Feel and sense.

Taste the world. If weight comes, carry it. No feeling is final and happiness is not a destination.

December 2025

Riding back from the national palace in Portugal.

LB narrates her life, relating it to the book she is reading ‘Hamilton’, written based on his letters. I mention that what made Van Gogh famous was his letters exchanged with his brother, Theo. She rings in that she is a huge Van Gogh fan, having visited the museum in Amsterdam.

The timing reminded me of A Walk in the Clouds... just serendipity. Dusk was coming on and rain was beginning to blacken the village roof and cobbles while we sped down the mountain. Automatic for the People working its way through me. Mentioned Starry Night. Then the fields. Then the end.

Hitting the mark much?

Van Gogh has always frightened me—not because of the myth of madness, but because of the proximity. His hunger to see the world exactly as it was and then render it honestly. His inability to numb himself. His dependence on beauty as oxygen. I want to be this man. I fear being this man! Color and motion aren't just tools, but vitality. He was an observer, a recorder. A collector and a keeper.

Automatic is the kind of record that understands levels of awareness and how dangerous it can be to see so clearly.

Ignorance, as you know, is bliss.

Drive

Surrender... but not giving up or in. A voice speaking to youth, to momentum and inevitability. It isn’t despairing—it’s acknowledging that much of life happens whether we want it to or not. Age is a good example. Responsibility accumulates like porcelain clowns. Ever wonder how you got ALL THAT stuff in to your home? One grain of sand at a time, that's how. We wake up mid-journey look at life objectively and realize we didn’t choose the road, only what lane we're in and how fast we walk.

Try Not To Breathe

Closer to the fear. Not death as spectacle, but death as inheritance—watching parents age, preparing for losses before they arrive. It doesn’t beg for escape. It steadies itself and says: this is not a failure of love; this is love doing its work.

And that work is vital. The steady moving toward the goal. Van Gogh didn’t lack passion. He lacked relief.

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

Misalignment—about speaking clearly and still not being understood. Van Gogh wrote letter after letter trying to translate himself to a world that didn’t have the vocabulary yet. I write too. I record. I shape sentences like bridges, hoping someone will cross them. And a thankful at least one has.

That impulse isn’t insanity. It’s loneliness looking for language.

Everybody Hurts

Pain, but not drama. Embracing the hurt without anasthesia. It simply says: stay. Don’t convert suffering into identity. Don’t mistake pain for destiny. That song exists because sensitive people nneed permission to endure without explanation.

The instrumental pause that follows feels essential—space for the nervous system to exhale. Silence as care. One wonders how different Van Gogh’s story might have been if embracing had been offered instead of judgment.

Sweetness Follows

The quiet moral center. Not happiness. Not redemption. Sweetness. Something modest and survivable that comes after loss if one remains present long enough to notice it. Van Gogh never lived to see the sweetness that followed his work. I am still alive inside mine. That difference matters.

Monty Got a Raw Deal

Beware the mythmaking. Against flattening human beings into cautionary tales or romantic archetypes. Van Gogh has been turned into a symbol at the expense of his humanity, and sensitive men are still quietly harmed by the suggestion that suffering is the price of authenticity. It isn’t.

Ignoreland

Anger exist without letting it rule. The world is unjust. Loud. Brash. Careless. Clashing symbols. Feeling despair in response doesn’t mean one is broken—it means one is awake.

Star Me Kitten

A whisper. Intimacy without performance. The desire not to be rescued or exalted, but simply seen while tired. This is where I felt myself soften. This is what I want most often: rest inside connection.

Man on the Moon

Pushing back against myth again. Meaning lives in contradiction. Humor and grief are not enemies. Neither are reason and wonder. Van Gogh was not a symbol. I am not a verdict!

Nightswimming

mourns innocence without declaring the future bankrupt. It remembers moments of alignment and insists they mattered simply because they existed. That insistence feels important when fear whispers that happiness is something other people reach and I somehow missed.

Find the River

No command. No solution. Just acceptance. Stop fighting the current. Stop demanding a final judgment on a life that is still in motion.

---

Van Gogh didn’t die because he never found happiness. He died because he lived in a time that didn’t know how to care for minds like his. He lacked support, treatment, and rest.

Romanticizing his end does violence to the living.

I am not standing alone in a field. I am in a car, in Portugal, with music, conversation, memory, and tears that come from recognition—not from collapse. Fear visited me. But fear is not prophecy.

If Automatic for the People teaches anything:

sensitivity is not madness. Awareness is not doom. Happiness is not a permanent destination one either reaches or fails to reach.

More like moments of alignment—music at dusk, a shared admiration, a hand on the rail.

And for now, that is enough.

---

Automatic for the People

REM – 1992

---

“Drive”

Smack, crack, bushwhacked Tie another one to your racks, baby Hey kids, rock and roll Nobody tells you where to go, baby

What if I ride, what if you walk? What if you rock around the clock? Tick-tock, tick-tock What if you did, what if you walk? What if you tried to get off, baby?

Hey, kids, where are you? Nobody tells you what to do, baby Hey kids, shake a leg Maybe you're crazy in the head, baby

Maybe you did, maybe you walked Maybe you rocked around the clock Tick-tock, tick-tock Maybe I ride, maybe you walk Maybe I drive to get off, baby

Hey kids, shake a leg Maybe you're crazy in the head, baby Ollie, ollie, ollie ollie ollie Ollie ollie in come free, baby

Hey, kids, where are you? Nobody tells you what to do, baby

Smack, crack, shack-a-lack Tie another one to your backs, baby Hey kids, rock and roll Nobody tells you where to go, baby

Maybe you did, maybe you walk Maybe you rock around the clock Tick-tock, tick-tock Maybe I ride, maybe you walk Maybe I drive to get off, baby

Hey kids, where are you? Nobody tells you what to do, baby Hey kids, rock and roll Nobody tells you where to go, baby, baby, baby

“Try Not To Breathe”

I will try not to breathe. I can hold my head still with my hands at my knees. These eyes are the eyes of the old, shiver and fold. I will try not to breathe. This decision is mine. I have lived a full life And these are the eyes that I want you to remember. Oh.

I need something to fly over my grave again. I need something to breathe. I will try not to burden you. I can hold these inside. I will hold my breath Until all these shivers subside, Just look in my eyes.

I will try not to worry you. I have seen things that you will never see. Leave it to memory me. I shudder to breathe. I want you to remember. Oh. (you will never see) I need something to fly (something to fly) Over my grave again. (you will never see)

I need something to breathe. (something to breathe) Baby, don't shiver now. Why do you shiver now? (I will see things you will never see) I need something to fly (something to fly) Over my grave again. (I will see things you will never see) I need something to breathe. Oh. Oh. Oh.

I will try not to worry you. I have seen things that you will never see. Leave it to memory me. Don't dare me to breathe. I want you to remember. Oh. (you will never see) I need something to fly (something to fly) Over my grave again. (you will never see)

I need something to breathe. (something to breathe) Baby, don't shiver now. Why do you shiver now? (I will see things you will never see) I need something to breathe. (something to breathe – I have seen things you will never see) I want you to remember.

“The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”

This here is the place where I will be staying There isn't a number, you can call the pay phone Let it ring a long, long, long, long time If I don't pick up, hang up, call back, let it ring some more, oh If I don't pick up, pick up The sidewinder sleeps, sleeps, sleeps in a coil

Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her, oh

There are scratches all around the coin slot Like a heartbeat, baby trying to wake up But this machine can only swallow money You can't lay a patch by computer design It's just a lot of stupid, stupid signs

Tell her Tell her she can kiss my ass Then laugh and say that you were only kidding That way she'll know that it's really, really, really, really me

Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her, oh

Baby, instant soup doesn't really grab me Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial A can of beans or black-eyed peas, some Nescafe and ice A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading from Doctor Seuss

Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her, oh

The cat in the hat came back, wrecked a lot of havoc on the way Always had a smile and a reason to pretend But their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream The sidewinder sleeps on his back

Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her, oh

Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her, oh

Call me when you try to wake her up, call me when you try to wake her I can always sleep standing up, call me when you try to wake her I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her, oh

We've got to moogie, moogie, move on this one

“Everybody Hurts”

When the day is long And the night, the night is yours alone When you're sure you've had enough Of this life, well hang on

Don't let yourself go 'Cause everybody cries And everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong Now it's time to sing along When your day is night alone (Hold on, hold on) If you feel like letting go (Hold on) If you think you've had too much Of this life, well hang on

'Cause everybody hurts Take comfort in your friends Everybody hurts Don't throw your hand, oh no

Don't throw your hand If you feel like you're alone No, no, no, you are not alone

If you're on your own in this life The days and nights are long When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes Everybody cries And everybody hurts sometimes And everybody hurts sometimes

So hold on, hold on Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on Everybody hurts

No, no, no, no you are not alone

“Sweetness Follows”

Readying to bury your father and your mother What did you think when you lost another? I used to wonder, why did you bother? Distanced from one, blind to the other

Listen here my sister and my brother What would you care if you lost the other? I always wonder, why did we bother? Distanced from one, blind to the other

Oh, but sweetness follows

It's these little things, they can pull you under Live your life filled with joy and wonder I always knew this altogether thunder Was lost in our little lives

Oh, but sweetness follows Oh, but sweetness follows

It's these little things, they can pull you under Live your life filled with joy and thunder Yeah, yeah we were altogether Lost in our little lives

Oh, but sweetness follows Oh, but sweetness follows

“Monty Got A Raw Deal”

Monty this seems strange to me. The movies had that movie thing, But nonsense has a welcome ring And heroes don't come easily. Now, nonsense isn't new to me. I know my head, I know my feet, But mischief knocked me in the knees. Said, Just let go. Just let go.

I saw the ocean meet the man. I saw you buried in the sand. A friend was there to hold your hand, Said, Walk on by. So, I went walking through the street. I saw you strung up in a tree. A woman knelt there said to me, Said, Hold your tongue, man. Hold your tongue.

You don't owe me anything. You don't want this sympathy. (waste your breath) Don't you waste your breath. (waste your breath) For the silver screen.

That nonsense doesn't mean a thing, They tried to bust you in a sting, But virtue isn't everything So, don't waste time. Now, here's a rhyme that you can steal. Put this on your reel to reel. Mischief threw a rotten deal. Monty's laying low. He is laying low. Just let go, just let go.

You don't owe me anything. You don't want this sympathy. (waste your breath) Don't you waste your breath. (waste your breath) Monty this seems strange to me.

“Ignoreland”

These bastards stole their power from The victims of the us v. them years Wrecking all things virtuous and true The undermining social democratic Downhill slide into abysmal Lost lamb off the precipice into The trickle down run-off pool

They hypnotized the summer 1979 Marched into the capital Brooding duplicitous, wicked and able, media-ready Heartless and labeled, super U.S. citizen, super achiever Mega ultra power dosing, relax defense, defense, defense, defense

(Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland (Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

The information nation took Their clues from all the sound-bite gluttons 1980, '84, '88 '92 too, too How to be what you can be Jump jam junking your energies How to walk in dignity With throw-up on your shoes

They amplified the autumn 1979 Calculate the capital Up the republic my skinny ass, TV tells a million lies The paper's terrified to report, anything that isn't handed On a presidential spoon, I'm just profoundly frustrated By all this, so — you, man

(Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland (Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland

If they weren't there we would have created them Maybe, it is true But I'm resentful all the same Someone's got to take the blame

I know that this is vitriol No solution, spleen-venting But I feel better having screamed Don't you?

They desecrate the winter 1979 Capital collateral Brooding duplicitous, wicked and able, media-ready Heartless and labeled, super U.S. citizen, super achiever Mega ultra power dosing, relax, defense, defense, defense, defense Yeah, yeah, yeah

(Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland (Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland (Yeah, yeah, yeah) Ignoreland (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

“Star Me Kitten”

Keys cut, three for the price of one And nothing's free, but guaranteed for a lifetime's use I've changed the locks, and you can't have one You, you know the other two

The brakes have worn so thin that you could hear I hear them screeching through the door from our driveway Hey, love, look into your glovebox heart What is there for me inside, this love is tired I've changed the locks, have I misplaced you?

Have we lost our minds? Will this never end? It could depend on your take

You, me, we used to be on fire If keys are all that stand between Can I throw in the ring? No gasoline, just star me, kitten You are wild, and I'm in your possession Nothing's free, so star me, kitten

I'm in your possession So star me, kitten

“Man On The Moon”

Mott the Hoople and the game of Life yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Monopoly, Twenty one, checkers, and chess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Let's play Twister, let's play Risk yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I'll see you in heaven if you make the list yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy did you hear about this one? Tell me, are you locked in the punch? Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby Are we losing touch?

If you believed they put a man on the moon Man on the moon If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve Then nothing is cool

Moses went walking with the staff of wood yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Newton got beaned by the apple good yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy did you hear about this one? Tell me, are you locked in the punch? Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby Are you having fun?

If you believed they put a man on the moon Man on the moon If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve Then nothing is cool

Here's a little agit for the never-believer yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Here's a little ghost for the offering yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Here's a truck stop instead of Saint Peter's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Mister Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy did you hear about this one? Tell me, are you locked in the punch? Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey, baby Are we losing touch?

If you believed they put a man on the moon Man on the moon If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve Then nothing is cool

If you believed they put a man on the moon Man on the moon If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve Then nothing is cool

If you believed they put a man on the moon Man on the moon If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve Then nothing is cool

If you believed they put a man on the moon Man on the moon If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve Then nothing is cool

“Nightswimming”

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

The photograph on the dashboard taken years ago, turned around backwards so the windshield shows. Every street light reveals a picture in reverse Still it's so much clearer

I forgot my shirt at the water's edge The moon is low tonight

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night I'm not sure all these people understand It's not like years ago The fear of getting caught The recklessness in water They cannot see me naked These things they go away Replaced by every day

Nightswimming, remembering that night September's coming soon I'm pining for the moon And what if there were two Side by side in orbit around the fairest sun? The bright tide forever drawn Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you You, I cannot judge You, I thought you knew me This one laughing quietly Underneath my breath Nightswimming

The photograph reflects Every street light a reminder Nightswimming Deserves a quiet night Deserves a quiet night

“Find The River”

Hey now, little speedyhead The read on the speed-meter says You have to go to task in the city Where people drown and people serve Don't be shy, your just deserts Is only just light years to go

Me, my thoughts are flower strewn Ocean storm, bayberry moon I have got to leave to find my way Watch the road and memorize This life that passed before my eyes And nothing is going my way

The ocean is the river's goal A need to leave the water knows We're closer now than light years to go

I have got to find the river Bergamot and vetiver Run through my head and fall away Leave the road and memorize This life that passed before my eyes And nothing is going my way

There's no one left to take the lead But I tell you and you can see We're closer now than light years to go Pick up here and chase the ride The river empties to the tide Fall into the ocean

The river to the ocean goes A fortune for the undertow None of this is going my way There is nothing left to throw Of ginger, lemon, indigo Coriander stem and rose of hay Strength and courage overrides The privileged and weary eyes Of river poet search naiveté Pick up here and chase the ride The river empties to the tide All of this is coming your way

#nonfiction #books #memoir #history #war

During World War I, a British archeologist singlehandedly forged a multitude of Arabian tribes into a unified army, leading them to victory over a decaying Ottoman Empire, in so doing bringing Arabia into the modern world, i.e. that of Western-style national statehood. This hero would become the legend known as Lawrence of Arabia, the white man who donned desert garb and with his Arabian comrades conquered Damascus. At least, that’s the story of the movie, as I understand. The story told by T.E. Lawrence himself in his autobiographical Seven Pillars of Wisdom is rather more complex and ambiguous.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is Lawrence’s own account of his role in the Arab Revolt, written some years after events from his notes and diaries (though most were lost) and going through several iterations before its final version. From the outset, Lawrence recognises that the Arab Revolt played only a minor part in the Allied victory in World War I, and that if it was critical to this victory, it was so in the sense that British authors tend to ascribe a sense of crucial importance to any single operation because it was part of the totality of the war effort (see also dambusters etc.). Nor does Lawrence suggest he tells his story because he was uniquely instrumental to the events of the Arab Revolt. By his own words, he tells his story because he was there. As such, he is as much, or perhaps even more, of an unreliable narrator as you might expect. Nevertheless, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is assuredly not a heroic tale or adventure novel about how good old British pluck saved the day. Instead, we accompany a profoundly emotionally conflicted man into a struggle where he is forever doomed to be an outsider to both his own and his adopted peoples. On top of which Lawrence is emblematic of so many of the pathologies of 1920s English repressedness that his memoir could double as a psychoanalytical field manual. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is now the sort of historical artefact that requires a 100 page introduction (which my copy duly has), and on the whole, the surface level war story of a few brave fighters facing overwhelming odds is the least interesting part of it.

Events, dear boy, events

Its nature as a memoir rather than a novel means that Seven Pillars of Wisdom lacks an overall plot, at least in the traditional narrative sense. There is a trajectory, starting in the deserts of the Hejaz in 1916 and terminating with the fall of Damascus in 1918. Damascus is Lawrence’s lodestar from the very beginning, but with the book written after events unfolded, it is hard not to suspect some of this is a backward projection. The narrating Lawrence at any point in the book is always a superposition of the contemporaneous Lawrence in situ and the future Lawrence telling his story with the benefit of hindsight. Combined with his literary writing style and tendency to embark on long introspective digressions, all this makes Seven Pillars of Wisdom oscillate unsteadily between being a memoir, a historical account, and a war story.

Real life is much messier than a story, with less structure, and hence Lawrence’s retelling often feels like a series of disconnected events following one after the other without much in the way of connecting tissue. Seven Pillars of Wisdom presents the reader with a constant procession of people, places and communities, many of whom are introduced with an assumed familiarity, only to never be seen again. Keeping track of the manifold characters and places isn’t made easier by Lawrence’s refusal to adhere to a single rule for transliteration from Arabic to English. With Lawrence rushing between villages, riverbeds, oases and most importantly, railway lines, always in the company of an rotating cast of comrades, there is simply too much going on, a significant part of which would be considered irrelevant digression from a narrative perspective. There is a sense in which Seven Pillars of Wisdom truly is ‘one battle after another’, with its endless sequence of skirmishes, reconnoitres, and a truly astonishing level of destruction levelled at railway lines.

War of manoeuvre

Lawrence’s account of the campaign in Arabia contrasts markedly with the common understanding of World War I as fought on the Western Front. Where the the latter is remembered as a war of stasis, the Arab Revolt is a mobile guerrilla war predicated precisely on refusing a pitched battle with the enemy. The Arabian forces use stealth and mobility, tying down the Ottomans in a futile defence of their extended supply lines. In the first chapters of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence muses on contemporary military theory and its applicability, or lack thereof, to the situation in Arabia, foreshadowing the contrast between wars of position and wars of manoeuvre that we see developed a decade later by Antonio Gramsci. Compared to the masses of forces involved elsewhere in the war, the Arab forces are pitifully limited in number, ill-equipped and riven with internal tribal rivalries. Even within the Middle Eastern theatre of war, the Arab Revolt is a side-show to the main event, which is the British and French advance against the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence himself is fully aware of this, and Seven Pillars of Wisdom never pretends the fight to be anything else.

Given Lawrence’s knowledge that the Revolt will only play a minor part on a secondary front within the Great War, his determination to claim victory is not based on the strategic value of his efforts, but a professed desire to help the Hashemite dynasty, in particular Crown Prince Faisal I, secure a truly independent Arab State. This is to be achieved through a combination of direct conquest of the lands to be incorporated into the putative Arab Kingdom, consolidating the variegated tribes into a single national body politic, and lending sufficient assistance to the British to gain standing as a reliable ally. It is this latter consideration that causes Lawrence no end of anguish, given his fears that Britain will in the end do what serves the Empire, even if it means reneging on its promises to its Arab allies. Time and again Lawrence returns to the feeling he is a traitor, engaged in a deception against the Arabian tribes whose fealty he is working to enlist for Faisal, and it is no surprise that on entering Damascus, victory tastes bitter to him.

Complex white saviour

Lawrence’s constant unease about the trustworthiness of his British superiors towards the Arab forces is only one part of the profound emotional turmoil that afflicts him, which means Seven Pillars of Wisdom is not the straightforward Orientalist white saviour narrative that I had come to expect. At a surface level, the Orientalism is definitely there, with a white man leading a motley collection of noble savages towards their destiny, i.e. a modern, European-style nation state. Below the surface however, Lawrence is aware that his leadership is less to do with the innate superiority of the white race, and more with his role as a conduit for British rifles, money and supplies for the Arab cause, as well as his status as a neutral outsider with no stake in the many inter-tribal rivalries flaring across a still divided Arabian peninsula. Significant parts of the book are devoted to Lawrence describing debilitating illnesses, fatigue and lack of endurance compared to his fellow guerrillas, even as his experience with desert warfare increases. Conversely, once he has adopted the indigenous ways of living with the desert, Lawrence can only gaze in bemusement on his compatriots who refuse to exchange their patently unsuitable khaki uniforms for the much more appropriate indigenous dress. Although he does not articulate this explicitly, one gets the sense that Lawrence is well aware that British supremacy is not due to the innate superiority of the white master race, but the result of being the ones holding the Vickers machine guns.

Not that this means the racism and Orientalism isn’t there. In keeping with Western sensibilities of the era, Lawrence cannot help but essentialise his Arab comrades, as well as every other people, including the English. It makes for a pervasive but also uncommitted and inconstant racism, with Lawrence readily pronouncing on the innate characteristics of the Arab race on one page, only to completely deviate from all of this in his detailed psychological profiles of the most prominent members of the Revolt or his most intimate companions. There is something intriguing about seeing the racist logic operate so openly on the page, with Lawrence unable to grasp how the immense diversity of personas and communities he describes directly contradicts the generalising tenets of his racist ideology. Time and again Lawrence will make sweeping pronouncements about Arabs, Turks, Indians or the French, only for these to immediately break down in his recounting of the actual people he meets. Even the Turks, who come in for most of Lawrence’s spite, are humanised when encountered as individuals, in particular the conscripts, prisoners of war, and the many casualties. His role in the Revolt makes Lawrence acutely aware of the great variety across the Arabian tribes he encounters, and while he is unable to divest himself of a belief in some inherent ‘desert culture’, the racism on display in Seven Pillars of Wisdom is of a completely different nature than our prevailing ‘clash of civilisations’ discourse, which lets Western leaders launder their realpolitik via some putative grand theory of history. The idea of unified ‘Christian’ and ‘Islamic’ cultural blocs will have seemed patently absurd to Lawrence, engaged as he was in enlisting the aid of Arab muslims against their Turkish overlords as part of a protracted European ‘civil war’.

Nor is it only his deep ambivalence over his role in the Revolt that causes Lawrence anguish. From his writing emerges a profile of a conflicted man profoundly repulsed by all things physical, most of all his own body, and hence with a deep-seated envy of people who inhabit their bodies with ease. Time and again Lawrence seems to seek bodily transcendence in the harshness of the desert, but this remains always beyond his reach. Neither is he intellectually confident, for while he is an educated man, he is not a trained soldier and therefore feels inferior to the military command in which he is embedded. If it were not for his duty to king, country and the Revolt, Lawrence might plausibly have taken the road of Frank Herbert’s [Dune Messiah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuneMessiah “Dune Messiah – Wikipedia”)_ and walked into the desert to disappear forever.

Imperial mandates

I cannot help but wonder to what degree the recurring episodes of self-loathing were retroactively amplified by the developments that followed the end of World War I. As Lawrence was writing his memoirs on return to England in the 1920s, the Arab state that he helped bring into being was destroyed in its infancy by French colonial forces, exercising their ‘mandate’ to Lebanon and Syria as agreed with Britain in the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, of which Lawrence was probably already aware when fighting with his Arab irregulars. Only a few years later, Arabia is indeed unified, but not under the Hashemite dynasty of Faisal I, but under the rival house of Saud, again with connivance and support of the British. Within a decade of the conquest of Damascus, everything that Lawrence told his Arab comrades they were fighting for has been crushed, one way or another, by the European Powers, endorsed in this by the nascent League of Nations. It is the beginning of a long series of betrayals that endures to this day, which includes Mandate for Palestine, the Nakba, the Suez Crisis, the assassination of Iran’s Mossadegh and the invasions of Iraq, Libya, and Iran, as well as the unwavering support for Israel’s military adventurism and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Seen in the light of the abject failure of the League of Nations to defend Arabian right to statehood in the 1920s, is it any wonder that the newly established Arab nations of the 1940s were disinclined to abide by a United Nations decree that the better half of Palestine was to be awarded to its recently arrived minority Jewish population?

Over a hundred years after its first publication, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is mainly interesting as a historical artefact that shows both the continuities and discontinuities of Western involvement in the Middle East. The British Empire has been eclipsed by the United States and its Israeli vassal as the primary imperial force, but the subordination of people’s right to self-determination to Western national interests remains. Direct colonial subjugation has disappeared, replaced by indirect economic control. And the racism is still there, but now grounded in Islamophobia rather than Orientalist essentialism. From the perspective of a family in Syria, Iran, or Palestine today, it must seem that everything changes so that everything can stay the same. The question is how many more white saviours they must suffer before they can take charge of their own destinies.

Notes & Suggestions

• An unavoidable comparison on reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom is with Frank Herbert’s Dune, for which it was a direct inspiration. In between the fighting and travelling, Lawrence gives a great deal of attention to the desert itself: the different compositions of sand and stone, the shape and topography, the sensation of various environments. Echoes of the desert, the Bedouin, and the outsider become leader can all be found in Dune. This essay offers an interesting discussion of the similarities, differences, and varying degrees of Orientalism in both books.
• Lawrence’s account of the exercise of imperial power is by its nature personal and small in scale. For an impersonal and macro-level account of how colonial policies readily sacrificed the lives of millions on the altar of imperial ambition, Late Victorian Holocausts gives a gruesome account of the catastrophic famines inflicted on European colonies in the 19th century as a consequence of their forcible integration into the global market.
• The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is the main British organisation campaigning to secure Palestinian rights and defend them against the ongoing occupation and genocide.

• Leviathan Falls (The Expanse #9) by James S.A. Corey, 529p: I didn’t want it to end, but all good sagas must come to a close. We see what’s left of the Rocinante crew as fugitives, now joined by Teresa Duarte (daughter of the Laconian high consul, Winston Duarte). There is a lot going on as bizarre, physics-bending anomalies begin to manifest within the ring space, threatening the existence of humanity. It’s tense, and full of high stakes with interesting viewpoints from Colonel Tanaka and Elvi. I think it was a satisfying conclusion to the series even though it does not answer all the questions. Sometimes, knowing less is better.
• Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries #8) by Martha Wells, 256p: Another adventure with Murderbot. Very consistently good, delivering the usual cynical humor and inner monologues. To be honest, nothing in particular stood out to me, but it is still a solid comfort read.
• Cryoburn (Vorkosigan Saga (Publication Order) #14) by Lois McMaster Bujold, 345p: We get into cryogenics shenanigans and politics with Miles investigating a major “cryocorp” called WhiteChrys, on the distant planet of Kibou-daini. I enjoyed the three different POVs: Miles, his Armsman Roic, and a local boy called Jin Sato. We also get to see Raven, a cryo-revival specialist from the Durona Group who assisted in reviving Miles after his death on Jackson's Whole in a previous book. Another great book in the Vorkosigan saga, that brings me closer to finishing the series!

Post 14 of #Blaugust #readinglist #books #reading

22 August 2026

Ruba brought a copy of Turner's Last Sketchbook (published by Yale University Press London in 2024, a roughly 7x4.5 inch “facsimile of the last known intact sketchbook by J. M. W. Turner”) to coffee. Perfect before my upcoming travels. Amidst the mental clutter that has formed while getting ready to uproot everything again, here was the simple, powerful fact of a practice. On the move with only water and a few colors at hand, his eye hones relationships; between colors, forms and space, forms and material. All with a thinness of application that serves as a constant reminder to revere.

People continue to ask me for directions on the street. One today, six this month, and I would say upwards of thirty across this whole year. Is that an uncommon amount? Feels like it. Especially because I'm definitely not the person to ask.

20 August 2026

Skee Mask—Resort (2024)

I've made some progress on Foolish Earth Creatures this month, although most of that has been filling out chapter structures with placeholder text so there's nothing very interesting to show. Unless you find this kind of thing interesting:

One fun thing about writing a new kind of game is that you get to reinvent your whole work process! When I started writing Foolish Earth Creatures I went straight into writing first-draft text in order to get the hang of the game's 'voice', but now I've been working on the game for a while I don't need to do that. What I've settled on is to start by writing a bare-bones outline for each chapter with simple placeholder text, then to do progressively more detailed placeholder structures, then first-draft text, and eventually (although I haven't got to this stage yet) the final text. Right now I've got placeholder outlines for nearly the whole game, so I've decided to do the outlines for the last few chapters before I go back to writing the first drafts.

My placeholder writing got faster when I realised that I didn't need to think of solutions to the player's problems at this point, I can just put “[[Correct option]] / [[Incorrect option]]” and move on!

I should have the rest of the game's placeholder structure done in the next few days, and hopefully by next month's developer diary I should have most of a first draft.

PLACEHOLDER: Can our hero do the thing? Find out next month!

#FoolishEarthCreatures #DevDiary

speed of hearts

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones. Count your life by friends and your age by smiles.

I had a long conversation with a young friend last night. He's been struggling with an addiction to pornography for the last year and a half. He's young and frustrated because it's an old demon he thought he had conquered more than a decade ago.

But moving to an emotionally and spiritually challenging place was biting off a bit more than he was ready to chew.

Personally, I didn't do enough to help him. I could have been more present, engaged and more of a friend. But the Keeper was battling his own dragons.

His frustration stems from what seems like an impossible task: to slay the desire for something he hates. And speaking to him, he has all of the barriers in place that one can have to stay governed.

But it isn't a knowledge problem, it's a matter of the heart. Knowing what to do and having the power to do it are different things. This seems to be a plague that is afflicting millions of young people, male and female.

In my opinion, and experience, the greatest asset we can have in fighting heart failure is to FEEL loved.

THINK: don't offer a lecture to someone who needs a hug.

Again, it isn't enough to know that you are; you must feel it. Constantly. Friends are critical in this. Honest, genuine and close friends. Those sticking closer than a brother. Those born for times of distress.

I think this is the blow that opened the crack of my friend's weakness. Too often he was seen as a resource and not nearly enough as someone to laugh and cry and share quiet moments.

When you feel lost, used and forgotten, it's easy to reach for that which makes you feel something else. Something good.

My friend is now considering a relocation.

Smart, but I hate to see him go. We need more men like him here—men capable of displacing the narrow thinking that too often controls the actions and decisions of those charged with taking the lead. Not malicious or bitter men, but men who have become so accustomed to managing every detail that they can no longer see the difference between micromanaging and shepherding.

So, I'm doing what I can to be a friend, as I have for some time. As I work to heal, I hope that I can help him do the same thing.

Prayer, time and hard work are the tools in my arsenal, which is enough. According to God's word, with Him, all things are possible.

Jesus, I think, knew what he was talking about.

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#essay

Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

Eyes on screens see with no sense of true scale The cosmos can be reduced to an inch The colors of reality made pale And all can be rearranged with a pinch Do you want to erode your will to live? Do you want to see without being seen? Do you want to waste what you have to give? All this and more can be found on the screen. Stop! Do you remember your childhood? When your mirror was your parents' faces, When the veil was thin, between you and Good, And love and hate not warped, public races? Go outside if you want to remember. Love on the scale of love, and no other.

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#poetry #sonnet

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

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Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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VVA Sport, Primus Voetbal

FC Meerderheidsbelang City versus Diepteinvestering United. 

Welkom bij FC Meerderheidsbelang City tegen Diepteinvestering United de primus uitzending van deze wedstrijd ronde in de Surplus Liga. Het stadion zit vol enthousiaste sponsoren en aandeelhouders van City en wat minder van United. Maar liefst 499,99 pønd, bruto staat vanmiddag in het City veld en slechts 333,87 pønd aan de United zijde echter City heeft veel minder reserve op de bank zitten, 376, 55 tegenover de 598,99 van United, meer dan voldoende voor investeringen in een betere uit uitslag, indien noodzakelijk.

Voor kijkers gemak noem ik de spelers bij waarde en niet bij naam, die merknaam ook noemen wordt veels te verwarrend, de naam is pas van belang als er gegadigden zijn om het merk te huren of kopen (voor meer of beduidend minder dan de huidige waarde, de flinke som waarvoor ze hier in dit stadion voor deze club zijn komen aantreden) Dit zijn de vertegenwoordigers van top resultaten, voor winst behalen vandaag in het speelveld, in de verdediging staan 4 waardes opgesteld, 34 miljoen, 23, 77 en 12 afgerond, netto, te lezen op de achterkant van het thuis shirt. In het midden eveneens 4 bijdragen 9, 45, 90, 3 de talentvolle waarde uit eigen spaarkas, veel potentie om schalen hoger te raken, voor in staan geposteerd 123 en 62 terwijl het doel wordt verdedigd door 23 (2) een flink stel meerderheidsbelangen behartigers waarvan ze, de volgers, gezien de enorme toekomst investering er in veel van moeten verwachten.

Bij de oppositie, is de openings inzet beduidend lager, helaas voor u kijker staat er niet een speler over de 90 opgesteld, er is echter sprake van een aankomende top transfersom waardoor hier later deze competitie verandering in komt, tevens zijn er twee hoger gerangschikte spelers gehaald, 88 en 95, maar jammer genoeg voor United zijn deze sommen der delen nog niet speel gerechtigd. De huidige onderhandelingen betreffende de laatste aanschaf duiden op een bedrag rond de 176, een verbetering met een van het al bija jaar oude record 175, betreffende de laatste inkoop van de VV Bekroonde Koning club om dan via deze inbreng de bank te versterken omdat daar steeds meer waarde op zal moeten zitten wachten op hun kans om die oudere eigenwaarde voor deze lauweren club te mogen vertegenwoordigen en sporadisch te laten zien dat ze het vorige transferseizoen niet werden overschat. Maar de United diepte investering moet eerst worden geaccepteerd en dat kan alleen als FC Verenigde UniLeveranciers eerst de rangen heeft versterkt met één andere of paar anderen voor een gelijkwaardig totaal bedrag als de voor veel vertrekkende, de voet balans moet wel deugdelijk blijven. In zwart gedrukte gebieden, anders raken ze over een x aantal jaren misschien officieel in opspraak en verliezen ze het krediet nodig voor spelen in deze hoogst gerangschikte club competitie.

Dit zijn de bedragen die United in de basis vertegenwoordigen, 21 op doel, 34, 32, 9, 24, achterin, de middenstand 34, 11 en 23 en in de aanval 75, 61 en 10 een bedrag voor een degelijke middenmotor maar voor een organisatie als Diepte Investering veel te min, dat zijn niet de sommen waar je ver mee komt in alle te vullen competities, Inter Smægmååns en de lokale Met Pijn& Moeite Samen Winkelend Keizerrijk beker wedde strijden, maar met die ene inkoop en het potentieel aanwezig in het veld en zeker daarnaast is de positie in de top ranken wel weer verzekerd, mits deze transfer er door komt en het bedrag gemonteerd in de spits niet vroegtijdig ermee uitvalt door veelvoorkomende blessures of andere waarde verminderende risico's, overschatting, hogere transfersommen rondom dankzij de toename van zeer kapitaal sprekende, oorerende, alles wat vast zit op los rakelende investeringsmaatschappijen steeds vaker bestuurlijk actief in deze spelende mensen handelstak in kader het eeuwige najagen van hogere, steeds langere, diepere en betere winsten der persoonsgebonden schatkisten, de rest mag genieten van hogere prijzen, alcohol, chips, krediet op een plastieken pas, extra maatregelen rondom beveiliging, voedsel bank pasjes en lange, lange, stom vervelende werkdagen waar in ze dan mogen spreken over club uitslagen, transfers, statistieken, de volgende vernedering ontvangen. Eerlijk delen duurt het behangst.

De spelleider is 20000 met assistenten 5000 bij de coach hokjes en 2 keer 10000 langs de handelings grens, in de naspel studio zit 10000, 5000 en 1000 zij zullen zich bezighouden met lijnen trekken, centi meten en dode spelmomenten nieuw leven inblazen of nieuwe dooie levendig maken. 

In de schreeuw en gebaar vakken staat bij City 11 per competitie jaar met bonus voor gewonnen wedstrijden en voor toename van het instapbedrag der spelende bedragen, afkoopsommen en weg stuur premies niet nader bekend, assistenten in totaal 34, mogelijk oplopend tot 55 na reorganisatie van de staf. United wordt gedirigeerd door 24 pønd en een staf van 60 plus, geen sprake van verandering daar in. Dit voor zover de meest opvallende bedragen, waar u de kijker op zal letten zeker omdat ik al deze bedragen vaak zal opsommen, heel erg vaak, want voetbal is een spel van de nummers.

De sponsoren hebben in koor de openingstune gezongen de wedde strijd staat op het punt van beginnen. City heeft de munt opgooi correct beoordeeld en heeft gekozen tegen de aftrap. United heeft het verlies geaccepteerd en trapt uit af voor vijandige sponsoren en club aandeelhouders. Wel zetten ze laag in met 10

In verband met lusteloosheid veroorzaakt door zoveel zinloos beschrijvingen van 2 keer 45 minuten redelijk actief handelsoverleg hebben wij in samenwerking met VVA dit live verslag van de onderneming verkocht aan de hoogste bieder voor dergelijke rapporten en bijpassende evaluatie van het geheel der bijeenkomsten, interventies en soortgelijke interacties, het live verslag kunt u derhalve lezen op ESViaZoggiPN, let wel u moet voor deze zeer frequente zelf kastijding aardig wat betalen en is geen enkele kans dat u dit bedrag ooit terug ziet, of dat het wordt vermeerderd!

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Schakel Moment NU GA JE ZAPPEN Klootzak.

Dit beknopte verslag beperkt zich tot de weinige hoogtepunten der levende spelcommunicatie.

Minuut 0 plus 1 seconde, 10 trapt af voor United

Minuut 5, 0-1, inleiding, Een scherm mutseling rondom het strafschopgebied van City via een carambole langs vele nummers komt de bal voor de knie of dij van 61, Melle Kemuiltje, zijn waarde neemt hierdoor toe en dat komt goed uit want zijn naam komt voor op die rang lijst van nummers waarvan de club ietwat spijt heeft, ondanks deze toegevoegde waarde voor United zal de belangstelling voor zo'n omzet moment zeker in stand blijven. De club heeft al aangegeven 61 niet voor minder dan 45 te laten vergaan elders 0-1 toch verrassend maar niet onterecht, Cities meerwaarde ten opzichte van United komt niet echt boven bedrijven.

09, Gele kaart voor City's 90, Hardhandig Optreden

24, Vrije trap City in de buurt van hun doel, dat van het inmiddels belegerde United, zwaar onderdrukt door de getallen waarmee City goochelt. Overleg is er tussen de kanswaarnemers 90, 123 en 77, zeer hoog overleg, de kans op succes moet wel toenemen. 90 legt aan, in de United muur. Wel een hoekschop.

26, Hoekschop van City's 12 vliegt langs alle top ondernemers en wordt derhalve omgezet in een doeltrap. Goedkoop succesje voor United.

Minuut 34, Een minuut van daverend applaus voor alle leden jongstleden bevrijd van het lot om iedere dag hun boodschappen te moeten betalen, tevens verzenden en ontvangen. Zeker een bevrijding een dergelijk applaus waard.

40, Gemor door de City aandeelhouders, sponsoren en overige belangstellenden over de prestaties van de opgestelde bedragen, er gaat veel mis, qua bereik, beschikbaarheid en productiviteit. Ook de dirigent coach lijkt wanhopig op zoek naar betere afstelling van de opgestelde instrumenten voor winst.

44, 0 – 2, Eigen doelpunt door de verse aankoop, versterking van het middenveld, 45, jammerlijk, hij wil een United voorzet onklaar maken met zijn linker maar de bal raakt zijn been raar waarna die bal zijn eigen weg hervat maar dan anders dan door de doelman ingeschat, en zo gaat het object aan hem voorbij en komt tot stilstand in het vangnet voor alle ballen langs keepers, hier. Meer gemot, op de tribune hier en daar al gezwaai met de symbolische contracten, namen van minderwaardige clubs er op uit lage lonen divisies.

45 plus 5 Rust, eindelijk rust. Ik heb echt last van mijn cont. Overbelasting.

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45 plus 1 seconde

Wissel bij United de nog niet helemaal fitte 75 vervangen door de bijna fitte 33 een extra progressie minnende middenstander erbij.

City moet nu wel aftrappen door de keuze eerder gemaakt, waarschijnlijk hebben ze daar spijt van. De sponsoren en aandeelhouders zijn opgekrikt met entertainment, loterij uitslagen, drank en samenzang, alles is voor nu koek en ei.

49, Bijna 0 – 3, enorme kans geboden door miscommunicatie tussen City middenstand en verdedigingswerk gemist door de rappe nummer 33, zo te zien een aardig ondergewaarderde speler of waarschijnlijk verkocht door een gedegradeerde club met de morrende bank aan het roer van hun doen en laten op de spelende mensen markt, zo'n vereniging waar bewindvoerders dan de dienstverdeling uitmaken, 33 een pareltje afkomstig uit de Italiaanse rommelmarkt, ah vandaar. Edoch hij mist de kans hem opgelegd, op een haar.

55, Toch 1 – 2, een vlotte middenstander combinatie tussen .. en .. meteen door naar voorstander .. en die terug naar de vrijstaande opkomende flanken verdediger die dan de bal vol op de nieuwe Raebanbock schoenen krijgt en deze met kneiterhard en geplaatst schot tegen het internet achter het goede doel ramt ruimschoots voorbij de keeper, macheloos tegen zoveel juist toegepaste middelen om precies hem te passeren, altijd hij. Het pimp hummer stadion veert op, de veren er in aangezet zodat het net zo'n pimp hummer is, de stemming zit er weer in.

73, De stemming is grimmig, de kleine groep aandeelhouders en sponsoren zijn blijkbaar erg goed ingelicht. Ze lieten hun licht schijnen op diverse falende ondernemingen van City beleidsmakers, een lange rij failliete ondernemingen, gesloten winkels, kantoren, schimmige transacties en noodverkopen werden opgedreund, meer en meer advocaten werden voor de veiligheid naar het uitvak gestuurd, de boel moest gesust.

77, Het spel wordt steeds slordiger, nummers aan metname de Ciry kant worden erg onzeker, ze horen ook de United fans feiten scanderen, en twijfelen wellicht aan hun toekomst op dit sponsor veld. Zo te horen zijn er onvoldoende reserves om de basis voor succes te onderhouden, het lijkt op misleiding, iets van wanorde onder de schone schijn vertoning. Dat zal toch niet doordringen in het hoofd van de spel acteurs.

89, Een straffe schop voor City! De 20000 samen met de studio lijnentrekker 10000 hebben een frisvverse eigengereide handsbal interpratie toegevoegd aan het arsenaal uitzonderlijke uitzonderingen, de bal heeft een minuut voor de 20000 floot in kader buitenspel van United bericht ontvangen over een bal op de hand rondom de elleboog, iets van de romp, er op gevallen na een gekraakt schot, via een been van City 38 invaller, die geen besef had van dat contact, de bal rolde nadien zelfs voor de voeten van city verdediger die daarop rakelings langs doel schoot. Nu alsnog wordt de handsbalregel toegepast, nogmaals ten voordele van deze fabelachtige top club, United aandeelhouders nogsteeds bezig met oprakelen van alle honderden organisaties die de dupe zijn van falend management en zelf verrijkende beslissingen door City beleidsbepalers amper onder de indruk van deze strafschop en de 300 advocaten voor hun tralies. City staat al tijden bekend om dergelijke reeksen toevallige beslissingen waarmee zij hun positie hogerop de competie piramide weten te behouden. Mis. Naast, en over.

90 De 20000 ziet er teleurgesteld uit, geen rede voor overnemen was er, niet eens een beetje van de lijn geweken, niks. Ze schote,n de geschonken buitenkans over en naast, hopelijk zou de geste later gewoon zoals normaal worden gewaardeerd met een .complimentje, zie ik hem denken. Ik bied namens VVA staatsomroep Smægmå welgemeende excuses aan voor u arme aandeelhouder, sponsor thuis dat u heeft moeten meeluisteren naar al die bekendmakingen rondom het gedrag van City officials, er zitten daar bij u ook al kinderen, het is erg dat een grote groep door corruptie in de sport benadeelden op deze ludieke wijze het voetbal kapot maakt!

90 plus 9

Pffft, einde

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Post Theater

1 – 2, smadelijke City nederlaag, er zijn over de gehele linie duidelijk versterkingen nodig. Hogere bedragen moeten worden uitgegeven middelen afkomstig van de kleine man over het veld zien sprinten voor het goede doel, de FC Meerderheidsbelang of FC Disney Warner of FC Hoogwaardigheidsbekleders en dergelijke top clubs die als uithangbord dienen voor zakenmannen op zoek naar rede om te laveren tussen vele landen, steden zodat hun handelsbelangen overal in Smægmå gevoeld worden, en flink ook. Heerlijke wedstrijd om bondig te verslaan, over twee dagen weer een City wedstrijd, Groot Smægmååns in de Chips Bier en Krediet Com Competie tegen FV Mercedesbrandstof Collectief, ook te zien op ESViaZoggiPN en hier als tekst op VVA Sport en Economie.

De Intern Fews

De VVA bende van trio bespreekt tussen de reclame door deze topper City versus United en spreekt met de beste nummersbover hun prestaties geleverd op de hoge transferwaardering markt.

(Voorheen) – Hadden jullie, experts, ervaringsdeskundigen er ook meer van verwacht?

Harry van Draaijomdeoren – Zeker wel, als je dergelijk hoge bedragen hebt staan kun je niet zo staan te lanterfanten als ze bij City deden. United heeft al zijn reserves niet eens aangesproken en nog kwamen ze niet in de problemen. Het loopt niet lekker bij City

(Voorheen) – Zou dat komen door de aanstormende niet te vermijden terugzetting naar de laagste der lage lonen divisies in kader de malversaties waarmee zij hun plekje bovenop de afvalhoop moesten garanderen?

Bennie Pijnstekers – Dat zou zomaar zo kunnen zijn, het is wel een teken aan de wand dat laatste minuut geschenken worden geweigerd, dan is er meer aan de hand. Vorig jaar nog schoten ze al die gegeven loonschoppen er overal in, dat net bolde al voor de gratis bal hun reclame voet raakte. Dan wil je het ook gewoon niet, verdienstelijk gelijk spelen.

Harry van Draaijomdeoren – Aanstormen kun je dit niet noemen, ze zijn al vier jaar bezig deze zaak te onderbouwen, en als ik dan op de tribunes alle al bekende gegevens hoor vraag ik me af waarom we nog naar City kijken.

DJ Poptop – De Hoognodige Muzikale Interventie, druk op mijn knopje, O Poptop Yeah

Penny de Jager – Ik doe een dansje om jullie heen.

Bennie Pijnstekers – Dat is fijn voor je.

(Voorheen) – Diepteinvestering United weet natuurlijk hoe het werkt, zij moesten ook uit zo'n zelfde dal worden opgekocht.

Harry van Draaijomdeoren – Deze beide clubs doen weinig voor elkaar onder, waarschijnlijk gepokt, gemazzeld en gehavend in datzelfde handelsklimaat, straatwaarde vertegenwoordigen, daar hoort veel poeha bij, een Pimp Hummer trilbak, en een stadion vol glitter daar dan aftrappen met de disco voetbal die dan meteen moet worden buiten gespeeld omgezet in de voor dit speltype normbepalende.

(Voorheen) – Was het een goede wedde strijd.

Bennie Pijnstekers – Alle wedde strijden zijn goed als er met wedde om wedde wordt gespeeld maar het niveau was lager dan ik had verwacht. Beide partijen zijn nog zoekende naar de juiste afstelling van de ingevulde vacatures. Duidelijk dat niet alle takenpakketjes bij de juiste vakmensen zijn ondergebracht.

(Voorheen) – DJ Poptop kun je Penny voorzien van iets uitdagender repertoire, hier kan ze niks mee. Zo kan ze niet sierlijk om ons heen laveren.

DJ Poptop – Oh, oké dan geen Happy Mondays..

Harry van Draaijomdeoren – Ik genoot er wel van, dat gesmoorde hakkelende tempo. Sloot goed aan op de ervaren wedstrijd zojuist.

(Voorheen) – Geschrokken van de United fans?

Harry van Draaijomdeoren – Nee, ze waren duidelijk op de hoogte, wel wat jammer dat al die onkieze zaken ook binnen sijpelen in onschuldige kinderoortjes, maar goed er waren daar voldoende advocaten waarin dergelijke geluiden voor een flink deel verdwijnen.

Bennie Pijnstekers – Het werd op een zeker moment wat lastig om nog onbevooroordeeld te kijken naar City, dat wel.

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(Voorheen) – We hebben twee spelers en beide zijlijn dirigenten zover gekregen dat ze ons te woord staan! Ze zijn gewezen op het verantwoordelijk heden van acteurs tijdend en na het theater in andere rol.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Ik sta hier met city deelnemers 11 en 77, hoofd spel arrangeur en speel wijze uitvoerende, min of meer dan, door de aanwezigheid van 11 dissonanten met een heel andere visie op balbezit en het goede doel is dat verhipte lastig. Welkom deelnemers, 11, zitten jullie net als de city aandeelhouders, sponsoren en overige spel beschouwers ook erg in zak en as, 11.

11 Neen dankzij mijn positie op het veld zie ik altijd veel meer lichtpunten, die van de spelerstunnel, bar, de lichtmasten en natuurlijk de hel oplichtende nooduitgangen. Vanaf die positie zie ik echter ook van nabij dat ons spel wat te wensen overliet, ik wens ook dat dit niet zo was. Hopelijk lukt het de montage crew deze wedstrijd zo te presenteren dat het tijdens de analyse lijkt alsof we met 10 – 2 wonnen. Soeverein, alle posities de betere, spel plezier spetters her en der en verderop, een genot om te herzien. Echter vooralsnog ben ik diep teleurgesteld in ons.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Van de achterbank klinkt de harde roep om versterkingen op alle linies, is dat ook jouw visie.

11 Mijn visie is totaal afhankelijk van wat zij mogen uitgeven aan transfersommen, het is zoals altijd heel simpel als ik vraag om dit, krijg ik dat en dan zeg ik tegen jullie dat dat dit is en precies de transferspeler nodig om de klus te klaren, heb ik alle posities goed bezet komt er een derde en vierde man voor juist deze posities, ik doe dan het enigste juiste en zeg dank je wel club leiding, dit komt goed uit ik had namelijk twee geweldige spelers daar die kan ik nu vaker op de bank zetten en mee in onmin raken, of ze zetten op een positie waar ik al een ander jong talent voor heb, die kan dan afhaken en vertrekken, excuus tranfereren voor 2 miljoen, naar een club waar hij meteen in de basis staat en iedere keer als hij tegen City speelt 3 goals maken. De ware taak van de dirigent is nou eenmaal de voorbereiding, de evaluatie en de gesprekken met de pers, als het goed is heb ik een veld vol talenten staan die allang weten welke prijs om hun nek hangt en dat die moet worden gehonoreerd of beter nog stijgen.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Nou, loop je hier niet een beetje erg leeg door de stress rondom je roeping?

77 – Dat kan ik alvast ontkennen, 11 is zo'n soort coach, hij maakt van zijn hart geen moordkuil, geen speler zal zich ooit beklagen over onduidelijkheden in de choreografie betreffende het voetbal bal tijdens zijn bewind. Het is meer dat overdaad wel eens zou kunnen schaden in deze surplus competitie.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – 77, jullie hebben meer inkomende hoge transfers, voor nieuwe toppers uitgegeven, dan uitgaande, vele toppers staan nog ruim onder miljoenen aan deze club geketend, de selectie inclusief staf is ruim 687 miljoen pønd 100 meer dan vorig jaar 50 meer dan jullie voornaamste tegenstrever, collega's in de beker tak, hoeveel meer moet de club nog uitgeven om zeker te zijn van het kampioenschap?

77 – Lastig te zeggen, er zijn heel veel über klasse zakenmensen die nog geen club hebben gevonden waarmee zij zichzelf kunnen profileren, je weet niet met welk soort bedragen zij gaan schermen om die club nu nog actief in de zesde divisie noord west Smægmå te veranderen in de volgende surplus liga kampioen Voorlopig hadden we altijd genoeg aan de hoogste uitgaven in vergelijking met de restjes. Als die restjes ons overstijgen en dat zou zomaar kunnen, zeker als het aan de oppositie ligt. Dat was feitelijk duidelijk te volgen tijdens het laatste kwart van de wedde strijd, als zij ons overvleugelen zijn wij gedoemd te degraderen.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – FC Plymouth bakkersbedrijven is ook leuk.

11 + 77 – Geen boos woord over FC Plymouth bakkerbedrijven, goed brood. Veel talenten in al hun vezels.

77 – Degraderen, trouwens, is op dit moment bespreekbaar gemaakt tijdens de jaarlijkse besloten meerderheid aandeelhouder vergadering, dit haalt de druk rustend op de schoudervulling schouders onzer criminele organisatie wat van de ketel. Kijk niet raar op als we dit seizoen blijvend onder ons niveau presteren!

---

(Voorheen) – Nog een repliek hierop?

Bennie Pijstekers – Dat klopt wel wat 77 zei over de leeg lopende 11, hij loopt niet leeg, dat klinkt heel anders. Hij was als speler al zo eentje die altijd fietste over de gulden middenweg. Ideale middenstand club speler, te goed voor degradatie zorgen, lang niet goed genoeg voor top transfers. Spelender wijs is hij van verdedigend spelbepaler overgegaan in hoge klasse team dirigent. Spelers op alle niveaus mochten hem, hij nam het voor je op als je hem een schop gaf, wist meteen dat je slechts je frustraties over iets anders op hem botvierde, na de wedstrijd zocht hij je op en dan ging je daar over praten. Zo'n type middenvelder, vol begrip maar als hij je kon poorten dan deed ie dat. Het resultaat, bestendig in de middenmoot bleef heilig.

Harry van Draaijomdeoren – Zo, nou, weet ge, wij hadden ooit de broers Franco en Rono LeTour bij de club, we stonden voor een inter Smægmååns tegen zijn club, Cruiiijvel was onze dirigent, de beste ooit, later, toen niet, 11 kreeg 3 beuken van Rono, in de pauze sprak hij hem aan, zei 'Rono ik snap dat je baalt omdat Franco meer dan de helft van jou specifieke spel taken doet, die bij jou op numero uno staan en bij hem onderaan, overleg met je dirigent en Franco zelve, maar trap mij niet het hospitaal in aub.'

In de pauze, bij de thee en biscuits sprak Rono, over Franco tegen Cruiiijvel, hij zei 'kijk, ik ben de man op het midden, hier mijn contract, passen geven, spel delen, scoren, no. 1, hier Franco, delegeren, verdedigers op de plek zetten, hele lange passes geven van ver af, veel korte naar mij, Cruiiiivels plan voor vlot aanvallend spel via de man daarvoor. Nu omdat iedereen blijkbaar wat graag wil komen in de verdrukking ligt mijn taak pardoes op mijn broeders bordje, gaan we niet meer doen!' En zo was het ook, 11 leerde ons de eerste les totaal voetbal deel 5, de juiste taken laten doen door de beste speler in deze, altijd. Je zet je keeper ook niet rechtsbuiten, ook niet als ie dat goed kan omdat hij nog altijd degene is die kan keepen, de meeste rechtsbuitens en de andere doelloze spelers niet.

---

(Voorheen) – Van Voorbijgaande Aard heeft nu winnende, dus betere mensen bij zich, United staan ze bij hem en de VVA sport crew, United voor het boodschappen bord met allerhande tips voor snacks, versnaperingen, vliegvakantie tripjes, wedde schappen en krediet aankopen (na de wedde schapjes).

...

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Inderdaad, nu goed volk bij de microfoon, speler van de partij, talent, man in vorm, numero 61, in belangstelling van velen met geld op de bank voor aankopen en routinier coach 24 pønd, met 5 maand op de teller de langst zittende coach van deze club in 7 magere jaren.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Wat ging er door jullie heen toen City spits die laat gegeven loonschop naast en over trapte?

Coach 24 – Ik was heel blij. Wij dwongen dit van begin af aan af, si, keeper keek naar bal, naar speler, wees naast en over en stak omhoog duim met woeste blik, ik zag zijn lippen iets fluisteren, eh no.

Speler 61 – Hij zegt meestal 'Ik ga je vrouw verleiden en van je laten scheiden als je niet mist', soms werkt dat vooral als ze net vader zijn... dan dat horen, terwijl de United fans allerhande misdaden opsommen gepleegd door de lui die jou hebben gecontracteerd. Zo'n cordon advocaten houdt niet alle geluiden tegen. Heb je sterkere schoenen deals nodig dan die van Adidoremidas. Sowieso mis ik door die killer blik tijdens de training al regelmatig mijn oefen loonschoppen, die man is levend al doodeng. Blij dat ie maar een keeper is en niet mijn pa of zo

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Na een wedstrijd al 3 punten, bij de allerbesten in de surplus liga, mogelijk meedoen met het InterSmægmååns kampioenen toernooi, tevens een benadering van jullie vorige succes jaar 2024, waarin jullie bij de eerste drie wedstrijden maar liefst 7 vette punten behaalden. 

Coach 24 – En dat hier, si, met die van jongs af aangeleerde haat ten opzichte van City aandeelhouders en sponsoren, dat is goed voor de onze, no, eeh, wij kunnen top zijn met helft minder marchandage met centjes, vastgoed en zo  Als City straks moet boeten wij met terugwerkende kracht komen in aanmerking Internationasl Smægmååns voetbal in 2021, 2022, we meedoen aan nieuwe loting en alles anders doen. Si, si.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – Ik denk niet dat het zo werkt. Volgende week de eerste thuis wedstrijd tegen promovendus FC Behedgefund Orinoco Joepie, verwacht je dat je op dit grote succes kunt voortbouwen. 

24 – Hedgefund Noco Jopie, tricky tegenstander voor ons, club vorig jaar in de Okobolodoca Cup in grote problemen gebracht door deze dappre krijgers, en zij alle oké spelers behouden met oké hoog contract salaris en veel spelers ingekocht voor op vijf na hoogste transfer gelden, wij op 6.

61 – Let wel niks uit alles in! Typisch hedgefund, gaan hoge ogen gooien, ze hebben mij hebben vanmiddag op tv ook gescout en na mijn schitterende goal meteen mijn zaakwaarnemer benaderd met formidabele som.

Van Voorbijgaande Aard – En?

61 – Ik zit hier goed bij United, club leiding heeft veel vertrouwen in mij, rotsvast, De aandeelhouders, sponsoren genieten van mijn immer hoge spel niveau en scorend vermogen, het aanbod is maar een te nemen optie, hoor, hoor. 

---

(Voorheen) – Tot zover de veld reportage. 61 zullen ze na zo'n wedstrijd toch niet laten gaan?

Bennie Pijnstekers – Ja wel, ik ken zijn zaakwaarnemer, die heeft ook zo zijn buitenissige luxe behoeften, een 61 transfer levert veel meer op dan geen transfer, al betalen ze maar 34.

Harry van Draaijomjeoren – Zo is het prof voetbal heden ten dage, voortdurend fluctuerend tussen waardeloos en verontwaardiging. Dit soort spelers komen daar op af, als muskieten op de pers. 

(Voorheen) – Huh watte. We gaan nog 15 minuten reclameren en zijn dan terug met de topper in de Vape suikergoed divisie tussen FV Brandstoftank en Chocolademuntgeld bank, een clash tussen twee degradatie kandidaten waarvan er een daar vorig ook al vroegtijdig in slaagde namelijk in de Mobomobo Super Eerste Competitie, de chocomunt club kende eens betere tijden. Tot zo, na de boodschappen,  schermplakkers. DJ Poptop start de enerverende eindtune op voor Penny, ons en u, dank voor u focus, hier is de voetbal classic Wuthering Hights van Kate Bush

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-4lXLM34g

The National Press Club’s 27th annual members photography exhibit is now live in the Club’s main lobby in downtown Washington, D.C. through the end of September. This year’s exhibit is the largest ever, with 237 images submitted by 55 NPC members, the fifth year in a row with 50 or more participants.

The show is on display in the Club’s main lobby at 529 14th Street NW (at F Street NW) on the 13th floor. An exhibit catalog tells about each contributor and photo, with the images grouped together by photographer on the Flickr photo site.

News photography is the core of the exhibit, with images of happenings from the streets of D.C., other American cities and towns, and throughout the world. Participants also contributed street, sports, wildlife, and landscape images, and — continuing a trend from the past few years — art photography, in some cases mixed with advocacy.

The exhibit’s theme of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” focused on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which brought in 175 images, nearly three-quarters of the total. As one might expect for an organization of media professionals and communicators, many images displayed visuals of the First Amendment in practice.

This is the 11th annual show organized by TechNewsLit’s CEO Alan Kotok, photography chair at NPC, who also has a set of images on display.

Copyright © Technology News and Literature. All rights reserved.

Inbetweeners Part 10- Desecrated Temple

The Desecrated Temple was one of the first “red hue” rooms the players entered. If you recall, the color around a door indicated its threat level. Green was safe, and the more red it became the more danger it posed. Kind of funny i chose that since I'm color blind, but it worked for the narrative. The Desecrated Temple could be accessed through the Master's Door in the Haunted Dining Room. The Haunted Dining Room was a green door, it did have several hostile skeletons behind it but I considered them to be a low enough threat level not to warrant any red in that room. The players later burned the manor down where the Haunted Dining Room was, so I had the doors, still charred, remain in the rubble.

The players entered the Desecrated Temple at the end of a session, which was perfect because they got a teaser and it gave me two weeks to set up the encounter more thoroughly. Essentially, they encounter a temple of Torm that has been ransacked. Nine members of the temple, followers of Torm, some acolytes, but two full blown paladins, had been crucified upside down, and ritualistically tortured and murdered with abyssal symbols carved into their bodies. The nine crucified figures represented the Nine Hells, and they were part of a ritual that allowed a portal to be open. A massive firey pillar rises up from undearneath the temple and goes up through the ceiling. An Osyluth (Bone Devil) is responsible for the mayhem, and tending to the portal when the players arrive. They were low level in this encounter so an Osyluth was a pretty dangerous boss fight. I had several imps in the background but they did not take part in the fight itself. After three rounds of fighting, two knights and a priest, all with a blessing of Torm giving them +2d6 radiant damage and +1 ac arrived. Narratively, they were waiting and preparing to retake the Temple, but when they heard battle inside they rushed in to help. In reality, I needed to balance the encounter so that the low level players had a better chance of success.

When the Osyluth fell below 50 hitpoints, I had 4 Bearded Devils show up to cover its retreat. It returned into the pillar of fire, presumably to go wreak havoc elsewhere. When the players investigated, they discovered that this was revenge for followers of Torm slaying some followers of Zariel that were actively recruiting souls on the material plane for the Blood War. The Osyluth was essentially like a recruitment officer, and was sending a message for Torm to back off. Two of the crucified figures, an acolyte and a cleric, where still alive... barely, and were able to give more information when healed. The players brought back one of the knights with them when they returned to the grey room. Here are my notes from those two sessions:

8/4/2024- Uzo, Thog and Cervi liberated a temple of Torm from a Devilish incursion, scaring a bone devil back to the hells and defeating 4 bearded devils with the help of a priest and two holy knights. They saved two of the nine crucified figures but did not speak with them. The priest sent the knight Orion with them to meet their “patron”. The Interloper lied, saying he was a god who supported Torm and then absorbed Orion to “study” him. The group has a holy relic that will let them access the purple door. Uzo was granted a Maul of Swiftness that adds both strength and dex to attack and damage. Cervi has a keen scimitar that deals double damage but is destroyed on a natural 1. Thog got Dolly back, discovering that she cannot in fact die but instead returns to the gray room.

8/14/2024- Uzo, Cervi and Rotlog treated with the followers of Torm in their temple through the purple door. They brought Triston, a powerful paladin, through the rooms sparing him of the Interlopers studies to the temple that was ransacked. They then had Orion’s body returned but it was defiled and without a soul, so the interloper came up with a ruse to make it look like a bone devil took his soul and it seemed to work. They ended the session in the nursery of a wealthy cloud giant child with a wyrmling silver dragon pet in the middle of the night.

So the players chose to give Orion over to the Interloper in return for goodies. A bit of chaotic neutral energy. They saved the temple and healed two of the surviving members, but then gave over Orion to a Far Realm entity for dissection. They still wanted to maintain a positive relationship with the followers of Torm, so they opted to frame the Osyluth for killing Orion and consuming his soul. It wasn't a hard sell, especially after the events of the temple. I think they defiled the corpse with abyssal symbols and spread infernal energy/material on it. This encounter served as an important inflection point. It started to give the campaign a bit more narrative structure than just a cross-planar dungeon crawl. The players now had a connection to the Temple of Torm, and an alternate force to get quests from other than the Interloper. Second, it gave them a bit of the conflict going on with Zariel, who they had direct access to through a door in the Grey Room.

Zariel herself is not necessarily an antagonist. She believes what she is doing is right, that the recruitment of souls on the material plane is a necessary evil to annihilate the demon threat. Unchecked, those demons would consume far more souls and terrorize far greater a number of people, so it was a bit of a utilitarian argument, vs the followers of Torm who definitely followed a more Kantian moral framework. Interestingly, some of the players gravitated more towards Torm, like Cervi and later Domilia when she joined the campaign, whereas some of the players gravitated towards Zariel, like Uzo the hobgoblin samurai. So you had the group playing both sides of a conflict, which makes perfect sense considering they are literally “inbetween” reality. This leads into my next post, where I will dive in to the Shadow of Torm. Stay tuned.

⚓️ Poesie

Rettungsschwimmer gruppieren sich zu einem

Abschlussfoto,

das Meer flutet dem auflandigen Wind davon,

über der Werft scheint noch so gerade die August-Sonne,

Segelboote, die auf Wellen schaukeln,

werden eingetaucht in warmes Sonnenlicht.

Die Töne der Badegäste wechseln

ins Bayerische,

während auf dem Weg zur Steilküste schon dichtes

Laub unter den Bäumen liegt.

Die Tage werden kürzer.

Im Park sind die Worte der letzten Sommerlesung verklungen.

So wie bald die Rettungstürme verschlossen werden, die Sommer-

ferien zu Ende gehen und das Jahr in die kühle Jahreszeit kippt.

🌊 Strandgut

Ich muss meine kleinen Wurzeln hier pflegen und stillstehen.

schreibt Rainer Maria Rilke 1907 in einem Brief an eine Freundin. Für einen Dichter, der weitgereist und scheinbar nirgendwo so richtig beheimatet war, ist es eine überraschende Bemerkung, die mich zum Nachdenken anregt.

Wo sind meine Wurzeln? Vor meinen Augen entsteht das Bild eines Baumes mit dicken, fest im Boden verankerten Wurzeln – solchen, die Heimat bedeuten. Die verbunden sind mit Gerüchen von Herbstlaub, endlosen Wiesen und Feldern, Wäldern, die vergangene Zeiten heraufbeschwören, und auf deren Pfaden die Hufe edler Pferde ertönen.

Doch da sind auch andere Gewächse, deren Wurzeln sich locker im sandigen Grund verhaften; scheinen sie auch zunächst einfach herauszuziehen, zeigt sich, dass sie viel fester verfangen sind als zunächst geglaubt. Es sind Wurzeln an Orten, die das Herz berührt haben, Orte, die uns lieb geworden sind, uns geprägt haben und in uns verhaftet bleiben.

Es lohnt sich, auch die kleinen Wurzeln zu pflegen und still zu stehen, um ihnen die Beachtung zu schenken, die ihnen gebührt.

📖 gelesen – gesehen – gehört

#gelesen 

Wer hier mitliest, weiß, dass ich immer wieder mit “meinem“ Rilke kämpfe. Mal bin ich fasziniert, mal finde ich ihn so befremdlich und fast durcheinander, dass ich nicht mehr weiterlesen mag. Jetzt gerade hadere ich mit dem Bändchen “Sommer“. Vielleicht liegt es daran, dass Rilke selbst sagt:

“Der Sommer war ja nie und nirgends meine Hoch-Zeit. Immer und überall galt es, ihn zu überstehen.”

Aber dann hat es mich wieder so gefangen genommen, und ich musste sogar einige Male lachen, z.B. wenn er von seinen Erfahrungen auf Capri schreibt: “Und nun Capri. Ach ja. So recht zuzulernen hab ich da nichts. … Nein, was die Menschen hier aus einer schönen Insel gemacht haben, ist nah am Abscheulichen.”, schreibt er 1906 in einem Brief.

Und so ist es doch ganz faszinierend, dass der Vielgereiste so über Orte lästert oder gar den berühmten Baedeker, der etwa für Venedig ganz unbrauchbar sei, und am Ende hat er mich mit seiner Wortgewandtheit und Poesie doch wieder ganz für sich begeistern und einnehmen können.

#gesehen 

12 heißt: Ich liebe dich 

Der Film, der in der ARD Mediathek dieser Tage zu sehen ist, erzählt die Geschichte zweier Menschen, die sich über ideologische Grenzen hinweg ineinander verliebt haben.

“1985 wird Bettina wegen verbotener Westkontakte verhaftet und dem Stasi-Offizier Jan vorgeführt. In endlosen Verhören wird sie von dem jungen Jan, der ehrgeizig an seiner Karriere beim Ministerium für Staatssicherheit arbeitet, vernommen. Ein halbes Jahr lang sehen sie sich in den Verhören fast täglich und es geschieht in dieser Zeit das Unfassbare: Sie verlieben sich ineinander. Ihre Gefühle jedoch dürfen sie nicht zeigen, sondern müssen sie versteckt halten.”

Großartig gespielt von Claudia Michelsen und David Striesow. 

Grundlage ist das Buch von Regina Kaiser und Uwe Karlstedt: „Zwölf heißt „Ich liebe dich‘.“ Der Stasi-Offizier und die Dissidentin. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2003, 298 Seiten, das auf persönlichen Erfahrungen beruht.

#gehört

Mhairi McFarlane: Du hast mir gerade noch gefehlt 

Ein Pub-Quiz-Abend und ein Roadtrip nach Edinburgh haben ungeahnte Folgen. Das Buch ist humorvoll, gleichzeitig hat mich berührt, wie die Autorin die Trauer über den Tod einer Freundin beschreibt.

☕️ Zum Schluss

Wenn ich dann eine stille Stube, bei großen, herbstlichen Laubbäumen, nahe am Meer, allein und gesund und in Ruhe gelassen, bewohnte (und in Kopenhagen und des Sundes Nähe könnte glücklichsten Falles alles das gefunden sein), so könnte sich vieles verändern in meinem Leben, manches Heil könnte da zur Welt gebracht werden.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Sommer.

It is Monday morning. Very early. When I woke up I was thinking back to a time before cell phones existed. I suppose that the amount of people who have had that experience is diminishing. There are likely some people out there who can't get one, or who are die hard holdouts and won't get one ever. A very large amount of society has been effected by them though. Shit changed when cell phones started being used for more than talking.

So what?

I don't know so what or where to go with that, or why I even typed it really. I'm half awake and typing before the caffeine kicks in. Cell phones were not what I was thinking about anyway. What got me thinking of the time before cell phones was clock radios, actually.

I had one beside my bed since digital was a new thing. About a year ago the one I had just stopped working. Something with the power cord. Sometimes it would stay on for days, and other times it would just randomly shut off until I wiggled the cord. Then it would come back on. I did that a few times before I just gave up and unplugged it. It sat there collecting dust for awhile before I threw it out.

Then I went without one beside the bed for maybe a year or so. I wear a watch that illuminates when I turn my wrist. Phone is beside the bed charging. There is little need for a clock beside the bed. Recently I got a new one though. It has big yellow numbers instead of red. Has a dimmer dial, and an alarm to set that I will never use. Has no radio though.

I remember when the latest technology was a digital clock radio. You could set it to wake you up with a radio station playing. It was actually a pretty nice way to wake up. Not very nice though if for some reason it was set to full volume static. That could cause you to wake up the same as if someone had started a chainsaw right next to your head.

There was a radio station that we could tune into. Oh man, even that is a weird thing to say now. Tune into. You had to be close to the radio station to be able to hear it clearly. So? So now you can listen to almost any radio station on the planet with the computer in the palm of your hand.

The station I used to tune into for my clock radio alarm was an easy listening station. It was not just soft rock or classical or anything like that. It was all elevator music 24/7. Popular songs of the time slowed down and had no vocals or drums or anything. Soothing. Smooth. It was great for the anxious child that I was. Now that I'm thinking about that radio station it reminds me of the other amazing feature of the clock radio... sleep mode. I would also go to sleep with that station playing. It would shut itself off in twenty minutes, or whatever.

And now I find myself thinking of my father and my older brother. My father worked in the factory I ended up working in for 20 years. After I dropped out of high school he hired me, and was my supervisor there.

He also had a woodworking shop in the garage at home, and he used to build things like shelves, workbenches and bookcases for employees to use in the factory. My brother and I used to help with delivering those things if they were a reasonable size for a child to lift and move. We would go at night when there was no one there. It was me holding the doors and them doing the lifting and moving. Funny to think that I was going to the factory for many years before I started working there. It was pretty exciting to go there at night when I was a kid.

One night came to mind. A snapshot really. A big old 80's sedan with a little trailer attached to be back of it. A cabinet of some kind secured in the trailer with a rope. Drifting down a narrow highway in the dark. A father with his two young sons. My brother in the passenger seat in the front. Me in the back. Our three faces lit up by the dim glow of the dashboard lighting. A guess at how old we were would be maybe 12 and 11. Maybe younger. My father would have been about 20 years younger than I am now. That elevator music radio station was playing. It came time for a break between songs, and it had a little tune for the call letters. C-H-A-Y, Huronia's welcome sound. (seeee-eeeee aayyych ayyyy whyyyyy... huuuuroniahhhhss welllcommm sound). My brother and father sang it out obnoxiously loudly and out of tune when the radio played it, and then we all laughed.

I have to get ready for my stupid job. Fuck Monday.

At least a long weekend is coming, and vacation is now only a month away.

Huron

Ontario

Michigan

Erie

Superior

---

Superior

Huron

America

Michigan

Erie

I am, definitely, the problem.

While I’m taking responsibility, in all fairness, some of this life stuff was messed up before I got here.

Growing up in a Baptist two parent household with alcohol abuse and domestic violence as an Aries teen mom…

Come’on, I don’t think anyone would be surprised that my life resembles a bull, well no, a ram…tiptoeing through a China shop.

But that’s not the purpose of this post.

The only purpose of this first post is to click ‘Publish’.

No overthinking. No asking AI where to start, how to start or what to say. No freaking out over Anonymous vs Public.

Just showing grace to the few words allowed to the front of the line after, seemingly, being on punishment for so long.

Just carving out a little space for myself.

Not a full “Ahem!,” just a slight clearing of the throat if you will.

I miss writing. I miss helping others. I miss sharing my world. I miss expressing how I see it.

Here’s where I get out of my own way.

Here’s where I allow something new to take shape.

Here’s where I listen and trust what I hear.

Thank you, God, for another chance.