More Parries
December 2008
Stop Yesterday
Is the goal of Israel’s assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets, or is it to render Hamas incapable of firing rockets? These are two very different projects, yet we are hearing about both from the government, which worryingly suggests that the government isn’t quite sure.
Short-circuiting Place-based Longing
If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.
October 2008
Ebullience, Please
A President of the United States must be ebullient. At the presidential debates we should have seen McCain like we saw him at the Al Smith dinner.
September 2008
History Tonight, McCain vs. Obama
McCain pulled through but he’d better improve, better get relaxed. This was the big one, and Obama came off a 21st century Brat Packer.
Encounter at Wetherspoone’s
As if those glass double doors belong to a wild saloon wherein one must repulse brigands just for a peaceful drink.
July 2008
Suddenly Seymour
Time was, Seymour Hersh’s dispatches were a cause for minor celebration. They were full- and deep-throated journalistic tours de force, possible changers of paradigms. But his latest, “Preparing the Battlefield” on funding covert ops in Iran, leaves too many clues that reveal precisely where he’s coming from.
June 2008
Another End of Times
With the recent reported training exercises over Crete, perhaps Israel’s strike on the Iranian regime’s machinery of genocide has already begun.
Dead Till Eilenspiegel
Beyond steadfastness and vigor in prosecuting Islamofascism, John McCain seems an American president I’d love even more than the great liberator George W. Bush (most of you just left, I know) because he is more American on immigration than either his party or the other.
All So Simple
First, there is a general moode and desire to write.
March 2008
Why AAPL
Apple’s operating system will, I believe, become in time the dominant one, and with a current market share of only 6% or so, that’s a lot more computers to sell. And as the only operating system seller that also sells the computers it runs on, as well as owning the shops they’re sold from, Apple stands to become a colossus, even a frightening one.
Clash of the Midgets
My phone! One of the reasons I didn’t want an iPhone is that I’m invested in the T9 text entry method and like it. But while I do like the Nokia N95’s slider, it creates discomfort when entering text because all the weight in the phone is further up.
January 2008
Dangers of the Gaza-Egypt border breach
Hamas may try to use Egyptian territory to stage cross-border attacks on Israel, aiming to operate in parts of the Sinai as Hezballah does in southern Lebanon.
Glick Dismisses Gaza Border Breach
Caroline Glick, the strident Jerusalem Post columnist, seems to see the Gaza-Egypt border breach as yet another in a long line of Israeli strategic disasters by incompetent leaders. I’m not convinced however of her arguments, mainly because she doesn’t make any.
Israel’s Greatest Victory Since Osirak
The great tactician Ariel Sharon steamrolled through Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and today we see another step in the unfolding of this masterplan to staunch the damage caused by the victory of the Six Day War in 1967.
I Do Like Mondays
First procedure: clean out the 2-cup mokka from the previous usage. The sink here is metal and I enjoy lightly bashing the coffee holder against it to knock the damp grains out then putting them in the rubbish before swilling out the remains under the tap. The sound is just the same as baristas make in cafes.
The Small Adventures - Part 2
There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a creme brulee. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up sitting there alone on my travels.
December 2007
The Small Adventures
Of course we were late for the train. We enquired frantically among the taxis for one who would accept the two dogs—mine and Davide’s—and take us to Termini Station so I could catch the 11pm train to Milan that would be one third of our journey to Britain.
Tony Blair and the Four-State Vision
Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy reflected an understanding that ownership of the Palestinian issue is shared with Egypt and Jordan. Once Tony Blair acquires this view, he can help facilitate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Spooked, They’ll Annoint Rudy
Because of the recent US National Intelligence Report, the electorate will turn to someone who demonstrates not only the ideological conviction required to continue to prosecute Islamism, but also the administrative savvy to reform entrenched bureacracies.
October 2007
A Restoration and Return
There she was, sitting outside the apartment block! How did she do it? Dogs must have some sort of navigational sense we don’t understand.
Curs to Fate
Yesterday I lost Jam in Villa Borghese, the central park here in Rome. She has not turned up since.
This Trip’s Last Day
I went to Astor Place Haircutters. I crossed Manhattan Bridge on foot. I walked west along Canal St, seeking a bamboo steamer.
I, Thou and Pastor Bob
At Rome I felt queasy that they would paint and revere scenes that occured in Israel, but here, looking at the Calvary Church campus, I felt that the religious energy is actually here, that we are far enough away from the places of the events themselves that they can finally become abstracted and spiritualized and kept relevant. An ocean and a small continent separate Fort Lauderdale from Afula.
September 2007
The Big and Easy
The moon is shining through these tropical September clouds, directly above a neighbor’s palm tree, and it’s completely full. An airplane is landing at a nearby airfield. I ramble, unable to reach what I mean, perhaps because what I mean is an almost meaningless jumble of contradictory thoughts that are less thoughts than incomplete attempts to label fleeting tumbling emotions.
Flightblogging
With the squeaks from the front and the clatter from the bulkheads and the smell from the toilet, there’s a reason to prefer Gatwick and the train over Heathrow and the bus. It’s very misty but we’re here. Korean Air Cargo. A parking lot.
August 2007
A Drop in Time
To have a camera back again a personal epoch later feels like a time machine squared. Your chronicling device—itself a time machine of sorts—is suddenly back to what it was years ago, before much was changed, which in itself somewhat returns you to those times.
Sauna Losing Heat
Rather than reaching the heights, to exciting thoughts and feelings, I tend increasingly in the sauna to just sit and think about the work I’ve just done and the work I’m about to do after. Something’s missing.
A Ride to Gatwick Airport
Gatwick is my airport now, largely unchanged since 1986, so it now looks tawdry. Airports. They’re so charged, so symbolic, and so empty once you’re at one; I dream of them often.
July 2007
Busy, Busy City
There’s a bridge in London’s St. James’s park where you can see Buckingham Palace at one end of the pond and Whitehall at the other, with the London Eye behind. Whitehall looked less a thumping fast haven for bureaucrats than a fairytale town, with the improbable slowly-moving Eye completing the fantasy.
First Time in this House All Day
One reaction (in The Times) to Islamist terrorist doctors: “Nowhere can inequality be so devastatingly stark as in a well-resourced British hospital.” So now we know: it’s understandable that after removing an annoying woman’s varicose veins, why, one sets a car alight and drives it into an airport departure hall.
The Soft Ache of Cold Hotels
The back yard is now set up and quite effortlessly picturesque, with its greenage and raw brick walls. Until we start trying to grow wee vegetables nothing else need be done except the daily maintenance of clearing the butts from the ashtray and the leaves from the ground.
June 2007
Only the Rustle in the Trees
We all, like twinkles on a sunny day’s waves, shine briefly. That I do know to be true. Other perspectives are futile. Grief, loss—these are the great teachers surely. Understand that what one has will pass.
A Rash Appointment
I have a rash on my face these days, reaching from my forehead down the sides of my nose and to my mouth. It went away while I was in America but now back in Britain it’s returned. How can that be?
A Cabaret Old Chum
It’s a last bastion of civility, Brian mused ruefully (with that inability of his to be really rued), as we had a beer walking through Penn Station to his train. I realized that I don’t know people like him anymore: libertarian Democrats.
Fatahland and Hamastan
Wherein I obsess about developments in Gaza rather than recording the sights and sounds of New York City in the springtime.
Squelching in a Bath of Me
I rode the Metro subway for the first time—didn’t even known Los Angeles has one. It’s cheap and clean, but the problem is there just aren’t that many trains, as if the city sabotages its own public transport system and wants you to have a car.
Stars, Stripes and Superlatives
Here in Los Angeles I am bombarded with superlatives. Daniel’s record collection. The Bikram Yoga College of India world headquarters. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Cutting-edge web applications by people down from the Bay Area. All mixed in with the most ravaging mediocrity.
Pursuit of Hashemesh
Welcome to three weeks in America. Top story in USA Today: Tiger Woods is going to design a golf course.
May 2007
Bikram’s Yoga, Meet David Allen’s GTD
Both systems are comprehensive in their respective realms and, controversially, ground-up rather than top-down.
Notes and Chords on the Levant Right Now
Palestinian Arabs, quasi-sovereign for the first time, are descending into civil war in Gaza. Lebanon, acting militarily for the first time, is going after al-Qaeda cells within its Palestinian camps. And Israel is undergoing political convulsions, hammering out a new political system it seems. And all these developments among the neighbors are in play each with the other.
My City to Your City
A bunch of loud white kids came running down from the promenade shouting vilely to each other. I was reminded of El Topo (we saw it yesterday at the fabulous Duke of York cinema) and I was reminded of the scene when the three bandits gradually build up their cackling harassment of the man in black as he rides into their valley.
Shite on Brighton
“Like many provincial towns,” the Private Eye reviewer stabs, “Brighton, as depicted in this hacked-together tribute, defines itself more by what it isn’t than by what it is. It’s not London, for one thing.”
From DisneyWorld to Watford
I needed my wallet more than the gypsies did.
Back in Black
Please pardon the unannounced, unplanned and unbecoming two weeks off. Following are some memorable moments from them in the order they popped into mind.
Daily Yin
For my first test of the day as day, I open the back door and step outside to the little patio to see the sky and feel the air. I realize not everybody does this, so if people tell me I’m a miserable bastard then perhaps this little habit will correct their impression.
April 2007
Wetherspoones and Raisins
No that’s not right, said I, sipping strong tea just brewed. Klement wanted me to read over an email he wrote. “Thank you for taking your time to interview me,” it began. My Dad also called to tell me of his new socks.
Mind the Dream
Dreaming about our passed companions as if they are alive requires tricks to the dreaming mind to overcome what it believes and knows to be true.
The Meaning Addiction
I’m reading Shardik by Richard Adams, famous for Watership Down. I chose it because it’s about religion, and Adams demonstrated such insight there with the rabbits’ religion—“Oh Frith on the hill, he made it all for us!”—that he’s clearly a contributor to our understanding of ourselves and our meaning addiction.
Short Stuff
Persian civilization typefaces, Palestinian innovation, Flood worries, that’s life with websites, Brighton is slow, and bad Jajah.
few weeks ago we decided to hike to Gatwick Airport—Irit, the Jam and I—and last weekend we pulled it off. I’m hoping this is just the first in a series northwards through Britain.
It was about 8:30am and perfect weather when we closed the front door behind us just like any other outing. But by Preston Park I was already feeling the fatigue. This was nonsense! I’d walked this far and back plenty of times before. No doubt it was due to the physical burden of my smallish backpack and the mental burden of the daunting distance ahead. We left Preston Park and continued north and uphill along Surrenden Road past the fork in the road and along Braybon Avenue into Patcham, which was new suburban territory for us. By the time we turned left into Ladies’ Mile Road the fatigue was gone and I had back the old hot hiking feeling. A woman said good morning on her jog.
We were nearly out of the city environs. We passed a little 1930s-looking clock tower, very clean, and continued north past the houses to Vale Avenue, the city’s northern-most street before the A27 highway marks the end of Brighton. The freedom of the highways! By this time we were worried about Jam’s legs as she’d limped home on our last day out—a walk across Seven Sisters a few weeks back—but she was holding up fine. We crossed the A27 and were on the South Downs and stopped there in a field. Holding up fine, yes, but definitely wanting a rest.
In November 2006 we’d walked here with Janja and Klement. This time was more enjoyable than then—the weather now was brighter and there was the pleasure of having doggies. Up we went, into a field where the cows milled around the path. Ahead a jogger ran towards us among the beautiful beasts. Irit was nervous of their bulk and wildness, worried that this or that one was actually a bull. As we approached they were curious about Jam and one followed her quite insistently until she barked to keep it away and it skipped back.
We arrived at the Chattri Monument and in the heat both Irit and Jam needed another rest. We continued, taking some respite by walking in a croft of trees before returning to the fields. Our goal was the Clayton ridge. When we got to it there were runners staggering along, part of a 5-mile race, with a brightly vested official pointing the way to each one, telling them well done and to mind the path. Another official told us the main race was 30 miles. A marathon and a half! I can’t believe people run that. That was the distance of our entire 2-day trek.
Jam at the Indian Monument
Sunday, July 27th, 2008; Brighton, East Sussex, England
Our route followed the racers over the ridge behind Clayton’s two windmills, Jack and Jill. Now we could see our route laid out in front of us, whereas up to now we’d seen it only on the map. We clamoured down the crumbly white stone path, sheep alongside us, into another shady croft of trees, where suddenly we saw dozens of them lazing there in the dips. Jam was mesmerized. After a minute of this staring she couldn’t help herself and ran into their midst. They all scarpered at once.
We passed the back of a lovely farming house and I was reminded of the ragtag Arab farms in the valleys of the Judean Hills, except these were large immaculate red-brick affairs worthy of glamour magazine pictorials. Things I’d learned to love in Israel were now being brought along to life in Britain; there is continuity after all, and despite terrible losses things can even mature in the cask.
At the foot of the hill lay Clayton playing field, set up as the racers’ camp. We sat here under a tree for lunch: sandwiches at 70p apiece from the refreshments room. Tonight we were having dinner at our hotel, renowned for its restaurant, so this seemed plenty. Besides, the buns were very white and I imagined would bring on an intense bout of the heartburn later.
We resumed, following the Brighton Road briefly until we could get onto the next path, running due north to Hassocks alongside the railway, recently reappeared from its tunnel under the South Downs. To our left was a run-down property with some fat poor folks sitting outside—for sale—then to our right a large well-kept private garden. Jam was hot and led us into a little forest for a pleasant detour, then we emerged into the maze of paths behind the nice homes south of Hassocks. Coincidentally, one of the streets there was Ockenden Way, and since our hotel was Ockenden Manor, indeed it was.
We emerged onto Hassocks’ Keymer Road, crossed under the picturesque brick railway bridge, then continued west along what seemed to me a haunted street before crossing the busy Brighton Road and onto a diagonal path through fields.
The path circled around a golf course and some nice private homes before a long straight trail shaded by trees. Butterflies serenaded us constantly here. Eventually we arrived at the south-west corner of Burgess Hill, where I stepped with both feet into a metal ring and tripped and fell. “A vicious circle!” Irit called it. This was the industro-commercial side of town, not very picturesque. We walked through it to the town’s main artery, London Road, and stopped at the first pub we saw. Irit was ravenous for crisps. Jam was desperate for a rest. I just wanted a beer. Dogs were welcome; the proprietor had a water bowl set in the inactive fireplace and brought out a handful of dog treats as well! Nonetheless it wasn’t a very atmospheric place this hot Sunday, with just one solitary fellow pulling on the slot machine, but we were grateful for the rest. Above the bookshelf of not-so-recent bestsellers, the big flat screen showed the Tour de France starting. I drank my Harvey’s Bitter. It was another one of those traveling moments memorable for its randomness.
Back of the Pub
Sunday, July 27th, 2008; East Sussex, England
We pushed on, but for the leg north of Burgess Hill to the hotel in neighboring Cuckfield we lacked the hiking map, which clearly shows the Public Bridleways and Public Footpaths; Google Maps in my phone doesn’t have them. There are two roads north of Burgess Hill to Cuckfield, forming a diamond shape around the fields, and we had to choose one. We chose the western side, Cuckfield Road, because it seemed the more substantial and hence more likely to have a pavement. It didn’t. We trudged uneasily along the narrow little hedge alongside the road until we could turn off. There we regained a public footpath north through the fields until we emerged in the middle of the diamond into Copyhold Lane, a row of fancy farmhouses with big gardens, each of them like a mini castle. But this road continued northeast until we’d practically crossed the diamond over to Isaac’s Lane—not what we wanted—before the path resumed and we could turn left/north. Then we crossed a road and were in the southern environs of Cuckfield. The hotel was back over on the west side of town.
Along the path here were tractor tracks and before we could stop her Jam sank down there in the mud to loll and cool down. Her underside was now filthy and we were only 15 minutes or so away from the hotel! We walked through the town’s cemetery and emerged at the beautiful church into little Cuckfield. Before we knew it—and a bit sooner than we’d have liked as Jam was still dirty—there was Ockenden Lane.
We walked towards the hotel. A smartly-dressed middle-aged couple perused the menu posted outside the gate. Within was the sleek behind of an Aston Martin Vantage. Into the gravel courtyard on our eight tired legs we trudged. I told Irit to stay outside with Jam while I handled reception. An overweight young blonde woman greeted me gingerly. Nobody had read the reservation, in which I’d added a nice email noting the dog. It turns out there are only four rooms in the hotel where dogs can stay, and ours wasn’t one of them. But she gave us the room regardless. I called Irit in and we traipsed through the lobby. The woman went up the stairs first so there was about half a flight between her and the Jam so I don’t think she could see nor smell the extent of the mud.
We were shown into the room and the woman was gone quickly, and before Jam had a chance to wander around—nice thick light blue carpet, I noticed—we got her straight into the bathroom. I’ve done this before, travelled with dogs, and I know what’s required: You have to take care of the dog stuff before anything else. I thought we should use a towel to clean her but Irit insisted instead on toilet paper. I thought it would disintegrate as we rubbed Jam with it, but it didn’t, and after ten minutes of rubbing no more brown was coming off and we hadn’t even used a complete roll. Jam was instructed to stay in the bathroom for a while.
As I’d glimpsed, it was a lovely room. Hanging outside the bathroom were two fluffy white robes. The tea and coffee table had a pot and a variety of Twinings teas including Darjeeling and Earl Grey. A window in the corner overlooked the fairy-tale gardens. As I looked out at the green, pleased we’d walked all the way here and trying to soothe and calm my inners, I heard a wail from the bathroom. I ran to see. Irit had dropped my wallet in the toilet. “It was under your hat,” she explained. We fished it out. I was relieved that’s all it was.
More next time…
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