Staying In My Lane

 Those old explanations of ghosts – echoes of a trauma baked into place – is it only human trauma that has that power? Might parks be crawling with the ghosts of worms? Is this river haunted by fish, fish ghosts targeted by heron, more than a millenia-worth? I'm trying to get into the Hallowe'en spirit now that the weather is proper October.

 

 Unfinished business – that was another explanation. Do only humans get to have that then? Wait, is that all a soul is? Business? Is it? I haven't been busy this year. Maybe. Have I felt like a ghost? A bit. And it hasn't all been unenjoyable, but I watched a youtube essay last week about the films of the Beatles which reminded me that being A CREATIVE FORCE is, you know, an option, and initially may require nothing more than just thinking to yourself "I'm going to be A CREATIVE FORCE" and then seeing what happens, and it's really picked me up. (Here's that video essay.) 

 

 In this case a bit of what happened appears to be me going for a walk and then posting shit phone pictures of it here. Well, good. You'll have to take my word for it that there were joggers. It's odd to me, by the way, that that that's what it's called: "jogging". That's definitely what it looks like, but it's not the aspect you'd think they'd want to advertise. Jogging's normally something you want to avoid, in case you scratch the record or spill your drink. How can I make running forward feel more like running into something? Jog!

 

 Are these pavement demarcations a hangover from the pandemic, or permanent now? And has anyone studied their effect on a pedestrian's mental health? I think I hate them. They just seem like another thing to get on the wrong side of. It's nice to have somewhere to record that though. It's nice to be A CREATIVE FORCE. The next paragraph contains swearing.

 

 I also hate seeing so many people right now take the side of a side, rather than siding with people – to see so many call for an end to Netanyahu's response to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holoocaust while not also calling - seeing as we're calling for things - for the safe return of Israeli hostages, as though we've finally run out of internet and there was just was no room for the Landaus. Well fuck that and fuck the war and fuck taking sides unless that side is Peace. Fuck Bibi. And fuck Hamas; buoyed by their actions, the Iranian Government announced last week it would be targeting Persian journalists working in Britain like my friend Faren. And, parenthetically (do go on, Simon) coming up to a year after the murder of Mahsa Ahmini by Iranian police for having loose hair I decided to search Xitter for any more news of protests, and found myself enaged in the following fun coversation about... let me check... yes, apartheid. Stick with it.

 

 

 

 I know, "mroe"...

 By the way, you can now find me on blue sky at @slepkane.bsky.social. 

 I really hope you're all okay.

One Use of Sanitary Pads in a Revolution

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A post shared by Sareh Ghomi (@sarehghomi)

 

                  "I am sitting here now with a bag of boiling water on my heart"

 

 So the twenty-one-year-old Orson Welles cut Ophelia almost entirely from his hour-long Hamlet it turns out, only introducing her ten minutes from the end to drown her so that he could do the grave-digger scene. That's quite a cut. Let's put a pin in that then, and rejoin the Womens' Revolution in Iran. Among the death sentences and other horrors of state retaliation following the death in custody of Mahsa Ahmini after her arrest for inappropriate headwear, there are also sanitary pads being put up to blind security cameras now. Instagram's translation of Sareh Ghomi's brilliant post above provides both illumination and a poetry of its own, but take any gendered pronouns with a pinch of salt because I think Farsi only has the one. Thanks to my friend Faren for sharing this:

 

 "This is the women's revolution, I mean this picture, I am sitting right now with a bag of boiling water on my heart and rolling in pain to myself and thinking why I shouldn't have seen this one piece all these years, special black bags that when you said: a pack of purple blinks, please! The local superintendent wouldn’t hand you in that thick, smelly black bag. I mean, during her pregnancy, the path of the drawer from the room to the bathroom had to be put like a bartender in your pocket or pull your pants and shirt over it so that the male elements of the family and friends would not see it and get upset! I mean my friend who never threw his used tape in the trash bin at his workplace and took it with him to an urban trash bin because he thought the environment was too masculine! That day when your boyfriend, after a big party, wants to clean the toilet, but his laziness in putting the bag in the bucket and sticking one of the same used ones to the bottom of the bucket, makes him face a scene he had never seen before and sound Don't forget to throw it up! They don't know what winged means! They don't know what to buy when you're in trouble and slamming the door and wall! Or even ashamed to buy and load a super so that the important package is not visible, sometimes out of kindness buy diapers like because you're in so much pain. Sanitary tape is a white fragrant piece that prevents the bleeding from spreading, and right here in this picture, it's glued itself to the wagon camera to stop the bleeding so it doesn't get lost! So the female body and all that's connected with it is changing user, it's taking over, it's breaking all taboos, see this white piece stuck to the camera and remember to be safe you are safe too. #women_life_freedom"

fog blog

 I've looked it up. 

 If you can't see through it further than a kilometre, it's fog. If you can, it's mist. 

 That seems quite far.

 

 Yesterday evening I headed out into the darkness and walked along the towpath from Ladbroke Grove to Acton, heading towards Perivale even though noone I know lives in Perivale now, but there's a lot of night these days so one might as well do something with it and I was surprised to be home before eight.

 I love mist, and so did Badphone. The last time I'd strolled down a canal at night I remember resolving with some excitement to get a replacement far better at recording my surroundings, but it really took to the mist last night.

 

  It could focus now there were no points of light to dazzle, just shades in harmony giving way to each other, autotuned by the mist, every shape picked out against the absence of darkness, sorted by its distance.

 

 I reconsidered Badphone's replacing. Maybe it's good to stick with something that doesn't work, to learn its foibles and grow old with it. Do I "need" a new phone? I'd never given a phone a name before. And my own eyesight's going.

 Nothing drastic. I'm just getting old. Nothing glasses couldn't solve completely. But do I "need" glasses? For some reason I don't want glasses. I like how I look in glasses so it's not vanity that's stopped me. Is it the faff? Pride takes other forms.

 

 But why not be proud? Why not just say I have bad eyesight now, and I have bad phone. Let's see what this is like. Why should everything be useful? I looked again at this delineated scenery. Form following function. Even in the ducks. So hang on, when did I stop wanting to be useful? 

 When did that become something I questioned? 

 Of course. I'm getting old.

 

Zan Zendegi Azadi continued...

 Yesterday I met Faren (not pictured) and her friends and colleagues in Trafalgar Square to join a human chain across Wesminster Bridge in support of the protests in Iran. October the 29th was also Cyrus the Great day, so I thought about researching him before writing this, then realised it probably wasn't that necessary, but I'll still research him after I've written this. I've got Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe open next to me right now.

 

 

  

 Whitehall had been busy. The March of the Mums had made front pages earlier that day, and there was also a Ukrainian protest outside Downing Street, with which we ocassionally intermingled. "Down with tyrants." A lot of the chants were in English, but we were also taught "Azadi! Azadi! A-zad-i!" the Farsi word for freedom. And I finally learnt how to say Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, meaning Women, Life, Freedom – as taught to the people of Hastings by Omid Djalili here, and written across the Jason hockey masks of some protestors. Others hid their face behind David Lloyd's Guy Fawkes mask, now associated with Anonymous, possibly unaware of the seasonal appropriateness. Others still were dressed as zombie nuns, but I'm pretty sure they were just cutting through.

 Our numbers grew as we walked down Whitehall, sometimes side by side and filling the road, sometimes holding hands in single file to form the human chain, (which I couldn't photograph without breaking of course). There hadn't seemed to be as many in Trafalgar Square as a month ago, but now we were on the move we were closing roads. This was my first march. Faren said she hadn't felt as safe as she'd have liked at the last one, because people had started shouting "Down with the BBC", believing the corporation hadn't been doing enough to support the protestors, or that reporting the deaths of students was bad for morale – meanwhile the very fact of Faren's employment by BBC Persian has seen her upgraded by the Iranian Government from spy to terrorist – but on this demonstration however, I only saw the one sign with the letters "BBC" dripping in blood, and Faren had her friends around her now. She seemed happy. She was loud. "I'm letting out a lot of anger." I realised I'd only been throwing my voice. Pretend shouting. Shy.

 

  Posting some photographs of the protest on Instagram that evening, I wondered for the first time what my phone is actually up to when it says it's "finishing up" after the loading bar's filled, and I had flashbacks to Arthur Pewtey at the Marriage Guidance Counsellor. I don't really know how well I've fulfilled protestors' requests to "Be the Voice of Iran". But I know what I can do if it's okay with you, and that is to sign, and ask you to sign, THIS PETITION to whoever's Home Secretary when you read this: to drop an already twice rejected Public Order Bill that would make criminal offences of everything that happened yesterday – "interfering with key national infrastructure" for example – in other words, closing roads – and "locking on" – in other words, holding hands. If not for me, do it for Cyrus the Great.

 

More Strands

 

 Sweet flipped birds of freedom. Here.

 And yesterday footage went online of riot police joining an anti-Khamenei march. I must remember it's the absence of fear here that's so uplifiting, not the absence of danger. A week ago, a day earlier in the same day that the first student protestors were beaten and fired upon in the Sharif Univeristy in Tehran, my BBC Persian friend Faren shared an Iranian video of a white-haired badass turning heads on the tube by slapping the crap out of two men complaining about her uncovered head. Stills don't do the video justice. You can see it here. I asked Faren what the onlookers were saying at the end and learnt some colloquial Farsi: "Pashmam" very loosely translates as, "Well, blow me!" But its literal translation into English is: "My hair!"

 

Unposted Photographs of September 2022 in Chronological Order

 I found the Powell Estate in Kennington but didn't recognise it because the trees were new.

 

It seems I location hunted quite a bit in early September. Here's Taskmaster.

 

  So I still drift south. 

 

You can now get lost in what they've built around Paddington.

 

 Or be at one with the scum in the Kyoto Peace Garden.

 

 Here Tom and Shim prepare Waterloo Farm for their second wedding of the day.

 

 Once Tom's changed into an apron to clear up after our pizzas.

 I couldn't find whose this was. Barry Letts'?

 

 Finding new walks for Faren.

 

 Filth.

 

 The Duke and Duchess with Jimmy Chipperfield and an unidentified lion.

 

 Forming a dart with my arms did help. (Best family outing since Eurodisney.)

 

But did I?

 A big walk home from drinks with John, and nearly all of London now wards off the low-flying.

 

 Catching a matinée of See How They Run.

 

 Yet another big face. The eyes follow you round.

 

 

 So do the gronking pelicans.

Strands

 

"For Mahsa Amini" by Faren Taghizadeh

 

  It's been a busy week for me, but busier for my friend Faren. She's moving flats, which is always quite emotionally draining, and also working 12 hour shifts as social media correspondent for BBC Persian – a job which condemns her to immediate arrest as a western spy if she tries to revisit her home country of Iran. Last night, while I was continually reloading iplayer to see if I was on EastEnders, she was covering a possible revolution.

 

 

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A post shared by BBC NEWS TÜRKÇE (@bbcturkce)

 

 Here's Faren explaining for the Turkish Service some shows of solidarity for Mahsa Amani, the Iranian woman who died last week after being dragged into a van and beaten by "morality police" for incorrectly covering her hair, a death which coincides with the failing health (and rumoured passing) of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenie, as well as a meeting of the United Nations. The UN is now calling for an investigation into Amani's death. Iranians are calling for more. If "calling for" is the right phrase. 

 Content warning: vast outnumbering...

 

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A post shared by bamdad esmaili (@bamdad_esmaili)

 

 Hence the 12 hour shifts. These scenes are extraordinary. Faren's very busy. I asked her to translate the chants. In hindsight that probably wasn't the smartest thing to ask someone with parents in Iran over a messaging app. 

 I'm going to offer to help with her boxes.

 

Workaround with Pat & Mat

 

"... and that's it!"

 

 Thanks to Faren Taghizadeh for introducing me to this!

 Apparently, growing up up in Tehran, you got your clownish antics and bywords for ineptitude, not from the Chuckle Brothers, but from any Laurel and Hardy short that didn't have wives in it, or – thanks to the fact that neither were identifiably female – from Czechoslovak Television's Pat & Mat. But do you know what? I'll take it. Because every episode I've seen so far of Lubomir Beneš' and Vladimir Jiránek's "... a je to!" ("... and that's it!") is beautifully animated and unimprovably funny, powered by a genuine love and undersanding for the detail of how things actually break. Silent partners Pat and Mat are a charming realisation of the differently ept; endlessly creative, endlessy unfazed; the architects of both their own undoing and their making do. This is the stuff, and there's hours of it.

 

 "I have called it 'Slapstick' because it is grotesque, situational poetry."

Kurt Vonnegut

"Let me blame"

  More bits of walk. (I don't know how closely you follow Hansard, but they've closed the golf courses.) If you prefer, imagine these images filled with birds I was simply too slow to photograph: plodding coots, seagulls, adolescent grey-billed swans and row upon row of crenellating pigeons. Imagine seed and freshly peeled fruit along the tow path. Imagine clear water, because the water was very clear today, and clouds that come down to your socks.