DSC06050 {Chumphon, Thailand]: photo by noppadol maitreechit, 11 December 2017

20170721-jacekszust: photo by Jacek Szust, 21 July 2017

Darkness | Talinn, Estonia 2017: photo by Andril Mur, 19 November 2017

Elche, Spain: photo by Miguel M.A.S., circa 2017

jacek_szust_homeland: photo by Jacek Szust, 28 July 2017

Ingoldmells [Skegness]: photo by Andy Feltham, 27 November 2017

Untitled: photo by Martín Molinero, 9 December 2017

Sonntagsspaziergang im Schnee | Kreuzweg Starrkirch-Wil [Switzerland]: photo by rdie, 10 December 2017

Thomas Hardy: Thoughts from Sophocles
(Oed. Col. 1200 1250)

Who would here sojourn for an outstretched spell
Has senseless promptings, to the thinking gaze,
Since pain comes nigh and nigher with lengthening days,
And nothing shows that joy will ever upwell.

Death is the remedy that cures at call
The doubtful jousts of black and white assays.
What are song, laughter, what the footed maze,
Beside the good of knowing no birth at all?

Gaunt age is as some blank upstanding beak
Chafed by the billows of a northern shore
And facing friendless cold calamity
That strikes upon its features worn and weak
Where sunshine bird and bloom frequent no more,
And cowls of cloud wrap the stars' radiancy.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): Thoughts from Sophocles [after Oedipus at Colonus 1211-48], in Evelyn Hardy: Some Unpublished Poems by Thomas Hardy, The London Magazine, 3/1 (January 1956)

Untitled: photo by Thanos Anthopoulos 8 June 2015

Untitled: photo by Ilan Burla, 28 September 2017

nap | Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur: photo by Paul Swee, 10 August 2017

Somerset, KY: photo by Bruno Ribeiro, 6 December 2017

Lipstick Refresh candid | London, England [Field Day festival, Hackney]: photo by DonStevie, August 2016

Louisville: photo by Joey Harrison, July 2017

Thompson’s Corner Saloon - Cordelia, CA | by Rex Mandel

Thompson's Corner Saloon - Cordelia, CA| Cordelia is an unincorporated part of Solano County about 42 miles (68 kilometers) from San Francisco. Hey Donald Trump, if you're not involved in your businesses, how come you're talking with your accountant about how the tax legislation affects you? You fucking phony!: photo by Rex Mandel, 25 February 2017

In the morning you feel one way; in the afternoon, it can seem as if years have passed. It’s just astounding how it all just keeps moving on | Pema Chodron | by myrnaphotography

In the morning you fell one way; in the afternoon, it can seem as if years have passed. It’s just astounding how it all just keeps moving on | Pema Chodron [NYC]: photo by Myrnaphotography, 24 November 2016

Untitled: photo by diadà, 1 May 2008

Untitled: photo by Stuart Paton, 25 November 2017

Untitled [Queen St. W., Toronto]: photo by Dominic Bugatto, 5 December 2017

Louisville, KY: photo by Bruno Ribeiro, 29 September 2017

The Angel Dog: photo by Tom Akaradech, 9 December 2017

back23 [world dog show, Leipzig]: photo by Hannes Herbst, 12 December 2017

100_2838: photo by Francesco Luppolo, 6 December 2017

Untitled [Park Circle, Baltimore]: photo by Patrick, April 2017

Le Roy, MI 2017: photo by Don Hudson, 4 December 2017

Somerset, KY: photo by Bruno Ribeiro, 21 December 2017

Wiesendamm | Berlin Spandau: photo by epha, 12 June 2016

Untitled: photo by Marco, 12 December 2017

* TAIPEI TAIWAN: photo by Sakulchai Sikitikul, 18 November 2017

DSCF1895-2 | Storkower_Strasse, PrenzlauerBerg, Berlin: photo by Michael Roggeman, 14 November 2017

Untitled: photo by rangefinderx, 21 April 2016

Untitled: photo by Yuro De Iullis, 1 May 2017

The inferno that won't die

#USA Over 6,000 firefighters battling southern California blaze: Photo @Robyn_Beck #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP, 12 December 2017

#USA Fire in southern California threatening another city #AFP Photo Mark Ralston: image via AFP Photo Department @AFP, 11 December 2017

Surreal scene on the beach in Carpinteria, California #ThomasFire Photo: @eye4light: image via Getty Images News @GettyImagesNews, 12 December 2017

#ThomasFire - With flames burning behind it, a Christmas Tree stands as a lone sentinel in the front yard of an evacuated home in Carpinteria.: image via SBCFireInfo @EliasonMike, 11 December 2017

#ThomasFire we made a trip at 10,500 feet along the eastern side looking at the 230,500 acres that burned. Couldn’t get to Montecito due to safety of flight issues. But saw so much destruction. Looking like alien landscapes. @CBSLA @KCBSKCALDesk: image via stu mundel @Stu_Mundel, 11 December 2017

I stared at this scene for a minute too long last night. #thomasfire: image via Marcus Yam #yamphoto, 11 December 2017

People stand on a roof to watch a wildfire in Santa Barbara County, California Photo Patrick T Fallon: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 12 December 2017

As the Thomas fire burns, Santa Barbara County alerts go bilingual

The Thomas Fire make its way down the ridges threatening homes in the mountains above Montecito on Dec. 11, 2017.: Photo by Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times, 1 December 2017

Why is the Thomas fire in Ventura so hard to contain?: image via Laura J. Nelson @laura_nelson, 12 December 2017

A great, heart-felt, story-telling image by @MelMelconPhoto documenting the continuing #thomasfire, now in Montecito. #latimes: image via Jay L. Clendenin, 12 December 2017

The inferno that won't die: How the #ThomasFire became a monster.: image via Marcus Yam @yamphoto, 12 December 2017

Marcus Yam’s picture of the California fires is a kind of counterpoint to the classic SoCal image: a sunset tucking into the horizon.: image via The New Yorker @NewYorker, 12 December 2017

2017: a conflation

#2017InReview #Iraq A dead body is seen hanging from a pole in east #Mosul during a military op. against ISIS. Iraqi forces battled the last holdout jihadists in east Mosul after commanders declared victory and quickly set their sights on the city's west. By @dilkoff @AFPphoto: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 10 December 2017

Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. One hot and sticky evening in July, in the dying days of the battle for Mosul, a group of Iraqi army officers sat for dinner in a requisitioned civilian house not far from the ruins of the mosque where, three years earlier, the leader of Islamic State had announced the creation of a new caliphate. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines. At the head of the table sat the commander, large and burly, flanked by his two majors. “That’s an . . . unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.” The rest of the officers were seated according to rank, with the youngest officers placed at the far end.

Flirting with her customers was a habit she’d picked up back when she worked as a barista, and it helped with tips. The commander, who was trying to lose weight, had banned his cook from serving meat at mealtimes, but tonight was a special occasion. She didn’t earn tips at the movie theatre, but the job was boring otherwise, and she did think that Robert was cute. The day before, his unit had liberated another block of streets in the Old City without suffering any casualties. Not so cute that she would have, say, gone up to him at a party, but cute enough that she could have drummed up an imaginary crush on him if he’d sat across from her during a dull class—though she was pretty sure that he was out of college, in his mid-twenties at least. In celebration, a feast of bread soaked in okra stew, and roasted meat shredded over heaps of rice flavoured with nuts and raisins, was laid out on a white plastic table.

He was tall, which she liked, and she could see the edge of a tattoo peeking out from beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt. Over the previous eight months, since the commander and his men had started fighting in Mosul, the caliphate had shrunk to a tiny sliver of the Old City squeezed between the River Tigris and advancing columns of army and police forces. But he was on the heavy side, his beard was a little too long, and his shoulders slumped forward slightly, as though he were protecting something. Thousands of Isis fighters, who captured the city in 2014, were now trapped, living without running water or electricity, with dwindling supplies of food and medicine, being bombed day and night by US drones and jets. Robert did not pick up on her flirtation. Caught in the siege with them were thousands of civilians.

Or, if he did, he showed it only by stepping back, as though to make her lean toward him, try a little harder. The few who were managing to escape came out filthy, emaciated and crazed by thirst and the constant bombing. “Well,” he said. “O.K., then.” The officers at dinner that night were all veterans of the war against Isis, but nothing in their long years of fighting compared to what they had experienced over the past few weeks in Mosul, one of the fiercest urban battles since the second world war. He pocketed his change. They fought in narrow alleyways, old stone houses and dense networks of tunnels and basements. Their advance was sometimes measured in metres, and their casualties were mounting. But the next week he came into the movie theatre again, and bought another box of Red Vines.

“We have one more battle and Mosul will be fully liberated, inshallah,” the commander said as he tucked into his meal.“You’re getting better at your job,” he told her. “You managed not to insult me this time.” A captain who was still limping from a recent injury said: “Our fathers used to talk about the Iran-Iraq war as the ‘long war’. That one lasted for eight years. Well, soon this war against Isis will surpass it.” She shrugged. “I’m up for a promotion, so,” she said. After the movie, he came back to her. “Concession-stand girl, give me your phone number,” he said, and, surprising herself, she did. Laughing, the commander asked the officers to open the military maps on their phones and proceeded to explain the plan for the next day’s advance.

From that small exchange about Red Vines, over the next several weeks they built up an elaborate scaffolding of jokes via text, riffs that unfolded and shifted so quickly that she sometimes had a hard time keeping up. “You jump into this building, make a fire base here and here at street corners,” he said, giving them the coordinates of the street. “You advance towards this high building. Your flanks will be secured by other units. Once you take the building, you will dominate the whole area with your snipers and we can reach the river in few hours.” He was very clever, and she found that she had to work to impress him. Before leaving, a wiry junior officer named Taha asked the commander: “Sir, what do we do with the two detainees?”

Soon she noticed that when she texted him he usually texted her back right away, but if she took more than a few hours to respond his next message would always be short and wouldn’t include a question, so it was up to her to re-initiate the conversation, which she always did. The prisoners had crossed the frontlines the night before and taken shelter with a civilian who denounced them to the army. A few times, she got distracted for a day or so and wondered if the exchange would die out altogether, but then she’d think of something funny to tell him or she’d see a picture on the Internet that was relevant to their conversation, and they’d start up again. “We tried to hand them to the intelligence service, but they refused to take them.” She still didn’t know much about him, because they never talked about anything personal, but when they landed two or three good jokes in a row there was a kind of exhilaration to it, as if they were dancing.

Then, one night during reading period, she was complaining about how all the dining halls were closed and there was no food in her room because her roommate had raided her care package, and he offered to buy her some Red Vines to sustain her. “Yes,” the commander said, “they told me: ‘You deal with detainees from your end. We can’t hold them because of human rights and Red Cross inspections.’” At first, she deflected this with another joke, because she really did have to study, but he said, “No, I’m serious, stop fooling around and come now,” so she put a jacket over her pajamas and met him at the 7-Eleven.“We worked on them all night,” said the junior officer.

It was about eleven o’clock. “One eventually confessed that he was with Daesh [Isis], but he said he left them two months ago.” He greeted her without ceremony, as though he saw her every day, and took her inside to choose some snacks. At that, everyone in the room laughed. The store didn’t have Red Vines, so he bought her a Cherry Coke Slurpee and a bag of Doritos and a novelty lighter shaped like a frog with a cigarette in its mouth. “The other,” the junior officer continued, “we beat him hard but he didn’t confess, so I think he must be innocent.” “Thank you for my presents,” she said, when they were back outside.

Robert was wearing a rabbit-fur hat that came down over his ears and a thick, old-fashioned down jacket. “Just finish them,” said a major. She thought it was a good look for him, if a little dorky; the hat heightened his lumberjack aura, and the heavy coat hid his belly and the slightly sad slump of his shoulders. “Release one and finish the other,” the commander said. “You’re welcome, concession-stand girl,” he said, though of course he knew her name by then. The sentence issued, now came the question of who would be bestowed with the honour of executing an Isis fighter. She thought he was going to go in for a kiss and prepared to duck and offer him her cheek, but instead of kissing her on the mouth he took her by the arm and kissed her gently on the forehead, as though she were something precious.

Kifah, a tall and lean soldier, stood next the table and asked to be given the prisoner. “Study hard, sweetheart,” he said. “I will see you soon.” But the junior officer suggested that they gift the prisoner to a captain who was still grieving the loss of his brother, killed by Isis a month ago. On the walk back to her dorm, she was filled with a sparkly lightness that she recognized as the sign of an incipient crush. “Call him and give him the detainee,” said the commander, getting up from his chair. While she was home over break, they texted nearly non-stop, not only jokes but little updates about their days. The officers rose swiftly and stood to attention as he made his way to the living room where tea was to be served.

Mosul, after the fall of Isis: photo by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad for the Guardian, 21 November 2017

Judith is one of our Hanukah heroines. In this painting (completed in 1620), Artemisia Gentileschi depicted Holofernes with the face of her rapist. #MeToo: image via Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @TheRaDR, 12 December 2017

A cut-up (conflation) of two texts, one fiction, one journalism: Cat Person: Kristen Roupenian, The New Yorker, 11 December 2017; After the liberation of Mosul, an orgy of killing: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian, 21 November 2017

Emanuele Satolli: Mosul 2017

Erschöpft: Einem Luftangriff in der Altstadt von Mossul sind sie nur knapp entkommen: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Weg von hier: Hinter ihnen liegt der Teil von Mossul, der zuletzt noch schwer umkämpft war: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Ein kleiner Moment der Ruhe: Sie haben es aus einem Teil der Mossuler Altstadt herausgeschafft, in dem sich irakische Truppen und IS-Kämpfer heftige Gefechte liefern.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Selfies mit dem Feind: Irakische Soldaten, nachdem sie einen Kämpfer des "Islamischen Staats" in der Altstadt von Mossul gefangen genommen haben.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Diese Frauen und Kinder haben nach ihrer Flucht aus der Altstadt von Mossul von der irakischen Armee Essen bekommen.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Nach einem Luftangriff der Anti-IS-Koalition steigt über Mossul Rauch auf.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Mitglieder der irakischen Spezialkräfte, der Goldenen Division, in einem Gefecht gegen IS-Kämpfer.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Gefangene der irakischen Armee: Die Männer konnten ein stark umkämpftes Areal verlassen, doch ihnen wird vorgeworfen, IS-Kämpfer oder -Sympathisanten zu sein.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Ein irakischer Soldat der Spezialkräfte in einem Gebäude nahe der Frontlinie mit den letzten IS-Kämpfern.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Irakische Spezialkräfte während eines Gasangriffs der Dschihadisten in Mossul.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Verschanzt zwischen Trümmern: irakische Spezialkräfte in der Altstadt von Mossul.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Einer flieht, einer verteidigt die Position in der Altstadt von Mossul gegen IS-Kämpfer.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Wohin, das wissen sie noch nicht, aber die Kämpfe zwingen sie zur Flucht.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

Ihn haben die irakischen Kräfte abgefangen, er könnte ein IS-Kämpfer oder -Sympathisant sein – nun wartet er auf sein Verhör.: photo © Emanuele Satolli via ZEITONLINE, 15 July 2017

5 comments:

TC13 December 2017 at 07:49
Bob Dylan: Positively 4th Street (live Nashville 1994)

Bob Dylan: Positively 4th Street (live King's Dock Liverpool 12 July 2001)
Hanford Woods13 December 2017 at 11:51
Tom
Nice to see the Hardy poem. Recently read Christopher Ricks' book Beckett's Dying Words, among others he uses Hardy and Sophocles nicely to help out in the case for never being born. But then had we never been born, we would have missed out on Kevin de Bruyne and we should surely never have foregone that.
Alas, Fulham
hanford
TC13 December 2017 at 20:26
Hanf,

Wonderful to have the permafrost broken by words of deep wisdom from one so long abus'd... by the cottagers I mean... while conceding that KDB is no doubt the most brilliant technical player on earth, there are these salient issues for me: large blond/pink person in citeh blue, what's the world coming to, and moreover, what's with this sudden outbreak of... may we call it manners? ... a decadent development... take the money out of it and let the lads have their aggro in the tunnel, say I from the Seven Crippled Sleepers Den, hard by the Death Impact Expressway...

In truth my present shameful state calls out from beneath my former state, which it seems I never was able to appreciate while in it and having at least a sketchy imitation of basic capacities like being able to walk move feel see etc, across the echoing krazykat deserts and buttes and canyons of Time, to Master TH, to guide me through the lameness and kvetching, the ills and the ails and the terminal lack of the sort of genius that allowed him to write great poems on into his eighties while complaining about it in the lucid, true way for which we love him, bleak old coot that he was.

The long winter night here has now been underway for hours and has hours to go still and the flu riddled inamorata is snuffling away in the dark under a mast of cats in the next room, allowing me the contemplative space in which to decide to not succumb quite yet, and upon the dawning, post in this space the #1 dead man walking poem by our favourite dyspeptic zombie guide to anciency, in your honour, naturally, insh'allah.
Unknown14 December 2017 at 18:06
Hey Tom—I was jolted and soon enough awed by the “A Conflation”. I read “Cat Person” last week and was taken by yet surprised this week by the story’s viral legs and then felt like an insider when I read this post (happens a lot). The New Yorker strung together fiction by McGuane and Coetzee this past month that I thought was strikingly good, and then I enjoyed, oddly it’s true, the curveball by Roupenian. I was shocked, shocked I tell you, by what you did with Roupenian’s piece. The tone among the cut-ups was, well, convertible. I don’t know how you see that stuff – both ends of the cultural equation, the war and the reckoning. I immediately thought (wrongly) Abdul-Ahad’s The Guardian pieces were cut from the New Yorker’s good “Dark Victory in Raqqa” by L. Mogelson. Anyway, I’m in awe, as mentioned, by “Beyond the Pale”. And to elbow in on the above comments, I’m shaking my head, still and favorably, about Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah’s at-speed run and strike in the Merseyside Derby. It was among the best I’ve seen this year. Old school desire and skill in traffic, if not pressure, from Big Sam’s version of the wall. No complaints about Rooney’s strike from the spot from this easy chair. Nor de Bruyne’s brilliance.
TC14 December 2017 at 21:29
Tom,

I was shocked, shocked I tell you that anybody actually stopped to attempt to unpick the conflation.

That nyawkah story read to me like a B minus effort that jumped out of the tank of a JC college writing class into virality w/passing Go, though of course that's explained by The Hook. I mean, I get that this viralist is at Harvard, not a JC. Well, JC "fiction" might at least have, like, maybe two characters, not just the one we're meant to care about plus the punching bag cipher w/ the hairy belly...

Now if a male had writ the thang and chosen to home in on the disgust evinced by repulsive gross female corpulence (as vs tother way round) (admittedly an impossible proposition, amid the current staggering social delirium)...

TBH I thought the story was weak, obvious, a compilation of diluted clichés and unexamined social attitudes.

But what happens when you attempt to mash-up a mash-up?

Mosul = world historical tragedy. #MeToo = uncut muricanski banality. Laid upon one another = Katzenjammer 2017.

"As the story began to go viral, a series of narratives began to emerge around it: It was a good story. No, it was a bad story, and people who thought it was good had not read enough short stories. No, it actually was good, and people who thought it was not good were sexist. Margot’s internal monologue about Robert’s body constituted fat shaming. No, she was simply a good old-fashioned unlikable narrator. Robert was the villain. No, Robert was the hero. Wait, was 'Cat Person' fiction, or a nonfiction personal essay?

"Much of the discomfort and controversy swirls around the character of Margot and all that she represents: a white, college-educated, straight, relatively thin young woman. She’s both a figure of enormous privilege and a figure who is disempowered, and most of the discourse about the story has focused on trying to figure out exactly where she stands."

Really, I didn't care even the teeniest tiniest bit where Margot stood. I just wanted the author -- just as I'm always dumb enough to be wanting the present -- to have a bit of mercy.

Ah, but here in these You Nighted Staids we are proud to say we have neither Mersey nor mercy.

Liverpool v Everton 10 December 2017

(Highlights fit to float in a seasonal glass swirling-snowflake paperweight... do they still have those?)

TOM CLARK

Wednesday, 13 December 2017