Mark Lind-Hanson's Blog, page 7

HARFLEUR TO AMIENS

 And so it was, that we set out for the fair at Amiens, I on Magdalene, Mary and Roger riding with Stephen in the cart. Stephen had seen fit to fill the small larder beneath his seat with enough food to last the four or five days it might take us to reach Amiens. I had my little line, with hook, so that someplace along the way, I might try catching some fish for us as well. The skies were not fair, and yet, they were not threatening, either.We again had some good foodstuffs, for which we could thank Stephen and Monsieur Luciole, all of the business about payment for the lodging finally cleared up. These included- a good fat wheel of cheese, a roast chicken wrapped in a cheesecloth, four bottles of good wine, a basket of good firm apples, and two loaves of bread for each of us, with a small jar of butter which looked like perhaps not enough, but which we might at least share out for a day or two. The roads had few people, and if there were, most were actually headed in the opposite direction, toward Harfleur, or to the junction of the Roman road which led south to Paris. On our first evening, then, as day drew to a close, we settled for the night at a spot which was far from houses and far from any sort of town. I fair enjoyed this, for there were some broad oaks, and they made a fine shelter, and the carpet of their fallen leaves crackled neath the boot.Roger prepared a fire, and we heated up the bird, and shared it out among ourselves, washing it down with wine, and making do for our desert with an apple and some cheese. There were tall hedgerows along the sides of the road, these we did not breach, but at the point we had stopped these broke off, for there was that other great attraction for me- a river, the name of which none of us knew, which would be crossed by a bridge, but which, I am sure, held fat fish plenty for the taking. I got Stephen’s assurance I could set my line in the morning before we departed, in the chance I could get one, and that, if I did, we might have that as our midday supper.Roger was in a good mood, for, after the incident with the moneychangers and the customs house and Luciole and Albertus and all the myriad things he kept in the back of his mind to keep Stephen on an even keel, he was talking and joking the entire evening. It must have been the wine, for he kept himself to just half the bottle (unusual!) and that, the rest of us did as well. We were trying to ration things the best we could. Mary spoke with Roger about his knowledge of this part of the land.“Aye, I have been on this road a dozen times, with Sire Richard on each of his trips, so my memory of this is quite firm. After this river we come to Valliquerville, and then, our next stop for the night should be at Porcieux. You will find there are few farmers along the way who will be pleasant enough to offer us more than water for the horses. And if they do, be sure you offer them some silver, else wise, they will cringe to hear your English tongue, and hold hand to dagger, till you depart.”“It sounds as though they do not fair care for English? But we are Cheshire.”
“That be no matter, lass. Of course all these years this land has changed hands once or twice, even more, from the English King to the Duke and the Duke again to the English- ever since Duke William conquered England and became William King. Aye, there are sympathies in these parts which remind me well of our own dilemma! For who wants a foreigner ruling over them, one from another shore? I for one would not. So it is best to consider anyone possibly hostile, and hold one’s tongue in reserve, and just be fair, pay one’s way, and be on with it.”“As I recall from Father’s stories, he had little trouble here.”“Aye, lad, but then, your father kept much from you, the better you should learn some things of the world by yourself. I tell you—I will be fair with the Frenchies, but I should also take care, lest you end up cheated somehow.”“Tis a pity none of us are French speakers,” replied Stephen.“Well, not to boast, but I do know some,” said Roger. “But yes, we are at a disadvantage there. Nonetheless— some things are common in all places, and some gestures mean much the same, so it is also not so hard to get by with some signal or other.”As the fire burned down, we all took to bed. Mary and I wrapped in our blankets together, Stephen and Roger taking sleep in their own bedrolls, lying on the woolsacks and cloth rolls of the cart. The horses all tied to a stand of ash trees, and we had led them to the river to drink as we made camp. They munched on straw which was tall and stood in generous clumps all about us.And in the morning, while the others broke out the bread, cheese, and apples again, I headed to the river to set my line. I stayed there a full hour, or so, and was disappointed that I had made no catch. But surprisingly, as I was just ready to say “that is it!” I got a bite. This was an ugly old lucy, which seemed to have been lying await for the entire time not far from my hook, but which had apparently determined that my bait- a chunk of cheese- was worth the investigation, and I had him.Man he was long, he was fat and he was round, but he might well make a meal for all of us!
We stowed him in the larder— wrapping him in the cheesecloth leftover from the hen— and Stephen agreed, when we did stop for lunch, we would fire him, and bake him up. Stephen and Roger had the sense to have brought a good thick iron skillet, which without, we might have needed to spit the fish, and that would have been both messy and perhaps, the fish might fall into the ashes, which would not be a good idea for eating! All the same. The stop for lunch would be a few hours more aways down the road.We continued. I walked Magdalene at an easy pace, she found it well to walk apace with the other horses, so usually I would be in the lead, compared to the others on the cart. We did pass a few more souls, but before we reached Valliquerville, we had a fateful encounter. This would be an event that had some bearing on the trip, as it happened.Before Valliquerville, a man approached us as we were going along. This man was a little bit hunched of back, he had bad teeth, he smelled rather foul, and had not wiped his nose for a day or two. Grime on his forehead, and his hands, and his clothing was so old that it hung in a tatter at his knees and elbows. But he approached us, speaking English! This was unnerving.“Kind people! I see you are English by your manner of hair and the cut of your clothes! Have mercy upon me! I am a poor man, but I am wise in these lands... Let me journey with you! Let me help to guide you, oh, for the sake of a fair penny, for I am a poor man, and my wife has long died, and my children know me not any longer!”Roger, who was now driving the cart, brought it to a halt. I sat saddled on Magdalene, flanking the beggar, should he attempt to make any moves such as attempt to possibly rob us. I had seen enough of highwaymen in England, that even a beggar in France could not be any less suspect.From his seat at Roger’s side, Stephen looked him over.“Tell us your name, poor man, and tell us why we should offer you our company? We have business up in Picardy, and we are headed there and will get there, baggage or none! Tell us your meaning, tell us your preference.”“Good sir, good Merchant from the other shore, I am Theuderic, I come from the meager village of Porcieux, and I am a poor man. Once I was a scholar of all things fair and noble, and earned my bread and my board from the Baron Roussendalle. But he has died, some ten years now, and the new lords of my own country have no use for me. In fact, they have scorned me, and sent me out to beg upon the roads, as have my children. Good Lord, you never knew such ungrateful little snots! But I speak your tongue! I can help to speak the language of the land, and ease your way in doing so! And please, oh, but for some fair penny, that I may buy bread, and shoes for my feet, and a wash!”Stephen looked at him. “A wash, my good man, can be had for as free as the water flowing at that river we just crossed back there. Just take oneself to the public baths.  Shoes— well, perhaps I see you may be in need. No man should be without. And bread, well, perhaps I might share with you a bit of mine. As for being our guide? We know whereof we go, and we know what we mean to do there.”“And where do you go, good merchant?”“We mean to Amiens, and the fair, there to depart our present loads, and make up more to sell in England.”“Amiens!” He said it with a shudder. But he pulled himself together, and made a show of courage. “Amiens! I know the town. The fair- c'est bien! Ah, you make the fair! I will see you make the fair! I can help with any troubles...”“Just make sure you give us no troubles, sir, or you shall find yourself at the fair point of my dirk!” Roger was speaking gruffly, but Stephen calmed him, indeed, Stephen calmed them both.“Then alright. We shall take you to Amiens, but then we shall owe you no more. And I may pay you something, but for that, you must wait, and what I pay shall be at my own judgment as to how you have given us fair or foul. Then get on, Theuderic, and we will take you along.”He shrugged at me, and I nodded back. Theuderic climbed onto the cart, and with some apologies to Mary, placed himself on the cloth rolls, and looked quite happy, much as a clam in a tidal pool could, for he had patrons, and now he could show off his wisdom— if wisdom that be.

We made our way then, somewhat in silence, for the new addition to our company was apparently not a man of many words. He was content to ride along, looking at the trees, the sky, the hedgerows, the fields, the birds in the field and on the wing, and hardly said anything. We stopped for lunch, and as Roger went about gathering wood and setting up the fire for the lucies, he managed to keep himself underfoot. Only now, his bent of talk was more of his needs, and less an explanation of  what had driven him to the roads.“Bread, sire, you promised bread...”Stephen nodded. “Assuredly, I will give you some. When I am good and ready. I wish you to tell me more of your life. How came you to lose your wife? Why do your children despise you? Surely there are reasons, as there are always three sides to a story, and two are usually wrong.”“Oh, sire, but for the grumbling of my guts! Ach, you want to know the pain of my existence! Listen”— he coughed, and wiped his grimy hand on his sleeve, and seeing as he had all of our attention, began.“As I said, I was in the court of Baron Roussendalle at Beauvais. For fifteen years I was. I had been to Paris and to the College and I had made my study the lives of the Popes. Yes! There are some sure rogues in that coterie, I will say! But it was for me to learn their ways, because Baron Roussendalle had a bishop who was, himself, they said to become a candidate to be Pope himself one day. Well, when I married, my wife thought me at times too wrapped in study to pay her the mind she wanted, if you know what I mean?”“No, go on.”“I mean, she liked me a’slammin’ her more than felt good for me, you know?”Roger huffed, at that, but kept silent.“I mean, I like a roll as much as any other man, but there are women in this world who, like many men, think of little else. And I found myself on the outs, one afternoon, as she brought a lover to our door and led him inside, and they made of me a beast with horns, while they made the beast with two backs! And that was not enough! For that evening, when my children came home from their own schoolhouse, they found the usurper himself eating at our table, and what is more, they welcomed him! More than they did me! They turned on their own poor father— and all of them! They drove me away... they drove me into this life. I have not gone home since that day—  my wife is a cheat and adulteress, and my children resent me, for not being man enough to keep her in line, and another man sleeps in my bed, eats from my table, and shits in my pot! Oh, woe...”Now whether any of this was true or not, neither Stephen, nor I, nor Roger, nor Mary, would ever know for certes. But it was told well, and it was told with such alacrity and sincere tone that we assumed, this must be true. For whatever could drive a man, a scholar, a person who spoke not only French, but English, Latin, and Greek (he said) from his own door, and into such a state of disrepair that  it looked far from certain he would ever see again such a noble estate, as that from which he had fallen? “This wife of yours, and this lover, what did you do to regain your status with respect to yourself?”“Respect for myself? What? I am not one to take these things lightly. But the lover is a man of great land, great company, a man who is known to many of Baron Roussendalle’s court as the chancellor. I have little chance myself, against a man with that much stride! A boastful man, too, but one whose authority comes of a higher regard of the Baron. And of that, I am only a plebe, and my family... Well perhaps, they could be better off with someone like that, than with a stupid man like me.”Roger huffed again. As we set the pieces of lucy in the pan and set them to frying, he was clearly thinking thoughts of Theuderic, and that his story was, perhaps, even if true, a little bit on the short side of believing.Mary was in the cart, still, and had not moved nor budged even to stretch her legs, and I motioned to her to get down. She brought the lute and the sack of poppets with her, and she began working on the Fool poppet.The fish was browning, and Stephen brought out the bread, wine, cheese, and apples, cut from one apple a half, and gave it to Theuderic, who grabbed it with greedy fingers, and gobbled it in three bites. He wiped again his greasy hands on his tunic. Stephen cut him a portion of his bread, and on it, placed a slice of cheese upon it. Theuderic took more time with this, but within a minute or two he had devoured it all. Stephen poured for him a cup of wine, and Theuderic slurped it—I watched, and he spent less time than I might have, but at least in this, he seemed to have had some noble manners in him, and he took his sips in measured paces, which did, in fact give him a more pleasing presence for us.When our dinner was done, and the sun was own, and we had finished hearing all the beggarman had to say, we all camped there by the river, and the horses tethered by the cart.In the morning, Roger hooked up the horses, we got back on our way with early light, not but bread and cheese for our breakfast. We rode most of the early morning but eventually reached a town, called Augrain, around about the hour of nine. Here, Stephen made it clear to the beggarman that he wished to do him a noble favor. It was always Stephen’s way to do things for others. After all, when I had dragged him choking from the Dee that day four years ago, he had gifted me with the lute Luisa, and had granted me power to come and go as I chose, on his father’s lands, and from there, I had become friends not only to Stephen but to his father, and Roger as well, and the other people around the manor, such as Master Porcull.So it was that out of his generous nature, as we rested our cart horses, and refreshed ourselves with milk, and a meal which we all purchased from a grocer, that Stephen took Theuderic to the shop of a cobbler, and bought him some good solid boots, such that might last a man tramping the highways for at least a year or more. Then, not satisfied with that, for what are good shoes without other clothing worthy of the word, he took him to a tailor, and to his own expense, fitted him with new hose, a tunic, and an overcloak for the winter. In such a fashion Stephen and Theuderic returned and we were able to resume the journey, after a break of an hour or so.Mary saw Theuderic’s manner as quite changed, for in his new clothing, he was near resplendent and did, at last, seem to be someone of whom it could be believed had spent time working in a royal court, as his story had put it. And while Stephen felt not a little put out by the expense, he shared confidentially with Roger and myself that he had done it as a matter of feeling charitable, and that perhaps, the beggar could offer something to us, as he had put it, as being our translator, for our time at the fair was to be as long as we might make it, and it would do us so much better had we a native French speaker to give us the real word on what was meant by this or that.And yet, while we did manage to gain Theuderic’s trust, we were loth to trust him fully, even though he did, of course, agree that it might be itself a fair deal, clothing for service. But we were to be sore and disappointed in the reality, once things took their full course.But that day, we had little to make any complaint as yet. Theuderic sat in the cart rolling along, something of a dullard’s joy in his eye, as he spent time picking lint and stray threads from the tunic, which I could see he wore with no small amount of pride.Outside of Chatenoy we again stopped, this time, it was for the evening meal, and Roger roasted all of us links of sausage that had come from the grocer back at the town we’d stopped at last. Roger said we still had at least two or maybe even three days of driving left before we would reach Amiens— and so we were yet not but halfway on our course! I told Roger that on the morrow, should we hit another river, that again I would try my hand at fishing, and that if we could get enough for the five of us, that I would even give him some more portion of my own. Roger laughed, and said that there would be little need. For he had also bought another large wheel of cheese, as well as a jug of wine, and that both of them should be enough to last us until we came to the fairground.The next day was much like the one before. We rode along a road, an old road made by Romans, with flat stones, and ditches beside which rose up on both sides into bocages, and these blocked much view into the wide farmland plains that were just beyond them. Sometimes, we might see cows, often, we noticed many types of birds, which would take perch in trees that lined the bocages, and watched us warily, before flitting away. I came to think this landscape, but for the huge barriers of tree and stone, much like that of Cheshire, only of course, Cheshire’s fields were oft marked out with scree of flint and chert, and not quite built up to such heights. But at about two in the afternoon we did hit another river, and Roger nodded to me, and I raced off with my line and pole to try, try again, to bring in our dinner.I don’t know why I didn’t stop at catching just five, though, because by the hour of five I had not just these five fish that could feed each of us alone, but I had double that! It would be a tough thing to keep this fish over the night, but Roger said we should eat the excess as our breakfast, and that we did. Such a filling breakfast! The fish, while no longer fresh, were still not rotted, and indeed, had I had the mind, I could have salted them all, and hung them on the wagon posts to dry in the sun. But the weather was not the best.In fact, while the rain stayed away, mercifully, the clouds often hung low, and menaced, and it would only be the mid part of a day really when the clouds kept themselves from darkening the road. When there was sunshine, I would doff my cloak, and place it upon the saddle as Magdalene bore me along, and when the wind and the clouds and the cold returned, again I would don my cloak, and bundle myself against the growing chill. At every stop we made, we had a fire, and with this we could warm our hands, arms, and legs, yet the nights were beginning to get so chilled, that Mary and I were often loth to move from beneath the blankets. We had each other for warmth, and our growing familiarity had become something that it was taking an effort to throw off, that the traveling could continue on apace.The day before we reached Amiens, we did stop at another tavern, and there, the beggarman set about on his own, to garner coins from the patrons. I used the time to tune the lute, and provide some music gratis, for those who might lend me an ear. Mary was continuing her work at costuming her poppets, and Roger and Stephen were content to drink of the ales, and wines, and for Roger, anyway, to attempt passes at the country wenches. But he had little luck. At least one of them looked at him cockeyed and all funny when he burst forth into his accent— betrayed by his Englishness, she turned up her nose and strode away, unconvinced of Roger’s worth, heedless of any of his need. Stephen put us all up again in the tavern so we had real mattresses to sleep on, although they were none as comfortable as the Inn at Harfleur. And the horses and cart were well looked out for, although we did, again, take the precaution of moving the wooden chests off it, and into our rooms.I spent what must have been three evening hours  from five until eight? Playing my lute. Again I used the Breton dances, but I did try also to improvise ideas of my own, reflecting on all I had yet seen, and reflecting on the faces of the poor people who inhabited the tavern, and were drinking, playing at darts, or dice, or cards. Or with each other, as Roger had hoped to find for himself a play friend, but did not.“Stephen and Roger tell me that we should arrive early tomorrow,” Mary told me. “I look forward to being able to sell father’s chests! I look forward to what it all shall be like. I do hope that both of us will enjoy ourselves, as much as if we might have been at home...”Again, talk of home made me both anxious, nervous, and hopeful, that we could make it back and that all would be as we had left it, and all would be well and fine. I said another set of prayers beyond my usual ones for my father, mother, and Simon, and this was directed to Mary, and her father and mother. “May they be free from the wrath of King Henry and the vileness of their servitude to him. may Robert come home safely from Wales, may he have great success and luck in battle, as it happens, and may we be delivered one fine day from the English. Amen.”And once more the sun rose, breaking over Dracqueville with the sound of roosters and somewhere the honk of an ass and many noisome geese which passed over the town.                 
You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

You Will Never Be So Free Again

     The last fourteen years of American life have been terribly disheartening for those of us who thought, perhaps, that with the new millennium, we might see an actual expansion in American culture of the ideas of Freedom and Liberty. Surely there might have been a window in which culture might have been allowed the opportunity to break through. But several things have happened, and I wish to let people know, that America will never be your parents' America, ever again, in light of these changes.     The first, and largest change, of course, was what seized the population after 9-11-01. Fear, and fear of “terrorists”, set us on a one way course to the point where now we see our own Constitution taken to task for its “oversight” allowing for Amendments One, Two, Four, and Five to be stripped of all meaning and reinterpreted in the hands of those who wield power over we, the citizens.      Besides the scourge of the Free Love generation, AIDS, which swept in like an avenging Victorian angel at the end of the 70’s to chill any chance remaining of the idea of “casual sex” ever regaining the status it had held for a decade, the social climate of the 1980s- that there was nothing which could not be commodified, and nothing worth living unless commercialized in the name of profit and greed- “loss leading” gatherings like the original Woodstock were seen as naive, Utopian fantasies, “proven” unworkable by the exceptional phenomenon of its doppelganger, the Altamont festival. Of course, Altamont was a disaster waiting to happen for a number of reasons, but the existence of a receptive counterculture to its idea was never one of these, not the way it was later sold to America by “Law'n'order”.      A situation like the Woodstock Festival of 1969 will never happen again. It just can't. In part, it is because the reactionary community led by the likes of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan took umbrage to the extent of making many such mass gatherings impossible to recreate. As well, their “War on Drugs” enabled a community of law enforcement officers to enact their own cultural war in revenge, punitively seeking to destroy wherever possible the growing “counterculture” attended to by a community of mostly young people. Those who foresaw a more healthy recreational lifestyle in the use of marijuana over that of alcohol. That the youth of America were automatically suspect of UnAmerican ideologies was half of the problem- the other half of the problem were those among America’s youth who actually were taken by UnAmerican ideologies (such as Marxism and Maoism) and self-appointed themselves to lead the lemming charge against the Military Industrial Complex. And if we need bombs to do it, by God, let’s build some bombs to do it with (i.e, the Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrns). Such persons never represented the leading edge of the movement, even if historical revisionists of both the right and left would like you to think they did.      Another element of the culture war, of course, is the revision of historical truth over how and why the Vietnam war was lost by America. They would like you to believe it was lost either on the battlefield by a mutinous soldiery, or in the streets of America itself, where people took to mass protest in order to end an illegal occupation of another nation. Defeatism, and not the possibility that the other side held the moral cards- it was their country after all. Of course, illegal occupations of sovereign nations have become de rigeur now for those charged with enforcement of American foreign policy. Some, like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, never see a prewar situation they do not approve of. They would love to escalate each and every situation into an excuse to throw more Americans into a slaughterhouse, for that is where their own greatest “service” to America took place. If it is good enough for us, then it ought to be good enough for you. Stupid peaceniks are always the problem.     Then there are the ones who would like you to think that the whole nation would go to hell if drugs were legalized, particularly, pot. Well, you know, any drug is a gateway drug, if it happens to be the first you use. And it could be said that many would never turn to alcohol, (or worse, heroin or amphetamines) if the safer alternative of pot as a culturally sanctioned intoxicant were to be normalized and alternatively available instead.      Mass gatherings like the Woodstock festival will never be possible again, despite their benign and nonviolent nature, because of law enforcement’s “need and desire” to be in control of mass assemblies. Anarchic opportunities such as Woodstock truly represented are seen as opportunities- if not for sheer out and out rebelliousness, then, as opportunities for “terrorist attacks.” Better to keep the population in line, than allow them the freedom to come together in such a disorganized (or unprofitable) fashion. The commercialization of the festival is not the issue (to be fair, it was a noble attempt to begin with- but the organizers did not count on the actual popularity of the attractions to be presented, nor the ability of a movement of highly mobile young people to assemble at what was, in those days, something of a moment’s notice) It goes without saying that even in the case of a national mobilization of militia in response to a governmental military coup that such a large mass gathering could only be seen as something to be nipped in the bud with helicopters, drones, and SWAT teams.
    The legacy of Woodstock was to be reduced and distilled into a small stream more easily channeled by authority into the phenomenon of “the Grateful Dead concert community.” Dead concerts, indeed, became a trap for the unwary, targeted by law enforcement as “havens of drug taking and sales” and sure-fire opportunities for drug bust press. That the Dead themselves rarely, in later years, played into this mentality (as they once might have in early years, when they actually were members of the activist psychedelic community) only points up the pathetic hopelessness in conceiving that somehow it was also “the last hope” for such freedoms as it could stand to represent. The Dead, eventually, endorsed the crypto-police state candidate Barack Obama (not merely once, but twice) and the possibility of a world where such extreme opposites as Ann Coulter and Al and Tipper Gore might meet over bong hits evaporated in a mist of PRISM-inflected super-spy paranoia. You never can know who your real friends are, now, can you? Only that we are all suspects in a bigger game which has been played by powerful shadow figures, ever since the death of John F. Kennedy.You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

HARFLEUR

[Each week or so we'll feature a new chapter from the soon to be released ebook, Many Worlds Since I First Left Home, Book Two in the Julian Plectrum medieval fantasy series]

The port of Harfleur now appeared off starboard. I hustled below to bring Mary up so she could see, and that we could be together as Barcelona made her landfall. Stephen joined us, and Roger made some haste to get a few things of his own in order, for one of the first things that would be done would be to offload the cart, and get the better portion of the goods into it, before Stephen would lead us on to our next stop— a now eagerly anticipated tavern. Albertus had command of the wheel and turned the cog in toward the harbor. There were a great many seabirds flying and flapping about us- hungry, obviously eager for what spoils they might take once the boat had docked.  Toward either side of us stretched wide marshlands, but they were interrupted by a long deep channel, which led to the harbor proper. There was a great fortification stretching all across the seafront, a great stone wall with tall towers, topped with the strange sculpted images of animals. There were two taller towers, thicker than the others, which we would have to sail through. But we were blocked by great links of chain, which lay suspended between them just beneath the surface.Albertus put the ship on a line to cross between the towers, in the only spot that allowed entry. He was hailed from above.“Qu'est-ce navire êtes-vous et pourquoi venez-vous?” A helmeted head peered out of a tower embrasure. The chains stretched across the path of our bow.“Barcelone,de Penzance en Angleterre. Nous sommes un navire marchand.” Albertus had a better command of French than the rest of us.The helmeted head disappeared back inside the tower. There was a wait, and then we heard a shout, and the great chains began to drop back down beneath the water, leaving room for the Barcelona to make port. I could begin to see the docks and the wharves where we were to tie up.We were now inside the harbor, and you could once again hear the noise of the great gears pulling the chain back up and tightening it against unwelcome vessels.Albertus’ crew hustled to bring in the sails and ready their anchor. Pins were tied, sails furled, and riggings tested. All was good. There was a point in the wharf which Albertus was aiming for, but he overshot his first one, and cursed.“Now I must take that next one. I mean to. OK, here we go”—Barcelona eased in, and Albertus’ cringing face relaxed, and he turned to Stephen and gave a weak laugh. “Tis nothing. Once you’ve done it a few times, nothing to it.”I was not sure he had convinced anyone, his his first mate stifled a laugh, but soon they had the anchor down, and the mate and bosun had laid down the gangplank. “Well Stephen, my first stop will be to the customs house. Would you care to come along? If not, that might wait for the morrow, but yet I need see the harbormaster, and see about the tackle to get that cart of yours off. Meanwhile, First Mate Regulus and bosun Chelmswadd can see to your horses. Once they are off and you have your luggage, then you need not see me ‘til the morrow.”“That is fine, Albertus. I should like to meet both of those men, for I am sure to have other occasions in the future, when a good face will show my company well, and again. Anyway, my friends here are in need of food and drink, are they not? For the day is drawing late and we have not had repast since the excellent breakfast. My compliments to your cook, as well.”Albertus nodded. “He’s one of the best, and he has yet to fail me.”A guffaw was stifled on the first mate’s part again, as he led the first of the three horses off upon the gangplank onto the shore, and returned, with the second cart horse, and then Magdalene. Obviously there was some discrepancy between Catso’s meals for Captain Albertus, and his fare for the crew. But it was not an issue for us, after all, and as Stephen had said, we were all eager to get some food and drink.Mary and I saddled Magdalene with her jingling blanket, and Mary rode with her chest, and her canvas sack of poppets in her lap, as I waked beside, Luisa at my back, my other belongings in a larger pouch I had fitted myself with in Penzance, that morning when we had found our bed, and hastened it home to the house, so far away now, but yet, dear in our minds.Stephen rode the first cart horse, which was a roan stallion, that was now, older than our horse Magdalene, and the veteran of some eight of these trips. The other, on which Roger was seated, was a roan mare, younger, but that had made five of the trips. So the passage off the Barcelona on the gangplank by both of them was something of a marvel, to me anyway, but in no wise odd for the horses.“Our first stop,” Stephen declared, ‘is the inn they call La Cove de l’Ogre.”I laughed. “And have they ogres there?”“Most definitely,” replied Stephen, “as well as whores, pirates, scum of the sea, water dogs, pickled eel, and oysters on the half shell.”“Sounds like my kind of place,” said Roger.“And as we both well know, so it is!” continued Stephen. “For the last time we were here, Roger, you told me it was the best inn in Harfleur! And you weren’t lying about that.”“Indeed it is, the best damn flesh pot in Harfleur and the entire coast of Normandy! You could do worse, and, so I know, so your father, our departed Sire Richard, was oft of mind to tell me.”The talk of a fleshpot whore house did not sit comfortable with Mary, who made some irritated faces toward me, but I winked at her. This only caused her to turn her head and look the other way. I would need to be a little more careful. Of course, once we had spent a night there, it might not be less to her taste, or more, I had no idea, but neither did she. So neither of us said a thing. But yet, I would have to watch myself on this.
La Cove De l’Ogre turned out to be located on a street six long blocks into the town, close to the harbor, true, but hidden under the eaves of a larger building, one seemingly used for a warehouse. It was in just such places one might expect to find Roger, in these port towns, where there was business to be tided up, and stevedores for hire to muscle goods on and off cogs like Barcelona, and where—no doubt—tenderfoot landlubbers like us might easily come to blows with rougher customers, armed with cudgel or dagger.And yet, when we entered The Ogre, as I shall henceforth call it, I was pleasantly surprised. There was little of the type of man which might have put the fear to Mary, nor any rough customer cutpurses lollygagging about. Inside, there was a bar, and it was stocked with many fine and handsome spirit bottles, and there was ale from tapped casks from which pretty pleasant girls of the country drew mugs for —comfortable gentlemen, so it seemed, all the men about were. And there were some fine ladies, as well, dressed in fine silks, sipping from fluted wine glasses, and discussing the finer points of hostelry and embroidery work.I knew then that actually, Stephen and Roger had been joshing me, and Mary felt quite relieved.“This is the Ogre,” said Stephen. “It is the last place which father brought me to, and again, it is the place where Roger last burned his worm on French soil.”“Yes, indeed. This man’s tavern sells only the finest spirit and cider and ale! I could waste away a month here, and well not notice,” Roger affirmed.“We must speak to Monsieur Luciole,” Stephen said, more to one of the barmaids than to any of us, and she hurriedly ran into the back of the inn, and returned with the man in  question.“Oui, yes, Monsieur! Bonjour! Welcome to La Cove d’le Ogre! I am, indeed, Monsieur Luciole! And you? You seem familiare, but zis, eet could be my meeztake.”“Monsieur Luciole, I am Stephen of Westchester, from Cheshire, in North England. I am a trader of wool and textiles.  My father and Roger, here, had come often here on their trips to Amiens, and this is the purpose of our journey again today.”The innkeeper looked hard at Roger, and registered some recognition. But said nothing, whether he thought good or ill of him. “And where eez your fazzair?”“He is dead, Monsieur.”The innkeeper regarded Stephen with a bit more kindness.“Alors, zees is a sad sing, a young man your age but only, and your fazzair has already died! Ah well. And I zuppose, you veesh to have lodgings.” The way he ended the sentence was not one to inspire optimism.“Indeed. We require a room each, for Roger and myself, and one for the fine couple here, my minstrel friend Julian, and his wife Mary. And a stable for our three horses.”I gave a slight bow, and Mary, a slight curtsy. We had both been trained in manners, but in England, had so little occasion or need to use them, so often were we among our own. but here in France... we had little idea how these French people might feel about anything. Especially, English country folk!“Vell, eet happens yes, Monsieur Westchestair, zat I do haff ze rooms vich you require, een zis, you are en le bon chance. Jillian!” he called for the girl who had brought him to the front, who quickly set down a mug she had just filled for a thirsty elder man sitting at the bar, and came running up to his side.“Jillian! Two rooms for les messieurs, et vun for ze couple! Make sure you haff zem in clean sheets!” he laughed.Turning back to Stephen, he now named the price. “Zat vill be un sous, good sir.”“Un sous... hmm- I have no French coin!” Stephen seemed flummoxed, but Luciole put him at ease. “You need not pay ze fare now, good sir. But you shall settle up all before your party leaves. Or else!” He drew a line across his throat with his index finger, and Stephen nodded.Jillian led all of us into the other side of the inn. The open rooms were on the bottom floor- not a good sign, necessarily, but in France, the bottom floors were always the luxurious ones, and I was not disappointed in the room she led us to. We set down our burdens. Roger was out in the front, seeing to tying the horses, and so he would trust Stephen with the care of his key.When we met Stephen and Roger again, out in the main dining room of the tavern, they were laughing about the stable hand who had taken all three horses back into the stables. The stables, behind the inn, but yet still a part of the same city block, seemed a little cramped, Roger complained. And the stable boy was slack jawed when Roger threw him a whole groat as a tip.“I am feeling generous today.” That would have been an understatement!Mssr. Luciole was soon at us again, but this time, with an apron tied round his waist, he was in his cook incarnation, and ready to ask us what we wished to eat “for ze suppair”.Stephen smiled. “Julian, do not worry, I will pay for all your meal and drink tonight. Have whatever you want.”Stephen turned again to Luciole. “For me, I should like your wine-soaked hare, which I well remember, when I was here last fall! Delicious, sir. And give me a red wine, in a full bottle. Roger?”Roger piped up. “Yes, Monsieur Luciole, well do I remember your deep sea bass. Ah, you are an excellent master of the scaly cold beasts! Give me a pot of best ale to flush it down with.”Luciole looked at us.I looked at Mary. Neither of us had been in France before, and she looked quite wan.“Do you serve lamb?” she meekly asked.Luciole chuckled with gusto. “Do I have lamb? Why yes, I can get you a little lamb. Would you like him to come with a sprig of mint, or would you like a white crème sauce for his bonnet?”“The sauce, good sir.” And now, Luiciole made it clear it was my turn.“I will have what my friend is having,” indicating Stephen, and meaning the hare. I always had enjoyed hare more than I ever had lamb, having grown up with lamb leg, lamb chop, lamb shank, lamb rib, lamb quarters, lamb, lamb, lamb, lamb, lamb, at the house of Davis my father.“Oui! Dieux hares! Quelle bon! Eet zhall be done!” and then quick as lightning, Luciole disappeared back into his kitchen.The girl Jillian brought us out two large bottles of wine, one for Stephen, and one for me to share with Mary, and Roger his pot of best ale, which he set to with great gusto, himself. We now had time to sit and look about us, drinking in the atmosphere of the tavern. As I said, there were groups of well dressed persons in knots around tables, or seated at the bar, and they all had the look of prosperous folk. There was not the least hint of the whores and the pirates and the guttersnipes they had jived me with. Indeed, this seemed to be a very fine place. It was disconcerting, that the “Cove of the Ogre” should be the land of such beautiful people.All that over with, and I wondered something.“Stephen, what will they do with your cart? While we have the horses here?”“Oh the cart, yes. Well Julian, they will have to hire the tackle, first, but once they get it, which they should be doing... very soon, if not right now... then they will lift off the cart, set in on the wharf, and Albertus’ crew will begin moving my goods to it. And then, Albertus’ crew shall move it to the customs house, where it shall stand the night. Then, I shall go to the customs house with Albertus, declare the goods, pay their fee, and we shall then be free to move them.”“And where or when will we be going?”“I hope that we might begin the journey to Amiens by tomorrow’s eve, but it depends, of course, how things happen to go with the harbor master and customs people today. Albertus has been through this many times though. I would not be surprised if he ends up setting here, with us, ’ere the evening is up.”I noted the fine glass windows of the Ogre. As the day was late, and it was around the hour of five, there were still some hours of day left. But the wind had come up from the sea, and while I was admiring the windows, the girl Jillian came over and began to close the shutters. I sighed. I hardly had the time to enjoy that, and this pleasure was being taken from us.But it was a small complaint, as we sipped at our drinks, and Mary brought it up for me.“Are we to be expected to perform tonight?”“Dear, I do not know. Stephen told the keeper that I’m a minstrel, but who knows what he makes of minstrels. This audience, too, are not our usual folk, I can tell. They seem more well-to-do.”“That should not bother us,” said Mary. “What we offer is different from what they will have known.”“Maybe,” I said, but in my head, not quite so confident. But then I decided, I should take this as a challenge. What did it matter who they were, those sitting rapt with my tunes in their heads. What matter how deep their purses, so long as I did well enough to gain their trust, and their attention! I made my mind up then, I would bring it up to Luciole myself, rather than to leave it up to him. So I told her:“I will mention this to him after we have eaten. That we are performers and have been playing all the way down from Chester this season. That we are anxious, even, and would feel more welcomed, had we the chance to offer them a sample of our arts.”Mary beamed at me, and I knew that, if I screwed courage to the sticking point, I would gain esteem not only in the eyes of these French, but in hers. I continued.“I think, Mary, that tonight we should both do something. I will play the Hotspur Lay- for there is no danger of our being found out by Henry’s spies here! And the Robin Hood, and the Ulysses, and you will accompany these with your poppets. Then, I shall regale them with some solo lutery- I have a number of things in mind.”“You should know, Julian, that I am thinking up a new play for the poppets. I call it “Fool and Beau.” All I need do is change the hat on Henry King, and he becomes Beau. And Fool- well, he is good and sturdy as he is, you know.”“Fine, fine. We ought to wait until we spend more time together though, before we play it to them all. Perhaps our next performance...”“Well, you say but I want to bring it out soon. For how else can I know how it goes, lest I try? ““That is somewhat what my predicament is, here, tonight. A strange country! A house, full of well-to-do’s! And all of them, speaking a tongue we know so little well. Anyway, yes, Mary, once we eat, I shall bring it up.As though it were a matter of no means at all, Luciole appeared once again, but now, he had plates in hand- a large tray, with a fine, fat bass, he set before Roger, whose eyes bugged out like saucers at the sight. Before Mary, he set (theatrically, with some gesture of deference) her plate of lamb. The fillet was cut long, and unlike anything I had ever seen on my father’s table. And it was covered in a deep rich creamy sauce, flecked with bits of chive and dill. Before Stephen and me came the two hares, roast in their skins, and which flaked off so easily form the bone when approached. They had been marinated in a pleasing wine, which of itself, Luciole assured us, was that we had been tippling the past half hour. The first mouthful made me realize that indeed, this Luciole must be some master of his art. There were other meals I had eaten long ago— indeed, the town fairs of Chester served very fine roast capons, and there were sometimes beefsteaks which themselves must have set nobles back a fair penny, but this was a meal to remember!And we supped, each of us to our own, as guests and customers came and went from the Ogre, greeted and parted from Luciole with jovial French talk which I knew none of, and Luciole getting merrier as the evening hours grew darker.At the end of our meal, Luciole returned with dishes of flan, the better with which, he said, might set our stomach to settle. It was sweet, and I noted bits of semolina in it, just grainy enough that it was not another sweet treacle sauce.When I had cleaned my dish of the flan, I caught his eye, and gestured for him to return to the table.“Master Luciole, that was a most fine meal, and I am glad to have come. I am a minstrel, as Stephen told you. And my wife and I should like to give you a performance. Would you give us the floor?”“Monsieur English, I suppose you zhould entertain zese good people. Ve haff had novun about heere do so for many a year. I am sad to say zat my own friend, Ranulf, he hass gone afar, and vuss indeed zumone I vould haff summoned to zit here and play for zem...”“Ranulf? Ranulf, the Breton?”“Oui. He hails from Morlaix, Bretagne.”“Why, I know Ranulf! He is one of my good friends! We met in Penzance years ago. And we are set, I hope, to perform at the Christmas feast of our Baron Anselm come Christmastide! Well, bless my stars, Ranulf is a friend of yours!”“Oui, monsieur, I am happy to hear you know him. But I vish I had zee vay of brinking him here. Zair is no vay I eefen know wear he ees at all.”It dawned on me, I didn’t know his whereabouts either. So we were both fated, perhaps, upon only time and chance, to meet up with Ranulf again.“Well, I guess then that changes some of my ideas of my performance! I shall end the evening with some dances which Ranulf taught me. Perhaps these will set your guess here about on their feet.”“Vell,” he looked at me. I could tell there was something about the Ranulf connection which was entertaining the gears of his brain. “Vell, zen I zuppose I zhall ask you to play for us, yes.”Mary, whom I could see just out of my right eye, was obviously pleased, and in a discreet way, began smoothing the length of her dress in her pleasure.“Then fine! We will be back, with our instrument and poppets! And as we are away, please introduce us! Julian and Mary Plectrum, the Cheshire Players!”At that, both of us rose, and we hurried back to the room, where we gathered up Luisa and the sack of poppets, and when we returned, Luciole was just winding up his calling the customers to the entrance we were about to make.And he did, of course, just as I had asked. It was a fine cue to step in on. We took up places near the tavern fireplace, as was our usual wont.“Greetings, Frenchies,” I began, not too diplomatically “Greetings, ladies and gentlemen,” I began again. “We are the Plectrums, Julian myself here, on the lute, and my fair wife Mary there, the poppet mistress. We are first going to give you a short musical play, which is titled the Lay of Hotspur. It comes about after a horrible battle, the battle of Shrewsbury, where our countrymen fell defending their freedom against that usurper of the Crown, Henry IV. And who fell in this battle but his good longtime servant Henry Percy, that which they knew as Hotspur. And he was the better man, although he fell.”At that, Mary’s Hotspur poppet came out, and she made him bow to the guests, who laughed, for they could see that she had a real talent for gestures.I began the song. As I sung it, she made herself busy with the King and Hotspur poppets. At the very end, she had the Henry King strike with his sword- at such a point in the lay that we had now practiced to occur just right— as the music stopped, and I began the refrain,“A’lack a’ Dee, for Lack of Dane,Bad Henry king, Fair Percy slain!”And although few of them spoke English, there were a few who did, and who appreciated our trouble, and applauded. This encouraged us a good deal, so I now went into the tale of Robin Hood.May’s Robin and Marian poppets came out now, and the first two were stored back in her canvas sack. I sang of the impish Friar Tuck and Little John, and this actually made some of the folk lean in closer to watch. And when that song was done, even more applauded.Next was the Ulysses Lay, and for this, Mary used Marian for Penelope, and Fool for Ulysses.When we ended it, she made some funniness with them, as if they were making love right in front of the crowd, and our audience loved that even more. So that being done, she set her poppets all back in the bag, and I continued with my solo performances.I introduced the first piece as one of Ranulf’s. At the name “Ranulf” I could hear some of them catch their breaths, and indeed, by the time I had that piece finished, something in their blood had set a couple of them to dancing, for it had to have been a familiar tune to each of them. This was a good sign, so I played my next four pieces specifically of tunes I had been taught by the Breton piper. And these went down so well, I had some of them roaring loud!“Encore, Encore!” they cried. I had plenty left in my little bag of tricks, so I settled them all down, and asked them all to be quiet, and to imagine they were aboard a ship, sailing out in the channel. Into this piece I poured all my impressions of our journey there to Harfleur- the birds, the choppy waves, the rattling of the men after the bilge rats, the sunlight over the water, the pretty purples and pinks and bright orange of the sunsets. It was long in doing, but I felt I had the time, and they all offered me their ear. So when it ended, even Luciole came up to me, shook my hand, his eyes near tearing, and assured me I were welcome to return at any time I chose. And when he finished shaking my hand, there was a florin in my palm! It was just the type of night I had hoped for, and even Stephen and Roger, who had been laughing and chatting with Albertus (who had, indeed, appeared in the midst of my show), were clapping and shouting approval when I finally bowed, and exited my seat at the fire.Mary and I spent time after the others had gone off to bed, and after Albertus had left for the Barcelona, chattering together about her new “Fool” play, and about how well we had gone down. We were both so excited we made love the rest of the evening and when we finally finished we watch the moon set, together, out our little window.


You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

SAILING ON THE SEA (from work in progress, book 2 of the Julian Plectrum Series)

As the coast of Cornwall faded to small dots and less behind us, the captain of the Barcelona, Albertus, hastened all of us below into his cabins. The main one held his own bed, and a table full of charts. And beside it another chamber he used solely for his dining, and had one or two bunks for guests. He bid us to sit round the table. Chairs with rope seats were all about it, and he called to his cook, Catso,  who began bringing in large plates of food for us.“I have brought you here just to welcome you again, Stephen, Roger, and you, the two newly wedded ones. We are headed for Harfleur, it is true, but I mean to let you know about some of the things we have been worrying over. The Prince of Wales— the Welsh one, that is— is rumored to be dealing with the French, and possibly treating with them. What I know is, while we sail there, and we have had good relations with them, it is entirely possible that they will make ways to keep us in port more than we might choose to. I have supplied all my crew with a little more victuals than they would have called for, in the event they do not allow us to offboard ourselves, to enjoy the pleasures of their port. For while I am English I yet feel drawn to your cause. The fate of Cheshire is in the balance.”He continued.“Like I have told you, Stephen, your father’s death sounds like something I shall carry as a scar all my life. It’s my wish that you take that pendant which I gave to you, and leave it at his grave, when you return, for in my heart I never had such a fine and wonderful friend.”We could see the tears welling up in his eyes. The meal sat untouched before us- there was good new bread, and bowls of good chowder, and even plates of boiled carrot, but we touched nothing while Albertus laid bare his heart. Stephen felt the sorrow. We all did, which was nothing remarkable at all.“Albertus, we know little of the designs of Wales. We only hope to bring our goods to Amiens, and return with more. I do feel the pain you speak of and aye, consider all my father’s friends to have been friends of mine. And that we might help to be yet your customers for many more years- I understand you would have us tread warily in France. And so we shall. But for now, let us put aside those other things. Tell us of the journey. How long? What say you of the conditions under sail?”“Ah, conditions. Well we leave at perhaps a good time, although I wonder about the return. We shall have good sailing to Harfleur. It is the coming back to consider. The current is fair, and the seas are not turbulent, at least, they are for the moment. We should be at Harfleur night after tomorrow, if not sooner. The wind carries us at a fine pace, and I have seen no sign of storm. Like I say though, our trip back could be more frighted. The storms will begin to blow through here mid October. The current will be against us on our return. The rains due to come will doubtless delay you, at some point, however you hope to make it. I know you have made the trip before, Stephen, but Richard had done it a dozen times, and each one, he took care to cover up the wagon for the torrents could easily ruin all those fine cloths you plan on returning with.”“Aye. I shall consider that, Albertus. Meanwhile, perhaps, we might partake your fine table? Let us have Julian tell the grace, and we eat, lest this good chowder go cold!”And so it came to me to speak the table grace. Mary nodded to me, and I began, quite simply.“Lord who has given us all good things and the grace of living, grant us continued blessings, and we thank thee for this blessed meal, and our good host. May we sail with good fortune, and his little ship be borne with joy, upon the great sea of thy continuities. Amen.”“Amen!” agreed Albertus most heartily, and he dug into his chowder with a gusto.“I feel we will have quite a journey,” said Mary. “I have heard much of France, but never left Cheshire, really, until I married Julian and we came to Penzance. Lest I fall homesick too quickly, I hope we might discover more things to give us conversations with our friends and families. Surely Stephen is a good and generous fortunate merchant, even though he be young. And he has Roger to help him, of course!”Roger, sitting across the table, looked up with a wet-puppy expression.“Madame, I helped Richard for each of those journeys, I can help to make ease the path for you and Julian, of course, by what I do know of France, and of this road we shall need take to Amiens. There are few things in France that surprise me now, although I am sure you and Julian will discover your own. Rest assured, I will do all I can to ensure the safety of us all.”Stephen and I had finished our bowls, and we each shared one of the small round loaves  Catso the cook had brought in. Albertus went to a cabinet on his wall and took down two bottles. One was a glass gallon jug of red wine, the other, a smaller blue glass full of some sort of brandy, of which I had never known.“My friends, as you are on your way to Normandy, I should give you a taste of their finest.”He poured liquid from the blue bottle into each of our cups. “This is an apple brandy, the august spirit of the apple of that land. It is famed far across Normandy! Would that there were more of this! But they guard it highly and part with it dear. The thing is, once you have had some, you are likely to want more! But this is all I have until we land, and I can restock my stores.”We sipped the drink. It was pure apple essence! Such like my strong cider, but more like Porcull’s distilled spirit than that! Strong, too. One cup of it, and I felt more relaxed, and set to the lute.“Will  you have a song, Albertus? Call the tune, if you would.”“What may you play that will ease my sorrow on Richard?”“Ah. Perhaps I shall give you a meditation in melody. I have no words— Richard was my protector, too, and I owe him dearly for what I have become. So very well. I shall make for all of you now a tune for Richard.”And I played them in a minor mode of D something that had been gathering thought in my mind. Richard the noble, the D minor- F- b flat and C major mode in grand flourishes at each change of chord. When I though of Richard, my fingers on the bass strings pulled earnestly, the strum of my pinky and ring fingers was just. Albertus took an ear, sat silently, and smiled. When I had set the lute back down again, my wife took my hand.“Julian,” she said, “I want for your sake that you remember these days. We are young and in love  and who knows if we should have the chance again to make such a journey. I will remember everyone at this table in my thoughts and prayers tonight. And I will welcome the ship’s captain at our own table, e’er he return to Penzance port, that he might have a safe place to stay, and celebrate anew.”“Very good of you to offer, Mrs. Plectrum,” replied Albertus. “Long have I tired of some of the taverners of Penzance- I will name you know names! Julian, you probably know who some of them are. If I should impose on you at all at any time...”“Imposition is not the question sire, only what you might reasonably require. I merely mention it because I feel your hospitality and help shall someday find repay. And we are new to Penzance as well. We can use having an elder who can help us make sense of the ways of the people there.”“And from a Cheshire man to the daughter of a Cheshire gentleman, I thank you, dear lady.”We finished off all the food laid before us, drank our fill of the brandy, and began again with the wine. Roger had to be looked to, of course, lest he take too many cups and make himself a monster again, but such was not the trouble now. The sun had begun to set, seen off through the windows of Albertus’ cabins, and the sky was rushing on a darker purple by the moment. Sea lapped against the hull, as we sailed on into the gathering dark. “I will give you three beds, such as there are here in this chamber, and in the antechamber beside. Usually that is reserved for my fist mate and bosun, but I have them working all night on a special task, and then, they are to keep the watch till sunrise. So when the weariness overcomes you all feel you free to bed down. There are blankets stored beneath the bunks, you will find. I return to my cabin. Stephen, and Roger, you will accompany me.”Mary and I took to the beds, and listened while Roger began going over the journey in more detail, as we could hear through the open door.“We have yet many sea-leagues to go. We head far below the Isle of Wight and continue full on over the French coast to Harfleur. I see no troubles in the next day’s travel- there are no ominous cloud forms, and it seems even the petrels and gulls remain on the open waters- that is always a good sign. The thing is, gents, as I told you, I wonder about our return. For each October at mid month the winds seem to reverse, take on chill, and the storms out of the great sea begin to blow against both England and France. These will bring rain to Normandy, and Picardy where you go. They can blow with severely strong rains- rains that cause us to furl the masts and take our lumps as we track back against the Channel flow. How be you set for cover?”“To be true, Albertus, it was not something I considered.”“Well then, I see you still have much to learn. Here I shall help you again. I have a small spare sail, which I shall give to you to make a cover to the wagon. You just cannot be coming back on the roads with those fine silks, tapestries, and everything else you find Amiens, in need of a drying! For they surely may spoil with mold and rot, if they soak long enough. And wherewith would you lie them aside to sun them? There will be few farmers in all Normandy willing to grant that comfort to an English merchant.”“Graciously, Albertus, I will accept that. And what payment shall I make you?”“Again, Stephen, no payment do I ask- today. But remember the debt if I should need a like favor! Well met were your father’s plans with mine, but he always kept me fairsquare on the level, whatever favors we gave each other. It is only common sense, of course.”“Of course.”Roger spoke up. The wine had settled well inside him, and yet not turned his brain to folly, as it must have the evening last in Penzance.“Good captain Albertus, I welcome this offer. We will need to perhaps trim this sail to our purpose. While we cannot do so yet, it shall be our first task once we are docked and unloading all the goods with the wagon. Mind you what can we do for you when we arrive at Harfleur? For I am familiar with the docks and taverns there. And with the shops. Once we have found ourselves a billeting and a place for the horses, I shall return to Barcelona and bring you to our stations.”“Ah, Roger, lad, I can very well sleep here on Barcelona while you have off to your sights. As I said, I worry some over how we will be perceived and received there. If things are not copacetic with the harbor master, it could be that I spend the entire stay cooped up in these spaces! No mind! For I have books and charts to look over, and of course there are always a myriad of chores to keep Barcelona fit and trim.”Stephen and Roger continued on talking in this manner for some time, in which, Mary and I relaxed in each other’s arms, and fell to sleep in but one of the beds, together.Deep in the night, I awoke, to strange sounds from the hull and the hold below us. Banging, yelling, cries of “there one be!” and “mash ‘em!” and pounding. I was so startled, I took from the bed, and peered into Albertus own cabin. He had not yet gone abed himself, and sat by light of a candle, with pen and compass.“What is troubling you, minstrel?”“Good Captain, what are these noises? What goes on down there?”“Ah, Julian, that’s only my crew. They have been set to their task.”“What the devil may that be! They woke me!”“They are just firing out the bilge rats. We can’t stand them, and we do not need them to spoil our stores, nor do we need them nesting in Stephen’s wool sacks. So the men take torches and cudgels and drive them out, through a hatchway, and off into the sea. We must do this on every journey, Julian.”“Oh well, I guess I see that. But can they be a little more quiet about it?”“They’ll be done within the hour, Julian. Have a good rest.”And with that, I was sure I was dismissed. I lay back down. Mary slept on, completely undisturbed by it, which was good, since I felt little desire to explain it all to her.When morning broke, as it must do upon all dreaming sleepers, I was hard put to rouse myself, for my dream had been a wonderful thing to find myself in, and the prospect of this earth again before my weary eyes was less the wonder, and more the burden. But I had not long to wait, before I heard Catso hustling and clanking about in his galley, firing the coals and setting pans out to boil up frumenty and eggs with cheese, which were set onto trenchers of a mild brown bread, that themselves were quite good, for while others may have flung them off, I found chewing on them added a lot to the relief of my own hunger. Mary and Albertus and Stephen were all already roused and fidgeting about having had a full fifteen minutes time on me. For I was indeed, a little angry at the gods for waking me. How rare it is, we dream a dream which is so pleasing to us, that we should rather forsake this world, for the one we find on the other side of sleep! But so it was. And even as I forgot the details, and even anything with which I might best describe it so to my wife, this dream was such that I only wanted to crash my head back down on the pillow again, and find my way back to Morpheus’ cave.But, of course, that was just not to be. As soon as Mary noticed me stirring, she was by my side, soliciting her good mornings from me, and offering me her hand, with which she smoothed the rumpled hair on my head, and stroked the growing beard of my face.“Julian, this day’s journey will find us in France. The captain assures me that we shall make port by nightfall.”Ah, the captain assures her. That was a good sounding phrase, it was, and I could only but trust this captain. Seeing as it was but my first time ever put out to sea, and that the Channel shores were each on the sides of the ship, and yet, only with a dunk in the water and a hearty swim could a man reach either, lest he remain onboard, I sighed, and tried to resign myself again to waking in this life.The captain himself, being full of his breakfast, had set to his own toilet, and now was up on the deck, making food for the fish with it. Stephen offered me the rest of his own breakfast, but I demurred, and the cook handed me over a trencher of my own, and this, as I said, I made my meal with, as Mary sat by me and both of us watched out the captain’s windows the green sea, with morning’s light shining full upon it, a thing both of wonder and of dread.“”Tis for sure, Julian, we shall be at Harfleur ere the dining hour. And there we shall bring you to the place we are fond of, in the town, where you and Mary might sleep this night. I take it that the hard sea gave you no fits?”“No, Stephen, the sea was neither hard, nor had I fits, but a wondrous dream most fond, that I should wake to see only this world again, ach, that is the curse! But what more. Perhaps I shall find that place of last night’s dream someday far-off, but for now, ach, here I am, and at least I’ve no headache!”And at this Mary laughed, for we would have many days ahead in our lives where a headache might be the least of our troubles.“You two must make yourselves easy as we ride Neptune’s chariot. For while we are used to the rocking rolling and the pitch and yaw of the cog, once we return to shore, you’ll see, the wobbles will come on as we gain land legs again!” Stephen was cleaning his teeth with his knife and flinging bits of crumb off onto the captain’s floor.The captain returned from his ordures and bade me a good morning. “Minstrel Plectrum! I should have a song, I should, to make my morning fine and merry! Have you a song in your bag that you can offer us?”Not affronted by his request, after my meal had been drawn away by Catso, I pulled forth the lute, and began to sing:The Barcelona sails upon the dark enchanted seaWith herring gulls and pelicans she is a sight to seeThe shore of France is starboard-wise, and England lies to portBut not for a moment would I leave this bed of my comfortThis bed of my comfort.
Our captain is a gentleman from Cheshire brave and sureAnd this crew of his they heave away- their hearts are strong and pureWe head this day for Harfleur town, the sight we’s like to seeBut not for a moment can I stop this anxious urge to peeThis anxious urge to pee...”I stopped. I had found myself headed someplace I was not sure Mary would be too keen on having me go. Indeed, I was heading into the realm of John the Farter, whom I will ever disparage, but being so close to the sea and the turning, churning of the stomach (as it might do) I knew not what had struck me. Albertus guffawed, and held up his hand. “Fine, fine, alright, you win. But I must hear your lute again, ‘ere the day is done! I know that I shall. Rest then, good Julian, for the cog shall get to Harfleur quite on our schedule. I recommend you and your wife take a seat up on the deck, where there will be other entertainments soon, offered by my crew.”What they might be, I had not a clue, and it seemed that Stephen might have an idea, but it seemed agreeable, so Mary and I went topside to the poop, where there were seats that looked both fore and aft, and chose the ones looking aft.When the crew had finished their morning miseries, they all assembled in the small space which set between the goods, the cart, and all the other stores which Albertus had outfit Barcelona with, and the bosun, Chelmswadd, was the first to begin.They sang a sailor’s song, so blue I cannot repeat it, and so ribald that Mary blushed.“They have a million of them,” assured Albertus.The Barcelona  was a fair sixty feet in length with a draw of about twenty five across. As a cog she had been to Spain and back some six times, to Bruges at least twelve, and to Harfleur, of course, someplace much upward than twenty. Albertus has friends everywhere, so Richard told us on the trip to London. I was also not surprised to learn Albertus knew where to go for the best spirits, because he had helped Richard to stock the cellars of the manor with wines from Spain and Central France. Those wines were delicious, and Albertus was a man getting up in the world.
           His crew had been gathered from men from Chester, Bristol and Falmouth, mostly. They were perhaps crude in speech and manner, but they got the job done and they did not dicker about complaining, when the time came to heave off, they would be there on board, or knew they would be left behind. I considered the little boat and its role to be an absolute item of real enterprise. Albertus made a little money off of us, not only because we paid him for the passage, but he made money from ferrying the goods here and there, and he did have his port costs, but he was in business because he liked to sail and he enjoyed the open sea. Perhaps as much as I enjoyed a warm and cosy hearth with a fire!Onward we sailed, into the brightness of day or such as might be allowed by some scudding clouds which came and went and came again. Dolphins came past us, and played within the wake, and sometimes swam up ahead of us, their own paths twisting and threading among each other. I spent some time with the horses, calming them, talking with Magdalene, assuring her that we would be putting to land ere the night came, and there would be water and hay aplenty for her, and nuzzling her, patting her on the head, and doing my best to help what must have been a rather intolerable situation for all the horses. after all, where could they go? They relieved themselves where they stood, and it would be the crew to clean it up. After I had spent a good hour or more just making the horses less skittish, I came back to Mary, and we talked of what we should do with our home, when we returned. We had been gone but one night, but it were long enough that we should feel the loss, for having held something assuredly, and yet, not being there yet to enjoy.“We will make a garden there, when we return, Julian. You will make the fields for planting, and we shall have barley, rye, and wheat of our own, to match the bakers. I will use much for our ale, which it will be best if I made, as why should we pay a dear penny for what I might do myself? And we shall make a vegetable garden, with roots, and with herbs, all about the sunny end. I am hoping that we can make enough that can last through our second winter, as we must wait for spring to o much. But much we can still do as winter comes! And we can plan it all out...”I agreed with her, that we should have our own ale, and grow food that could keep us from the need of going often into the town. So she also mentioned we should have other animals there. Perhaps a pig, perhaps our own cow, perhaps some chickens, or doves...This all sounded fine to me. When we were at a place the conversation felt done, she embraced me, and we sat together watching the sea, rocking to and fro by the waters, Barcelona riding surely eastward, and then, with a cry and a heaving of sail, now turning southward. The cliffs and the strand of the French shore were now approaching. It was not so different from the English, only it be reversed, such as a mirror. The Devon coast and Cornwall looked much like this, but there were less towns upon them, and Albertus cried out from the wheel when he spotted from afar our destination. “Harfleur! Harfleur!” and the crew began to make ready for landfall.You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

Republic, Empire, Decline

     Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West, identifies three major stages of the development of a civilization in a historical context. These I refer to in my title. The American superstate has now entered -it could be said, it has entered officially- into its decline. Why do I say this, when American global power is at an unprecedented peak, when the world assumes America will come riding to their rescue to save them from catastrophe, and yet, time and again America proves herself to be completely incapable of actually holding any nation’s interest above its own, or even yet, considering what her own self interests actually are?     Spengler identified three stages. In the first, Republic, a nation forms itself into a representative democracy. Given that the Greek and Roman republics limited enfranchisement to propertied individuals (as did the United States for a fair portion of its early existence), the polity evolves around ideals and ideas which set themselves up as progressive and unique in the endeavor of the human race. So far, so good.     In the next phase, Empire, the interests of the privileged classes take on manifestations of reach beyond the borders of the republic, and in cohort with militarist principals, begin to affect the original ideals into a form of tyranny. America’s Empire can be said to have begun with the Spanish American War and the acquisition of the Philipines and Puerto Rico as external adjuncts to those mercantile interests and military checkpoints.      The Tyranny phase of America’s Empire began with the dropping of the two atomic bombs which ended World War Two and began an earnest competition with the largest totalitarian superpowers, USSR and China, for domination under threat of mutual annihilation and nuclear winter. We are still in somewhat of a holding pattern here, as while the USSR fell under the weight of an insupportable military budget, foreign intervention, and unsustainable internal corruption, these were all phases that America began to reflect (if not reflect upon) as she declared “victory” in the Cold War and turned herself towards an internal policy we now see embedded in Washington’s intelligence community- Collect it All.     American technology went on to conquer the mercantile interests of the global economy. The personal computer is now indispensable to the participation in that economy, and the national intelligence arm of the United States has made it their prerogative to use this technology to spy on every individual partaking of it, in the name of hunting down the enemies of the Empire. This itself has manifested in great corruption, which we can see every day in the dissembling of those responsible for undermining the very civil liberties and ideals upon which the American republic had been founded.     But Empire cannot be sustained over a period of time. The American republic, as revolutionary and wonderful a hope as it may have seemed against the backdrop of monarchies and feudal states which existed at its birth, only survived so long as the interests of the citizens took precedence over the interests of the ruling class and financial elites. Rome manifested its tyrannies over a period of several hundred years, in which outer forces, populations of those wishing to be included in her “protection”were betrayed and/or oppressed, and eventually swarmed the gates of the capitol and sacked it- more than once, since the points were easily lost on the rulers.     We can see this syndrome playing itself out, as well, as the left-out developing nations in which America has extended her arms of military rule awaken to their own displeasure at rule from without, and seek their own level of democratic governance, however unsavory the American ruling class may find it. American intervention cannot be sustained, just as Soviet intervention could not be sustained, because America insists on its own doctrines being the basis and lynchpins of whatever form of democracy these nations come up with on their own. In other words, if America cannot have a say in it, or American interests are not considered as a matter of essential worth then those democracies will not have America’s support, and America will do all they can to destabilize and overthrow them.     And that is a matter of tyranny. Not only have America’s military and financial elites decided that the world’s governments ought to dance to their tune, but her own citizens, as well as the citizens of all other nations, must also do so. The global reach of the NSA reflects the intention of the NSA and other intelligence agencies (some sixteen in all at last count) inside the American state, to usurp those very rights which the founders of the American republic saw fit as to include as essential to her Constitution and the protection of liberties and the rights of man. Paradoxically, those rights which are granted to Americans, and which American politicians seem to be so anxious to extend to all other nations, especially those tyrannized by their own leaders, are seen as inessential in the matter of fighting off those threats to American power when it comes to the rights of the American individual against state power and the right to be left alone in one’s own home, or to speak freely against grievous manifestations of overwhelming intrusion.     American politicians like to consider that it can “never” happen here, that America will take on the tyrant’s cloak to the extent of a Nazi or East Germany or Stalin’s Russian gulag or the reeducation camps of China and North Korea. But all of the elements exist, and most especially they include a willingness of America’s leaders to worship and extend into heroic manifestation the idea of the policeman as protector, despite the overwhelming trend of police in large American communities to react, and proact, in matters of civil enforcement, as a militarized force. This force can easily be called upon by the know-nothing wings of both major political parties as a counterweight to actual grassroots democratic process, if the process be found offensive to those who control the elite game of national power.     And so it behooves me to sadly predict that American in her Imperial state will collapse at some point, unless Americans themselves help to return her to the status of Republic. This will take amputation of some of the greatest political, military, and paramilitary capabilities which the world has yet seen, but it is essential for the survival of a democracy that what is alleged to be “necessarily” secret to the leaders of the state be extended as a right of each and every citizen to also have awareness of, if democracy and liberty themselves are not to be swept under the rug forever.

You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

BIKES!

     Dedicated readers of this blog might be disappointed, but today I write not about politics (as has been a growing personal concern, the last two years) nor am I giving previews of current writing works in progress, but to speak of something entirely different... bicycles.     As one of America’s few individuals who have somehow managed to survive their entire lives without owning either  a car nor license to drive one, I have been someone who, until five or six years ago, relied completely upon urban mass transit to get from here to there. This was, no small part, due to my living in a city San Francisco, in which it really is possible to survive- a good long time- try thirty years!- without a car. The BART system is excellent and can take you to most places out of town, however, it will NOT take you down the SF Peninsula, where I mostly grew up, and where I yet have friends. The MUNI bus system of the City is adequate, if awful, but at least an urban musician can get from here to there and gig to gig without a lot of pain and crisis.That is just not possible where I now live, back again on the Midpeninsula, where a car is as necessary for musical life as it is in Orange County. So that is one (not small!) reason why I placed my musical life “on hold” and have turned to writing. I bought a bicycle in May of 2009, and it’s been my main transportation. I can take it with me on the train, or on the local bus transit, pretty easily. It is not a cheap instrument of travel, (in comparison to my meager earnings under "economic recovery") although it does me well, the only inconveniences are an occasional flat tire, or a need to true a wheel, replace a spoke, or a gear adjustment. Some of these I can manage myself, others I can’t, but I have a good relationship with two local bike shops which serve me well when I need them. As this is my main transportation, it’s always a case of “in and out” for the most part.What I have found in becoming “a biker” is that there are many aspects of day to day riding which would be easier on the soul if they did not involve as much perceived conflict, as happens to be, with those of the automobiphilic distinction. Cars (drivers, rather) can be so ignorant of the practicalities of bike riding.Often, drivers will not signal a turn, leaving someone on a bike behind them in need of constant awareness and second-guessing. They will back out without warning, they will cut you off on a turn (again, by not signaling their intention, they leave it to you to be the cautious one) and they often pass you just  as you pass some obstacle to your right, leaving you with a “that was a close call!” sense of survival.I don’t hold much against auto drivers, except from some, their attitude. As if by being someone who chose rather a means of transport three times as risky as theirs I’m somehow “less of an adult” because I didn’t buy into the “oil serf” mentality. Or that just because I am on a bike I am immediately to be placed in their mental pigeonhole along with the extreme portion of the population on two wheels.I think you might know who I am referring to. These are the weekend warriors, the ones who need to look like whores for a bike company as they flash down the road geared in spandex, their specialized clip-in shoes clack clack clacking as they stride into a Starbucks, whom it seems need each day to prove they are willing and involved in a personal Tour De France, rather than another mundane journey to the office.Here on the Peninsula, where Google rules the universe, half of Google’s employees are engaged in what a friend of mine calls “Google pony” culture. This involves laying out at least $3,000 for a bike, preferably a road bike with spindly skinny wheels and tires, another $500 for shoes and clothing that scream “I AM A BIKE RIDER!” and another $500 for exactamento accessories like front wheel panniers, seat wedges, grocery racks, helmet lamps, etc, etc. The more money you spent on your bike and your outfit, the more you appear like the automobiphiles who need Ferraris and Porsches to scream “I AM A LUXURY AND STATUS-DRIVEN MANIAC!”I have never been that type of bicyclist. I am someone who merely uses it for my means of getting from A to B, and do not care to be making a political or cultural statement with my bike, even if just by being on one, I kind of am. I wear what I feel like wearing. That means blue jeans, sturdy shoes that can take the road, and warm outer clothing. What I sacrifice for wind speed I gain in a sense of personal satisfaction that I have nothing to prove to anyone, and owe little, either. I do not take part in group rides, with dozens of folks all competing and riding with slipstream airflow in a mob. These types get well deserved aggravation comments from friends when we pass them on the highway (I guest of their passenger seat) on the local hill-country roads. They always take wide turns and are often two or three abreast as a matter of recreation. Rather uncool, and I see where my friends get their aggravation.However I am someone who plans on riding my bike to a good old age. It was once said “there are many old bicyclists, there are many bold bicyclists, but there are few old, bold, bicyclists.” The urge to “take it slow” is actually what drives me. I love the normalized, human pace of bike riding. I love the fresh air and the connection to the environment, which automobiphiles excuse themselves and insulate themselves from. I do not take risky chances nor make sudden moves, if I can help it. Because I plan to be riding my bike to a good old age. I have nothing to prove. I just spin.You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

Hillary Clinton, Token Candidate En Perpetua

   It is always amazing the way some characters in American politics just never seem to go away, no matter how much scandal and schadenfreude appears in their wake. Hillary Clinton, like Dick Cheney, is one such individual. Not content in having been the power behind the throne for two terms of husband Bill (and always, always, turning a blind eye in the matter of his marital infidelity, in order to keep a firm hold on such osmotically-attained power) Mrs. Clinton is poised, and lauded, as she ever is, as the “most popular contender” for the titular role of “next President of the United States.”     Goes without saying that there are millions of American women who will offer up their sacred votes for Mrs. Clinton on the premise that “America deserves a woman president” on much the same grounds millions of blacks voted for Barack Obama on the grounds that America deserved a black one. Never mind  that his record shows him to have been an absolute monstrosity on the issues on which he ran—Civil Liberties, Economic Recovery,  Health Insurance “you can keep”, a Lessened International US Military Involvement—Barack Obama has succeeded in outpacing and defrauding his core constituencies a dozen times already, and for what real gain of the nation, and, specifically, what particular gains for blacks themselves?     Mrs. Clinton, herself the favorite of a class of individuals who see no problem with political nepotism in  the United States, glides into her comfortable “edge as the leading Democratic candidate” on the heels and coattails of husband Bill. One would hope that by now Americans have grown sick of family dynasties- the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Cheneys. But apparently just creating a meritocratic system which was designed to exclude hereditary and familial patronage just has not been enough for Americans, who despite their bright shining democratic city on a hill, ever yet bow and scrape to monarchs and royalty wherever they happen to coincide with agreements on foreign policy, (like Saudi Arabia) or “just plain tradition.” (the United Kingdom.)     And yet, I see no reason to elect Mrs. Clinton on her merits, for there are, indeed, few merits. I will give couple of examples which show her in her true colors.  Alexander Cockburn, writing in his A Colossal Wreck, relates this story, (dated 1-18-2001) which I apologetically must quote verbatim.     “Joann was recently traveling in a limo from Baltimore to a town in West Virginia and fell into conversation with the driver, who related some of his ferryings to and fro of various bigwigs. One of these was Hillary Clinton. “An ornery woman,” the driver commented. “And what a mouth on her!”     The driver went on to describe an occasion on which he was driving the First Lady and a couple of her female friends through a poor area of Washington, DC. They passed a beggar, and as they did so the First Lady expressed her disgust for the mendicant, adding “He wouldn’t be a bum if he had a piece of ass.” The driver was able to shed no light in how or why she had arrived at this conclusion, stunned as he was by the coarse nature of her observations. Then they passed two young black women with babies. “There go two welfare cases. They make me sick. They’re too lazy to work,” said Senator Clinton, champion of mothers and children everywhere.”      Mrs. Clinton was also captured on film chortling in glee over the lynching of Moammar Qaddafy by his enraged and incited populace. A matter of public record, she paraphrases Julius Caesar in her attempts to sound statesman-like.     “We came, we saw, he died.”...      ...[“Reporter—Did you have anything to do with it?”      “Mrs. Clinton—I’ll never tell”. ]*     You can watch a portion* of this informative exchange here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXkl0Z...\     On this matter, this is what Mr. Cockburn had to say:     “Did the terminal command, Finish Him off, come via cell phone from the US State Department, whose Secretary, Hillary Clinton, had earlier called for his death, or by dint of local initiative? At all events, since Gaddafi was a prisoner at the time of his execution, it was a war crime, and I trust that in the years of her retirement Mrs. Clinton will be detained amid some foreign vacation and handed a subpoena.”     In my opinion, a head of state who laughs— laughs! over the death by lynch mob of another head of state, is unworthy of the dignity of elected office. Is this really the kind of person we want representing our nation, serving our interests? Or is Mrs. Clinton just yet another version of our tendency to elect those we feel “familiar” with, minus the critical reasoning which it takes, on the part of a scrutinizing public, to ensure that the leaders we elect actually representour stated and claimed ideals and values? Our nation is in a lot of trouble, folks. There are people now holding high office who not only find the violent death of others cute and appropriate, but are willing to find a joke in it, if they can manage to milk one.      (*Apparently the full exchange with reporters from which I draw that quote, as I originally viewed it a year ago, is no longer up at YouTube, although I shall continue to research the possibility it might Somewhere be available, and update these links for my readers, if I can. At present, unfortunately, all that are available are half-minute clips at the most. Given the high,  mighty, and protected status of Mrs. Clinton, it’s quite possible that such graphic exposures of the Secretary’s inner soul have been removed from YouTube by her political operatives.)

You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

Yes, Mr. President, What About Abdulrahman Alawki?

     Last May, President Obama was giving an address on the legality and the necessity of his drone program when he was importunely interrupted by what the press peripatetically terms “a heckler” —(a heckler being a person who sees fit to express an embarrassing statement or question into an otherwise smoothly conducted address by some public official.). Only this was not just some ordinary heckler. The person addressing the President so “rudely” was none other than Medea Benjamin, the founder of the antiwar protest group Code Pink, and actually she managed to deflect the attention of the press, as well as the president, who took the time to calm the nerves of the aggrieved press by saying “Wait a minute, that woman is saying something important She deserves to be heard.”      Only President Obama did not, in fact, address her question. Which was, “What about Abdulrahman Alawki?”     For those of you unfamiliar to this discourse, Abdulrahman Alawki was the 16-year old son of Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Alawki. He was killed just two weeks after the President’s death drones caught up with his father, as he ate dinner with a relative. His father, Al Qaeda propagandist though he was, was also still, under law, a United States citizen who had been released from an original indictment set on him by the Bush administration, and freed, to take up residence (and an inarguably adversarial stance) from the country of Yemen. Abdulrahman, who had no stated connection to his father in terms of radical Islamic politics, had left home (against the advice or consent of his now aggrieved grandparents) to seek out a reunion with his father.  Who knows what goes on in the mind of kids.  What is clear from all reports and from interviews with the grandparents is that Abdulrahman was an ordinary American 16-year old with no pretensions of jihadi warfare against the American Government, nor lust for killing innocent fellow Americans. But he was put on Mr. Obama’s kill list, and executed summarily, as his father was,  without due process of law.     The Constitution of the United States is very clear in stating what the government must do in order to claim a right to  “forfeit life or property” from any citizen. There must be a conviction in the courts, there must be, in the case of “treason”- evidence presented by two witnesses, in same said courts, and it must be a matter of process.  Instead, in the case of both Alawkis, the President had chosen to pre-empt the legal process and proceed with what is Orwellianly termed an “extrajudicial killing”- or in plain English, a Premeditated Murder. Both United States citizens became two of a select group of Americans, which is now counted at five, who have been so honored by the Republic as to be “exceptions to the Constitutional process.”     Ms. Benjamin’s question, however important the President may have thought it to be, or not, at the time, has yet to be answered. Instead, the killing of Anwar Alawki has now been summoned forth as “a precedent” for another planned, premeditated murder, minor details of which have actually been leaked by the White  House to the press, and who knows why. Mr. Obama has not yet apologized to the family, the grandparents, of Abdulrahman Alawki, although as he himself admitted, his murder was “an accident.” (Press Secretary and official sock puppet Robert Gibbs  cynically said “He should have had better parents.”)
     Perhaps Mr. Obama prefers not to comment, perhaps he is actually shaking in his boots at night, haunted by Abdulrahman’s ghost, because a lawsuit now yet sits before the Courts of the United States lodged against Mr. Leon Panetta, who was the contemporaneous Secretary of Defense, and others, acting on behalf of the President’s Targeted Killing Program (which this column will henceforth term “TARKILPRO”) or as is referred to more often, “the Kill List.” But he has said that the killings of innocents under the duration of his drone program “will haunt us forever.” Well and that they ought to! For the murder of a United States citizen, no matter how much lawfare sophistry attends it, remains, without the due process of law, as immoral, illegal, and unjustified in the name of freedom and liberty and all things which Mr. Obama would wish the United States would be “blessed by God” for. We no longer have a Republic, when the President of the United States can assume the right to act as though he were a King, and kill anyone he feels like, for whatever reason, wherever they are in the world, at any time he chooses. It’s no longer your grandparent’s America, your parent’s America, nor is it even your America.You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

Hif Majeftie and Machiavelli

The United States was once known for its shared values with that of Great Britain. As divergent as the two countries are, and as little as Britons are yet inclined to free themselves from the abhorrent shackles of their monarchy, both cultures have instilled for a very long time the concept of “fair play.” This is most obvious, of course, on playing fields of sport, where expressions like “that’s not cricket” and “personal foul” are everyday occurrences. In America, the most influential work of Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, is usually not assigned to school reading lists until someplace in the college syllabus. In Europe, however, of which Machiavelli was a product, and in many places, a cultural hero, his works are read early and often cited as beneficial instructions to those who seek to rule.The shortcomings of Machiavellianism as a moral cause are legion, none more frequently cited than the maxim “the ends will justify the means.” The derisive political epithet “Machiavellianism” has come to represent political figures devious, banal, wicked, and malign. What made America different from European culture was the concept that such ideas as “princes” would not be tolerated in the new democratic republic created out of revolution against hereditary monarchy. And yet Machiavellianism always manages to flourish both inside and outside of Washington DC, as more and more players eventually adopted the philosophy— also of Machiavelli’s— “what evil you must do, do it quickly, for it is better to be feared than to be loved.” The Nazis took this idea one step further when they realized that once the Leader is sufficiently feared, the Love of the Volk will and must soon follow.What perhaps most galled the American prosecutors at the Nuremburg trials was the sheer lengths to which the German ruling class had appropriated the idea that the ends —in their case, the genocide of the Jewish people— would be justified by the means (“special action”; i.e.; a “final solution). That this was precisely the point of Manifest Destiny in the USA is another matter we might take up at some another time. I am speaking here of what was generally thought of as an inherently American sense of Fair Play, which extended as far from the playing fields into everyday life as could be drawn— to the courts, for instance, and to the general rule of the populace. There were some things our politicians just would not do, and were restrained from, either by virtue of the fear of impeachment, or criminal indictment. Americans have always had more of a sense of justice, which of itself in its pure state is the acme of a sense of fair play. And to find Machiavellian concepts and “pragmatism” infecting American politics is certainly no improvement for the American society but evidence of a banal sense of moral decay.No such inhibitions plague the current crop of American politicians and bureaucrats. From the top and eye of the pyramid on down, a blasé approach of cynical opportunism spreads like a malignant cancer upon the body politic. Legislators are bought out by lobbyists. “Constitutional scholars” present their case for the destruction of the Bill of Rights with platitudes such as “a balance that must be struck between liberty and security” and “my first responsibility is to keep the American people safe.” I never noticed those words in the oath of office any legislator makes, but I do note that “uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” plays a rather prominent part.I do not know if Hif Majeftie has actually read Machiavelli, but I think it is a safe bet he never read Sun Tzu, (The Art of War) either. There, he would notice on the fist page “there has never been a society that survived a protracted war.” You can say that for the War on Terror, for the wars of Iran and Afghanistan, as well as the War on Drugs. The adoption of adversarial positions is the hallmark of the insufficiently diplomatically gifted. It might occur to many that the aims and goals of Al Qaida—to turn America into a caricature in donkey-draw of a free society—have basically been achieved by the fiat of the United States Congress and Executive branch. The Patriot Act. The indefinite detention clause of the 2012 NDAA. The blanket surveillance of  persons of international internet aptitude or awareness. All of these are incursions on what had once been the greatest hope for freedom in the world. Millions have died in defense of a Constitution which the president himself has evidenced—by his actions, not his words— he has absolutely no intentions of protecting. Millions who it may well be argued that with the system of American law and civil liberties as it now stands, died in vain.One person I am sure he has read however, is Saul Alinsky, the author of the hilariously oxymoronic Rules for Radicals. (If you are a “radical” and you need rules, then you most probably are not quite as radical as you like to think you are). Alinsky is also cited often by those who have studied both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Hilary Clinton as being influential to their formative political thinking. He is also advocated what might politely be called “toilet tactics”  and much like Machiavelli, saw benefits of making points by hitting below the belt with untruths. “Ridicule is man's most potent weapon” as a signature quote of Alinsky’s,  shows in a stark way how cynical and how intolerant his disciples can be. The opposition are to be ridiculed, not tolerated. Liberalism used to mean the ability and willingness to allow contrary and opposing ideas to exist. Now it seems to, if we take Mr. Alinsky’s words seriously, indicate appropriate ridicule of anyone who feels otherwise to be no more than an “idiot.” Indeed, all one has to do is peruse the comments section of any political article anywhere in America these days and you’ll find someone using the word to describe someone of a differing opinion. Liberal democracy and civilization cannot flourish under one party rule, no matter whose party that is, whether Communist, Socialist, Fascist, Republican, or Democrat. Since enough people of either major party (and many who belong to neither) love tossing the word around these days, one could easily conclude that Mr. Alinsky’s maxim has now become de rigueur for examining polemic and debate. Which is why people such as Alinsky, while worth a read (just as much as Hitler or Marx, if only to inform oneself as to what the hoopla is all about) ultimately belong in the dustbin of history, and the generation of American leaders who took his guidance for gospel should be scrutinized in the extreme when they make their empowered suggestions leading to “ultimate” answers to social problems. Do you have a problem with someone else’s ideas? Just call them “idiot”. It sure saves the trouble of thinking up and expounding on an intelligent rebuttal, doesn’t it? Better to insist that they shut up, since living with their words and ideas is so impossible to take.And since Rules for Radicals was self described by Mr. Alinsky in this manner: “If The Prince is for the haves to hold on to power, Rules is The Prince for have-nots to gain power,” I see no virtues in that at all. For the Bolshevik revolution, ostensibly a revolution of “Have-Nots” taking power, was accompanied by a great deal of the same type of “better feared than loved” sensibilities. It was, also, actually, an accomplishment of an Elite— in the name of the Have-Nots— which quickly reversed itself into its own parody- an elitist group of self-proclaimed Have-Nots who immediately set about depriving the actual Have-Nots of what little they had. The famines of the 1930’s and the forced resettlements, the pogroms against the kulaks, not to mention the vast social engineering intent of Stalin’s purges, were all orchestrated by elites in the name of state-manufactured equality, equality which would never be realized, and Machiavellian in their extreme both in organizational scope, and in procedure. I just do not see how overcoming amoral tyranny by amoral means manufactures automatically a somehow more moral social order.It does not matter to Barack Obama that he was elected, in a great part, by idealistic believers in the things he had to say about the Constitution and rule of law. Who believed he really was an “environmentalist” and not just another Wall Street puppet. Who believed that he would actually create a national public health system, not some piecemeal tyrannical demand that- just as they once had demanded male citizens register for military service- all citizens must register for their chaotic “Affordable Care Act”— or else, face extortive criminal sanctions. Well, that’s one  way to balance the federal budget, eh? Barack Obama has shown by his actions that he is not a man of morality or fair play. Hell, he won’t even apologize for an “accidental” murder which he himself authorized. “I’m pretty good at killing people” he brags. Well, bully for you, punk, but some of us are absolutely not willing to go so quietly. Once he had his votes in place, he figured he could do whatever he liked and people would never notice, for his love of power is seemingly greater than his sense of responsibility to American ideals and values.Machiavelli has another role to play in American politics these days. George W. Bush brought “ends justify the means” back big-time with his justification of the use of torture on detainees. “What matter is it that we torture people if it saves American lives?” Obama too- “what matter who we kill, even if we kill innocents, (or even fellow Americans!) if we kill terrorists as well?” For many people living in central Asia now, their first representative of American policy is a robot death plane delivering a Hellfire missile to their neighborhood, not a package falling from the sky filled with boxes of oat flakes and peanut oil. And what about the winner of the “more feared than loved” award of all time in Washington DC, Dick Cheney? Obviously he won’t be winning any “most likeable” awards, either. Machiavelli seems to have all but invaded US thought these days and the result is an amoral government which is as much instinctively repressive as it is paternalistic. People can think whatever they like about Barack Obama’s high-flying rhetoric on “NSA reforms”, that he will, actually, do more to restore the trust of the public in the NSA and other intelligence arms of the US Government. But I have listened to his promises before, and I have been disillusioned before, by his accompanying actions. As John N. Mitchell, that unctuous jailbird Attorney General of Richard Nixon’s, once so well put it “Watch what we do, not what we say.” Barack Obama needs to be completely scrutinized for every aspect of his presidency and held accountable for his outright lies and the obvious apparent discrepancies between his words and actions. He cannot eternally campaign for an office he has already won. He will never need work again another day in his life, should he not wish to, being assured  of a federal pension for life assumed by we the taxpayers who have suffered under the wheel of his nonexistent “economic recovery” and whose electronic metadata must exist— somewhere, for lord only knows how valuable it is— in some far off never-never land in the hands of who-knows-who what consortium of dataminers he eventually sends it all away to. No, I have heard too much from this man to listen to his sweet talk and his con game any longer. It’s my sincere wish that most of you will tune out the lies- or keep your bullshit detectors on wide-stun, because he has snuck a number of things past us all in the past, and he is very much— in all likelihood going to sneak something past us all again, given time and circumstance. I plan to ride Mr. Obama all the way down to Hell like Chill Wills on the atom bomb in Dr. Strangelove, for the unconstitutional murder of Abdulrahman Alwaki. If I must. Even if I were the only American left standing willing to do so on the sheer principle of it. Life cannot be made forfeit without the burden of proof falling on the state. Letters of Attainder are illegal under the US Constitution. For I prefer that my president be above outright murder, whether it be by design or accident, and regardless any issues on which he and I could possibly agree about the culpability of Abdulrahman’s father as a “terror suspect,” President Obama must live with that death forever, and I for one hope to ensure that he, indeed, will never be allowed to forget it. Barack Obama can do one thing, and one thing only, if he wishes to restore “trust in government” with the American people. It is a very good thing that for a very long time, Americans have not nourished a blind faith in their government. But if the numbers mean anything, less are willing to swallow his painful ACA pill than he would like to see. That says more about their trust in him than anything else. (And more about the viability and validity of his “solution” than he cares to admit). That one thing is to abolish forever the National Security Agency. The ability for governments and their secret intelligence and police arms to abuse power has never, ever in history, been something which once available, has ever before been set aside. More people are, this very day, taking part in international protest against this super-secret-police arm, which would like to be everything the NKVD, KGB, Gestapo, and Stasi once were, and in fact, possesses powers which they would be only all too jealous to have had at their disposal, in their day. What the NSA propose to do— completely eliminate the concept of personal privacy and instill obedience, chill free speech, and crush dissent— (and which President Obama would like us all to believe they never-ever would possiblyactually put into play) is no less than the murder of the Republic, that “hope of the nations” and the very ideals out of which the United States of America was born. At this time, Hif Majeftie Barack Obama is openly contemplating committing yet another murder. The rot begins from the top down. Indict and try James Clapper for perjury. Impeach Barack Obama for murder.  It’s well nigh high time.*****As usual, I have marshaled a “legion of demons” (an entire MS Word doc’s page worth!) in the form of relevant recent articles which expose the situation, as is, from a less deceitful perspective than that being pimped out by Washington officials in order to rain on Hif Majeftie’s parade (as well as bite him on the ass) and which support my assertions, reflecting that in these matters, my criticisms are not alone... ENJOY!http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/tex..., I have been making many of these same points all along:http://www.infowars.com/top-constitut...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/wor... have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...

Woody Allen and Public Opinion

     Allegations that Woody Allen molested Mia Farrow’s seven year old daughter are being heatedly denied around the media this week. One wonders whether this is because of wishful thinking- that people would liketo believe Mr. Allen is above these things, and that he is, in fact, reasonably presumed innocent. “He has not been convicted of anything” the defenders cry. Well I see some corollaries here: Notably, the cases of OJ Simpson and Barry Bonds.   Presumption of innocence has never stopped the critics of either of them from holding a deep seated, near-instinctual, distrust and apprehension of either of them. Barry Bonds was never actually tested positive for use of steroids, although the federal government was convinced somehow that he lied as to his use of PED’s, enough so to heatedly prosecute and convict him. (Although no such prosecutions seem to be forthcoming against James Clapper, whose lies before Congress are indeed a matter of the public record). OJ Simpson has “never been convicted” of the murder of his girlfriend, but millions of Americans “just know” he is guilty, just because. Because something about it all “just didn’t fit.”    However in Woody Allen’s case, like that of Barry Bonds, there are certain issues which beg the question of innocence, and these are  of the sort which are right before the eyes of the cynical. Barry’s hat size grew by some 2 or 3 sizes. His body bulked up beyond any reasonable expectations as may be explained from just plain “working out.” And like Barry, Woody Allen's seeming proclivities toward “not looking too far from home” for his sexual conquests are confirmed in his having taken the 19 year old daughter of his ex-wife as his own wife. I think there is a little there that is grounds enough to cast doubts on his current claims of innocence.     Almost as dubious as this, if not more, are Woody’s claims, in a recent interview I saw on YouTube, that somehow, despite his earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per picture as an actor and director, he’s just  “blue-collar” kind of guy. This was a remarkable instance of dissembling and re-assembling truth. If a man with that much earning power can straight-facedly call himself “blue collar” then perhaps he really is one of those sociopaths who have no ability to discern their own impression of themselves from that of other people’s, willing to believe the image they have created of themselves is the person they really are.     I liked Woody Allen, for a long time, and gave him (already, some twenty years or so on) benefit of the doubt, although I always though t it was creepy he married a girl young enough to be his daughter. And that basically he robbed the cradle right out from under her mother. If that was not creepy enough. But I was long in the camp of those who claimed Allen’s status as an artist- for his first big film, Take the Money and Run, was an undeniable screamer, and I always loved What’s Up Tiger Lily (more for the Lovin’ Spoonful’s contributions, than the actual film) and laughed at the coke scene in Annie Hall, as did so many of my peers. But to have this current aspersion cast upon his character after so much suspension of judgment in his favor, I am afraid I would prefer to weigh in with the victim, this time.
     Because her story sounds sincere, and it’s being backed up by her brother, as “speaking for itself.” There had to have been a lot of anger pent up over the years as Dylan Farrow watched Woody get “the benefit of the doubt” and keep getting it, because people want to love the “lovable” public character, and dismiss as quirks any peccadilloes of the private man. But it seems to be resonant, for me, more of something which actually could have happened. Despite Dylan’s misjudgment as to things such as statutes of limitations, there is indeed something which rings true about it, and which asks individuals who presume to enjoy, and continue to enjoy, Allen’s cinematic work, to have a deeper look into it all in light of the “new” allegations. As for myself, I'm waiting for his version of Lolita.You have been tuned to Grand Jatte, an independent and autonomous
syndication of Lucid Dream Music. Stay tuned for more exciting
verbal rambles and reductions...