On Consistencies

For they surely cannot be called anomalies.
Atrocities. Yes. We can most certainly call them that.

There is a little tale that has came to light in the last six months. It’s not topical: most of the perpetrators and their victims are doubtless dead, more of the latter than the former, I suspect. But it sheds light on a different facet of the Greatest Generation– or at least the stiff-upper-lipped British version thereof – light which perhaps they would rather have kept concealed beneath a bushel. A pen which, all things considered, perhaps they would prefer not to have mislaid. For it concerns their conduct in that most justifiable of all wars – that perpetual thorn in the pacifist’s side. Oh not all of them of course. Just those few perennially rotten apples again. Strange how they do get about.

This little tale is probably not exceptional – many similar such may still lie like kittens in a creek, strangled and drowned at birth.

(For some reason as a teenager, the Katyn Forest massacres became so inextricably entangled in my mind with the phrase “Into the Woods” that for years afterwards I assumed that the Sondheim musical – although it predated by three whole years Gorbachev’s acknowledgement and apology for Stalin’s atrocities – was about the wholesale slaughter of Polish army officers. Except it wasn’t just Stalin’s atrocity, was it.)

Let’s pause for the high-kicking, all-singing, all-dancing chorus number now . . .

“It wasn’t their fault,
They weren’t to blame
They were all so young
It’s a crying shame!
It was just a job,
They had bills to pay
‘Twas the man at the top
At the end of the day.”

No? And I had my spangly costume all ready to go. It had medals on.

Perhaps you’d like to know what I’m talking about.

Last December, after 60 years of secrecy, it emerged that from 1945 until at least 1947 the British ran torture centres and camps in London, Bad Nenndorf and Güttersloh (this last was opened after the closure of Bad Nenndorf). As of last December, the Foreign Office was still refusing to release photographic evidence: this became available in April.

Follow the links. Read the articles carefully: you will see that the list of victims includes Holocaust survivors, German leftists – that political constituency so beloved by Hitler – and communists. Some were there because of clerical errors, other because they knew too much about Bad Nenndorf to be released. But none of them – whatever their deeds, whatever their state of innocence or guilt – should have been there because places like these should not exist. (And I’d be sceptical, moreover, of claims that these three institutions were the only ones of their kind. After all at the time the British were presiding over a Glorious Empire Upon Which the Sun Never Set – and as we all know, those take some special handling).

Do you feel a sense of déjà vu coming on? And perhaps again?

Good. Because these are not anomalies: they are consistencies. They are not bad apples, they are business as usual. They are what militaries do.

A Landfall in Barbados

The 20ft. launch drifted for a long time.
Aimlessly, yes, but not without a destination, for the pull of those currents was strong.

It started from Praia, Cape Verde, bound for the Canary Islands.
There were about fifty people aboard, mostly from Senegal, Gambia and Guinea Bissau.
They had paid for their passage.
Probably they had been hoping to find work so that they could send money back to those they loved.
For a little while the launch had run under its own power.
For a little while after that, it had been towed by another boat.
But then a decision was evidently reached and it was cut to drift. (Possibly because of a storm? Possibly because the whole thing had just become an inconvenient and costly nuisance? Who knows.) The evidence for that ‘evidently’ is a towing cable cut by a machete.

One can imagine the sound as the launch suddenly loses momentum, hunkers down in the water.
Have you ever been on a boat when the engine cuts out suddenly?
Yes? Then – if you screen the engine thrum from your memory – you know what that part felt like. You need not imagine.
At that time, it is possible that everyone on board was still alive.
One can imagine the sound of realisation.

By the end of January, no-one on board remained alive.
In late April it was sighted by a fishing boat in Barbados.
In late May, it hit the U.K. news.

Many of those who died are still to be identified. One, who left behind a note, was named Diaw Sounkar Diemi. Another, with family in Portugal, was named Bouba Cisse.

These fifty lives are only a small fraction of the thousand or so lives that have been lost so far on this particular clandestine migration route. They are an even smaller fraction – vanishingly small – of the 200 million of us who are first-generation emigrants, who do not live in the nation state where we happened, by random chance, to be born. And in terms of what we might consider the greater diaspora – that loose network of ancestors, descendants, friends, family, and acquaintances? Well that diaspora may even comprise the majority of the world’s population, in which case these fifty lives are a miniscule, insignificant fraction indeed.

But still far too large. Still far too many. Because their lives mattered every bit as much to them and those who knew them, as yours or mine to us and those who know us.

Open the borders.
The world was never meant to be a prison.

So you want to stop smoking?

If you want to stop smoking, say that you are going to stop smoking.

Better yet: say that you have stopped smoking. That you have quit smoking and you are not going to smoke ever again. Not at the pub on a Friday night with your mates after a few beers. Not to calm your nerves before that big presentation that you are just scared shitless about delivering. Not when the kids have been driving you up the wall all day until you just want to scream the house down or worse.

(Actually, depending on your disposition, it may not be best to say that you’re not ever going to smoke again. You might be better off to say “I am not going to smoke – no matter what happens – and tomorrow, I’m going to make the same commitment.” Which form of commitment is best for you – that grand sweeping pronouncement or that series of small but doggedly constant steps – is not a matter of relative strength or weakness of will. It is a matter of self-awareness, most likely borne of trial and error. And which method is best (or indeed possible) may vary from one commitment to another. Anyway, let’s face it. Sometimes the differences may be more apparent than real. Just because you opt for that grand sweeping pronouncement option doesn’t mean you don’t end up repeating it to yourself every day)

But say it. Say it inside your head if that’s the only place you can. That’s certainly better than not saying it at all.

Usually though, if you want to stop smoking, it’s best to say so in front of other people – in particular, in front of people whom one knows and whose good opinion one values. And there at least a couple of reasons for that.

One is that your friends who smoke might refrain from offering you a ciggy at the pub on Friday night after you’re two sheets gone to the wind. If they’re really good friends, they might even refrain from smoking themselves while you’re around, fending off those nicotine cravings until they’ve seen you safely ciggyless to your front door after your night on the razzle. They do this because they want to see you become the person whom you want to be. They know what kind of person you want to become because you have told them clearly and unequivocably.

Another reason is that – even two sheets to the wind on a Friday night – your word might just hold you even when you don’t feel particularly like being held. Whether it’s damnable pride, not wanting to look a fool, not wanting to be someone who says one thing and does its opposite – whatever it is -- it might suffice to endure that moment of temptation until once again you want to stop smoking. Yes, it probably is a stopgap measure. Perhaps you could not sustain it forever, but sometimes a moment is enough. In the end, it is a rare motive that is not mixed.

We all know this and we all know that it applies to many things besides quitting smoking. For example, when we publicly promise ‘til death do us part’ (whether within the context of a marriage, a civil partnership, or a grand and glorious picnic festivity) we are not only calling on those who witness to help us keep that promise but also adding the weight of our word to the scales. We do this in order that, at some future point, if we might momentarily weigh our choices differently, our words will be among the things we weigh.

Publicly stating who we intend to be, even under an alias, is one of the most powerful things that we can do to make ourselves who we want to be, to keep ourselves honest. It is no failsafe (after all, what is?) but it is among the most valuable tools at our disposal.

Why is this knowledge – in so many other circumstances so deeply engrained – so often forgotten when it comes to our moral responsibilities in extremis?

Well, it’s a rare motive that isn’t mixed.

Part of it is an honest desire to avoid hubris. After all, so very many failed to hide fugitives, so many failed to resist, so many didn’t rock the boat, so many obeyed the orders, participated in atrocity. So many decided not to know. Why should we assume we shall choose better in their place? And why should we assume we shall choose better than those who are in extremis even now?

Another part of it, I suspect, is that such situations appears more suited to the ‘grand sweeping pronouncement’ than the ‘series of small but doggedly constant steps.’ That is perhaps because, in extremis, the choices most salient to our memories are those which are penultimate: the small and dogged steps that often precede them seem less central. We remember Sophie Scholl first and foremost for her courage at her trial and execution, not so much for her careful purchases of stamps and envelopes, never too many from a single shop. Yet these were inextricably linked.

Furthermore, just as we wish to avoid hubris by thinking we should do better in their place, so too we do not wish to compare ourselves with our heroes. We are not perfect. We are not blameless. We have derived material benefit from the oppression of others. We are among those culpable. How then shall we promise to match the peerless courage, the unfaltering and knowing steps of those who have resisted? Is this not the very height of arrogance? By what right do we, complicit and compromised as we doubtless are, even aspire to that?

We forget that Sophie Scholl began her long journey into resistance as an (albeit when young and only briefly) enthusiastic member of the HitlerMädchen.

Here is one more ingredient in this mixed motive.

By saying “we do not know what we should do – perhaps we should do no better, who are we to judge?” we hedge our bets. We ensure that even if we do refuse the fugitive shelter, that even if we do follow the orders, that even if we do diligently maintain that knowing unknowingness, that at least we shall not be hypocrites. At least we shall not be arrogant. At least we shall not stand accused of false pride. We shall salvage something of our character. After all, we made no promises. Thus we prepare our soft landing, thus we let ourselves down gently.

But if things come to that pretty pass and we fail, will hubris and arrogance really be chief among our regrets?

If there is someone that you want to become, lay claim to that.

If there is something you want to do, or want not to do, say so.

Promise it before people whose good opinion matters to you, whom you would hate to disappoint, whom you would hate to have think worse of you. Let your words stand among the things to be weighed: let them help you become that which you desire to be. Perhaps they shall be a tipping point: avail yourself of them.

For if they do not suffice, it will in any case become abundantly clear that there are failings far greater than hypocrisy.

On a quiet day

Here, so close to the roar of the big machine it is sometimes difficult to hear.

But you might have sensed it in Piazza san Maggiore on May Day, there by the inscription for communists who resisted. Especially on this May Day past, when media monopolists are not quite so invincible after all.

Echoes sometimes travel across water. Stand on the shore today. Cup your hand to your ear like a seashell. Beyond the gull-cry, perhaps you will hear rumour of people done with shadows.

It was there in 1975, every step of that long road from Te Hapua to Wellington.

It is in France. Certainly Pierre Labeyrie would recognise that sound.

And albeit flawed and incomplete in its expression (let alone the execution), it is here too.

Another world is possible
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Diaspora Days

An acquaintance remembers people from her village selling their blood.

Another said -- a while ago -- that she's thinking of joining the police because it's been really hard finding work here. Her parents aren't keen though -- her brother did survive what a different set of police did to him in another time and place, but not unscathed. And there would be other complications too. I don't think she did join in the end and of that I'm glad.

A friend told of coming out from nightclubs rolling drunk as a teenager and stepping over the bodies of people sleeping in the street and his disgust for what he was then.

Someone I used to work with many years ago now -- far older than me -- recalled growing up amid the rubble of bombed out buildings.

Sitting in a pub chatting with an ex-colleague who has recently returned from Haj. "Can you believe the idiot?" she asks "The boss calls me into his office and says 'Oh I hope you aren't going to go all religious now."

On the way to go union organising, a friend and I compare notes about where we grew up. Two smoggy cities, one big, one little. Shared nostalgia for imagined countries irrevocably lost. If it makes it through June and July, hers is probably safe until September: after all from a marketing point of view, August is not a good month for introducing new product.

Talking about my all-too-brief stint backpacking (I'm happiest when travelling without purpose but with intent) -- and the way that it is possible to just submerge oneself into that transient society of hostelling Antipodeans (and at the same time also peculiar because they are on their big OE before they go back 'home' and their home is no longer yours) and to so quickly get used to drifting from place to place with what you have on your back (admittedly one of those things that you have on your back being an ATM card). "'Yes." he said "One does get used to things being different surprisingly quickly." But the person I'm sharing coffee with is remembering Kosovo.

A beloved friend -- more than a friend in fact, one of those rare people, fiercely brave, that you don't have to trust because you know. It's not that you know what she'll do exactly, but whatever she does is true. I haven't seen her for too long now. It's prohibitively difficult for me to get a visa to go and see her, even if I had the wherewithal. And if it's difficult for me, how much more so for her?

Like him, his parents were communists. He grew up with the knowledge that he should never discuss politics with his school friends.

It's not that we always left because we wanted to. Far from it. But it's true that if we had all stayed put, we'd never have met.

Walking by Moonlight

Since I reached adulthood, night-time has always been my time. The time when - for better or worse - the city belongs to me. Whatever city I've happened to be living in.

It's rare for a woman to feel that kind of freedom. So I've been trying to puzzle out how I came to be that anomalous. And what that anomaly means and what it doesn't mean.

"Don't you walk home from there by yourself."
"If you're staying late, make sure you call for a cab."
"Do you really think you should go there alone?"
"Stick to the main paths if you go walking in that park by yourself, there's too many places where someone could grab you"
"You're brave, setting off by yourself like that! Aren't you scared of what might happen to you?"
"What do you think you're doing, letting her walk home in the dark by herself. You should have gone and picked her up."
"It's best not to go if you're not sure. Better safe than sorry."
"Will you be alright, going off by yourself like that?"
"It's her own fault, what did she think she was doing walking around on the streets at two in the morning?"
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

I've never been on a `Take Back the Night' March. I don't need to: I took back the night when I was 18 and I've been taking it back ever since. Truth and falsehood, all in the same sentence.

When I was 18, I moved into my first flat - a four person, two-bedroom flat in a somewhat dodgy neighbourhood, with very dodgy plumbing, dodgy perpetual scaffolding and a dodgy landlord who gave new meaning to the word. I loved my life there. It was full of complications, tensions, drama, angst, moral dilemmas, intrigues and decadent parties (which in due course inevitably led to complications, tensions, drama angst, moral dilemmas - etc). I remember it as a time of exhilarating freedom: that year Spring held such promise. The sun was never warmer.

And I'll always be grateful to that flat because it taught me about the impossibility of following the rules about sensible women and freedom of movement.

Sensible women aren't supposed to walk around alone at night. If they have to walk somewhere, they arrange to go with friends, or catch a taxi, or drive, or get picked up. If they can't do that, they curtail their lives. They don't walk into town to meet a friend for coffee, or stay late to study at the library, or work late at the lab because they're so absorbed in what they're doing, or stay as late as they want to at that party, or pop down to the late night store to pick up fresh milk for the morning, since they realised they used the last of it in their coffee. They prune their lives to stay within the borders. Their every move is planned. They follow advice like this that

"The best advice about walking around late at night for females is don't bother - unless you are accompanied by friends."

And - and this is the tricky bit - they are supposed to act as though this curtailment of their freedom was acceptable. As though it did not cause them pain or diminishment.

My flat was a 20 minute walk from the town centre and about an hour by foot to the university. In Christchurch it's dark by 5:30 in winter. I had lectures that didn't end until then. And I had other things to do - pupils to be tutored, friends to hang out with, meetings to attend, parties to go to. And I had no money for taxis. I didn't want to prune my life of the things that made it precious to me. So I didn't.

Instead, I stopped being a sensible woman and slowly, tentatively -- and yes, fearfully - started getting to know the city by moonlight.

I learned which places stayed open late.
I discovered that you can see better under amber streetlights than white streetlights.
I learned how to look into shadows, how to hear what was going on around me.
I learned to combine attentiveness and reflection - to be simultaneously alert and lost in my own night-dream.
I found that less people are out walking on cold crisp nights when your breath hangs in the air.
I listened to the hum of the pylons out near the bypass and the scuffle of rabbits at its base.
I smelt the cold mist rising off the river, wrapping itself about me
I heard the wind in the pines in the park, made louder by darkness
I saw the moon riding the clouds.
I walked to the beginning of the Port Hills and smelled fresh roses by night.
I stopped to greet cats standing sentry on gateposts

And what began as simple defiance borne of necessity slowly became one of the richest pleasures of my life.

Near misses? Lucky escapes? Yes. A couple. Someone grabbed me in Cathedral Square once. But he was drunk. I wasn't. And there were still a fair number of people around. Much more frightening was the morning I opened the paper to find that someone had been sexually attacked in a park about twenty minutes after I'd walked that same route. But I'm one of those who believes the factoid that women are more likely to be assaulted by someone they know than by a stranger.

Sounds all rosy doesn't it? Just being strong and feisty and independent is obviously the solution! Women just need to follow my glorious example (shakes head and gets off high horse)

Alas, my beloved Samuel R. Delany pointed out the catch in his Tales of Neveryon (sadly missing its umlaut). It's one I'd suspected, though I'd not ever managed to articulate it until he did it for me.

"`Norema,' Madame Keyne said, when they had seated themselves behind the frayed drapery of a particularly glum red and black weave (and before they had let themselves become too annoyed that, after having been seated for five whole minutes, the waiter, who was joking with three men in the front, had not yet served them), `something intrigues me - if you'll allow me to harp on a subject. Now you hail from the Ulvayns. There, or so the stories that come to Kolhari would have it, we hear of nothing except the women who captain those fishing boats like men. We doubtless idealize your freedom, here in the midst of civilization's repressive toils. Nevertheless, I know that were we sitting outside, and some man did importune us, you would not be that bothered . . .?'
`Nor,' said Norema, `am I particularly annoyed by sitting here in our alcove.' Then she pulled her hands back into her lap and her serious expression for a moment became a frown. `I would be annoyed by the bothersome men; and I could ignore the simply trivial ones - which I suspect would be most of those that actually approached us, Madame Keyne.'
`But for you to ignore, for you to not be bothered, there must be one of two explanations. And, my dear, I am not sure which of them applies. Either you are so content, so superior to me as a woman, so sure of yourself - thanks to your far better upbringing in a far better land than this - that you truly are above such annoyances, such bothers: which means that art, economics, philosophy, and adventures are not in the least closed to you, but are things you can explore from behind the drapes of our alcove just as easily as you might explore them out in the sun and air. But the other explanation is this: to avoid being bothered, to avoid being annoyed, you have shut down one whole section of your mind, that most sensitive section, the section that responds to even the faintest ugliness precisely because it is what also responds to the faintest nuance of sensible or logical beauty - you must shut it down tight, board it up, and hide the key. And Norema, if this is what we must do to ourselves to "enjoy" our seat in the sun, then we sit in the shadow not as explorers after art or adventure, but as self-maimed cripples. For those store-chambers of the mind are not opened up and shut down so easily as all that - that is one of the things I have learned in fifty years."

Well, I'm not the first kind of woman.

I know about walking alone at night, through silent city streets, wandering out near the industrial estates where the rabbits are surprised to see anybody about, walking in despair through the dangerous parts of town until the numbness recedes a little, home from parties, under a full moon near the foot of the Port Hills, by the Huron River on a cold, clammy Spring night, past the `massage parlours' to Caffiends where coffee and friends await at 2a.m., through Hagley Park at midnight with a friend in full gothed-up glory assuring me with slightly nervous bravado that "We've nothing to worry about. The only people who walk through Hagley Park at night are people like us." I've seen Manchester's uneasy slumber, stumbled half-asleep to the station in Hyde to catch that pre-dawn bus so I can make my train.

Always - except for the third item on my little list (for in truth at those times I do not care) with that edge of fear. Sometimes slight, sometimes not so slight.

At night, the city belongs to me. There's truth in that. And I know about walking alone by moonlight in all kinds of places. But I don't know about walking alone and unafraid. And so Delany might well say that there are sections of my mind that I've boarded up tight and hidden the key. How else can you be enjoying a stroll by the river after dusk and simultaneously be staring into shadows?

And so, fifteen years on into my nocturnal peregrinations,

"I'm waiting for the night to fall
when everything is bearable
and there in the still
all that you feel is tranquillity."



Apologia


Tacky, tacky, tacky. That's what this excess of reposting old diaries is. My apologies. I'm still wrestling with the 'Instead of 'Let's Talk About Alex'' post, which has -- as I suspected it might after I spent that informative evening re-reading the cartoon diaries -- has inexorably become a 'goodbye' diary. To quote Gaiman once more, "Certain conclusions become inescapable." Despite my nature, I'm doing my best to keep from being vicious -- let's hope I don't completely fail, because although individuals are inescapably responsible for their actions, it is also true that (in the words of Dire Straits who surely stand falsely accused of being MOR) the dice were loaded from the start. Structure, like language, matters.

But I also have a different, giddier, excuse for this one. After 2 and 3/4 years of having no means to listen to music (except in that inadvertant 'it was on TMF' kind of way), I now have a CD player. Which means I can listen to Depeche Mode (which is the sort of appropos bit since I felt free to take Martin Gore's words in vain here). And Shriekback. And Sioushie and the Banshees . And Sisters of Mercy . And The The . All of whom -- if (as I strongly suspect) he has not yet got lying on the rack next to the Kiri Te Kanawa CDs -- my beloved honorary ancestor should promptly dispatch a descendant to the nearest decent second-hand CD shop with instructions to purchase. For make no mistake: these are among the Dunstables of our day, but unlike his, their ends are not those of Empire.

To which I shall add (with youthful arrogance) the remark that if one had read Delany, one would be unable to forget him. Therefore I surmise that one has not and therefore the descendent should also make a detour by the nearest decent bookstore. As should anyone else who hasn't read him yet.

A Shortish Story

On Tuesday, at dusk, the eagles flew from the Coroner's Court. Unfurling their wings of stone, they launched themselves into the deep blue beyond. Commuters, impatiently awaiting their buses, did not believe their eyes.

On Wednesday it was the turn of the women. One calmly led a lion, against whose back she had reclined for the past century, out over the railings onto the roof, coaxing it as one might a reluctant cat. They disappeared from sight, though not from memory.

Nearer to ground, a woman armed with a sword - who had sat peaceably enough above the Court's main entrance, suddenly dropped her sword to the ground beneath. It clanged. Positioning herself carefully, she leapt to earth, cushioning her fall by rolling as fluidly and proficiently as any martial arts expert. She reclaimed her weapon and bystanders remarked that, animated, her expression bore a feral cast entirely removed from the placid countenance she had worn in her years of stillness. Rising to her feet, she smiled, baring her teeth at passers-by. She strode purposefully and smoothly into the city's heart, her sword held low and dangerous against the drapery of her full long skirts.

The gargoyles disappeared on a bleak and rainy Thursday. Wolf-headed, ram-horned, gratuitously grotesque, they had spouted water from the roofs of rainy Manchester's churches and cathedrals through Blitz and Bombs, but now they were gone to ground.

How did I know all this? Passers-by brought me the news as swiftly and surely as any official briefing or bowing courtier. And with my own two unyielding eyes I had seen a bare-breasted woman lead a lion through Piccadilly Gardens at four in the morning. They took the Oldham road.

On Friday the angels took to the air as one. From monuments and spires they rose and those who heard their song fell silent and for ever after sought to call to mind the memory of their singing. I saw them, wheeling overhead, circling higher, their song ever more distant.

All that time, from Wednesday to Friday, I sat, considering and deliberating, for I am perhaps less inclined to act precipitately than was my flesh-and-blood namesake. For if my crown weighed heavy in life, so much more so has it been a burden in my years of thought and stillness since. And I, alas, am no lithe sword-maiden. Nor do lions follow at my command.

But on Saturday, I could wait no longer. Early in the morning, before the shops opened - though truth be told the city was emptier than usual these past few days - I rose to my feet and considered how best to descend from my high and stony seat. A matter that required some thought for my figure is matronly not maidenly. Gracelessly - without visible witnesses at least - I clambered down at last, biting back curses at my cumbersome clothes. Then, to cancel out the indignity of my descent, I stood straight and formal before that high throne from which I had watched the years pass by. I took off my crown and left it there on the empty seat.

Then - as I had always known I would, despite all of my hard considerations and deliberations - I turned my back on Manchester and took the road to the South.

Even stupefied and subdued as it was by recent events, the world I now walked through was louder and noisier than that which had been known to my fleshly self. The skies, for once were silent - no contrails criss-crossed the sky. For though the angels had circled ever upwards and their song was now unheard on earth's surface, what mortal pilot would risk such a collision?

Yet the great lorries continued in rumbling convoys unceasing, lest the cities starve, collapsing inwards on the weight of human need. The truckers pretended not to see me as I walked by the side of the road. Eventually, just South of Stoke and weary of the noise and fumes, I left the M6 for smaller, less frequented roads. Requiring neither food nor sleep, I walked for days, ceaselessly under rain and sun alike.

In a field just out of Oxford, I came across a group of soldiers. They had dug trenches with their stony hands, deep enough to hide themselves in. Unchallenged, they had torn down the barbed wire fences that had kept the sheep from straying and strung them along their battlements, all twisted and snarled. The shadows stood sharply on the ground. They sat together, some fossicking in kit bags, others cleaning bayonets. A cigarette dangled from the mouth of one man but it was unlit. They waited and watched, gas masks kept close to hand. A stout middle-aged woman - even stony of heart and face as me - posed little threat and offered little interest. And so I passed them by unhindered, disregarded.

In these strange days of flesh and stone, we act as though we cannot see each other, as though pretence might serve as a defence.

From Oxford I took the River Isis East to Abingdon and beyond. I followed it all the way into London, which like a large and greedy pike, has gobbled up all of the surrounding towns. Past Richmond, Hampton Court and Kew, past derelict Battersea Power Station. I came at last to Westminster Bridge. Pushing my way through the throngs of tourists, I did not pause to look at the Houses of Parliament or visit Westminster Abbey. I went on to Trafalgar Square, where Nelson no longer surveys the City from his column.

Where has he gone, I wonder? Seeking another kiss from his Hardy? Down to the sea?
I do not know. Nor do I wish to seek him out.

I came at last to Kensington Park, to the object of my long journey from the North. There, stretching out before me, I saw an amusement of Victorias, all assembled. A swelling sea of young idealised Victorias, old and stern Victorias, middle-aged Victorias like me, all of greater or lesser verisimilitude. All resplendent, all triumphal. And there, standing in our midst a bemused Albert, haplessly clutching his programme for the 1851 Exhibition. For ever since that first Wednesday when it was the turn of the women, Victorias had been congregating here. Those closest arrived first - others, stragglers from the North and from Scotland were still arriving.

Oh, but it was good to look on his face again. To see his smile. I had known of course, how it would be - what use is deliberating and considering from Wednesday to Friday unless it shows you some small shadow of the future? I had no doubt that within a month every Victoria in the land would be gathered here. And yet. I circulated through that crowd, in a slowly decaying orbit that centred on him.

He moved slowly, talking first to a beautiful young Victoria, then to an elderly dowager Victoria. His expressions, his attitude a stone simulacrum of the Albert I - we--remembered. So familiar, so long unseen.

And yet. Seeing him so unscathed, I found that I myself have changed in ways that I had not anticipated in all of my deliberations and considerations. For I have put down the crown and passed anonymously by the Queen's soldiers - and if in so doing they are no longer bound to me, so too I am no longer bound to them. And watching my old lost love, there in that Victorian park, as I moved slowly to the margins of that crowned crowd and left, I found myself filled with new longings, for the hills where I was quarried, for rivers and roadsides. And the memory of angel song.

Apologia
Reposted from BT (19/10/05). After work, I used to wait for my bus at the station just opposite the Coroner's Court. It does have eagles.

Another old diary: On self-censorship

They are there a couple of days a month, outside the local shopping mall. Maybe it's more like a day a week. Conspicuous in their camouflage gear and close-cropped hair. With their ridiculous little tank, their tents, their guns and their glossy recruiting literature. All terribly neat and tidy.

Most people here do not talk to them. So they just stand there all day waiting around looking silly.
When I see them, my throat tightens.
When I walk past, I look at them closely, my expression inexpressive.
The clouds seem a little closer, the sun a little dimmer.
The day more grey.
When I first noticed them, I thought, "Good. Very thin pickings here.
Let them waste just as much time here as they like.
May they come in droves with their conspicuous camouflage gear and close-cropped hair, their ridiculous little tank, their tents, their guns and their glossy recruiting literature every day, and stand about, talking to nobody and looking silly. The more the merrier."

Even if my throat tightens, my face grows guarded and the day seems strangely grey. Given that the sun is shining and all.

But I was just very, very stupid.

The last time they were there, outside the local shopping mall, I realised at last why they were there. Most everyone else walking by knew already, I'm quite sure. One way. Or the other.

For despite the conspicuous camouflage gear, the close-cropped hair, the ridiculous little tank, the tents, the shiny, shiny guns and the glossy recruiting literature, they were not there for recruits.
Officially, yes. Sure.

But not in fact.

For even the most lax of superior officers must at some point notice that despite their regular appearance outside the local shopping mall in conspicuous camouflage, with the close-cropped hair, the ridiculous little tank, the tents, the shiny, shiny guns and the glossy recruiting literature, there is nary a new recruit in sight.

(And all of a sudden, from this new vantage point, the mysterious uniformity of their whiteness -- which had been a mystery to me -- snapped into place, like the last stubborn corner of an old Tupperware box)

They are There To Show a Presence.
Trooping the Colours.
Waving the Flag.
Showing the Sullen Natives (that's "them" and who knows, perhaps it will also be latecomer me) What's What.

Empires cast long shadows. Though many years have passed since its eclipse, the sun has not yet set on this one. Still, it seeks reflected glory.

The second week of Ramadan is beginning
and it would be fair to say that this has been a difficult year.
My acquaintances,
politely singled out for baggage checks,
tell of suspicious looks.
Their expressions speak of biting their tongues until they bleed, even though they do not say so.

Usually it's busy outside the shopping mall, today it's quiet.
Lots of people staying at home,
calling numbers that don't answer today.
Waiting.

But there they were.
Outside the local shopping mall,
in conspicuous camouflage and close-cropped hair, with their ridiculous little tank, their tents, their shiny, shiny guns, the glossy recruiting literature and nary a new recruit in sight.

They stand there all day, looking menacing.
When I see them, my throat tightens.
When I walk past, I stare coldly.
Those clouds look like thunder. The sun is grey.

Boarding the Ark

Let me tell you a story.
Once, in a time and place that now seems as remote and unfathomable as any long-lost Atlantis, I trained as a medieval musicologist. A rigorous and thorough preparation for a life very different than mine. That's not the story. But that distant far-off place is where I learned this story, by reading the lines and what lies between them.

In a smallish town, many years ago, there lived a man called Noe. He had a wife and some married sons. There's no point in asking his wife's name - no-one remembers it. This town was perhaps a little licentious. On special occasions it's possible that it could even have been described as libidinous. Noe - most assuredly a virtuous man - certainly thought so. Often he could be seen moping about and grumbling into his beard about the `youth of today' and `sinks of iniquity.'

Evidently Noe wasn't alone in his opinions, for after a few years of moping he began building a sizeable boat. The town being fairly well inland, it would be fair to say that this attracted some local attention. Noe told all who asked - and many did - that God planned on flooding the entire Earth and drowning everyone, since the youth of today were simply not up to scratch, the whole place was a sink of iniquity and thoroughly libidinous to boot. Only he and his family were to be saved.

It's unclear whether Noe started out thinking that only he and his family were to be saved, or whether his sceptical reception from inquirers led him to this view.

His wife rolled her eyes and did her best to ignore the sounds of sawing and hammering. She did her best not to see the thick layer of wood-dust that settled on everything as fast as she could wipe it. She went about her business as usual, selling her goods in the market, meeting with her friends and sharing the news of the town. Perhaps she spent less time than usual at home, but in this she was alone within her family. For the sons had been roped into sawing and hammering, and the daughters-in-law were occupied with tending an ever-increasing menagerie whose yammering and clamouring threatened to outdo even the noise of construction.

And then the rains came. At first this was a welcome break in the dry season, a chance for the wells to be replenished, an omen of a good harvest free from drought. But they did not stop.

And Noe's wife looked at the ark and at her husband's barely disguised glee at the prospect of divine retribution.

The rains continued. People retreated to the highest ground within the town, to the rises, the hillocks, the roofs. All crowded together, people grew sick from strange illnesses and died, especially the very old and the very young.

Noe's boat began to float.

And here is where the story diverges. In the usual version, Noe's wife gets on board like a good little girl, leaving her friends, their children, her relatives and all to drown. On the ark, she floats for forty days and forty nights. Eventually one of my namesakes is released, disappears for a few days before flapping back with an olive branch.

But in some much later versions - plays enacted in England's wealthier market towns in the later middle ages - the tale is told a little bit differently.

In one, Noe's wife refuses to board the ark. Then, feeling the water at her feet, her courage fails her and she runs aboard.

In yet a different version, she and her friends are gathered before the ark. She refuses to board unless they too are saved. Noe forces her aboard and leaves her friends to drown.

At the time these plays were performed, Noe's wife was understood as a comic character - an example of the vice-filled, contrary wife. Her refusal to board the ark is meant to be funny. Whether through her own cowardice, or a lack of physical strength, her rebellion is so easily undone. But to me, peering at her this way and that through my mis-matched eyes, Noe's nameless wife does not seem so very funny.

For left to my own devices, virtue and vice should be assigned quite differently.



Afterword
This is another old diary, this time from BT. I've been thinking about Noah's wife a bit lately, so thought I'd repost it.

Let's talk about Alex

There’s this woman.

Let’s call her Alex. It doesn’t matter too much if you want to think of that as short for Alexandra or Alexis. Feel free. Take your pick. Alex isn’t quite real anyway.

She’s not even one woman exactly, she’s more of an amalgalm. An idea/l. (Though not a post-modernist, I find that forward slash handy sometimes). She’s a stock character. A recurring trope. A family resemblance even. But a resemblance that exists out there with something in the world. Having resembled her, I should know.

Oddly enough, Alex is usually a woman. Mostly she’s straight and she’s almost always white. At least, I haven’t known any Alex’s that weren’t so far, though presumably they exist. Her age is indeterminate – she’s just kind of ageless, like the model in a really good cosmetics ad.

Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s . . .

Often she’s American, though I’ve also met Alex in the U.K. from time to time. That’s just because those are the only places I’ve lived since I first recognised Alex. I’m pretty sure she lives lots of other places too.

On the whole though, Alex’s femaleness, her sexuality, her whiteness, and her nationality strike me as salient (though not essential). To my rather callous and calculating mind, they hint at a particular (or perhaps a particularly ambiguous?) relation to power. Alex has something to lose.

But when I think of Alex abstracted from particular circumstances, she wears the face of the first Alex I recognised.

She’s about my age, with a freckled face that tans in summer. She has long straight brown hair and with casual grace she contrives to keep it flipped back out of her face. She’s no Barbie, those are practical clothes she’s wearing, old shorts and T-shirts, or long skirts and sandals. The kind of thing you garden in, or do yardwork. And you can tell from how she carries herself and how she speaks that she is practical, confident, creative and intelligent. A good person to have on your side.

Alex is really friendly. She’s got this warm, generous, nurturing nature that looks to see the best in people. She does cool and interesting stuff. She’s well-liked. And she’s usually so calm and reasonable and centred in a way that eludes me entirely, prone as I am to veering between grimness and giddiness. She’s well-meaning and she’s cares about politics. She really wants a better world. She’s progressive, she’s liberal, she might even be leftist, though that’s less likely. Those of us on the left tend to end up hard-hearted one way or another. And Alex isn’t.

I want to like Alex. I want to trust her. I really do. But I don’t dare.
Because Alex wants me dead.

Well, no, that’s not quite true. Not directly, anyway. She’s soft-hearted, remember? Wouldn’t hurt a fly, that’s Alex.

But she wants the death of people that I try to be loyal to, and when push comes to shove if she had her way and I did not fail, that would mean mine. Sooner or later. Probably later, given my cowardice, but even that has its limits.

No. It’s not even that, exactly. Though perhaps that’s a little closer. Circling in decreasing orbits, we must hit the mark in the true eventually no?

Third time lucky.

Alex is innocent and she wants to stay that way. She doesn’t want to be guilty and so she doesn’t want to know. If she knew, she’d have to change her life or feel guilt – and Alex doesn’t think that guilt is a productive emotion and she still has something left to lose. Those salient features, remember? That particular(ly ambiguous?) relationship to power.

It’s not fake innocence. It’s real. She really is innocent and she really wants to stay that way.

Alex wants to stay that way badly enough to falter before an argument’s dangerous conclusion, though agreeing its premises and each step of reasoning.
Badly enough to erase moral agency – that of others, but also in the end her own. (After all, if one is not a moral agent, one cannot be other than innocent).
Badly enough to lash out in defensive fury at anyone who challenges her innocence, her essential 'goodness.'
Badly enough to fall back into a familiar patriotic fervour.
Badly enough not to look too closely.
Badly enough to pretend not to see.
Badly enough to denounce.
Badly enough.

Alex is nice enough. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She’s warm and nurturing and kind and those qualities are entirely genuine. She twinkles. But her innocence is a very dangerous thing.

Yon bonny road

And see ye na yon bonny road,
That winds about the ferny brae?
That is the way to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night maun gae.

But, Thomas, ye maun hauld your tongue,
Whatever you may hear or see;
For if ye speak word in Elfin land,
Ye'll ne'er win back to your ain countrie!"

Though occasionally a rhymer and often a doubter, my name is not Thomas.
But I did go to Elfinland. And I never won back to my own country. (Indeed in latter years I have come to suspect that I no longer know the way back: my country has become imaginary.)

You must judge for yourselves whether I have kept silence.

Elfinland and its kissing cousins Utopia and Dystopia are where I found politics. Of course they are not the only places, just as there is no one beginning. How could they have been? As a child my life stood frozen before the witching hour -- whether morning or dusk, it was always three minutes to midnight. In such circumstances, one finds politics, despair, or both.

One of the first places I found in Elfinland was the vast expanse of Middle Earth. A traveller embarks on a dangerous, hopeless journey, to renounce something that he can neither live with nor live without. His journey is long and wearisome, and in the end he fails in intent and would also have failed in deed -- except that earlier on, he'd once managed to get something right. And by God, Tolkien sticks to his guns. When push comes to shove, Frodo does not survive the Ring and its loss. Means and ends matter enormously in Middle-Earth -- and despite its processions of kings and nobles, the end sought is that of Empire. Finally, among other things, it's a powerful love story -- and I don't just mean Aragorn and Arwen. Why do you think it hurts so when Sam marries Elanor and Frodo goes West?

Now let us take ship with C. J. Cherryh, out towards the Beyond, to the claustrophobic confines of Downbelow Station embroiled in war. A closed system, lurching from one crisis to the next and never ever quite recovering its footing. Union on one side, Mazziani's 'Company Fleet' on the other: Downbelow Station stuck in the middle. And Signy Mallory of Norway -- callous, calculating and morally compromised to the hilt, yet in the end unable to abandon principle entirely, unable not to play the traitor.

If we venture further afield, light aeons past Union space, perhaps we would find ourselves on the fringes of the (anarchic? socialist?) Culture, Iain M. Bank's licentiously sprawling, permissive, promiscuous and at times whimsical civilisation. Depending on where you stand, its perfection is either profoundly Utopian or Dystopian. Either set after the beginning of history (in the Marxist sense) or long beyond its demise. For myself, I suspect the former, but can one believe its account of itself? Has not the pen been much in the Culture's hand?

Fall through two mirrors backwards and you might find yourself in Neveryon: a world that is a reflection, but then emphatically not a reflection of our pasts and presents. Although I had discovered Samuel Delany's short stories (and who could argue with a title like "We in some strange power's employ move on a vigorous line") and essays (read his introduction to Neil Gaiman's A Game of You) some time ago, it was not until last year that I discovered Neveryona.
As Nanette would say, go and read the whole thing.

One finds many things in Elfinland and its kin, but contrary to popular report, escape is not among them.

And as for winning back to your own country? Journey long enough: it will no longer be your own.

Questions We All Know the Answers To

This is another repost of an old dkos diary, this one from February 2005. Apart from A Shortish Story and On Self-Censorship (which I think many of the Eegians may have read already) it's probably the last repost I'll do. The others tend to be either too topical or too recent. And I'm being lazy and should stop and write new things instead.

Questions we all know the answers to.

Sat Feb 05, 2005 at 03:33:23 PM PDT

Here are some of the examination questions police cadets in the Iraqi Security Forces have been asked by the Occupation, according to the Guardian

"Human rights can be taken away from a person
a) never, human rights are inalienable
b) if the government says so
c) if the accused has committed a serious crime
d) in time of war

In a democratic free society the role of police is to protect
a) the citizens
b) the leader
c) the state
d) the military

The police basic standard of conduct requires
a) all citizens to be treated with respect and dignity
b) information to be shared with the local community
c) special treatment for privileged persons and organisations
d) bribes to be collected for services

Now, I could proceed to a fairly obvious rant about the nature of hypocrisy, or to bitter laughter at the comic spectacle of the United States presenting itself as a defender of human rights. "Surely the intent must be self-parody?" I could ask in innocent tones, but in truth, I lived long enough in the U.S to know that the Kool Aid flows freely.

So take the hypocrisy and my bitter laughter as read. I find most of my laughter is bitter these days.

Instead, let me ask another set of questions. Do any of you seriously imagine that any cadets flunked these questions? Do you think that any of the responses flagged a potential torturer? Or that any cadet was so naive as to announce that the "police basic standard of conduct" requires "bribes to be collected for services"? That anybody responded that, "Human rights can be taken away from a person" "if the government says so?"

Didn't think so.

Then what was their purpose? What was the point of this laborious exercise?

Well, I have some ideas on this one.

Let me tell you a story.

When I first flew into the United States as an adult, I had to fill out a card. Now, I'd been very worried about this card from a practical and philosophical standpoint. I'd heard that you had to declare whether or not you'd ever been a member of a communist party. And I had been. I had no idea what I should put on the form -- if I said 'Yes' would I be admitted? If I said 'No' would they know I was lying? And if I said 'No,' what would that betrayal cost? By the time I left New Zealand, I had a fine and extensive collection of regrets, personal and political. I did not want lying about my past political involvement to be among them.

But the strange parody of communism that was the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union had collapsed. Gorbachev's socialism had been replaced by Yeltsin's capitalism. The Harvard B-School boys were in Moscow promoting the wonders of the unregulated free market, even as life expectancy plummeted like a stone. China was a valued U.S. trading partner. Tiananmen Square was quiet and orderly, though not peaceful, for what peace can there be without justice? More happily, Hungary had opened its borders. The Wall that David Bowie sang about ('And the guards, shot above our heads') had been pulled down and sold for souvenirs. As a result, the U.S. no longer cared whether you had communist sympathies or not, and I never had to decide how to answer that question. (And if you think from the foregoing paragraph that my relationship to communism is complicated, you'd be right)

Instead I checked the box stating that neither I, nor any family members had engaged in acts of genocide.

I stated that I hadn't used illegal drugs, or worked as a prostitute. From memory, I think I also declared that I was not seeking to enter the U.S. in order to overthrow the government by force.

And I wondered, does anyone ever check the `yes' box on these forms for any of the things that haven't already been externally verified?

Didn't think so. So what is its purpose?

Here's my take. Entering a country is a kind of ritual. You get off the plane, you show your passport at immigration control, you haul your luggage off the conveyor and take it through customs. There are clearly-defined steps, and also points of danger along the way. A rite of passage. And all-too-often that ritual is also about reinforcing hierarchies: the superiority of citizens over non-citizens; the power of the state and the powerlessness of the individual. The form I filled was part of that - a systematised kind of humiliation. Asking those questions was a way for the U.S. government to say, "You foreigners are dodgy, suspect and unwelcome. And just to make that absolutely crystal clear, we're going to ask you these stupid, insulting questions even though we know exactly what you will say."

For my money, the multiple choice exam questions asked of the cadets in the Iraqi Security Forces are the same kind of deal. A form of ritualised humiliation - albeit one far more subtle than the barbarities of Abu Ghraib - to which the colonised are subjected by their colonisers. It is a way for the occupiers to proclaim their superiority - moral and intellectual - over the occupied. After all, you don't ask questions like these of people you consider your equals.

Because these are questions that we all know the answers to.