Imposense

Syntactic Musings

I am reading at present the very accessible and very thought provoking book A History of Language by Stephen Roger Fischer. In describing the evolutionary path of human communication he points to the development of syntax as being the most important attribute of that development. Yes, he points out, animals, birds, and insects do have a lexicon of ‘words’ which are communicated in different ways i.e. phermones, wing-rubs, sonar pulses etc. but as he describes it ‘choreography does not replace articulation’. Language development in humans, he attests, is a product of an evolutionary ‘cerebral sense of belonging’ of words being together. And yet in our modern world the historical development of syntax-rich ‘daughter languages’ to a dominant language (English in the main at present) appears to have foundered in the very abbreviated and very accelerated world that Twitter and Texting language have brought us to.

Perhaps if language was to be analysed from the listener’s perspective – or sense – rather than the more usual articulator’s perspective then perhaps we should divide the ‘cerebral sense’ of synthetic (rather than syntactic) Rap, Twitter, Techno and Text language into the categories of Ab-sence, Non-sense, Sense-less, Sens-ual, and Sens-ible of their various constructions.

This brings me to a new word to perhaps describe its constrained development: Imposense.

Well not quite a new word. In Googleworld there is an avatar or wandering web-soul using the name and some years ago a blogging French poet called Mysteriuse entitled one of her poems l’imposense. I have quoted it below because I really like the poem. She is no longer blogging so I have not been able to get permission for this but I did try to track the source. I hope she will understand.

Mysterieuse's Musings

Imposense for me implies the notion of an imposed sense of understanding – a Foucaultian gridding – on the receiver of the language, which is dictated by the ‘rhythm’ rather than ‘rhyme’ of the communication, the tyranny rather than the freedom, the time constraints rather than the timeless words, and in a reversal of language evolution the choreography rather than the articulation. Equally at a quick glance the word somehow evokes confusion with Impotence and a failure to satisfy. Perhaps the impotence involved is the fault of the listener or receiver … or perhaps it is just me.

My imposense!

Am I making any sense? I like the notion of belonging that an apostrophe or dialect brings. Is language better for their loss? Does a sequence of nouns serve a more useful function than adjectival attachment? Will simplification and brevity reflect the reality of modern life (and the dominance of English) thereby allowing quicker communication in the now rather than having to deal with a complex communication from the past? The future will take care of itself? I am not so sure.

In the future, Fischer concludes, and I agree, the loss of language will result in a loss of identity, of protest, of diversity, and will result in alienation rather than universal brotherhood.

C u there! Ggg ..goo…goog….google …ga

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The Peating of My Heart

The Peating of My Heart

It’s a lonely thing,

The sudden silence.

Birth waters still; settling.

But, listen to the resonance

In the furrowing,

Where the whispering dead-wood

And deep-shadow crawling

Echoes

To the peating of my heart.

(For Michael's recently deceased mother, and mine, 21st May 2001)

From Beneath the Faery Dew

Executions – Gibbets, Guillotines and Henry Gillettes

Thierry Henry hiding behind a beard.

I love the notion, indeed the expectation, of any genuine sporting contest. It does not matter what the sport is as long as there is a genuine willingness to play fairly to the best of one’s ability. A naïve aspiration no doubt but I’ll hang in there. The soccer World Cup second-leg qualification play-off match between France and Ireland last Wednesday has left a bitter-sweet taste in many spectators mouths. Not the match per say, as it was the best soccer match I have watched Ireland being involved in for many years, but the nature of its conclusion. Thierry Henry pulling behind Ireland’s last defender, who to be fair should have done better to cover the run, controlled the ball twice with his left hand to prevent it going out of play and then with a flick of his right foot crossed for William Gallas to head home the goal from a short distance. An instant in time but in that instant Henry has achieved an infamy and it is a moment he will always be remembered for.

All sportsmen cheat, whether a little or a lot, to gain an advantage. Some call it bending the rules, gamesmanship, taking advantage of lax officialdom whatever. The pressure on professional sportsmen in particular is enormous (the French team were on a reported €400,000 bonus to qualify for South Africa) and also on referees. I was a rugby referee for 25 years and although serious and usually repetitive ‘cheaters’ were found out many, many players are coached from a young age to creatively ‘explore’ the margins of what it is possible ‘to get away with’. Indeed for many this marginal behaviour is admired. In most professional sports however modern technology has allowed the development of oversight techniques, which are called into use when a ‘critical incident’ would have a bearing on the outcome of a contest or an event. FIFA, the world governing body, will now have to seriously consider television official replays for any incident within the penalty box that leads to or denies a score.

On a tangential note, I also believe we have found a new type of French execution to replace Madame Guillotine: the Monsieur Henry Gillette; being a double-tap drop movement of the executioner’s arm. I also wonder as a result whether the Gillette company (part of Proctor&Gamble) will ease Thierry Henry from its ad campaigns for razors from the company of two acknowledged ‘true’ sportsmen in Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. Almost certainly his sleight of hand will result in some sort of ‘guillotine’ motion at the next company AGM!

The Tarot card for the Thief

The Guillotine of French Revolution fame, named after the Professor of Anatomy in Paris who was on the commissioning committee, was a direct descendant of the Halifax Gibbet in use in Halifax, Yorkshire from as early as the 12th Century. Gibbets were primarily structures used for hanging dead bodies (sometimes in cages) for public display. The Halifax Gibbet was much more pro-active than this. Statutes going back to the time of King Philip and Queen Mary state:

“That if a felon be taken within their liberty, with goods stolen out or within the liberty or precincts of the said forest, either Hand-habend, Back-berand, or confess and cloth, or any other commodity of the value of thirteen-pence half penny, that they shall, after three markets, or meeting days, within the town of Halifax, next after such his apprehension, and being condemned, he shall be taken to the Gibbet, and there have his head cut off his body.”

Hand-habend is an archaic way of describing a suspect “having his hand in, or being caught in the very act of stealing” aka Monsieur Thierry Henry.

Russian Constitutional Court

On a more positive note the Russian Constitutional Court, the morning after the match, upheld an indefinite moratorium on the re-introduction of the death penalty which was due to run out next January when Chechnya becomes the final republic to introduce jury trials; the universal availability/absence of jury trials being the legal reason for the moratoriums introduction in the first place in 1999. That just leaves Belarus as the last country in Europe where the death penalty is still available as a sanction.

Teddy Bears’ Picnic

Papoosed

A short whimsical blog. I suited up this morning (papoosed ) to take young grandson Leon and our dog across the tidal flats to the woods on the far side of the inlet that we live on. I know that aging has various effects, young Leon is quite light, but the presence of a papoose on my chest began to exercise muscles – and memories – of days gone by.

On the physical side alone one change those years have wrought is that there is now a reliance on needing to see where you place your feet, particularly when descending (where once rhythm and an innate ability to regain balance existed, and I am not just talking about dancing), and the papoose makes this impossible. Making my way down to the seashore on a slippery decline that is negotiated weekly without too much concern suddenly became a major hazard to the health of young Leon, and thoughts of having to explain any injuries to his parents rattled in my brain.

Young Leon and the Bears

On the mental side, the woods when reached also brought home the other changes of aging: being unable to recall the exact words of the nursery rhymes you had heard as a child and also sang (frightened!) to your own children. On a beautiful late Autumnal day I launched into Leon’s right ear Teddy Bears’ Picnic but for the life of me could not remember the fourth and fifth lines. The poor child is now probably scarred for life by the incoherent rendering.

The Words

Teddys’ Bear picnic, composed originally as instrumental music by John Walter Batton achieved its greatest fame when lyrics were written by Northern Ireland songwriter Jimmy Kennedy (of Red Sails in the Sunset fame) in 1932 and sung by Val Rosling.

I have always loved the song, even if the bears escape me.

Rihla (Journey 10): Australia – Nostalgia, Bitumen and Avoidance-Language

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This rihla is about Wilpena Pound, Australia.

The 25th November is the anniversary of the birth of John Flynn in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia. John who? The Rev John Flynn, a Presbyterian minister was the founder of the A.I.M Aerial Medical Service in 1928, which subsequently evolved into the Australian Aerial Medical Service in 1934, the Flying Doctor Service in 1942 and ultimately the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 1955. John Flynn died of cancer in 1950.

The first aerial medical service took off from Cloncurry, Queensland in a fabric De Havilland bi-plane on the 15th May 1928 to be greeted by 100 people 85 miles away in Julia Creek. In the year up to the 30 June 2009 the RFDS flew 24,000,000 km, serviced approximately 247,000 patients and conducted nearly 37,000 medical emergency evacuations or about 100 evacuations a day across Australia.

With the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 1989

(That's me in the shorts like any good colonial)

This is where my nostalgia comes in. Between 1989 and January 1991 I was based in Adelaide, South Australia in the Queen Victoria Hospital (sadly no more) and was one of the on call-obstetrician/neonatologists for the evacuation of maternity and neonatal patients to Adelaide from places as far away as Alice Springs in the Northern Territory and Broken Hill in Victoria. The on-call air service rotated between the St John’s Ambulance air wing and the RFDS and the calls could come at any time, day or night. Night evacuations in particular were an extremely nerve racking experience as you dropped out of a perfectly beautiful, star-filled sky to land on uneven packed earth airstrip in an Aboriginal homeland. I always feared that one of the many feral camels that roam in central Australia would choose that particular moment to cross the strip and I admired greatly the skill of the pilots and their sang-froid.

Australia is a beautiful country inhabited by probably the most hospitable and welcoming people on this planet. It is however a coastal strip of sunshine development and opportunity surrounding an inner land and islands where some 400 Aboriginal peoples (2.6% of Australia’s population) often live in dire poverty and neglect. I had never medically encountered syphilis or leprosy or terminal T.B. until flying into some of these homelands with the RFDS and some of the encounters still haunt.

Many Aboriginal groups have a well-developed Avoidance-Language when in the company of taboo relatives. It often struck me when I was there that there was an even greater use of Avoidance-Language on the part of white (of settler and convict origin) Australian officialdom when confronted with the taboo subject of Aboriginal rights. Things have significantly improved in the last 20 years but there is still some way to go.

In any event the RFDS is a service to be admired and supported. On the 16 November tickets go on sale for one of the most spectacular charity events (far better than the Rose Ball in Monte Carlo) you are ever likely to attend. It takes place in Wilpena Pound in February 2010 in aid of the RFDS. The Pound is a natural amphitheatre in the Flinder’s Range at the end of the ‘bitumen’ (sealed road) 429 kilometers from Adelaide. The black tie event with dinner and starlight and music and dance announced by the sunset is to….is to know you breathe.

An Abandoned Homestead near Wilpena Pound, South Australia.

And in the sky somewhere that night an RFDS team is evacuating and saving a life, a family, a community beyond the bitumen.

Further Information: http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/News--Events/Events/?ItemID=6&count=1

Revolutions, Game Theory and the Bottom Line

An Old Door in Yazd, Iran showing old-style communication.

A genderised communication with differing shaped knockers giving a

different sound to announce a male or female visitor.

On the 27th September 2009 the Iranian Government sold a majority stake in the Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI) to a consortium comprising Tose’e Etemad (46%), Shahriar Mahestan (8%) and Mobin Electronic Development Company (46%) for $7.9billion (20% immediately and the remaining 80% over 8 years with interest). There has been some disquiet expressed about the nature of the bidding process (Mobin is a private joint stock company one of whose directors, Younes Bakhshmandi was deputy chairman of TCI) but also accusations of collusion between the consortium and the Sepāh e Pāsdārān e Enqelāb e Eslāmi or the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRG or IRGC).

A spice-bowel in the market in Yazd, Iran.

The many layers of Iranian society

The IRGC dominates the huge military-economic nexus that now exists in Iran and has established multiple commercial companies to exert and maintain this control at a boardroom level, a strangulation if differing in tactics does not differ in intent from the brutal strong-arm thuggery employed by the IRGC ‘company workers’ against protesting citizen ‘dissident stakeholders’ on the streets of Iran in recent times. The IRGC is currently commanded by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, originally from Yazd.

I find the IRGC’s cynical pragmatism both fascinating and depressing. It is one of Iran’s main contentions that the rapacious greed and interests of the large players are driving American involvement in the Middle East and points to the USA’s military-economic nexus political involvement in companies such as Halliburton (Dick Cheney was CEO from 1995 to 2000). There is some truth in this and President Ahmadinejad has been vociferous in his condemnation of these interests and predicted the demise of their influence. He stated in 2008 in a speech the UN that:

"The American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road, and its next rulers must limit their interference to their own borders."

And yet Iran is supporting a similar development of a powerful military-economic self-interest block. Is this of concern?

I am not, nor do I pretend to be, a political analyst but obviously, to any sane observer, control of the major telecommunication delivery networks allows inherent suppression and censorship but equally facilitates the transfer of political power, or the taking of it. And with this latest acquisition this is a distinct possibility in Iran. If the analysts are right and the successful consortium is linked to the Jafari-controlled IRGC then it is just a question of time. The theocracy is waning, its lifeblood, a dependence on popular support for its religion-based policies and a distaste for the demands of Mammon, spilling. And in the wings is an electronically savvy Mammon dressed in Kevlar patiently waiting to take control. And a return to a military dictatorship. And the days of the Shah?

The Zoroastrian Towers of Silence, Yazd, Iran

A redundant history?

I am not alone in this assessment. Recently I heard a radio interview with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. He is the arch proponent of 'game theory' when applied to political developments and it was quite depressing to listen to him. He has no time for the conscious impact, for what I would have imagined to be important such as informative past historical input i.e. previous civilizations and regimes’ mistakes, successes, achievements etc. In de Mesquita’s assessment and game theory application past history is entirely redundant and really serves only to act as a validation of his predictions. Those predictions are entirely based on the self-interest of the ‘now’, the ‘players’ involved having no past just a present and a future. He has predicted that over the next four years, the theocracy and Ahmadinejad will be marginalized and that Jafari’s IRGC is the future, and will become along with the Bonyads (charitable trusts that control 20% of Iran's GDP) the major players in Iranian politics.

de Mesquita's 'game theory' prediction for regime change in Iran

Don’t call us, we’ll call you when the next revolution comes. And we’ll use your telephone credits to boot! And boot we will!

Rihla (Journey 9): Bahamas – Abaco Beyond and Bones

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This one is about Abaco Island, Bahamas.

My First Bonefish

(Caught and released)

Things to do before you…. whatever! I recently had the precious opportunity of being able to satisfy my curiosity about two of these undone things – fly fishing (my brother Paul is an expert fly fisherman but I had never got around to it) and a visit to the Caribbean and the Bahamas in particular. I had always wanted to visit the small Bahamian island of San Salvador where Columbus landed first, or Eleuthera where one of the greatest travellers of them all, Rosita Forbes – my other great traveller heroine is Freya Stark – resided, or the capital Nassau on New Providence Island which was the hotbed home of the pirate heroes and heroines of my childhood: Blackbeard, Vane, Anne Bonny etc.



In the end I did not get to San Salvador or Eleuthera (another time if given half a chance) but did make it to Abaco where a friend of mine Peter Mantle has recently opened a fishing lodge dedicated to fly fishing, what are considered to be the best sports fish in the world, the bonefish.

The lodge, called Delphi-Bahamas at Rolling Harbour on the Southern coast of Abaco, is truly beautiful, and an oasis of elegance and charm that separates it spiritually and physically from all that is disheartening about modern beachside development in Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, the Caribbean, everywhere. I am acutely aware of the privilege afforded me but that said it is a place where even if you are not a fisherperson you will find respite and a place to replenish your soul.

Abaco (Ha-Bo-Ko-Wa in the Taino language of the original Lucayans meaning ‘large outer outlier' (island)) has an interesting if very recent history. It was colonised first between 500 and 800 C.E. by the Lucayan peoples, a branch of the Taino-speaking Arawak tribes of the Orinoco River delta. These gentle people who had first left their Orinoco home about 2100 B.C.E had been pushed ever northwards to island-hop by the more aggressive Carib tribes pressing behind. This gentleness was to cost them dear after the coming of the Spaniards in 1492 as most of the Bahamian islands were depopulated to provide slave labour for the development of Hispaniola and Cuba where they were to exterminated by disease and mal-treatment.

Abaco was then ignored for 100 years until the French tried to establish a colony there in 1595 (routed by the Spanish) and again in 1633 when the title of Baron des Bahamas was granted to Guilliame de Caen, a French Huguenot on condition he did not settle any of his fellow Huguenots there. It was the English however who were to establish permanent colonies, as a result of migration away from religious or political persecution, a dissent that was to always mark the islands future development. In 1647, seventy English settlers arrived on nearby Eleuthera from Bermuda and a second wave established on New Providence in 1650. By 1713 upwards of 1000 pirates (Teach, Vane, Bonney etc. were operating out of Nassau and the nearby islands such as Abaco until suppressed by the English navy and government under Woodes Rogers in 1718.

In 1783, following the Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of American War of Independence, 1458 loyalists and freed African-Americans from New York left to establish colonies in Abaco. The black migration of ‘freed men’ was undermined somewhat in that they were paired or indentured to a white migrant. By 1788 (the year of a black revolt against the indenture system) only 400 of these white settlers had remained on the island but were supplemented later by inward migration from Harbour Island nearby. This core group of white and black settlers were to remain intensely, if misguidedly, loyal to England to the extent that when the Bahamas was granted its independence in 1973 Abaco petitioned (unsuccessfully) the House of Lords in the UK to remain a crown protectorate. The island’s white people, particularly those associated with fishing and boat building still speak with a quaint early settler accent and pronunciation and derive much pleasure but little satisfaction in bemoaning the shortcomings of the central Bahamian government in Nassau.

Modern Abaco is laid back, a mixture of deep poverty in the shantytowns of recent Haitian migrants, and local pockets of prosperity bought about by the huge amount of money made and retained in the 1970’s when Abaco was a major staging post for South American cocaine transport to the US as well as the tourist infrastructural development. The people are polite and welcoming but the taxis are exorbitant. The only other place that comes close to the cost of taxis in proportion to the per capita income would be another island, Sicily. It reflects the enormous historical power the Taxi unions in the Bahamas wield because of their 1958 strike, which precipitated the beginning and ultimate achievement of Bahamian independence.

And back to Anne Bonny and the gynaecological connection! As I settled in the swing chair, waiting (pleading!) for dinner, I stared southwest towards Nassau and thought of her. Supposingly from my home county of Cork she became the mistress of a notorious pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham, the designer of the ‘Jolly Roger’ flag of popular renown, until captured with another female pirate Mary Read with Rackham off Jamaica in 1720. Tried and found guilty they were both sentenced to be hung with the remainder of the crew until at that point of sentencing they suddenly ‘pleaded with their bellies’ i.e that they were both pregnant. Under common law, following an inspection by matrons, if proven this allowed a reprieve of the intended sentence until the pregnancy was over. Mary Reed died in prison but Ann Bonny disappeared or was ransomed by her wealthy father never to be a pirate again.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read

(The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that "Evidence provided by the descendants of Anne Bonny suggests that her father managed to secure her release from jail and bring her back to Charles Town, South Carolina, where she gave birth to Rackham's second child. On December 21, 1721 she married a local man, Joseph Burleigh, and they had eight children. She died in South Carolina, a respectable woman, at the age of eighty-two and was buried on April 25, 1782.")

In 1931 the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Act 1931 was enacted. Pregnant women were no longer to be hanged after giving birth and were given penal servitude instead. (Mary Ann Cotton became the last to suffer at Durham Castle on the 24th of March 1873, her baby being taken from her before execution).

Looking Southwest towards Nassau from 'the Chair'

Get to Abaco before you expire. Plead with your belly if you have to!

Rihla (Journey 8): Ani, Turkey – On My Mind

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This one is about Ani, capital of old Armenian Kingdom, Eastern Turkey.

On the 12 October 2009, in Zurich, Turkey and Armenia signed a series of protocols aimed at normalising relations between the two nations. Two of the most important facets of this agreement was firstly an undertaking to open the common border to travellers and commercial traffic within two months after the entry into force of the protocols and secondly the establishment of a joint commission to conduct an impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archives relating to contentious issues. Although not spelt out specifically this commission is expected to primarily examine the ‘Armenian Genocide’.

The incarceration, extermination and deportation (the systematic nature of which has been recognized as genocide by about twenty countries and the European Parliament) of somewhere between 500,000 and 750,000 people of Armenian ethnicity between 1915 and 1918 is a highly emotive issue for citizens of both countries and something that I first encountered when visiting Armenia in 2002. Whether walking up the main street in Yerevan towards the very stark and somber genocide monument or waking up each morning and staring south-west towards Mount Ararat knowing that you could not reach the mountain from within Armenia or talking to people for whom the genocide was a fact of life and that the lack of acknowledgement or apology by Turkey, for this stain on its modern history, rankled most.

There was also, from my perspective, a medical connection as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the political party that came to power in Turkey in 1908, had been founded by four medical students in 1889 and which later as it took control, mainly through the actions of the Teskilat-I Mahsusa under the direction of another physician Behaddin Shakir, bore ultimate responsibility for many of the atrocities committed.

In an uncomfortable way since then the moral, economic, legal and geographic vacuum the genocide created has continually informed my travels in the area. For example while visiting the Vank Cathedral Museum in the New Jolfa district of Isfahan in Iran in March of this year the imagery and memorabilia from the genocide period displayed in the museum were numbing in their impact. Even more so when I remembered back to earlier travels in south-eastern Turkey in October 2007.

I was based in Kars, in a beautifully restored hotel that had once been a Russian mansion (at the time of the genocide Kars and this part of Turkey was in Russian hands and indeed one of the main reasons for Turkish establishment of concentration camps to detain Armenians was their supposed collusion with the Russians), and walking in the city I came across a closed museum dedicated to the genocide. A day or so later while driving near Igdir I noticed another sign in English for a genocide museum and thought this most enlightened. It was only later that I found out that both museums were in fact dedicated to the ‘genocide’ of Turks by Armenians!

That trip in particular brought home to me, in addition to this very obvious moral vacuum, the enormous geographic and legal vacuum the genocide has perpetuated. Returning northwards from driving half-way up Agri Dagi (Mt Ararat) to the fort of Koran Kilesi, with its guns pointed at Armenia, I encountered convoy after convoy of Turkish military hardware and manpower rushing the opposite direction into this south-eastern corner of Turkey. Why? Eradicating and deporting the Armenians from their lands, farms and homesteads had allowed Kurdish clans to move in and occupy the deserted spaces.

And now the ‘modern’ State of Turkey, which has been absolved in the main of responsibility for their Ottoman predecessors’ genocide of the Armenians, has a ‘Kurdish’ separatist problem. The sins of the grandfathers have come back to haunt and in an equally moral and secret vacuum the ‘modern’ Turkish State has over the past 20 years tried to militarily and governmentally eradicate the 'Kurdish problem'.

And so to Ani. And to vacuums.

Ani is about 50km from Kars, right on the Armenian border. Ani was a frontier fortress as early as the 4th century. It became capital of the Armenian Kingdom under King Ashot III in 961 and the residence of the Armenian Cathilicos in 992. At one point 100-200, 000 people were thought to have inhabited the city. It came into Byzantine overlordship in 1045, fell to the Seljuks in 1064, to the Georgians in 1199, and was nearly completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1319 at which time it began its terminal decline. The Catholicosate left in 1441 for Yerevan and the place was fully abandoned by the mid-1700’s.

The day I was there it was equally deserted but between the ruins of impressive fortifications, numerous churches, a Seljuq mosque, a Zorastrian fire temple and two deep gorges framing the plateau it was probably one of the most impressive archeological and historical sites I have ever visited. And yet the desertion, the empty spaces and fallen walls, lent themselves only to silence. I got no sense of previous reverberations or existence. No laughter, no chaste incantations, no call to arms. Just a vacuum! All memories extinguished by the repeated violence of men.

Perhaps this part of the world has always been a vacuum, and nothing can ever fill it. Certainly not love, fellowship, or co-existence.

Further Reading:

Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Turkey, www.armenianow.com/pdf/20090831_protocol.pdf.

http://groong.usc.edu/ICTJ-analysis.pdf

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/long-history-of-the-doctors-of-doom/2007/07/06/1183351455116.html

The Rhythm of Life and Sweet Vibrations

A shopfront in Innishannon, Co. Cork, Ireland.

With global warming and the gradual northerly shift in the warming Gulf Stream seasonal change in Ireland is becoming less obvious. However Galway is a university city and come the start of the academic year in mid-September the bedsits and flats around the town fill up with returning and first-time students and the vibrations begin again.

The first term has its’ own very peculiar and very amplified rhythm. Next summer’s exams are but a Star Wars futuristic concept. There is money from summer work or grants, hormones are raging, life-long friendships are forged on the backhanded flip of a beer-mat and logged in beer-soaked mobile phones. First time refugees from the restrictions of home exult in a freedom of opportunity, of exploration, … of mayhem. University cities have always learnt to adapt and deal with this expected seasonal disruption but nowadays I get the sense that there is far less understanding on the real streets of the ‘Game Boy’ generation of boyos. For many permanent residents it has become a decibelic chaos and the confrontations more bitter.

A friend of mine, well known for her pithy and acerbic wit, lives on a narrow cul-de-sac next to a student house and was determined to be pro-active in confronting the potential problems. She decided to introduce herself to the poor unsuspecting students next door with the following:

‘Hi, I am your neighbour, and I wanted to introduce myself. I am a menopausal woman who has had a breast removed for cancer and also part of my bowel. Generally I am pretty angry and pissed off at my bad-luck. That said I don’t care whether you self-harm, harm each other, shoot yourselves up in the back garden, remembering of course to tidy up the needles ... or blow your heads with crack … nothing, I don’t care!

The students were still looking at her in amazement as she turned to leave. She stopped and in her most threatening voice called back at them, ‘Just don’t do any of the aforementioned to music!’

Young Leon creating his own rhythm

Sadness in Sa’ada

Sana'a, Yemen, March 2006

Looking northwest over the Sana'a rooftops, and President

Ali Abdullah Saleh's partially-constructed new mosque, towards the

mountainous strongholds of the Zaydi clans.

There is a real humanitarian crisis in Yemen at present resulting from the influx of external refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia but of more importance from the internal displacement of hundreds-of-thousands of villagers as a result of the Government efforts to eradicate Zaydi insurgents in the north, in Sa’ada, Hajjah and ‘Amran governates.

"The Sa'ada region has been largely sealed off to the outside world by Yemeni

forces since the current upsurge in fighting between government troops and

armed Zaydi Shi'a militants began last August, but it is clear that civilians are

bearing the brunt of the conflict,"

said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East

and North Africa Programme. 18 September 2009

The al-Zaidiya are a Shi’a sect named after Zaid b. Ali b.Husain b.Ali b.Abi Talib who rose up against the Umaiyads and was killed in street fighting in Kufa in 122 A.H./740C.E. The Yemeni branch was founded in the 9th century by al-Hadi ila ‘l-Hakk Yahya and has always been based in the mountainous area of north-west of the country.

In previous centuries the Zaydis were in constant conflict with the Ottomans and now a branch known as the al-Houthi are in a constant secessionist conflict with the central government in Sana'a. Although a Zaydi himself Ali Abdullah Saleh, the 67 year-old long-serving president of Yemen (President of North Yemen since 1978 and of Reunified Yemen since 1990) has unleashed the dogs of war to eradicate the insurgent clans.

And this is the rub!

Refugees from the fighting are unlikely to find optimal sanctuary in neighboring Saudi Arabia either. For two reasons! Firstly Saudi Arabia has never signed up to the UN 1954 Refugee Convention (or its 1967 Protocol) and thus sees no obligation in providing official relief. Secondly and probably more importantly the areas of south-west Saudi Arabia bordering Yemen and governed from Najran are the homelands of Saudi Arabia’s minority Ishmaili community particularly the al-Yam clan. In addition to ongoing objections by the Ishmaili of central Saudi government settlement of Sunni Yemeni in the Najran area, and the imprisonment of Ishmaili leaders for their temerity (http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=93757), historically the Zaydi and Ishmali are are also implacable enemies as a result of Da’i ‘Abdullah al-Hamdani’s enthusiastic support for the Ottoman campaign – designed to destroy the Zaydi imanate power – dispatched from Egypt in 1569 under Sinan Pasha.

Before the battle for Khadid castle in June 1569 Da’i Abdullah said ‘I shall unsheathe my sword from its scabbard after its long rest till tribe after tribe (of Zaydi) is slain.’

And to today.

There is still no safe place for those caught up in the fighting. A resolution must be found but in the meantime as much help as can be mustered should be directed to the UNHCR program in Yemen.

Further Information:

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/SNAA-7W7867?OpenDocument

http://www.unhcr.org/4a9d4a886.html

Further Reading:

Clive K. Smith, Lightening over Yemen – A History of the Ottoman Campaign 1569-71 (I.B.Tauris, London, UK 2002)

The Lisbon Treaty– An Inferior Monologue

The Last Lines of James Joyce's Ulysses

Eurynome

Friday 2nd October 2009

…oh yes to continue before 'Bertie' Athene’s sparrow sitting high in the rafters spoils suitors’ darts let me bring an end to my wantonness concerning the forthcoming parley on the Lisbon Treaty and yes deny ‘Blazes’ Ganley and other lesser and yes more selfish lovers of their opportunistic ride of Erin’s Bloom for yes surely it is a bull of an ideal personified by and strangely yes in a stage-managed way also by the physicality or yes the lack of it of ‘Poldy’ Barroso and yes I will put my arms around him and hear his heart go ‘mad’ for he will say yes it is federalist yes it creates concerns about Irish neutrality if we were ever neutral in anything yes it does embrace a common foreign policy yes by Zeus it is an abrogation of Europa's will yet yes I will announce him home light the fires and wash the dirt-slung away because yes it is the best of perfumed intentions yes the best of possible outcomes but paramount it is a consolidation of our love and thus

‘yes I said yes I will Yes.’

Postscript:

A version of this blog was published in the Irish Medical Times on the 2nd October 2009, the date of the referendum. Thankfully the majority of the Irish electorate voted 'Yes'. Now for 'Poldy' Barrosa get the Czech and Polish governments to complete the ratification.

DEAD SLOW

Dead Slow is a nautical term used to indicate the very slowest a ship or boat progresses forward or backwards (ahead or astern) without actually stopping. The derivation and usage is as old as the earliest shipping along the coasts of the Mediterranean, perhaps even as early as 3500 B.C.E.

Most shipping in antiquity was entirely intimate to the coastline and the distance travelled depended on the winds and the manpower energy capable of being expended. When a galley entered the estuary of a river discharging into the sea the freshwater often formed a layer, without mixing, over the denser saltwater below. This type of water was known as ‘dead water’ because it was very difficult to maintain momentum and speeds would slow to a ‘dead slow’ pace. The term remains in usage today and in modern shipping terms equates to about 6 knots speed.

The term could equally and as aptly be applied to the tidal flows of human emotions. There are moments in our lives when a sudden surge of ‘freshwater’ stimulus creates an unmixed layer above the ‘saltwater’ and understood density of normality, of daily existence. Unexpectedly, for a little time, instead of speeding up your responses, your desires slow to a stop, unable to maintain momentum, unable to comprehend what is happening. Then the ‘dead water’ clears, purchase is regained, a way is found and often you speed up to regain lost time.

When a ship or person is at ‘dead slow’ they are at their most vulnerable.

Pirates of the sea and the soul know this is the moment to strike.

An Approximate Sense of Self

I am who you think I am, I am who I think I am, I am who I am.

I was browsing the other evening through the profiles of some of the various people who have shared interests with those quoted on my own BlogSpot – I am still waiting for someone else to share ‘a stolen smile’ with! It is an interesting exercise exploring the nuances of what people choose to reveal about themselves. You make judgements, second-guess them and sometimes feel compelled to reach out, to make contact, to be certain that your perceptions were accurate.

The objective and subjective perceptions of self rarely in ordinary life coalesce to give an accurate portrayal unless, I sometimes think, it is in a man saying ‘no’ or a woman saying ‘yes’ to those eternal questions, Do you believe, do you love me, are you happy, do you forgive? The reverse gender responses do not generally hold true.

And in writers it is never true!

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the Algerian born millionaire ‘media-darling’ philosopher of the French left – I have to state here that my perception of modern Socialist/Leftist French politics, and indeed also that of the current Iranian ‘theocracy’, is akin to that of a recent amputee, who inwardly, at a cerebral cortex level at least, has a sensation of something ‘out there’ where the limb once was, moving, touching, sensing, reacting yet in reality there is nothing there, nothing of substance at least, just a memory, a memory of a once viable purpose – said in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine some years ago that ‘writers are not as interesting as the books they write.’

Is this the key?

The great books, the greatest poetry, the most beautiful music and art are all exploratory journeys of self, yet in their greatness reach or almost reach non-self, the approximate likeness of being.

Rihla (Journey 7): West Cork – Hercules and the Pipistrelle

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This one is about West Cork, Ireland.

What wonderful worlds words can transport you to! By their very nature they are of the moment, the present, yet each in their own way are a timeless lexicon of magic, of mystery, of descriptive pre-history when heroes and gods battled for our consciousness.

I was walking last week on Bere Island off the south west coast of Ireland. It was one of those panoramic days when the sky, land and sea were in symphony and each footpath taken became a journey into the language of the landscape. The island has an interesting pedigree in that it is the site of a Viking ‘naust’ or boathouse in Lonehort Bay but also has extensive English military fortifications and gun emplacements designed to protect the First World War Atlantic Fleet of Royal and US naval vessels that were anchored in its lee. I stopped at one point at the southern edge of the Derrycreeveen battery to read a blue metal plaque erected by the tourism authorities.

Like Ali Baba’s ‘Open Simsin’ or ‘Sesame’ the plaque was a doorway to a treasury unknown to me. It described the deserted fort as being the location of one of Ireland’s biggest colonies of Soprano Pipistrelle, the smallest Irish bat. It is called a Soprano Pipistrelle because it echolocates at 55 kHz whereas its’ Common Pipistrelle cousin (which it was confused with until 1999 when the echolocation frequency distinctions were made) echolocates at 45 kHz.

As I walked on the word 'pipistrelle' continued to evoke an enormous sense of wonderment as I had managed to get this far in my life without ever hearing it used. What was its origin?

Pipistrello is the Italian for bat. It derives from the Latin for bat, vespertilio, a creature of the evening dusk, vesper. Further exploration shows that vesper is the Latin derivative of hesperos, the Greek for the evening star Venus.

And this is where Hercules comes in.

A Statue of Hercules overlooking the Bisotun Mountain

Kermanshah, Iran

The Hesperides were the Nymphs of the Evening who inhabited a paradisiacal garden – personified by the clouds – at the western end of the world. Here were kept the golden apples from the tree of immortality that Hercules was ordered to retrieve as one of his extra two labours (a.k.a. anger management course) by Eurystheus.

The Hesperides

Hare Island Sound, West Cork, Ireland.

The following evening after discovering the pipistrelle on Bere Island I travelled a short distance by ferry to dine on Hare Island at the Cottage Inn. It was evening time and the sun was setting on another wonderful day. Venus was rising and somewhere in the shadows of the twilight I knew that the Soprano Pipistrelle was emerging to chase insects across the waters. Magic, mystery, ancient lore fuelled my imagination.

And to the west the golden clouds of the Hesperides drifted by.