is well except for that gnawing post-holiday anxiety. Hope you're good and the writing goes along.

  

Ruin: I have been enjoying some crisis time here. Stuff to do with the sexual abuse, the neglect, and the, to be expected, self-loathing generated there. It happens every now and then, and it can be overpowering. The stuff we have been looking at, or at least that stuff I have been writing about, would more or less cause that to happen, I guess. Anyway, I have been taking a step back to look at it, the PTSD generated through abuse of all stripes. It’s sort of overarching. I want to look at it, and the idea of patterns, that ‘Wild Goose’ thing, of flight rather than fight, that permanent adrenaline rush of looking for a constant ‘elsewhere’, of heading out, or creating situations where one has to head out (like the silly 'London situation' that catapulted me to Amsterdam), that forcing oneself into constant panic-mode, left over from childhood survival tactics.

 

Then there is the generation of a cuckoo gene relative to all that too, that looking for parents, stealing them, even, nesting strategies that could be considered ‘shameful’, or at least might generate shame to add to the self-loathing, bolstering it up. Then there’s the slow suicide of looking for HIV, that cowardly way of doing oneself in. Anyway, these are a few of the things I am going to look at unflinchingly, going forward. I am in a sort of bracing mode, girding one’s overused, and sagging, loins for a full-frontal assault.

 

Once more unto that breach, and all that palaver, a cuckooed 'Wild Goose' negotiating a swansong, even.

 

It's difficult to write these things about oneself, and see them reflected back by you, your acknowledgment of them, suggesting that you have more than an 'understanding'. We are both aware of what we reflect back to each other, something we have done for 35 years now, that there is mutuality there. I know why you struggle with it, I do too. I suspect this might be what makes it worthwhile.

  

Rack: Ruin, I had a similar moment recently. It has taken this long for me to be able to recognize what is happening when I want to flee, when I feel that the sky falling on my head is imminent, when I just can't function. It is hard to acknowledge how many areas of life its tendrils have drilled their way into. I have read that Ketamine infusions can help, and I've been toying with the idea for a long time, though it is horribly expensive. Not drinking has been a huge help lately and I realize that booze just makes me more anxious, ultimately. It's alarming to think how one's life has been sculpted by such childhood events. I can't even identify what it is that happened. I can remember very little of childhood. I wonder was there additional abuse to the stuff I can remember. I suppose it's not that important to remember the details. That whole notion of healing and moving on seems like a daft impossibility to me. If anything, the symptoms of PTSD have become worse for me as I age, as if they will out, regardless. Sometimes I just feel like I'm not functioning. Anyway, I know where you are and it is a difficult and painful place to sit through. Maybe that's how you get past it. By looking it in the eye and not freezing. Maybe the writing of it will be a huge relief for you, not in the way of some perfect redemption, but a squaring of things. I am sending you much love.

  

Ruin: I don’t know if I scared myself to a stop or not, I don’t think I did, I think I am still writing. I am writing around it, around the theme. There were, of course, triggers. It’s difficult to get to that point of full exposure, but that’s where I think I have to go, and I have enough evidence of questionable behaviour generated in response, perhaps, both in my art and in what I have been writing all these years. Strangely, I realised that there were others in my family generating patterns, according to how they reacted to our negligent parents. The sister, Phil, who gloated over the tearing up, and burning, of that book (‘A Stone for Danny Fisher’) is the same sister who consigned my Doctoral work to the Dublin City dump. It was the same action, a refined echo, but 50 years later. I have been looking at, and thinking about, how we continue to unknowingly repeat these patterns. I assumed my victim role, and ran away, yet again. I would rather fly than fight, that classic ‘wild goose’ pattern. There is nothing there I want to fight for anyway, the place is even more sordid than I am, but I want to be aware of these patterns, and all of my siblings adapted a different variation, one that would make their lives livable. But my parents in their turn generated their patterns in reaction to their abandonment, so there’s no blame there at all. I guess the idea isn’t to blame, even not to blame my abusive uncle, I love the word ‘avuncular’, his was learnt behaviour. Of this I am sure, given that I know that at least two of his older brothers are child abusers (and priests).

 

So, the drive is not to ‘forgive’ and lovingly embrace family. It’s simply, through writing, to understand these patterns, and hopefully in doing so, to short-circuit the whole shebang. But I don’t want to write an abuse ‘memoir’. Anyway, there’s the challenge, and it’s still called ‘Rack and Ruin’.

  

Rack: Yes. I heartily agree. It’s “just” trying to understand and thereby to release oneself of ever re-enacting the same circular route. Maybe not possible. Maybe is.

  

Ruin: Well, I wouldn’t want to prefigure, or disallow for, any deathbed exegesis, that flash of realisation, that might, or might not, be on the cards. If it was all figured out before then it might make that climax anti-climactic. As for the rest, the writing, the art, the life, you get as far as you get, and then it all unravels anyway, and before you know it, you’re dust. There’s a cheerful morning thought. I suspect we both have them. Then there is that intervening time, and the filling of the same. Mine is very much about restoring self-worth, and I am actually glad that I am still at that. It would have been much easier just to give up and dissipate towards that void (Oh, the drama!). I wrote sissipate, accidentally. I like that, that rolling the ball endlessly up that hill, and finding it at the bottom of the hill in the morning. Just like this morning, and away we go again. Bless that dung beetle. I like that we, instinctively, continue to do this, each rolling (along the self-same route) being completely different from the one before. That release happens in its own time, or rather it’s happening constantly, until it’s spent. I like this, and have no interest in it other than the doing itself. I like putting words and images up on Flickr. I love that this represents a type of slightly cracked-open window, that one's experience, and understanding, is not completely shut off, even if there is no evidence of any response. It is enough in itself. It reminds me of that medieval Anchorite sitting by her window, carbuncled onto a remote church, entombed even. The goal is no longer to show, or publish, the goal is to make, with a small window left open, just in case. I love that 'Just in case'.

 

“Maybe not possible. Maybe is.” I love the ‘maybe’, like I love ‘perhaps’, ‘even’, ‘possibly’, and other words conveying lack of surety. That’s where I would love to be found sitting for whatever posterity there might be, or not. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I also love that idea of it not mattering. I saw it in a ketamine exegesis (that word again), and I know it to be true. I know, ‘dumb ass’, but I don’t care.

  

Rack: Yes to "restoring self-worth". Oh, that there were a short cut, but it seems there is not, probably not even Ketamine. Up and down that bloody hill, sissipating like the dung beetles that we are. We are, once again, at the juncture of ‘Labor Day’, that convenient long weekend that bookends the summer with its predecessor, ‘Memorial Day’. My panic continues as my partner sits reading with a small flashlight hanging out of his mouth, because he can no longer see without the additional light. Who does the panicking in your house? I feel like it is somebody's job in a household. A small engine of worry. Anyway, I am going to try and park it somewhere and enjoy the relatively empty city and the weather with the worst of the heat gone out of it. Could really do with a good long screaming walk with you.

 

Ruin: I am the worrier. I find myself wonderfully entombed with the buggering Buddha, as far as that is concerned. It’s a glorious place to be. Our Pyramid is wondrous. Time is at its undoing, and I love it all shoddying the edges. That doesn’t seem to staunch that flow of worrying, regardless. The insecurities, or the source, perhaps, of that deluge, is somewhat easily traced back.

 

The Mater had a type of mantra, it was in a way the pride of her arsenal, and I remember it being put to use on many an occasion. It went something like this: “You do know that you can never pay us back, don’t you? If you worked all your life and gave us every penny you ever earned, it wouldn’t even come near to what you owe us”. I have it in parentheses, but it is not really a quote. It wouldn’t have been proffered so lucidly, it would have been spat and mangled, screeched out, perhaps between thuds and flailing fists. It was harridan-like. The thuds and flailings would, more or less, always miss their marks and land on a battered table, or on the back of a broken chair. They weren’t the problem. All the chairs in the house were broken. I remember going back to help celebrate one Christmas, travelling from London, 40 years later, and sitting on a chair which immediately collapsed from under me. I roared at the power of the Mater’s mantra asserting itself, as I sat on the floor hysterically laughing whilst remembering.

 

So, it was set in stone. I would have to go working at the age of thirteen, in the aforementioned ‘The Laurels’ to “earn my keep” and pay into the coffers for the upkeep of the brood, all of whom had “no idea how much they owed”. At some point, during one of these incidents, I made the connection between sex and pleasure, probably around the concurrent abuse cycle with my uncle, and perhaps managed to scream out that they chose to have sex, that they shouldn’t have had children at all. My mother informed me that “sex is for men”, which only further confused me relative to her putting her brother in my bed.

 

Other than what my bull-uncle was teaching me, this was the only sex education that I had.

 

When we came to ‘Human reproduction’ in biology class, the ‘chaste’ Christian Brother announced, “We will skip this section for now, it won’t come up in exams anyway”. I was already, perhaps, a year into my anthropological avuncular education.

 

Avuncular

 

/əˈvʌŋkjʊlə/

Learn to pronounce

adjective

adjective: avuncular

1.

kind and friendly towards a younger or less experienced person.

"he was avuncular, reassuring, and trustworthy"

2.

ANTHROPOLOGY

relating to the relationship between men and the children of their siblings.

 

It was strangely confusing, this attention from my uncle. Nobody had paid any attention to me before.

 

[9:58 am, 02/09/2022] Ruin: A screaming walk would be wonderful. It would have to be a slow one though, and not too far, with rest stops along the way. The screaming wouldn't have to be slow, we could let that go from the get go. A relapse into hysteria with you would be wondrous indeed.

 

[9:58 am, 02/09/2022] Ruin: But we can also always do that here.

 

Let's sissipate side by side.

 

Rack: I don't think I've ever heard these stories, at least so graphically. You are approaching the very kernel here. Her fury is so furious and so energetic. I can almost relate. I can't help but think about her putting her brother in your bed, or you in his. It strikes me as some weird sacrifice she was making. Offering her brightest up to the altar of interference. Knowing and not knowing. And I suppose sex was for men. My paternal grandmother said the same thing. A thing to be endured. Your mother was going to make you endure it too. Somehow share in that forced ritual. Why did she choose you? Was it an age thing? It's horrifying and fascinating. Sending you love, as always.

  

Ruin: Yes, Rack, this is the crux, the kernel, that molten core. It might be other than what we expect, but this is it. It is also why I don’t want to write an abuse ‘memoir’. It’s not that. It’s not about struggle, triumph over adversity, forgiveness, and a sort of accompanying redemption. It is about ‘drivers’. It’s about innocence too, universal innocence, even. The mater’s innocence, the sibling’s innocence, the abuser’s innocence, and ultimately the self’s innocence. It encompasses the murderer’s, and mass-murderer’s, innocence. It would even include the innocence of those God botherers, those mass-manipulators who pushed their divisive theories of the divine on our susceptible forebears, those so-called priests and nuns. At a push, it might even include bank-managers and CEOs of Fortune-500 companies. Okay, I’ll go the whole hog, artists need to be forgiven too.

 

I would normally sit down, of a morning, and vomit out a spiel, and press the send button. I can’t do that this morning. I have to write this and be as clear as I can be, so there is no misunderstanding as to what I am trying to say.

 

I will just say, firstly, that my mother chose nothing. She was 100% reactive, desperately and fearfully reactive, even. She was, sadly, trapped in a pattern, rather like we all are, to a lesser or greater extent.

 

So, that’s where I am starting from. The rest is about getting as far as time permits.

 

I will answer those questions you brought up, as we go along.

 

Ruin: [10:44 am, 03/09/2022] It was never going to be easy, Crusty Lusty.

 

Rack (from sometime back in the mid-nineties, last century):

 

Funny you should mention staving off the SSRI pillies.†

Lately I have felt them to be an evil† necessity myself and frankly I am tired of them.†

I do need them ‘til I'm de-interfered with, but I think they† make one's character and brain sort of mushy until one reaches a state where you are oddly detached from your "self" and quite happy to be mired knee deep in your own raw sewage.†

 

It's not good.†

I feel impure in a way I can't quite explain, and I'm not prone to

feeling impure.†

 

Ultimately there is something terribly wrong about being incapable of living

without them.†

Why not just look for an honest distraction like alcoholism,

severe junkiedom, or whoredom?†

 

All this modern messing with chemistry.

Anyway, feeling like a reactionary regarding them and god bless you for going

cold turkey and long may it last.†

I'm sure one makes better work without them.

 

I'm† off to the scratcher with my oozing beaver:† ah the last gasps of estrogen as the old uterus pops an egg and screams for something to fill it up.†

Odd this biological baggage we women folk have; all this oozing and cycling and yet

no thought of acting on it.†

 

Modern, eh???

 

Much love,

 

Pox Bunny Beaver Rackety Crust

 

[10:49 am, 03/09/2022] Ruin: You were, and are, a wondrous poet.

 

I love your use of the crucifix. Strangely, the matrix put them there. Somewhere in the transferal from a Word document, or from an email, or whatever. They, the crucifixes just appeared. I like that their placing seems so random, though they do impose a sort of rhythm. This musky Matrix knows best, all praise our new Meta Gods on this soul-saving superhighway. I would not want to remove those religious signifiers put there by whoever is the powers that be.

 

The original ‘Castration Piece’ had a fourth panel. It read "I am Not an Open Beaver". I am putting the titles of art pieces in single parentheses, they refer to pieces made, and either shown at some point or other in Galleries and Museums, or on the WWW, on my only social media platform ‘Flickr’.

 

Rack: I always loved that piece.

 

Ruin: I liked placing it back at ‘The Mammy's Hearth’, that sacrosanct place of no safety.

 

Rack: And blurry you. How the hell do we ever individuate? I feel as if I’m still sissipating up that particular hill.

 

Ruin: We do it whilst sissipating, we are even doing it now. I love our new word.

 

Rack: Me too. Rhymes with dissipating, includes it, of course, but also suggests some progress, even if Sisyphean.

 

Ruin: I am still sitting with those last few questions you asked me, it's going to take time to answer them, but I will. I am worn out, off to the doctor to find out what is happening with my prostate, kidney pains, urinating every 15 minutes, exhaustion, sore groin lymph node (one sided).

 

Rack: Eugh, sounds nasty. No rush on answering those questions. I hope they weren’t “previous” of me to ask. But I am genuinely curious. It goes back to the innocence factor. Anyway, sorry your nether regions are bothering you. I hope it can be resolved in a simple way. All we can hope for our ailments now.

 

Ruin: No questions are "previous", ever. More like "about time", this doo-doo needs sorting out.

Rack: ♥️

Ruin: ♥️💩

  

As for the mater’s fury, he had some ideas relative to the source of that pain and anger. She was never overtly forthcoming with her sharing, regarding her ‘story’ that is, though she would on occasions over-share inappropriately. He recognized this tendency in himself, and in others he had known from the abused fraternity and sorority. This had a sort of uncontrollable Tourette’s-like quality, a certain convulsive vomiting, almost exorcism-like in its urgency to be expelled. He understood it now, but as a child this was confusing. She had been abused, she spoke a little of this later, another errant uncle working his avuncular magic, that undoing of innocence, that unwanted incursion. But she had been abandoned when she was six or seven years old, more or less left as the carer for her three younger siblings, after her mother had died, of TB, at a tender age, somewhere in her early thirties. Her father had left the four children, almost immediately, in the care of some older relatives, disappearing from their lives and remarrying a 17-year-old girl, with whom he had 13 more children. The mater did not see her father again until her own wedding day, when she was 23 years old. So, he surmised, we are talking about abandonment here, that form of neglect and abuse, before that other assault, referenced but never really spoken of. He remembered her cursing that uncle later on, but no details of what happened were ever shared. There was a gap there, another unfillable void.

 

Why the ‘his’? Why the ‘he’? It’s simple really, it gives a once remove, making it all a little easier. It might go back and forth, but who knows? There was also that once remove of the inadequacy of memory. Of course, he wasn’t even sure how much of this was true, even, what parts he remembered and what parts he had dreamed, or what part he had generated to find the wherewithal to forgive himself, and her. He was at a point where he couldn’t easily remember what day yesterday was, never mind familial gathering, sixty years ago, around that infinite family hole. His father’s crater was also there, inadequately filled with alcohol and anger, regrets, sadness, and neglect.

 

They sucked each other in, my parents, warring black holes in love, proffering impossible promises of security to each other, indifferent to everything else including their own children. Or so it seemed. But children can’t surmise all this, they can only pick up on the anger and disappointment, and the complete lack of any vestiges of stability. They each, both parents, made their oaths to be the other’s salvation, as they began quietly, at first, to fail. They stayed together for 60 years, so at least in some way they fulfilled their commitment to each other.

 

Meanwhile their children fell apart.

 

But this is not a story about aborted family dynasties, of triumph over adversity, or the opposite. It’s about another family of sorts, with nothing really to do with DNA extensions, and that striving to fit into some idea of continuity. It is about setting out, breaking away, the ‘Diaspora’, that homelessness, the ‘Wild Geese’, a certain ruthlessness, even. It is partially about recognizing the other as the same, or at least connecting with another where that sameness is sensed. It’s about the ‘Rack and Ruin’ of this fable, a chance encounter in the ‘New World’, and attempts at the rebuilding of ‘Trust’.

 

But the fury is somewhat easy to explain.

 

Downstairs was, a rented, one living room and a small kitchen behind a failing shop, the ‘Bon-Bon’ by name, another unfillable hole, as it would happen. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a box-room, shared by five children and two adults, with the addition of the new bull-interloper, a 20 or 21-year-old, testosterone-overflowing, encroacher.

 

Rack: Amazing stuff. Thank you for sending. I need to read again and assimilate before I respond more fully. So much here! Congratulations on facing it head on.

 

Ruin: I am feeling my way into it. This piece is the continuation of a conversation between you and I. Nothing is edited yet, I am not worrying about that for a while, or perhaps never, who knows? It's stuff I had written before, not in answer to your questions, but I do think it starts to address them. I will get there, though it does start to answer them, your questions I mean. I guess I am limbering up to answer, because yes, it is the kernel. But as I said, I don't want to write an abuse memoir. I want to write about 'drivers'.

 

Off to the doctor to have my prostate prodded. It's been about four years since there were any incursions in that region. I am not feeling great, but ho-hum, perhaps well enough to write some more. I wanted to sit still anyway.

 

Anyway, I am putting that text under the image of the cloud-filled sky from the window of an airplane, more or less adding to it daily. Nobody sees it, it's like a private space. It is further back in my photostream, on Flickr. Pundits tend to look at the newer images, so I can work there almost privately. I like to leave that window open a crack, as you know, just in case I am in the mood to hang my arse out of it. He said, nodding at mister Chaucer, was there no end to this man’s pretensions?

 

Rack: The only way to do it. Not that I would know. Hope the prostate thing is OK. It’s funny how the bits that allow us to reproduce cause the most illness: breasts, prostates, and maybe we can list the heart there too. Feeling quite peculiar, but not in an entirely bad way.

 

Ruin: Maybe indeed, the heart I mean, perhaps it should be even listed first. I suspect that when we get our hearts broken as children, there’s, more or less, no fixing them. I don’t like being around children at all, they feel so ferociously delicate. I never have, my whole life, I mean. This was fortuitous, in that I recognise my own capacity to brutalise, even unintentionally. I am pleased to have never found these small creatures attractive, I know that abuse can sometimes generate that reaction. Thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones, it drove me forward, instead, desperately searching for a father.

 

But back to the mater, back to that bed companion, back to a small room with two beds, shared by four people, 3 brothers and one uncle.

 

He didn’t remember much about the room other than it was small and usually cold. There was no central heating in the house, and no insulation to speak of.

 

Ruin: I am chasing that cuckoo theme or, at least, working my way towards it.

 

Rack: Worth chasing. I have lost my enthusiasm for a lot of things. But have also lost my taste for destroying myself. As if the shortening years are drumming sense into me at last.

 

Ruin: Queen Elizabeth is dead.

 

Rack: I actually have a tear in my eye.

 

Ruin: I understand that. It's a little unreal. She's always been there, I mean from the beginning of our lives.

 

Rack: My mother was enamored of her. They shared an age, both members of the forces during WWII.

 

Ruin: I think my mother was the same age too, at least she claimed to be. She liked her too, but it sort of went against her republicanism

 

Rack: I knew she was a goner when I saw her greeting Liz Truss. Looked feeble for the first time.

 

Ruin: Yes, her hands were all bruised. She had obviously been having transfusions.

 

Rack: Poor love. She really was remarkable.

 

Ruin: Yes, to your "As if the shortening years are drumming sense into me at last ". I am there too

 

Rack: It feels good (the at last). I feel as if I’m negotiating the supermarket aisles with little concern for my fellow shoppers.

 

Ruin: I have been writing to you, still working it out, will write it soon (as an email). I will send it soon rather, when I get a little further

 

Rack: I look forward. And backward.

 

Ruin: I appear to be writing about everything, and making images too

 

Rack: Happy that you are.

 

Ruin: anyway, I will write it out, you will see. Hey, guess what, you are writing it out here too, and I will use it all.

 

Rack: Hah! Work away. Might be the only way I can do it. Obliquely.

 

Ruin: I'll hand it over to you eventually, if you outlive me, as I said before.

 

Rack: One of us has to go first. YIKES.

 

Ruin: Yep, that's how it goes. Yikes, indeed! Unless, of course, we all go together, courtesy of Mr. Putin, or whatever. I am on a new drug for my prostate, apparently it was squeezing my urethra, making my piss flow very difficult, no pressure, slowed down, and it meant I had to pee every 15 mins. One of the side effects is possible priapism, a permanent erection, even. I can feel a series of photos coming on, that 'how to negotiate being a spent old tosser' series.

 

But back to that crowded bedroom, with ice on the inside of the windows and the horsehair overspilling from the mattress, that altar.

 

To the bloody Dickins with the whole shebang.

 

Rack: What a fate your mother had! No wonder she was angry. What a fate you suffered! It’s as if she had to make you endure something similar, that by effecting its repetition she was freeing herself, sacrificing you. Kill the thing you love. It is compelling to read Billy; onward! It never occurred to me that the abuse you endured happened in a crowded room. That your brothers were there. It must have added to everything.

I hope the prostate submits to the new drug and things get more comfortable.

  

There seems to be so much to this falling apart, and the attempts to stave it off with an array of pharmaceuticals. The latest one seems particularly unpleasant, and a balance might have to be found, some sort of compromise with the condition, where it is determined which is more livable with, the affliction or the ‘cure’. The pill-box is now full, or the complement of slots is full, those 4 notches for each day, spacing out the pills, that morning, midday, evening, and night array. This reminded Ruin of Rack’s “ramming 28 horse-pills down my throat every day”, of one of her first emails, some 25 years previously. This also reminded him that four pills a day was not that much of an infringement on his time and effort if he was going to get this ‘epic’ written. He guffawed inwardly at this notion of an epic, whilst recognizing the unwieldiness of it all, that sprawl. It could easily get out of hand, he knew this. Actually, it was already ‘out of hand’ more or less, but he felt that he just had to let this be what it was, for now.

  

Eventually decisions would have to be made. Again, this sounds suspiciously like ‘choices’ would be presenting themselves, but, in reality, there is no choice at all. It is simply about being able to continue, a survival strategy, an instinct. Ruin had been reduced before to a soporific state by ‘life-savers’. For five years he had been on a drug which more or less curtailed all creativity, writing, making art, or even reading. He was determined not to let this happen again. Unfortunately, the medical powers that be, the doctors he encountered, did not appear to be very good at listening, which led to five years of what felt like an anaethesised life, a time felt as though it was spent wading through a particularly dense fog, a treacle even. Eventually, after that unnecessarily extended sluggish exile, Ruin managed to convince the doctor to change the medications, and hey presto, as if by magic, the curtains rose. There’s a lesson to be learnt there, relative to doctors, drugs, and private interests in the Pharma industry, but allowing for the possible duration of a lifespan, one has to choose one’s battles. For this very reason, Ruin was thrilled to see the sterling work by Laura Poitras and Nan Goldin being acknowledged by the Venice Film Festival this week.

  

This is all normal stuff, we all face it at some point, it is part and parcel of growing older, and of particularly having the privilege to do that whilst enjoying last centuries, eclipsed, ‘maladie du jour’. It appears that this new century can, and will, generate its own, and it is somewhat wondrous to see, already, the machinations of science in its attempts to protect us.

  

Ruin believed in science; he did not believe in God. He had watched science work its preserving ‘magic’ both on Rack for 35 years, and on himself for 20 of those shared years. What was not to believe? If some billionaire or other had wanted to tag him with an electronic bugging device, he would have been well tagged already; he had given science total access years ago. He had read, digested, and discarded Duesberg's HIV conspiracy theories way back in the mid-eighties, propagated somewhat by ‘The Village Voice’, as he attempted to support Rack, and as they tried to help each other, through the early tsunamis generated by the same virus. Ruin had all he could stomach of anti-science conspiracy theories three decades before Covid eclipsed everything else in the collective imagination of the general public. Then in the eighties and nineties, Dr. Fauci was the enemy too, and we demonstrated against him and the tardiness of the CDC. We formed ‘Act Up’ and marched, demonstrated, and had ‘die-ins’ in Grand Central Station. Dr. Fauci listened, and eventually acted, proving to be a stalwart comrade in arms.

  

Recently Rack wrote to me (Enter those 1st person pronouns, both singular and plural):

  

Rack: I think we all have a lot of fear about how our behaviour is being policed. Are we racist? Are we transphobic? Are we elitist? Are we mansplaining? As you say, it’s not helpful and it doesn’t actually assist any of the issues it purports to protect. I fear we are in a very dark corner. Some days I find this very liberating. Not all days. Reading about the US government’s attitude to climate change is frightening. Also, Republican’s attitudes towards Anthony Fauci. Horrifying. He has just resigned. Bless.

  

Ruin: Yes, bless indeed, both Science and Doctor Fauci.

 

I am most pleased that we can still write to each other after 35 years of dealing with this disease. No, I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in miracles, and as far as I can see, most of those are, now, generated by Science.

 

A progenitorial alternative might be:

 

"Three drinks of water (holy) taken on three consecutive occasions from The Bishops Skull. This skull is believed to belong to one of three bishops who were murdered for their faith in Penal times. This particular skull is in a very extraordinary state of preservation and is kept at a house named Rielly (sic), near to the village of Mahera in Co. Cavan.

The skull is requisitioned from all parts of Ireland and the cure is well recognised."

 

The Schools Collection volume 0721 page 212.

www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5009031/4979138

 

Rack: Not too much. I am always fascinated to read, but will admit that there is a part of me that wonders why I am so stuck while your gates are wide open and functioning with such wild and wonderful abandon. It is a form of jealousy, but not just that because I am truly happy you are doing it. So, keep sending and forgive me if my replies are a little constipated. Thinking about your latest missive, the medicated falling apart. Much love.

 

Ruin: I rewrote and added there a bit. I am just shit-scared of not having time left to finish what I have started, so pushing. You are very much there too.

  

As luck would have it, I don’t seem to be able to tolerate these prostate pills. They cause intense palpitations at the slightest exertion. So, I will just have to get on with it, the swollen prostate and all that. It’s not cancer, just swollen, but that causes enough problems anyway, which will just have to be embraced. Yes, to what you were saying about those parts of the body to do with pleasure causing the worst, or most common, problems. It does slightly put me in mind of that red ‘Castration Piece’ I made in the eighties, that fantasy I had, for years, about being neutered. That ‘I fantasized about castrating myself feeling this could free me from the guilt and shame (and pleasure)’. I could now, with those added 35 years on top, add ‘and doctor’s appointments’ to that title. But the response has to be, and is, Yes, a resounding ‘Yes’. Yes to growing older I mean. It remains the best, and the thing I am most grateful for. (Waving at Molly Bloom here, of course).

 

I have never had what are called ‘Panic attacks’ before, the first one I had was in my early sixties when I was on those terrible stultifying TAF including drugs for our shared lurgy. I then started to have them occasionally, plus a host of other exhausting complaints, and that aforementioned pea soup brain-fog. These, more or less, cleared up when I changed drugs. Now, with this new prostate pill they are back with a vengeance, two in three days. These are not panic attacks; they are drug induced palpitations. They are listed as possible side effects. We are, of course, guinea pigs for these wonderful HIV drugs, and I know we are both eternally grateful for that opportunity.

 

Let’s live somewhat longer, let’s describe it, let’s write.

 

But Ruin did have to get back to his mother, and that misunderstanding, that space where some ‘intent’ might be suggested. He needed to somehow exonerate her, to say that it wasn’t her fault, or rather to prove to himself that it wasn’t. He recognized this as being virtually impossible, given his history, their ‘story’, and the reverberations through six decades, but he was going to try anyway. Her history, back story even, can’t really be delved into. There is not enough evidence there, just those initial tales of abandonment, her father, early grieving, her mother, and abuse, her uncle. Ruin could hardly remember his own story, never mind attempting to reconstruct that of the mater, but the pattern was obvious, and the repeat motifs presented themselves unashamedly. Ruin was used to looking for patterns, probably generated by a lifetime making visual art. There were also patterns in the mater’s behaviors, mirrored in his own. These he could see and understand. These were the drivers he wanted to expose. He wanted to explain these to Rack. Rack had been, for over three decades, a type of ‘sounding board’ for him, utterly non-judgmental, hyper vigilant even, with an uncanny ability to proffer solace. He had the idea that this was also mirrored back. They were, somehow, equally scabrous, wanton, lewd, call it what you will, and could laugh uproariously at each other’s coping mechanisms. This was probably central to their ‘screaming walks’ through the canyons of Manhattan in those early days of their beloved plague. Rack was very much the ‘screamer’ then, and Ruin was in awe of her ability to let one rip on a crowded avenue or cross-street, whilst quietly hoping he might be mistaken for her companion-carer. He so loved that embarrassment. He also suspected that she loved watching him attempt to deal with it.

 

Those walks should become legend.

 

Yes, it all happened in a crowded room, a dark one to boot. There were two not quite double beds. Ruin didn’t know what size they were, they weren’t standard anything. He guessed they were more single size; two double beds would not have fit in that room. But this was years before he was aware of those designated sizes, queen, king, whatever. They were old metal frames, with exposed springs, on which the horsehair mattresses scrappily floated. His two younger brothers shared one, he had the other. It was their room, the boy’s room. His parents slept in the small box-room, so his sisters could share the other bedroom, furnished with two single beds. The youngest of the brothers, Johnny, was about 4 years old at the time. He was a troubled child, if his self-rocking was anything to go by. This self-soothing swaying back and forth relentlessly would infuriate his ten-year-old brother, Tony, until Johnny managed to soothe himself to sleep each night. Tony would then become comatose, at last, having endured that rocking until exhaustion intervened. Johnny also slept with his invisible friend ‘Ibi’, so their bed was somewhat overcrowded.

 

Ruin, the oldest, had a bed to himself, a sign of seniority, an acknowledgement of his waxing ‘teenhood’, until that interloper arrived.

 

Here, let me (that personal pronoun again) interject, by way of adding a warning. It’s simple really, and I am directing it towards all parents, of all persuasions and ilks, gender preferences, and identities. It’s blindingly elementary, an iteration I know. Please, never put a mature male in bed with an immature child, no matter how much you trust this male, no matter how close the family relationship might be. But I guess if I was being both fair and honest, I would have to extend this to include all maturated individuals regardless of gender or self-identification. My, perhaps unfair, focus on the male abuser here is because this was the case, both as far as my mother and myself were concerned, those wayward uncles. But then this isn’t about me, so I apologise for any presumptions made.

 

Ruin did not want to share his bed.

 

Yes, Ruin was doing okay. He knew it wasn’t Rack’s job to take the sadness away. How could it be? Anyway, he was doing exactly that himself, and it was about time, in every possible meaning of that phrase. It was about time itself, indeed, nothing more, nothing less. So not counting on any, a godly and honest state if ever there was one, he would get on with it until he no longer could. There’s a definition of fulfilment there, that recognition of oneself as that veritable elephant surfing on the fabled edge of that infinite black hole, and writing this out made him happy, elated even. For what it’s worth, it records itself anyway, endlessly, and anything the universal you or I might choose to add is simply non-essential extra, that ‘Froth on a Daydream’ which Boris Vian liked to write about. It is written for the self, a gift. He was looking at Vian again for a reason, or at least was planning to, it having once been important to him. A new copy sat on his emptying shelves, quietly reverberating. Hum diddley hum. This hum was once beautifully described as ‘the music of the spheres’.

 

There is there, there.

 

Anyway, back to those words of advice, my abridged handbook for would-be parents.

 

Do not circumvent the grooming, do not make it unnecessary by placing a potential predator and a victim in a dark, and silent, bed together. Whilst I am not going to dissect what happened on that mattress, I am going to look at why a child might have erroneously projected that grooming onto his mother for almost 60 years. There’s the crux, Rack, that mistake, that almost lifelong, retarding, projection that might have turned a 68-year-old child into a storyteller.

 

It was almost impossible for that son to describe that mother, to find the words, I mean. But he was going to try. There was no malice there, and she wasn’t stupid. Being stupid and ignorant are not the same thing. But then the whole story is also tinged with her innocence, something which can often be confused with ignorance, but here they were intertwined, and she had no way to pick them apart. These traits were very much part of her Gordian Knot, that imponderable she had inadvertently played forward.

 

To go further he knew he was going to have to do it alone. He was going to have to, temporarily hopefully, let Rack go as well. He knew that it was going too far, and could even be triggering, to use a woke expression, for her. It was almost going too far for himself, even. It felt like an essential step, so he would take it. This would constitute a huge, and frightening, departure, a rupturing, after 25 years of corresponding. He was going to go back alone. She knew where he was, he knew where she was, that would have to be enough for now.

 

There is always that cracked open window here, letting some air in, and stench out.

 

That will be enough in this interim, he guffawed quietly to himself, recklessly Rackless, perhaps, but enough for now.

  

Rack: Have been thinking. And just tell me to fuck off if you disagree or don’t care, but I feel you should be writing in the first person.

 

Ruin: I will work that out, now, or soon. I write in the third person when it becomes too difficult to write about, to get some distance. I now sort of know I can write it, so I better get on with it. The first person might be more immediate, I guess, but I was trying, to a degree, to avoid writing a straight-forward memoir. Anyway, this does need sorting out before I really sit down to it. I think I have the bare bones together now, and need to work on the form it's going to take. I am feeling like withdrawing more to do it, but that frightens me too.

 

Rack: I absolutely get that. And the fear of withdrawing to do it too. Onward. I get so stuck on the small stuff that I cannot proceed at all, so it would be safe to ignore me. Sending love.

 

Ruin: I am not at all sure yet which direction it is going in, in so much as I don't really want to write a 'novel' or a 'memoir'. I am thinking of it as more of connected 'essays', than anything else. Essays on a theme, personal essays, even, perhaps lyrical essays, I am not sure. For now it's just writing. It will include these, Immediate messages, emails, stories, confused memories, and ramblings about ideas, 'drivers', and whatever. There will even be images. The person they are written in can change. I realised that in the writing to you, it should always be in the first person, directly written to you, that personal. But in my enthusiasm found myself sending you some of the 'Ruin (he) had a good wank and fell asleep' stuff. I put all that on Flickr anyway, so you know where it is. I still revolve around images, so I will continue to work there. It is my way, as unorthodox as that might be, and it's more or less private there anyway. I like that promiscuousness, that slightly ajar window, so something can creep out or in, and catch me unawares. It is my only 'Meta' space.

 

I say you know where it is there, but it is now quite hidden. I am working under certain images, add text most days, but these are older images. Only newly added images get attention so these more or less go unseen, as the text develops. I leave little clues but one would have to be quite intrepid to find them.

 

The title, 'A Less Comforting Narrative', refers to the image, and not to the exchange under it.

 

Rack: It’s always an act of faith and you are writing, that’s what counts. The idea of writing essays might be very freeing.

  

But Rack, there is another crux there too, another layer I need to look at, and that is the idea of the self as a ‘groomer’. I am not at all sure why I attack these ideas head on, but it seems I do, or have to (am driven to), at least. OK, perhaps I make cack-handed efforts at this, perhaps there is delusion there, but this is something I have to do, if I am going to be as honest as I can be. This is grooming, this writing I mean, it is enticing, and almost demanding, responses. It appears I might feed off responses, and this is somewhat alarming. As usual, confrontation seems the only way forward, not just to recognize something but to actively attempt to disempower it. This might demand another step, a sort of extension of that quarantine which I have already noted as possibly a way forward. It feels like I should write to you, and not send what I write. In short, I don’t know my own motivations, let alone trust them. I don’t even know if they are mine. I recognize a group of possibly powerful drivers, besides the common or garden ones of background, abuse and general upbringing. All these are more or less universal, perhaps the abuse aspect was more extreme. Then there are the added influences of a sexually generated plague, this we share, and the drugs needed to control that scourge/gift. There is also residual anger, perhaps, at being a ‘failed’ artist, at the aborted attempts I made to try to communicate. This is also more often the case as not, considering the overabundance of ‘Artists’ floatingly enjoying poverty and rejection globally. To attempt to turn that into a ‘La Vie Bohème’, at the age of 68, would border on the farcical, though that in itself might be funny enough to create a page-turner.

 

In July, Thalia wrote to me:

“Yes, It's always interesting when communication happens, but it is also alright with me when it doesn't, for any reason. Nobody can be a perfect Victorian-style correspondent now, even I can't.”

 

Thalia, by another name, is one of those 4 women you commented on, relative to this idea of re-building myself, those ‘good mothers’, those substitutes I have been busily generating all my life. I see that now as a type of grooming, not conscious in the doing of it, but decipherable in retrospect, that looking back I seem to be up to.

 

Of course, you sit there, the ‘Mother Superior’. Next question, are you getting anything out of this? If not, tell me. I will stop writing to you, in fact I won’t. I will write to you in private, but not send it, I mean. I would continue to post the writing where I habitually post it, my afore-mentioned public/private Meta space, that chink of an open-window. This would mean that if you were ever curious you could find it there.

 

I know how relentless I can be, and I also know how exhausting this can be. I am acknowledging this, at last. Let me know what you think so we can begin this next phase in a way that would ensure that there was no grooming in the doing of it.

  

Rack: I need to concentrate on my own work. As is my habit, I get too involved in other people’s stuff in order to avoid my own. It would be awful to never hear from you, maybe there is somewhere in between.

 

Ruin: Yes, I couldn't stand not being in contact. I just need to rein in, to control my need to share, to get approval, awful 'boy stuff'.

 

Rack: god we might be growing up!!!!

 

Ruin: you know I hang on your every word, and can generate 1,000 words from ten from you. But yes, I can do it alone. But it's better with you. But I want you to do your work, not hinder you.

It's time to grow fucking up, for me anyway, you decide when it's your time. 68, little boy lost hasn't got the same appeal. I can't help but think I can do this quicker; I have all the raw material.

 

‘Don't Confront Me With My Failures’.

 

I am so pleased to have gotten here, this plateau of seemingly controllable desire. This burgeoning hormonal hiatus, brought on by years, disease, and the medications for the same ‘affliction’. Even surviving thus far seems somewhat miraculous, from that point of childhood abuse to this unexpected seniority, an adulthood of sorts. It was almost arrived at through no obvious intervention of my own, but there may be some evidence there that could suggest differently. It would seem that all energies were set in self-destruct mode. There was so much luck involved in generating that continuance, but there were also interventions, practical ones, like the leaps and bounds made by science in this age we live in, but also the intervention of loved ones, not family, but those rather who recognized an aspect of 'self' in the 'other' along the way, and stopped long enough to develop mutual caring.

  

These writings are dedicated to two of these paragons. Rack, the titular, and ‘Hem Binnen’, the Dutch ‘Him Indoors’ who saved my life.

  

As to my failings, I know them intimately and will expose them in all their tawdriness as I continue.

  

"There was an old man named Michael Finnegan

He had whiskers on his chinnegan

The wind came along and blew them in again

Poor old Michael Finnegan"

  

Begin Again.

  

Fail again, Fail Better, as our fellow countryman, that other writer in Paris, would have it.

  

But then beginning again is just moving forward.

  

Ruin, Ruin, Ruin, what in god’s name were you up to? Neither of us believe in that geezer with the grey hair, on a cloud, but my exasperation needs letting out, so there he sits omnipotent. Just so you know, I was watching all those 68 years, and I can clearly see the stories you have been telling yourself. It’s almost as if I had nothing better to do than watch over you. But, I guess, someone had to, and that judgmental geezer with his tablet of ten regulations wasn’t really up to that job, now or then, was he? So, I hung around watching, and more or less saw it all, except for those times I might have been comatose in a Ketamine or alcohol haze, beside you. You may have gotten up to some shenanigans at those junctures when I wasn’t exactly compos mentis. My apologies if I missed out on any of your multitudinous ‘calls for help’. None of us are perfect, as you well know. Before we start, get going that is, I should also say that I intend hanging around, watching over you, until your sticky, or otherwise, end. I wouldn’t miss that unravelling for all the gilt bronzes in Tibet. I am in it for the long run, as they say, whoever 'they' might be. I know you are having those memory holes, those vast and growing ever-expanding black holes, but don’t worry there, Ruin. I think I can help out with this, even. You see, I kept a written record, I know, sneaky, but it’s the nature of the graphomaniacal beast, one of my own little foibles that might actually aid and abet your storytelling. I believe we might have shared that letter writing mania, that drive to communicate through correspondence, but we have never really written to each other, have we? I suspect that is about to change. I hope so anyway.

 

Rack, Sorcha and Thalia inspired you to write, I can see that, mostly by being able to tolerate you, it would appear. Perhaps you brought out a mothering aspect in their natures when they saw you in some considerable distress relative to that early abuse. Perhaps it was something else too, some mutual need. There were others too, mostly female others, those correspondents, with the exception of Jonathan, who would be deserving of a separate story, perhaps. Rack spoke of them as the ‘Good Mothers’, those interventional women, those lifesavers.

 

Which more or less takes us to the ‘invisible man’, that centre of those black, expanding, holes, those memory lapses, the ‘Good Father’, or any father at all for that matter. He was purportedly there, constantly in the background, and often used as a threat, but he was there. I seem to remember you even put some photographs of him up on your antiquated Meta site, Flickr. I do see that there might be an absence there, a vacuum, and I have seen all the extremes you have gone to fill that infinite hole. So here I am, a Nelson Eddy to your Jeanette MacDonald (I know, camp and hopelessly dated, I am sorry about that), a top to your bottom, as Jonathan would have it.

 

Write to me, I will write back. Just don’t call me ‘Daddy’, that’s just one step too far, and I know, and understand, your tendency to always overstep those boundaries. I am willing to play at being the ‘Good Father’, until you learn to do that for yourself. I really wouldn't do this for anyone else in this whole wide world, so hopefully this will help you begin to feel better about yourself.

 

Onwards and upwards as the aforementioned 'they' like to say, tomorrow being the first day of the rest of your life and all that cliched palaver. I will do my very best to rein all that corn in as we proceed, a struggle I know. I do believe we might have a job to do, and It's way beyond time to get on with it.

 

I've got your back, for what it's worth.

 

Best Regards,

Top

 

25 September 2022

 

Dearest Top,

 

Embracing the fear of possibly going full Ham, Shem and Japheth, I am going to have to name you. I can’t call you 'Top' for the duration of our correspondence, disregarding the reality that the Top/Bottom synergy thing doesn’t even hold anymore, now that one is post-gay, post-sex, and approaching post-everything, what with oblivion waving tantalisingly, as it is, from the border of that widening gyre (tips hat towards W.B.) of our beloved ‘event horizon’. I think I have even found a name for you. Its partially catholic, even, from that miasma of childhood memories, that “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church, and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom”.

 

Okay Rock, I am giving you the keys. You, for a while anyway, can be the designated driver, Petrus, that's you, that dependable rock, rock of the walk, even, rock of ages, my Tio Pepe port in a storm, my fellow geriatric mariner. Lash me to your, larger than average, mast, we're off.

 

Welcome to Rack & Ruin, and Rock! It does have a certain alliterative ring, n'est-ce pas? (TYFTC). Fasten your seatbelts, we might be in for somewhat of a bumpy ride.

 

Deliriously yours,

Queerqueg von Lederhosen

 

PS: Are you sure this device works for blocked sinuses?

 

PPS: Relative to the acronym used in this photoplay, please see photo below, entitled: L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.H.I.V+O.A.P

It ain’t heavy, it’s my acronym.

  

Dearest Wuufus Wainscotting,

 

Sorry to her about your troat. Don’t they be at the doing of the blessing of that same gorge anymore, at all, at all? Probably not, I would guess. Perhaps the only church what did it is now boarded up, or turned into a leisure centre where they give Irish dancing lessons to all those young, eager, coiled-springy girls, with the revolving legs and primary-colour gúnas (Gaelic for frocks), in plastic ringlets. You know the ones; they make those Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleaders girls look like vestal virgins, pushed on by their mammies, hello Bernadette Peters, to excel in all that leaping and jiggery-pokery, moving downstage like one of those roman phalanxses, putting the fear of God in every daecent catolick. Anyway, I diverge.

 

Talking of Catholics, no, you ain’t Rock. Rock’s his name, not Peter, or Petrus, or any of those Roman shenanigans, just clear old plain, and sturdy, ‘Rock’, as in that island lodged between the East River, and the Hudson (where I met my beloved Rack), if you get my drift, and the rock of me birth, that emerald-green one you are presently lodged up the backside of. I will admit he is partial to the odd glass of Theo Pepys, and has been known to take an occasional dash along the boreens of the Adirondacks brandishing that emblematic, blue-striped axe. That Daniel Dye Sluice could play him in a moving picture extravaganza, ‘The Last of the Tops’, or somesuch, Oscar fodder no doubt, probably to be found, eventually, in the ‘Science Fiction’ section of our favourite ‘Blokebuster’, down that windy old boreen of a bog road.

 

And what does every poor Irish boy need, dare I say, what does every boy need? I answer here and now, without much hesitation, other than the time it takes to take a gulp of coffee, with a slice of me iced-duck, so that I can take me slew of morning pilules; every boy needs a Rock. You can see that I am substituting, intermittently, the ‘me’ for ‘my’. I do believe I might be enjoying heading for a little regression, and sure why not, on this fine rainy Amsterdam morning? There’s neery a rock here, on this damp sponge of a low-lying place, so a lad would have to be going about inventing his own boulder to support him. And that is simply what I do be doing, as Frank S. used to like to sing.

 

Do be, do be, do, what were the chances?

 

But I regress. Where was I?

 

I remember. I was in Amsterdam about to take me ‘Daddy’s little helpers’, those much-loved lifesavers (said pilules). All praise science and all that palaver. I sit here pin-cushioned, enjoying the wonderful side-effects of the Monkeypox vaccine, and looking forward to when I can enjoy the same from the latest Covid update. Unfortunately, I have to wait a month for that second one, a recommended period of time between that first and second vaccine to ensure they don’t conjoin in some diabolical conspiracy to turn me into a 4G antenna, or something similar.

 

Pillar of salt, Lot’s wife’s lot, and how’s your mother?

 

I don’t think for a minute that that naughty Mr. Gates is out to chip me. As I said, pincushion here, and if he felt a yearning to chip yours truly, he could have had me eons ago. Have at it, Bill. Take me, I was, formerly, anybody’s anyway, writing bad cheques willy-nilly.

 

And breathe.

 

‘Comhbhrú na cruinne ina carraig, agus rolladh i dtreo ceist ró-mhór í’, (trans: Compress the universe into a rock and roll it towards a bloody huge question) as the plagarised ancient Irish bard might have warbled, and more than likely did.

 

No, it isn’t that Rack is non-responsive, it’s more that I am giving her a break from all my 'raiméis' (Gaelic for general doo-doo, shite for want of a better word). It's all been 'ri ra agus ruaile buaile', (gaelic for a gas craic) as far as I am concerned. We have chewed the cud now for 35 long, wonderful, and somewhat excruciating years. That’s not altogether true. We lived on that same rock of Manhattan for 11 years, then wrote to each other for 24 years after that. There are probably a million words lurking there. I think that you recognize that I love letter writing, or it’s modern equivalent anyway, the email. The problem is that the unwieldy words are there, and they are just a part of what lurks on my hard-drive, and I suspect it’s going to take my ‘Rock’ to sort them out. Rock has a pithy character, he takes no prisoners, that tough-love stuff, that ability to tell you when you are being an eejit. Ruin needs Rock more than I do, possibly (oops, reality check there). Anyway, Rack and Ruin could chew the cud relentlessly forever, they could easily become that universal methane generator, much feared of by the powers that do be sitting there Canute-like, holding the tide back, in Brussels.

 

Carraig is the Irish word for Rock, just so you know. Would that not be a great ‘secret’ name, one to make any mammy proud? “Come on over here, darling Carraig, and let me wipe your nose wit me sleeve, you’re snottin all over de kip”. It doesn’t get much better than that in my book. Did you know that kip is the Dutch for chicken?- just saying.

 

I used to love, back on that old Manhattan Rock, when Rack used to croon "It's not your frock my dear", then look at me as if wisdom had been imparted. Rack knew how to make Ruin laugh, it was sort of a mutual thing. It was some 'Hibernafold', sweep me into your fold my dear, understanding stranded between laughing and screaming, that wondrous type of hysteria, infectious, scary, and lovely (Oxford comma usage there, blimey). Pronouns be damned, we know who we are. A pox on all your pronouns, here's to universal interchangeability!

  

Mise Lemas,

 

Ruin O’ Carraig (Gaelic for Ruin, son of Rock)

  

It’s time to get back to that ‘crux’ as Rack called it. It will be slightly different this time, as I won’t be telling it to her, I will be telling it to myself, and to Rock, perhaps. Perhaps this part needs looking at, not only from Ruin’s viewpoint, but from that slightly cynical over-arching perspective that he might be able to bring to this dissection, this evisceration, this vomiting up. I guess it isn’t really about what happened anyway, I mean the details of what happened, these I won’t be telling, but rather the reactions to these stimuli on that rather delicate entity that the child, Ruin, was. He was a stammering wreck of a neglected child, and this was the first time anyone had ever paid any attention to him There was nothing in his arsenal to deal with the repercussions, and no one available who might proffer some help or even a suggestion of an explanation. It happened in cold darkness, and in silence. It happened in his gut.

 

It was most definitely where it happened, there, in the pit of his stomach. He still remembers that feeling, vividly. Yes, that’s present tense, remembers, not remembered. That stays forever, at least for the forever that describes the length of a life, but it can also be projected into a future, through these words, beyond that ‘life’s sentence’. Technically apparently, the hippocampus shrinks, and entombs the memory, creates an imprint that asserts itself for a life’s duration. That’s the sentence, that’s the imprisonment. And why would you want to project that into the future, that delicately butterflied stomach, the answer would be simply to give it a description, to, perhaps, proffer that absent help, or a suggestion of an explanation.

 

He/I/we/they needed Rock there to help explain it to him. He loved that grab-bag of pronouns, a new freedom generated by contemporary politics, which would allow him to seamlessly segue from one to another. Rock could provide the ‘You’, that objective overview, perhaps. He always loved that wonderfully funny narcissistic joke: I am getting sick and tired of relentlessly talking about myself, can you take over and talk about me for a while?

 

Okay Rock, do you want to take over, to give a kid a break?

 

Come on “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee”

 

1 Oct 2022, 3.08PM CEST

 

Thalia,

 

Strange this idea of letter-writing. I do see it has been excessive, something I have always done too much of, finding some validation there, I would guess. In a way, I want to turn that around. Perhaps I have been inflicting my ‘graphomania’ on others for two long now and it’s time to take responsibility for that myself. I know it’s too easy a diagnosis, one of those that was bandied about some years ago, another over-arching description that, perhaps, doesn’t mean much. That’s something I learnt from you, the need to circumvent easy characterisations.

 

Your: “Yes, It's always interesting when communication happens, but it is also alright with me when it doesn't, for any reason. Nobody can be a perfect Victorian-style correspondent now, even I can't.”

 

That was somewhat of a turning point for me in this, that note, it worked for me. It set me of on some realisation of what I might have been getting up to, over the last few years, and how this might have been somewhat unfair. You probably saw that acknowledged already under ‘A Less Comforting Narrative, (Turku, Finland)’, as I know what a sleuth you can be, acknowledging your “I saw!”. I must admit that I like that you saw.

 

Yes, I guess at some point there might be editing, heavy editing, I imagine, but I am not feeling at all, at the moment, that this is my job. I feel like I am still working through it and into it, getting the substance of it all together. I am currently at that ‘abuse phase’, I have been trying to explain to Rack that my mother is not to blame, and neither was my father, they were just carrying on what they knew, their abuse and abandonment. The more I move on the more I realise I have to talk about universal ‘innocence’, and when I say universal, I mean exactly that, a forgiveness that pardons Jeffrey Dahmer and Adolf Hitler, even, those unspeakable outrages against decency and humanity. This ‘innocence’ doesn’t negate the need for absolute quarantine in cases such as these. For what it’s worth I hold no truck with death sentences, no matter how extreme the actions of the perpetrator of the outrage. It’s a strange journey, that getting around to forgiving everyone so you can forgive yourself, but that does seem to be what I am up to, so I will take it as far as I can. It feels like a good, a necessary, journey.

 

I have been spending the last week releasing Rack, letting go, trusting. Then lo and behold, along came Roc

“Keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to understand art more and more.” - Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter, Post-Impressionist, 1853-1890)

 

Photo taken from Eden Nature Park and Mountain Resort, Toril, Davao City, Philippines

atmosphère breizh à la Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland

  

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Only text comments (and faves if you like it!), no gif, no pics or artwork promoting others pics or groups. Comments that are not text only will be removed. In the same fashion, I'm not fond of Post 1 Award 1,2,3... so if I ever posted in one of those groups, do me a favor, please unsubscribe me. Thanks for your understanding!

My understanding is that this is the only temple not to have been named after any Greek god. Rather, the name is said to reflect how well people in the area got on with each other. I also understand that the Temple of Concordia is the best preserved temple outside Greece.

Leipzig Book Fair 2014

Leipziger Buchmesse 2014

 

Cosplayers

2014#064 2014_005 2014-03-14

 

Zhenya (Ramona) 130540 as Compa from Hyperdimension Neptunia

 

Photos posted are 1024x768 pixels in size. Higher resolution (3000x2000) for models only, sorry.

 

Thank you for any group invites which I will gladly accept. However, if I can't check the content of such groups ("This group is not available to you") I'd rather not add any of my photos. Thanks for your understanding.

Understanding the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology

-The first archaeological museum in northern Taiwan

The establishment of the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology can be traced back to “rescue excavation” undertaken at the Shihsanhang Site in 1990. At that time the Taiwan Provincial Government’s Department of Housing and Development planned to build a sewage treatment plant on the top of the site. As a result, a group of noted archaeologists launched a campaign to rescue the Shihsanhang Site, which quickly received wide public support. This successfully resulted in the area being designated a Historical Site - Second class and part of the original site was ordered preserved. In 1992 the Executive Yuan ordered Taipei County government to establish a Shihsanhang Site Exhibition Room to display objects unearthed.It was renamed the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology in 1998 and given the central objectives of preserving and displaying artifacts unearthed at the Shihsanhang Site, serving as an archaeological museum of northern Taiwan and an educational center, teaching people about the importance of the prehistoric culture. After its official opening in 2003, the Museum has also become an Ecomuseum of the Bali Left Bank.

 

-Building the Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology

The Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology cost NT$380 million to build, paid by both the central and Taipei County governments. Construction worked on the main buildings, the outdoor plaza and parking lot began in 2000,and the project was complet in 2003.

#Singapore - #StrengthsFinder #Futuristic is like a visionary in our time called Elon Musk who founded SpaceX, Tesla & PayPal. He said "In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization"... Whao. Just whao He is able to see possibilities that could materialise in the near future and start to put meat onto it. And for Singapore's very own futuristic hero, we have got our late Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew So for people with StrengthsFinder Futuristic, the understanding of the phrase "near future", is that the future is nearer to them than we can ever imagine The definition of StrengthsFinder Futuristic's GENIUS The genius of Futuristic talents is in your emotional anticipation and visual imagination of a better future, which inspire you — and could inspire others — to make that dream a reality #StrengthsFinderFuturistic #StrengthsFinderGenius #GallupStrengthsFinder #CliftonStrengths #StrengthsQuest #StrengthsSchool #Gallup #StrengthsFinderSG #Asia #HumanResource #SelfImprovement #SelfDevelopment #TeamBuilding #Workshop #StrengthsCoach #ProfessionalDevelopment #StrengthsFinderCoach #CoachJasonHo Jason Ho • SouthEast Asia & Singapore's 1st StrengthsFinder Certified Coach • Strengths School™ Singapore ift.tt/2aXKHqp

The Unisphere, a 12-story high, spherical stainless steel representation of the Earth, was built as the theme symbol for the 1964 World's Fair. The Theme of the World's Fair was "Peace Through Understanding" and the Unisphere represented the theme of global interdependence. It was dedicated to "Man's Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe."

 

Designed by landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke, the Unisphere was donated by the United States Steel Corporation and constructed by that company's American Bridge Division. It's the world's largest global structure, rising 140 feet and weighing 700,000 pounds. Some sources say the Unisphere weighs 900,000 pounds, a figure which includes the additional weight of its 200-ton inverted tripod base.

 

Built on the structural foundation that supported the 1939/1940 New York World's Fair's Perisphere, Unisphere is centered in a large, circular reflecting pool and is surrounded by a series of water-jet fountains designed to obscure its tripod pedestal. The effect is meant to make Unisphere appear as if it is floating in space.During the fair, dramatic lighting at night gave the effect of sunrise moving over the surface of the globe. Additionally, the capitals of nations were marked by uniquely designed lights that held four bulbs each. When one would burn out, another would rotate in place so that the bulbs would not have to be changed during the two-year run of the Fair. None of these lighting effects are still in operation.

 

Three large orbit rings of stainless steel encircle Unisphere at various angles. These orbit rings represent the tracks of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, and Telstar, the first active communications satellite. America was at the height of the Space Age when Unisphere was constructed, and the rings serve as reminders of America's early space achievements.

 

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, often referred to as Flushing Meadow Park or Flushing Meadows Park, occupies 1,255 acres between the Van Wyck Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway, stretching from Flushing Bay to Union Turnpike. The site, originally known as the Corona Ash Dumps, was cleared by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses in preparation for the 1939-1940 World's Fair, and later used for the 1964-1965 World's Fair. Iconic remnants from the two fairs include the New York State Building, the Unisphere, and the New York State Pavilion. The US Open tennis tournament takes place in Flushing Meadows Park at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, and the New York Mets play their home games in Citi Field at the north end of the park. Shea Stadium, the Mets' previous home, once stood adjacent to Citi Field.

 

The Unisphere with its surround pool and fountains was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 16, 1995

via Assemblies Unlimited Inc bit.ly/1PmSuL0

Bay is finally understanding what my camera does and will actually let me take her picture now on demand. After I snap one she runs over and is eager to look at the back of the camera and scroll through the images. It's adorable.

...with the idea that we're supposed to be "tolerant and understanding" of those who despise us, spit on us, and behead our citizens because we're not just like them.

 

God bless America, God bless Texas!

My understanding is this is restored and now at the Whittaker Camp One display at Cass Scenic Railroad.

 

Description borrowed from the Mountain State Railroad & Logging Historical Association(MSR&LHA). visit their wonderful and informational site at www.msrlha.org/

 

High-lead Steam Skidder -- Built by Meadow River Lumber’s Rainelle shop using older Lidgerwood skidder engines and winches – completed in 1945 – rostered as No. 1; mounted on a 55-foot car frame, the mast (tower, spar) fabrication (standing 96-feet from its base in operating condition) and cable capability (over 3,300 feet) made it one of the largest high-lead skidders ever used in the East. The purpose of the rebuild was related to handling tree-length logs; service ended sometime in 1966 (it was the last operating steam skidder in the East); brought to Rainelle in early 1968 and stored on a siding across the mill pond from MRL’s bandsaw plant). Shipped to Cass as part of the donated equipment in 5-72; the mast came on two B-series log cars (one of these also carried the boiler’s cupola housing); moved to Whittaker by Shay No. 2 and No. 5 in 11-93; the mast was brought to the site via the same power combination in [8]-94; one of only two Lidgerwood skidders extant domestically.

 

A view of restoration: www.msrlha.org/p-roster-photos/thumbs/high-ead-1999.html

19/01/2023. London, United Kingdom. Minister for the Lords, DHSC, Lord Nick Markham CBE, signs a memorandum of understanding with Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand and Minister for Public Health, H.E. Mr Anutin Charnvirakul at the Department of Health and Social Care. Picture by Rory Arnold / No 10 Downing Street

Understanding the origin of matter in the early universe requires unique accelerator facilities and SRF cavities like this one. #NatLabDay

Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.

Adlai Stevenson

It was two days after Christmas when my mother woke us up that fateful morning thirty something years ago. My sister and I had started sleeping in the same room again. There was no discussion about it - we just needed the comfort the nearness of another person can provide. I was twelve and my sister was eleven.

 

I remember the look on my mother’s face. Her eyes were swollen. Her lips pursed.

 

“I have good news and bad news. The good news is your father is no longer suffering. The bad news is he is gone."

 

The rest of the day felt like a dream. How could he be dead? We had just spent Christmas Eve with him and he was laughing and having fun. He didn't look like a man about to die.

 

My father had brain cancer. He was 36 years old when he died. His body withered quickly from the chemo and radiation. When the will was read, my sister and I were too young to understand the shock my mother faced. Later, we’d learn my father left my sister and I almost nothing, but chose instead, to leave most everything to my step-mother.

 

As I grew up and became a mother, I then understood the magnitude of that decision and became hurt about how little my father left us. How do you not take care of your children - especially when you know you are dying? It left me feeling confused and angry. I loved my children so much that I couldn’t imagine not being sure they were taken care of.

 

Bitterness became so real I could taste it. My father’s family had quit calling soon after the funeral and our step-mother had quickly remarried. We reached out several times but it felt awkward and forced. It was just easier to stay away and let the anger simmer.

 

Over the years and despite my disappointments, I’ve never quit missing my father. Several months ago, my father’s sister sent some pictures to me that she’d found. There were pictures of my parents together in a time before I had a memory. And there were pictures of that last Christmas. They took my breath away. In those pictures, my father looked swollen, pale, and sickly. Not at all like the picture in my memory.

 

For me, time has healed a lot of wounds and I think I understand why he didn’t leave us much in his will.

 

He didn’t plan on dying.

 

And for that I can forgive him.

 

~~

 

This is me.

Grounded in understanding.

And still missing my dad.

Now You Workshop

Summer 2012

This weeks focus: Roots and Wings

And telling the backstory

 

If you read all that, then I am truly impressed. It was cathartic to write.

 

Respect!

 

Please View On Black to read the text...

 

Translate by Google:

 

When God created mothers of children with autism

He had been 6 days of working overtime.

 

An angel appeared and said:

"You cross a whole lot of time and work in these units'

 

"Do you have the specifications of this order already read?" Asked God tired.

 

"The mother of a child must have very good eyes,

so they can see how special her child,

when all blinded by the syndrome.

 

She has much more energy than is normally required

so she never gives up,

even when others do.

 

Her skin must be extra thick to endure all the injustice

and any criticism of her parenting skills.

 

I gave her an even stronger hearts

with a greater capacity to love and understand.

 

"God," said the angel as she touched his sleeve,

"You'd better get some rest and tomorrow to continue working.

 

"I can not," said God, "there are more autistic children than the world knows.

 

The angel flew slowly around the creature and studied it carefully.

Suddenly she stopped and leaned forward.

 

Her fingers glided across the cheek of the woman.

"They leak," said the angel, "I think you too long to have worked through

"That's not a leak" said God, "that's a tear.

 

"Where is that?" Asked the angel,

"I suppose for pent-up emotions,

for too much injustice,

for lack of understanding. "God.

 

"You're really brilliant," said the angel

God looked somber and leaned back in his chair.

"The tears I have not made," he said.....

 

"Not a cry for attention, but a scream for respect"

 

View On Black

happy to pose together for me and they look with such an understanding and sympathy too! the photo speaks not only of their humanity and warmth but also our interactions

 

- those are selling the very colourful battles of oils -

new project

C'è sempre un argomento di intesa.

Tunnel fittings in the air-raid shelter

 

The Bombings of 1940 forced a reappraisal of deep-shelter policy and at the end of October the Government decided to construct a system of deep shelters linked to existing tube stations. London Transport was consulted about the sites and required to build the tunnels at the public expense with the understanding that they were to have the option of taking them over for railway use after the war. With the latter point in mind, positions were chosen on routes of possible north-south and east-west express tube railways. It was decided that each shelter would comprise two parallel tubes 16 foot 6 inches internal diameter and 1,600 feet long and would be placed below existing station tunnels at Clapham South, Clapham Common, Clapham North, Stockwell, Oval, Goodge Street, Camden Town, Belsize Park, Chancery Lane and St. Pauls...Each tube would have two decks, fully equipped with bunks, medical posts, kitchens and sanitation and each installation would accommodate 9,600 people...All the deep level shelters were sub-divided into sleeping areas. Each tunnel was divided into 4 sections with connecting doors between them. Each section was given a name. At Clapham South they were all naval commanders. The northern entrance sections (i.e. those accessed directly from the northern lift without crossing to the other side) were named: Freemantle, Beatty, Evans, Anson, Nelson, Jellicoe, Madden and Inglefield while those accessed from the southern entrance were: Grenville, Hardy, Drake, Oldham, Keppel, Parry and Ley. Each section had bunks fitted longitudinally along the outer wall, a single at the top, a double in the middle and a single at the bottom. Along the inner wall bunks were fitted across the passage forming bays. There were 7.952 bunks in total and each bunk was allocated to a named person. If they didn't turn up one night the bunk remained unused...Although work on them began in November 1940 there were difficulties in obtaining sufficient labour and materials so the first one was only ready in March 1942 and the other seven were finished later that year. Access to them was by ticket in order to help control numbers and prevent disruption to the underground network. There was considerable pressure to open the shelters to relieve the strain on London’s tube stations from people sheltering from the bombing, but the authorities were concerned about the cost of maintaining the shelters once opened and preferred to keep them in reserve in case the bombing intensified. Clapham South was used as weekend troop accommodation from 1943. The start of the attacks on London by V1 flying bombs (commonly known as ‘doodlebugs’) in June 1944, followed by the V2 rocket campaign in September that year, caused many of the deep shelters to be made fully available to the public; Clapham South opened on 19 July 1944. The south entrance, next door to what was the Odeon cinema, was in a small compound that housed administrative offices and ticket printing presses for all eight deep shelters. The shelters were used for their original purpose for less than a year. The north section closed on 21 October 1944 and the shelter was transferred from the Ministry of Home Security to the Ministry of Works on 1 October 1945. Clapham South closed completely on 7 May 1945 and from June 1945 it found a new use as a military leave hostel and for one month in June 1946 it acted as an armed-forces troop billet. At the end of the war, London had a severe labour shortage and the Colonial Office sought to recruit a labour force from Britain’s colonies. At that time there were no immigration restrictions for citizens from one part of the British Empire moving to another part. An advertisement appeared in Jamaica's Daily Gleaner on 13 April 1948 offering transport to the UK for a fare of £28.10s (£28.50) for anyone who wanted to work in the UK. As a result the ship MV Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury later in 1948 carrying 492 worker migrants from Jamaica. However, as there was no accommodation for the new arrivals the Colonial Office decided to house them in the deep-level shelter at Clapham South.

The nearest labour exchange to Clapham South was on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton so the men sought jobs there. As a result Brixton became a focus for West Indian settlers from that point onwards with successive arrivals making their way to the developing

community. The actual time the deep-level shelter was occupied by new arrivals was relatively short as the men all quickly found jobs and accommodation, and successfully integrated into many parts of south London.

[Subterranea Britannica]

7 star strategies for your child's future

 

How can you put a price on the expression of pure bliss on your four-year-old's face

 

as she enjoys an ice-cream? When your 17-year-old whoops on hearing the news that

 

he has secured admission to his dream college, would your brain tick away at the

 

amount of money this is going to cost you?

 

These are non-questions to any parent. Parental love is unconditional and largely

 

unaccountable. It's heartless and clinical to count your child as a cost centre, and we

 

are not suggesting you do that.

 

Understanding expenses does not imply condemning them. On the contrary, it is only a

 

first step towards gaining an advantage over them. In fact, if you do manage to chip

 

away at the warm, fuzzy feeling of pride and accomplishment and examine the costs

 

of raising a child, you would be able to do a far better job of being the provider.

 

The dichotomy of spending on your children is a conflict between the present and the

 

future. Should you cave in and buy the Rs 25,000 Playstation 3 that your son has

 

been nagging you for? Will it come from the money you have been saving for his

 

graduation? Will that Barbie-themed Rs 50,000 party you threw on your daughter's

 

birthday be the reason she will have to do her hotel management in Goa instead of

 

Geneva? The only way to solve these dilemmas is to plan ahead and start investing.

 

Now.

 

Two big-ticket costs that all parents have to provide for fall under the heads

 

education and marriage. Post-graduate education is expensive, and in this globalised

 

world, if you want to give your child the advantage of an international education,

 

multiply the cost by 10 times, often even more. A grand celebration to mark your

 

child's wedding is a great Indian dream and something that all parents would like to

 

put some money away for.

 

1. Second baby

 

Most couples can afford one child and want to do the best for him or her. As financial

 

decisions go, the second child is usually one that swings the balances. The thought of

 

having to keep away double the amount of what you need for a child can be daunting.

 

Often, when the kids are young, one plus one does not add up to two - you could

 

re-use and recycle and keep your expenses slightly lower. But, as they grow older,

 

two children can be a real strain on finances. Guitar lessons for one, football coaching

 

for the other, science tuitions for one and mathematics for the other can add up to a

 

tidy sum every month.

 

A second child had always featured in Jayant Bhadauria and Kamalika Nandi's life

 

plans. It's just that they did not really have the time to have one. Jayant works in a

 

multinational software company in Mumbai and Kamalika looks after marketing for an

 

outsourcing company.

 

Between work, their travelling schedules and looking after Kamini, their four-year-old

 

daughter, the second child remained something to be done sometime in the future.

 

Which was why, in September, when Kamalika discovered she was pregnant, for a

 

minute she didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

 

"Of course, money was not the first thing I thought about," says Kamalika. "Once the

 

news sank in, I did realise that we would have to start looking at our expenses. So

 

far, if I have seen something and liked it, I have ended up buying it if I felt the price

 

was fair. Now, I feel, there would be a little bit of a compromise there. I do want the

 

best for my kids, but that does not necessarily mean the most expensive."

  

7 star strategies for your child's future

 

The baby is due in May and, for now, they are figuring out the expenses related to

 

having him - delivery and hospitalisation are just two of the heads. A normal delivery

 

in a reasonably good hospital costs about Rs 35,000. If there are complications, the

 

fee could be substantially higher. Kamalika reckons their monthly expenditure would

 

increase by at least Rs 7,000 for the first year of the new baby.

 

A substantial portion of the large expenses they incurred for Kamini would not have to

 

be repeated. Expensive baby paraphernalia like the cot, stroller, rocker and high chair

 

can be reused for the second baby.

 

Jayant has a couple of insurance policies. The rest of his investments are all in equity.

 

He has an employee stock option in his company. Besides this, he has also opted to

 

buy the equity of his employer, listed in the US, with a certain percentage of his

 

salary every month.

 

The rest of his portfolio is in various Indian companies. While equity investment is the

 

ideal route to create wealth for his young family, Jayant should also look at

 

diversifying his portfolio. A major chunk of his money is invested in one stock - that of

 

his employer.

 

Jayant is also evaluating a couple of child policies from insurance companies. He

 

wants to use these as vehicles to save for his kids' higher education and marriages.

 

He is confident that as the expenses of the kids increase, so will his wife's and his

 

own salaries and that there will not be a situation of having to face a financial crunch.

 

Kamalika plans to return to work once her maternity benefits expire. When she was

 

expecting Kamini, she had given up her job and stayed home till her daughter turned

 

two. "I will try and enjoy the baby more since this is the last one I will have, but it

 

might be difficult because I plan to go back to work," she says.

 

"My career has suffered because of the break I took the last time and I don't want to

 

do it again. But, my company is employee-friendly and I feel that I would be able to

 

get leave in case I need to spend more time at home."

 

For now, they are not thinking about late night feeds and diaper changes. They have

 

chosen to focus instead on Tahitian weddings and exotic holidays for their kids.

 

2. Nascent dreams

 

When Simran Kumar thinks about her kids' future, she is not worried about which

 

school they will secure admission in or how big a wedding they will have. But, as a

 

modern, aware mother, she does get anxious about the world they will occupy, what

 

with environmental pollution, global warming and the rest. "I am concerned about

 

security issues, about violence against women, childhood respiratory diseases from

 

living in a polluted and crowded city," she says.

 

Simran and her husband, Zafar Baig, have two children under the age of two -

 

daughter Ananya is 22 months, and son Vivan is four months old.

 

Simran is an anchor for a television channel and Zafar works for an export house. With

 

two well paying jobs, they have not been worried about spending on the luxuries, so

 

far. But as their young family grows, they want to make sure they get started on

 

laying the foundation for a sound financial future.

 

"Now, we do not spend carelessly and have cut out a little bit of our frivolous

 

expenses. I want the best for my kids," she says.

 

One of the dreams Simran and Zafar have for their children is to offer them an

 

opportunity to follow in their footsteps and study abroad. "We are not very

 

money-savvy, but now want to invest in our kids' future. We do not really know

 

where to start," says Simran.

 

7 star strategies for your child's future

 

They have, however, opened bank accounts in both kids' names and all the money

 

they have received as gifts has gone into them. Zafar has bought a couple of

 

insurance policies and invested a bit directly in equity, as well as in some mutual

 

funds.

 

He recently invested Rs 50,000 in HDFC Standard Life's Young Star Plan. Even as they

 

try and cope with the 'now and here' expenses of a family of four, as well as investing

 

in their dreams for their kids, Simran and Zafar would also like to buy a house.

 

They are not alone in wanting to do several things at once. Most couples are in the

 

early stages of their careers when they start their families. Often, the need to put

 

away for a rainy day is lost in the euphoria of youth and its maxim of living for the

 

day.

 

When the kids come, several priorities tumble out of the financial closet -- a house,

 

some means of protecting income and insurance against unforeseeable events, buying

 

things for the baby, hiring someone to help look after them. Often, with this, also

 

comes a drastic drop in income levels if the mother chooses to stay back home and

 

look after the kids for a few years.

 

The key here is in being able to prioritise and not trying to do everything at once. The

 

important goals of higher education and marriage of children are quite far away and

 

even putting away a little sum of money starting right away would be enough.

 

What is key is getting into the discipline of saving, the amounts can be large or small.

 

As the goals are far away, most investments can be directed into equities. Systematic

 

investment plans (SIPs) of good funds, with a long-term view, are ideal here.

 

Short-term expenditure can be rationalised and reduced if there are opportunities.

 

Simran reckons she spends about Rs 10,000-15,000 a month now on the kids. This

 

includes diapers (about Rs 500 for a pack of 50), food and household help.

 

Simran works three days a week, and that leaves her with enough time to spend with

 

her children. Once they start school, she can go back to working full time. Simran is

 

optimistic about her future. "It's all there somewhere, I am a positive person in that

 

sense," she says. "For now, I want to focus on enjoying my babies," she adds.

 

3. Wonder years

 

The five years when the child has started school but is not yet in a higher class that

 

warrants private tuitions is the ramp up stage for the finances of parents. The goals

 

of higher education and marriage are some distance away, yet well within view.

 

Even though the primary schooler's ambitions vary widely from day to day, you could

 

still get a sense of the direction in which he is likely to head. This is the stage where

 

you could build your savings. If you have SIPs, you could increase the amount you

 

invest every month.

 

On the expense side, this is perhaps the easiest stage. You do not have the

 

heavy-duty everyday requirements of diapers and baby food, nor have you reached

 

the stage where you have to spend Rs 300 for one hour of mathematics tuition.

 

School fees, books, birthday parties and expenses on outings and excursions would be

 

areas of high spends. A birthday party can cost anywhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs

 

20,000.

 

In Kolkata, nine-year-old Arkatapa wants to be an archaeologist one day and a

 

teacher the next. She attends classes on ancient mathematics, Bharatnatyam, singing

 

and drawing. But her mother, Arpita Roy, feels when it comes to choosing a career,

 

Arkatapa will pick an academically-oriented one.

 

7 star strategies for your child's future

 

Arkatapa's father, Barun Kumar Roy, is an officer in the West Bengal government. His

 

money mantra is that investments should be made for the short term and loans should

 

be taken for the long term. He spends 60 per cent of his salary and saves the

 

remaining 40 per cent.

 

Barun invests with a three-to-four-year view. His first priority is insurance policies, so

 

that in case anything happens to him, his family does not suffer financially. He has life

 

insurance policies and Ulips with accident covers. He also has some investments in

 

Prudential ICICI Mutual Fund. These are in both equity and debt funds. Child plans do

 

not attract him, he has not taken any for Arkatapa.

 

An ideal asset allocation at this stage of your child's life is to have 75 per cent of your

 

investments in equity. This implies that in the intervening years between 0-4 and

 

5-10, you move some part of your money from pure equity to balanced or debt funds.

 

Arpita never wanted a career, she was always keen on staying home and looking after

 

her family. But her advice to her daughter would be to be self-reliant and have the

 

financial ability to look after herself.

 

Arpita finds her joy in her daughter's accomplishments. "When she scores 15 out of 15

 

in a test, I feel very happy. Even though it is a little silly, I do feel happy," she says.

 

"My daughter is not a very brilliant student, but she is still young. I am not worried

 

about her career now, water will flow where it will."

 

Her husband agrees that it is too early to predict what their daughter will grow up to

 

be, but he is certain that he must invest in her future. "Whenever she makes her

 

choice of education or career, it should not get stuck because there is no money for

 

it," he says emphatically.

 

"Every moment as a father has been a proud one." His dream for his daughter is that

 

she grows up to be honest, respectful and a good human being. "Everything else is

 

extra," he says.

 

4. Early teenage mayhem

 

As Rishab Nanda grows tall and lanky, his parents, Manisha and Manish, are beginning

 

to anticipate the mood swings and door slamming that will start as their

 

soon-to-be-12-year-old grapples with adolescence. Already, there are arguments and

 

high drama about pretty much everything -- from walking the dog to going on trips

 

with friends.

 

Although Rishab is yet unsure of exactly what he wants to grow up to be, the options

 

are getting clearer by the day. His parents do not want to get caught on the wrong

 

foot at the last moment and are now quickly squirrelling away as much money as

 

possible to fund his dreams.

 

Rishab's school offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme and his parents

 

expect that once he finishes his class 10, he would opt for this. Not only is the IB

 

course more expensive than a regular school, the chance that a child going for it

 

would ultimately pursue his graduate programmes abroad is also high. A two-year IB

 

course costs about Rs 4 lakh, compared to Rs 1 lakh that you would pay for a regular

 

CBSE or ISC school.

 

Manisha and Manish know that this would be an expensive proposition. They would like

 

to save enough to fund the full cost of his foreign degree, but are not entirely sure

 

they would be able to. The actual amounts they would need would depend on the

 

course, college and country.

 

When the child is between the ages of 10 and 14, regular day-to-day expenses are

 

also high. School fees in secondary classes are higher than those in primary, and

 

children also need a lot of academic and non-academic stimulation outside school.

 

This would mean a mixture of tuitions and lessons. Rishab takes lessons in playing the

 

drums, speech and drama. These add up to Rs 18,000 a year.

 

7 star strategies for your child's future

February 26, 2008

This is also the age of having to make large-ticket purchases. Gameboys,

 

Playstations, the latest skating boards and other 'toys' cost quite a packet, some

 

starting upwards of Rs 25,000. You can manage to spin some yarn and convince your

 

eight-year-old that the Barbie she has is better than the Barbie she wants, but there

 

is no talking reason, logic or threat to a 13-year-old.

 

The Nandas have made several investments in equity mutual funds. They also have

 

two child-specific plans -- one from LIC and the other from UTI. Ideally, the Nandas

 

should move their portfolio more towards debt and balanced funds. One, they would

 

need a large sum of money to pay the IB fees after Rishab completes his 10th

 

standard.

 

Also, since he is likely to go abroad for his undergraduate studies, their requirements

 

of funds would be sooner than usual. In case the stockmarket enters a lull phase after

 

four years, the largely equity portfolio of the couple could prove a problem.

 

Right now, Rishab is keen on pursuing his athletics and art. The Nandas know that

 

these are unconventional choices, but if Rishab does stick to either of these and

 

decides to pursue a career in it, they would encourage his choice.

 

Manisha was an advertising executive who switched careers to become a teacher.

 

She wants Rishab to have the guidance that enables him to discover his aptitudes so

 

that he doesn't waste years working in a profession he does not really want to be in.

 

"But," she says proudly, "at the end of the day, I think he is a survivor. Like me."

 

5. Terrible teens

 

In Delhi, Priyanka Verma is one busy 16-year-old. She is in her 12th standard and

 

preparing for her board exams pretty much takes up all her time now. She has opted

 

for the science stream and is studying physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer

 

science at Shriram School in Gurgaon.

 

Her mother, Sarika Verma, is an arts teacher and had noticed, very early, Priyanka's

 

creative bent of mind. "But," she says, "my husband had the foresight to advise her

 

that even if she wanted to subsequently pursue a career in arts, it would benefit her

 

to opt for the science stream at this level." Priyanka's father, Ashutosh Verma, works

 

in the Indian Trade Promotion Organisation.

 

Priyanka has now found a career that will allow an artistic expression of her science

 

education - she wants to be an architect. Not only that, Priyanka also decided on a

 

foreign language early on, and now she is learning French at an advanced level. This

 

means that she could opt to study architecture at a good college in France, where

 

the cost of education would be lower than in the US or the UK.

 

The Vermas are self-confessedly not very money-savvy. They decided early on that

 

Priyanka's education would have the first claim on their finances; everything else

 

would be secondary. Right now, these education expenses are high. Priyanka takes

 

tuitions in a couple of subjects and these cost Rs 300-400 an hour. This, added to

 

school fees, the bus charges of going to school and coming back home and other

 

expenses aggregate to a neat Rs 20,000 a month.

 

"There was no room to splurge or go on binges. We knew we had limited resources

 

and, for us, spending was not a way of living. We set our priorities and refused to

 

worry about anything else," Sarika says.

 

The Vermas have left what they managed to save in their saving bank account. They

 

will have to drum up the funds once Priyanka secures admission in a college of her

 

choice. They are looking at the option of taking an educational loan to augment their

 

reserves.

  

7 star strategies for your child's future

 

When the child is between 14 and 18, the first big goal draws close. The money

 

needed for higher education should be ready and ideally, a large chunk of it should be

 

moved into debt and balanced funds. A 50 per cent exposure to equity is sufficient at

 

this stage.

 

Those sending their children abroad - for undergraduate or post-graduate studies -

 

should be in a position to provide for at least the first couple of years. If you do not

 

have enough saved up, you can seek an educational loan from a bank. Usually, kids

 

find part-time work that helps fund a part of their education or, in the least, provides

 

for their living expenses once they settle down in their new country and campus.

 

Ideally, earmark your investments for your needs. If the monthly SIP of Rs 7,000 is

 

going into junior's college fund, the Rs 4,000 one could be the marriage resource. As

 

the event draws close, you could switch the investment from an equity to a debt

 

fund. This would allow it to continue earning higher returns than a bank account while

 

being absolutely liquid.

 

Sarika is certain that her daughter is a bright spark. "My only dream is that in her life

 

she should be able to get opportunities to use her many talents," she says.

 

As for her marriage, it is still far away. "Even if I am rich, I wouldn't splurge on her

 

wedding; I am totally against that kind of fanfare," she says.

 

6. Action!

 

It all comes to pass now, the years of swinging between anticipation and hope. Now

 

is when your constant refrain of "go to your room and study" goes through its test.

 

And the money you have put away finally finds its purpose.

 

Bina Sharma's older son Prabhat is doing his electronics and communications

 

engineering in Bangalore. As he prepares to finish this and zone in on an area of

 

specialisation for his post-graduate course, Bina feels a mixture of relief and anxiety.

 

For one, Prabhat is bright enough to have got through a better college. But, she did

 

not want him to stay home for a whole year and prepare for the engineering entrance

 

exam. So, he joined the college where he got admission. This means that if he does

 

not get through to an IIT for his post-graduate degree, it is best that he go abroad

 

for it. By the time that would be happening, the younger son would be starting his

 

first year of college, seeking a medical degree in all likelihood. Bina is remarkably calm

 

for someone who is juggling so much.

 

"Prabhat is in two minds and has not decided whether he wants to do a Master's in

 

Engineering or an MBA," she says. "My sense is that he'll stick to the technical line. If

 

he does, he might choose to pursue his Master's in aeronautical engineering or

 

continue in electronics and communications. Either way, if he does not make it to a

 

top rung college in India, he would go abroad."

 

A postgraduate degree abroad is much easier to manage compared to an

 

undergraduate one. All said, it would cost about Rs 40 lakh (Rs 4 million) a year to

 

study in the US. This means an outlay of Rs 80 lakh (Rs 8 million) for a postgraduate

 

course, compared to Rs 1.6 crore (Rs 16 million) for an undergraduate degree. Bina

 

has started planning and has put away a part of this. By the time Prabhat finishes his

 

degree, she should have the rest of the money on board. If her resources fall short,

 

the Sharmas may have to take an educational loan.

 

The Sharmas have been forecasting their finances towards these goals. While they

 

meet their monthly expenses from the money generated by the business of Bina's

 

husband, Vipin, her salary is saved in its entirety. They have invested in equities,

 

mutual funds, fixed deposits and provident funds. They also have bought some real

 

estate with the express purpose of liquidating it to meet the kids' college expenses.

 

7 star strategies for your child's future

February 26, 2008

A 25 per cent equity allocation is ideal at this stage. While the remaining money is

 

invested in lower-risk debt instruments, this 25 per cent would give the kicker of

 

higher returns.

 

College expenses cannot be calculated to the last rupee in advance as various factors

 

come into play on securing admission. Prabhat is planning to pursue a technical

 

degree, so the possibility of getting sponsorships and fee waivers is higher. However,

 

the couple needs to peg a basic minimum and work towards it.

 

The current expenses of the family are also high. Bina paid Rs 150,000 for the first

 

year of Prabhat's engineering. Over this, he incurs a monthly expense of Rs 8,000.

 

Bina is focused on her kids having a sound base in education. Once they graduate,

 

they are free to choose any career they want. She feels that Prabhat's rational

 

expectations would hold him in good stead through his education and career.

 

After the stress of steering two boys through their teens, Bina is looking forward to

 

the final satisfaction of seeing them settle down. "I will then put up my feet and

 

finally relax," she crystal gazes.

 

7. The last mile

 

Sumona Gupta did not want to make the career decisions of her daughters for them.

 

Snigdha, 23, works in advertising in Google for Hyderabad, and Shaila, 16, is an

 

aspiring fashion designer. Now that Snigdha is 'settled' professionally, Sumona is

 

certain that like her choice of an occupation, she would also let her daughter choose

 

who she wants to marry.

 

Sumona exudes the confidence of a successful parent -- one who has done the right

 

thing for her daughters and who can now take it easy and enjoy their success.

 

Sumona freelances in real estate, helping in renting, buying and selling of property.

 

Her husband, Sumit, has a shore-based job in a marine operations company in Dubai.

 

Together, they have set aside some money for their daughters. Most of this is in the

 

form of equities.

 

"When my daughter does get married, I would like it to be a big wedding; not overtly

 

so, but within our budget," Sumona says. A wedding dress for a bride would cost

 

between Rs 5,000 and Rs 60,000. Of course, if you have the resources you can even

 

spend a couple of lakh for an outfit. Food for guests sets you back by Rs 50-2,000 a

 

plate. Ideally, the funds for the kids should be moved out of equity at this stage.

 

If you have set aside enough, you could leave a small portion, about 5 per cent of the

 

portfolio, in equity to improve your returns. Investments in gold, ideally in bars and

 

coins or units of a gold exchange - traded fund, would also come into use now. There

 

are hardly any expenses you have to incur on behalf of the child now, they have their

 

own salaries to pay for most of their needs.

 

Sumona would rather worry about her daughters' financial stability than who they

 

would marry and when. "There is nothing very secure in a married life," she says. In

 

fact, she would like Snigdha to go for a postgraduate course, such as an MBA, than

 

find a man and settle down immediately.

 

Parenting is full of paradoxes. Even as we wait for the child to cross her next

 

milestone, we begin to miss the precociousness of the earlier stage. As they wean

 

themselves away, all we can do is gather all the special moments we have had and air

 

out their warmth every now and then.

 

When they grow into adults - people with careers, aspirations and points of view - we

 

can only wonder how they were ever so small that they fitted into the crook of our

 

arm. If we have planned ahead and made our children's journey to adulthood that

 

much easier, that is a job well done, a life well lived

 

Materials exchange with Elisabeth Taudière, France.

6x6 Collage Group

 

Miscellaneous papers, string.

Heute in ZOOM Erlebniswelt Gelsenkirchen.

Memorandum of Understanding 20 Euro Banknote

Theme #37 Letters

52 in 2016 Challenge

Letters build powerful words.

 

Take note politicians - you could learn from this passage by author Gavriel Savit! Anna and the Swallow Man, is a great read for young adults and adults!

 

Book review: flic.kr/p/Equ7fw

Asahi,

Said friend Michiko,

Means that 'aha' moment,

awe, understanding, awareness, zen understanding,

all that could rise our soul to gratitude and wisdom.

 

In Japanese, it means morning sun.

How many roads you’ve traveled

How many dreams you’ve chased

Across sand and sky and gravel

Looking for one safe place

 

Will you make a smoother landing

When you break your fall from grace

Into the arms of understanding

Looking for one safe place

 

Oh, life is trial by fire

And love’s the sweetest taste

And I pray it lifts us higher

To one safe place

 

How many roads we’ve traveled

How many dreams we’ve chased

Across sand and sky and gravel

Looking for one safe place

 

One safe place - Mark Cohn

Disinformation – “Closed Circuit” – architectural + immersive sound installation in “Sounds & Shapes” exhibition at Drawing Matter, Somerset, curated by Matchett & Page, July 2021, poster by Denman & Gould.

 

“If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer, even, than architecture, which Le Corbusier rightly says can best be felt at night.” – Marshall McLuhan “Understanding Media” 1964

 

“Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality and [of] engendering dreams” [1], and, perhaps paradoxically, in the silo at Shatwell, a familiar architectural form is re-purposed to create a kind of strange laboratory, within which, through the manipulation of architectural acoustics, of auditory and haptic sensations, the formal aesthetics and symbolism of pure geometry, interact with (equally primal) tactile resonances and symbolism, to evoke long-forgotten reflexes, sense memories, and (arguably, to some extent) even dreams. Extrapolating the assertion that “architecture in general is frozen music” [2], the installation at Shatwell is created not only within the building, but by the building, with the building itself functioning as a massive loudspeaker, as a kinetic artwork, and as a musical instrument, generating “sound” which is heard through the fingertips, drawing visitors into an amniotic sound world of gently pulsing vibration and breath-like rhythms.

 

In geometric terms, the curvilinear surface of a cylinder is effectively infinite, while in projective geometry, a cylinder can be defined as a cone whose apex rests at infinity [3] – a grain silo is in effect a giant tin of beans, and every child who’s built a tin-can-telephone is familiar with at least some of the acoustic properties of plate steel. “In every art it is the most elementary and primitive means that achieve the most profound and beautiful effects” [4], and “Closed Circuit” – the sound installation by artist project Disinformation – uses simple microtonal tuning techniques to create a rhythmically active and dynamic sound mass, which oscillates around a core frequency of 40Hz. This is, in neurological terms, the exact frequency of so-called Gamma waves which is most strongly associated with the integration of visual consciousness and dreams [5][6], and is the exact frequency most used in the field of vibro-acoustic therapy [7].

 

“We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and Surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors…” [1]

 

“Arnold began telling Alan about his recurrent childhood dream, or nightmare rather, in which he felt himself suspended in absolutely empty space while a strange noise would start, growing ever louder, until he woke up in a sweat. Alan asked what kind of noise it was, but Arnold could not describe it… Alan imagined the old hangar on the RAF camp… and made up a science fiction story… in which the hangar was itself a brain.” [8]

 

[1] Ivan Chtcheglov “Formulary for a New Urbanism” October 1953

[2] Friedrich von Schelling “Philosophie der Kunst” 1802

[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder

[4] Rudolf Arnheim “Radio” 1936

[5] Francis Crick and Christof Koch “Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness” Seminars in the Neurosciences, vol. 2, 1990

[6] Rodolfo Llinás and Urs Ribary “Coherent 40Hz Oscillation Characterizes Dream State in Humans” PNAS, vol. 90, 1993

[7] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibroacoustic_therapy

[8] Andrew Hodges “Alan Turing, The Enigma” 1983

 

“Closed Circuit” by Disinformation is commissioned and installed at Shatwell Farm, Somerset as part of the exhibition “Sounds & Shapes”, curated by Matchett & Page. The installation is open by appointment at weekends, 11am to 5pm, Saturday 17th July to Sunday 1st August 2021.

 

drawingmatter.org/disinformation-closed-circuit/

matchett.page/sounds_and_shapes

 

Initial site visit 22 Feb 2020, installation date 29 May 2021

Text by Joe Banks, copyright © 2 June 2021

FortWhyte Alive is dedicated to providing programming, natural settings and facilities for environmental education, outdoor recreation and social enterprise. FortWhyte promotes awareness and understanding of the natural world and actions leading to sustainable living.

FortWhyte Alive has something to offer for everyone - 364 days a year. Whether you want to learn a new skill such as sailing, enjoy a fun Sunday family afternoon together, join a guided group tour through forests, wetlands and engaging exhibits, or just reconnect with nature as you stroll the trails, it’s all waiting for you at FortWhyte

"Accidents don't occur through repeated attacks by surface vessels and aircraft. It obviously was a decision made pretty high up on the Israeli side, because it involved combined forces. The ship was flying an American flag. My judgment was that somewhere along the line some fairly senior official gave the go ahead. I personally did not accept the Israeli explanation."

-- US Secretary of State Dean Rusk,

  

"...the board of inquiry (concluded) that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing in attacking the Liberty."

-- CIA Director Richard Helms in his book A Look Over my Shoulder

  

"It was no accident."

-- CIA Director Richard Helms in interview for Navy Times, 6/26/2002.

  

That the attack was deliberate "just wasn't a disputed issue" within the National Security Agency

-- Former NSA Director retired Army Lieutenant General William Odom on 3 March 2003 in an interview for Naval Institute Proceedings

  

Former NSA/CIA Director Admiral Bobby Inman "flatly rejected" the Cristol/Israeli claims that the attack was an accident

-- 5 March 2003 interview for Naval Institute Proceedings

  

"I have never believed that the attack on the USS Liberty was a case of mistaken identity. That is ridiculous. Israel knew perfectly well that the ship was American."

-- Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and later Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff writing for Americans for Middle East Understanding, June 8, 1997

  

"To suggest that they [the IDF] couldn't identify the ship is ... ridiculous. ... Anybody who could not identify the Liberty could not tell the difference between the White House and the Washington Monument."

-- Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and later Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted in The Washington Post, June 15, 1991, p. 14

  

Of four former NSA/CIA seniors with inside knowledge, none was aware of any agency official who dissented from the position that the attack was deliberate

-- David Walsh, writing in Naval Institute Proceedings

  

"That the Liberty could have been mistaken for the Egyptian supply ship El Quseir is unbelievable"

-- Special Assistant to the President Clark Clifford, in his report to President Lyndon Johnson

  

"Inconceivable that it was an accident. 3 strafing passes, 3 torpedo boats. Set forth facts. Punish Israelis responsible"

-- Clark Clifford, Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson, in Minutes of NSC Special Committee Meeting, 9 June 1967

  

"A nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid and inept [expletive deleted]."

-- Handwritten note of August 26, 1967, by NSA Deputy Director Louis W. Tordella reacting to the Israeli court decision exonerating Israelis of blame for the Liberty attack. Dr. Tordella expressed the view that the attack was deliberate and that the Israeli government attempted to cover it up to authors James Ennes and James Bamford and to Congressman George Mahon (D-Texas), and in an internal memorandum for the record. He noted "a nice whitewash for a group of ignorant, stupid and inept (redacted)" in the margin of the official Israeli excuse for the attack as noted in the NSA Gerhard report 1982)

  

"The attack was clearly deliberate."

-- General Marshall Carter, former director, National Security Agency, in a telephone interview with James Ennes

  

"My immediate reaction was it was not an accident. It had to be a deliberate attack."

-- Lucius Battle, in BBC Documentary "Dead in the Water".

  

"....did not buy the Israeli 'mistake' explanations either. Nobody believes that explanation." When informed by author Bamford of gruesome war crime (killing of large numbers of POWs) at nearby El Arish, Morrison saw the connection. "That would be enough," he said. "They wouldn't want us in on that. You've got the motive. What a hell of a thing to do."

-- Major General John Morrison, US Air Force, Deputy Chief NSA Operations during the attack and later Chief of NSA Operations as reported in Body of Secrets by James Bamford, p233.

  

"I can tell you for an absolute certainty (from intercepted communications) that they knew they were attacking an American ship."

-- Oliver Kirby, former deputy director for operations/production, National Security Agency. Kirby participated in NSA's investigation of the attack and reviewed translations of intercepted communications between pilots and their headquarters which he reports show conclusively that they knew their target was an American ship.

  

On the strength of intercept transcripts of pilots' conversations during the attack, the question of the attack's deliberateness "just wasn't a disputed issue" within the agency.

-- Lieutenant General William E. Odom, former director, National Security Agency, interview with David Walsh on March 3, 2003, reported in Naval Institute Proceedings, June, 2003

  

Inman said he "flatly rejected" the Cristol thesis that the attack was an accident. "It is just exceedingly difficult to believe that [USS Liberty] was not correctly identified" based on his talks with NSA seniors at the time having direct knowledge of intercepted communications. No NSA official could be found who dissented from the "deliberate" conclusion.

-- Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, USN, Director National Security Agency 1977-1981, reported in Proceedings, June, 2003

  

"I found it hard to believe that it was, in fact, an honest mistake on the part of the Israeli air force units. I still find it impossible to believe that it was."

-- Paul C. Warnke, Undersecretary of the Navy and later general legal counsel to the Department of Defense.

  

"In many years, I have wanted to believe that the attack on the Liberty was pure error. It appears to me that it was not a pure case of mistaken identity. . . . I think it is about time that the State of Israel and the United States government provide the crew members of the Liberty, and the rest of the American people, the facts of what happened and why it came about that the Liberty was attacked 30 years ago today." Later, McGonagle remarked, "USS Liberty is the only US Navy ship attacked by a foreign nation, involving large loss of life...that has never been accorded a full Congressional hearing."

-- Captain William L. McGonagle, Commanding Officer, USS Liberty, speaking at Arlington National Cemetery June 8, 1997.

  

"The Israelis told us 24 hours before that ...if we didn't move it, they would sink it. Unfortunately, the ship was not moved, and by the time the message arrived the ship was taking on water."

-- John Stenbit, Assistant Secretary of Defense for C3Im in an address to the AFEI/NDAI Conference for Net Centric Operations, Wednesday, April 16, 2003

  

Walter Deeley, NSA department head, conducted still-classified investigation of the attack and remarked later in telephone interview that he regards the attack as deliberate.

-- NSA Department Head Walter Deeley

  

"The highest officials of the [Johnson] administration, including the President, believed it 'inconceivable' that Israel's 'skilled' defense forces could have committed such a gross error."

-- Lyndon Johnson's biographer Robert Dallek in Flawed Giant, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 430-31

  

Never before in the history of the United States Navy has a Navy Board of Inquiry ignored the testimony of American military eyewitnesses and taken, on faith, the word of their attackers.

-- Captain Richard F. Kiepfer, Medical Corps, US Navy (retired), USS Liberty Survivor

  

"The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack...was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.... It was our shared belief. . .that the attack. . .could not possibly have been an accident.... I am certain that the Israeli pilots [and] their superiors. . .were well aware that the ship was American."

-- Captain Ward Boston, JAGC, US Navy (retired), senior legal counsel to the US Navy Court of Inquiry

  

According to Kidd's legal counsel, Captain Ward Boston, USN, Kidd discussed with him his belief that the attackers were aware they were attacking an American ship. The Court ruled otherwise because they were so directed by Washington.

-- Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, President of the Navy Court of Inquiry, as reported in Navy Times, 6/26/2002

  

"I feel the Israelis knew what they were doing. They knew they were shooting at a U.S. Navy ship."

-- Captain Ward Boston, legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, as reported in . Navy Times, 6/26/2002

  

"No one in the White House believed that the attack was an accident."

-- George Christian, Press Secretary to President Lyndon Johnson in letter to James Ennes, 1978.

  

After reviewing the Court of Inquiry in his official capacity as legal counsel to the convening authority, concluded that the evidence did not support the findings that the attack was an accident and declined to recommend that his Commander sign and forward it to Washington.

-- Rear Admiral (then captain) Merlin Staring, Staff Legal Office for Commander in Chief US Naval Forces Europe and later Chief Judge Advocate General of the Navy. Statement to Navy Times, 3 June 2002 and elsewhere

  

"The Congress never investigated this matter, and I don't detect much enthusiasm for getting into it now."

-- Senator Adlai Stevenson III in letter to James Ennes dated September 9, 1980

  

"From what I have read, I can't tolerate for one minute that this was an accident! ... What have we done about the Liberty? Have we become so placid, so far as Israel is concerned or so far as that area is concerned, that we will take the killing of 37 (sic) American boys and the wounding of a lot more and the attack on an American ship in the open sea in good weather? We have seemed to say: 'Oh, well, boys will be boys.' What are you going to do about it? It is most offensive to me!

-- Senator Bourke Hickenlooper; From transcript of July 1967 Senate Foreign Relations Hearing on Foreign Assistance Act of 1967.

  

"I have read the Navy investigation of the Liberty, and the evidence adduced there, and I have read the Israeli court of inquiry records, and based upon their own records of the investigation, I cannot agree that it was accidental."

-- Senator Bourke Hickenlooper; From transcript of May, 1968, Senate Foreign Relations Hearing on Foreign Assistance Act of 1968, page 444.

  

"American leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of its citizens. . . . The Liberty's presence and function were well known to Israel's leaders. ...Israel's leaders concluded that nothing they might do would offend the Americans to the point of reprisal. If American leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything.

-- George Ball, under secretary of state at the time writing in The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, pages 57-58.

  

"I don't think that there's any doubt that it was deliberate.... [It is] one of the great cover-ups of our military history."

-- David G. Nes, the deputy head of the American mission in Cairo at the time

  

"How much better if Congress would....call to account those who were involved in spreading lies about the tragedy."

-- James Akins, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Akins in Special Report, The Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty, June 8, 1967, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December, 1999

  

"It's an American ship!" the pilot of an Israeli Mirage fighter-bomber radioed Tel Aviv as he sighted the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. Israeli headquarters ordered the pilot to attack the American ship.

-- former US Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight Porter describing transcripts of communications he saw, reported in syndicated column "Remembering the Liberty" by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, November 6, 1991.

  

"The historical event which took place in June 1967 can hardly be called enigmatic and mysterious. ...It is difficult to understand that the Israelis could not identity the USS Liberty, since the ship had a unique antenna and equipment and especially since the Israelis had identified the ship with long term observation."

-- Translated from a taped interview with Sergeev Oleg Korneevitch, retired Colonel, Soviet GRU.

  

"The government of Israel intentionally attacked the ship. ...The attack was not legally justified. ...(there were) two further violations of international law...the use of unmarked military aircraft (and)...the wanton destruction of life rafts."

-- Walter L. Jacobsen, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, in Naval Law Review, Vol 36, Winter 1986

  

"Certain facts are clear. The attack was no accident. The Liberty was assaulted in broad daylight by Israeli forces who knew the ship's identity. ...The public, however, was kept in the dark. Even before the American public learned of the attack, U.S. government officials began to promote an account satisfactory to Israel. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee worked through Congressmen to keep the story under control. The President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, ordered and led a cover-up so thorough that years after he left office the episode is still largely unknown...."

-- Paul Findley, author and former Member of Congress 1961-1983 in They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley, 1985, page 166

  

"Is the Liberty episode being erased from history. So it would seem...What has happened to our prying journalistic corps and our editors, normally so indignant of attempted suppression of the news?...We believe that a joint select committee of Congress should investigate the strange case of the USS Liberty..."

-- William F. Buckley, journalist and publisher, National Review, June 27, 1967

  

"The attack on the USS Liberty was planned and there is and was a cover-up." "If the very valuable lessons of the Liberty were known, the capture of the USS Pueblo could not have happened."

-- Lloyd M. "Pete" Bucher, US Navy, Commanding Officer USS Pueblo when captured by North Korea in January 1968, in telephone conversations with James Ennes and on September 6, 2002, with Richard Schmucker.

  

"It is clear that the Israelis knew that they were attacking a vessel of the US Navy, especially as it was flying a large Stars and Stripes at the time. The fact that they spent six hours reconnoitering and executing the attack, which included machine-gunning the lifeboats, attests to the deadly intent of the operation.

-- Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, the Inside Story of the US-Israeli Covert Relationship, by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, p152.

  

"A. Jay Cristol's virtual minority of one assessment is not supported by the detailed non-technical common sense evidence to the contrary in Body of Secrets (by James Bamford). "There is nothing surprising in Bamford's conclusion that the attack was deliberate. Liberty survivors have made that case convincingly for years."

-- Professor Hayden Peake, author, former CIA officer and member, Association of Former Intelligence Officers, The Intelligencer, Vol. 12, No.1, Summer 2001

  

Survivors of the attack are unanimous in their conviction that the attack was deliberate. Among other things, their belief is based upon the intense pre-attack reconnaissance, the fact that the firing continued from close range long after the attackers examined the ship and its markings from a few feet away, and because the Israeli version of events as reported to the United States is grossly untrue.

-- USS Liberty survivors

  

Several Air Force intelligence analysts who have come forward to report that they saw real-time transcripts of communications from the attacking forces which show clearly that they were aware they were attacking an American ship. Others who saw these transcripts include Dwight Porter and Oliver Kirby, mentioned above, and several top officials of the American intelligence community.

-- Former US Air Force intelligence analysts Ron Gotcher, Steve Forslund, Richard Block and pilot Charles Tiffany

  

Published doctoral thesis establishes that the attack was deliberate.

-- John Borne, PhD, adjunct professor of history, NY University.

  

Rejects the US Navy Court of Inquiry as inadequate, declares that the attack was apparently deliberate, and calls upon the United States to conduct a complete and thorough investigation.

-- Resolution #508 of the American Legion at its 49th annual national convention in August, 1967

  

"The [Navy Court of Inquiry] leaves a good many questions unanswered."

-- The New York Times, July 1, 1967

  

"The naval inquiry is not good enough."

-- The Washington Post, June 30, 1967

  

"They must have known...that Liberty was an American ship."

-- The Washington Star, June 30, 1967

  

"The action was planned in advance"

-- Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson in The Washington Post, June 30, 1967

  

"Only the blind or the trigger happy could have made such a mistake"

-- The National Observer

  

"The attack was deliberate. Those responsible should be court-martialed on charges of murder."

-- California Congressman Craig Hosmer in the Congressional Record--House, June 29, 1967, p. 17893

  

"How can this be treated so lightly? What complaint have we registered?

-- Mississippi Congressman Thomas G. Abernethy in the Congressional Record--House, June 29m, 1967, pp. 17894-5

  

"Certain facts are clear. The attack was no accident. The Liberty was assaulted in broad daylight by Israeli forces who knew the ship's identity. ...The President of the United States led a cover-up so thorough that years after he left office, the episode was still largely unknown to the public -- and the men who suffered and died have gone largely unhonored."

-- Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, Lawrence Hill & Co., 1985, p166

  

The story has been hushed up."

-- Louisiana Congressman John R. Rarick in the Congressional Record--House, September 19, 1967, pp. 12170-6

 

Shuttle358

 

⚫️

 

Book :

 

New Order

Retro

London Records

2008

 

Photography . Nick Knight

 

Art Direction . Peter Saville

 

CD :

 

Pinkcourtesyphone

Elegant & Detached

ROOM40

RM451

 

Music & Design . Richard Chartier

 

iTunes :

 

New Order

Sub Vulture

Factory

FAC133

 

Sir GMAttenborough ...

Flickr Meet, Shepreth Zoo, Cambridgeshire

Ulu meets Imi

Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

I found this heart-wrenching poem while surfing on youtube. It was written by Roger Valentine and posted for a friend with autism. Beneath the surface of the words is a very human journey that many of us have taken and still take. Silence and suffering paralyzes us in darkest chaos. In helplessness all seems to be lost and pointless. Eventually wisdom rejuvenates us with kindness and understanding. In this light we find our voice and our uniqueness. In joy we overflow with who we are meant to be. This poem is eloquently recited by Rajesh Vedprakash whose silk laden vocals really add emotion to this superb piece. Thank-you kindly Mukhtarze for posting this.

 

Listening to the clip inspired this digital art piece.

 

Listen: www.youtube.com/profile?user=mukhtarze#p/u/17/cq45qrxczmQ

Text for Poem: Click Here

   

My wife, it must be said, is very understanding when it comes to my photography. What more can a guy ask for ;)

 

However I've tried a couple of times to interest her in coming out with me and using one of my cameras to take some shots but she has never been keen. So instead, I bought her a camera a couple of years ago (an Olympus Tough because she liked the idea of taking it in the water) and she is using it more and more which is great.

 

Then last month she visited her folks down in Melbourne and took her camera with her, taking shots of her family and a few of the places she'd been. Awesome.

 

Tonight she gave me her camera and I had a quick flick through the shots she'd taken and I come across this. I was floored.

 

"Honey this is freakin awesome" I told her. "Really", she said.

 

So I thought I'd post this on Flickr so I can show her what other people think.

 

Thanks very much for looking :)

Researchers at the Northwestern University Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence are studying the ways in which cancer cells migrate from existing tumors to create new, metastatic tumors in different regions of the body. By creating micrometer scaled adhesive islands on gold surfaces, they have allowed individual metastatic cells to take on shapes, such as the star depicted above. These shapes provide cues to cancer cells, which respond in the above image by concentrating their motility machinery at the star’s tips. This assay lends itself to large scale screening of cell populations—a problem that has stymied past efforts to find a drug that targets metastatic motility.

 

This image is part of the Nanotechnology Image Library collection.

 

Credit: Bartosz Grzybowski, Ph.D., National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

Educational Classroom Poster for teaching elementary math. This one help students understand the concepts and units of Metric Lengths.

Available in letter size and now 11"x17".

Sun shines on Sunshine Coast as region records Queensland’s highest

international visitor growth – 15.7%; Massive increases in European

visitors power Sunshine Coast to record growth

 

www.scdl.com.au

 

source/credit: Sunshine Coast Destination Ltd

 

This image has been supplied to www.traveloscopy.com on the understanding it is

copyright released and/or royalty free.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack signs a memorandum of understanding between NASA and USDA as Undersecretary of Agriculture for research, education and economics, Chavonda Jacobs-Young, left, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, look on, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at the USDA’s Jamie L. Whitten Building in Washington. The agreement strengthens the collaboration between the two agencies, including efforts to improve agricultural and Earth science research, technology, and agricultural management, as well as the application of science data and models to agricultural decision making. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

explord # 229

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