Harald Hardrada - Chapter 11: 1065

 

Harald

Arctic noon dusk, on the beach of a calm fjord, two men recite poetry, call and refrain, over the still waters and beneath the looming mountains. I’ve come to Halogaland to fish for cod, to harvest the stickfish and the saltfish, to make skis and snow-shoes, to fashion mink cloaks and wollen sweaters, to fuck the local women and to watch the northern lights. Beside the mountain, beneath the sunset, under oars, a dark ship enters the fjord. The poetry ends and I wonder who it could be, on that boat, coming for me.

Wikipedia

Tostig appears to have governed in Northumbria with some difficulty. He was never popular with the Northumbrian ruling class, a mix of Danish invaders and Anglo-Saxon survivors of the last Norse invasion. Tostig was said to have been heavy-handed with those who resisted his rule, including murdering several members of leading Northumbrian families. In late 1063 or early 1064, Tostig had Gamal son of Orm and Ulf son of Dolfin assassinated when Gamal visited him under safe conduct. The Vita Edwardi, otherwise sympathetic to Tostig, states that he had “repressed [the Northumbrians] with the heavy yoke of his rule”.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle

This was done on the mass-day of St. Bartholomew. Soon after this all the thanes in Yorkshire and in Northumberland gathered themselves together at York, and outlawed their Earl Tosty; slaying all the men of his clan that they could reach, both Danish and English; and took all his weapons in York, with gold and silver, and all his money that they could anywhere there find.

Wikipedia

Harold Godwinson persuaded King Edward the Confessor to agree to the demands of the rebels. Tostig was outlawed a short time later, possibly early in November, because he refused to accept his deposition as commanded by Edward. This led to the fatal confrontation and enmity between the two Godwinsons. At a meeting of the king and his council, Tostig publicly accused Harold of fomenting the rebellion. Harold was keen to unify England in the face of the grave threat from William of Normandy, who had openly declared his intention to take the English throne. It was likely that Harold had exiled his brother to ensure peace and loyalty in the north. Tostig, however, remained unconvinced and plotted vengeance.

Tostig took ship with his family and some loyal thegns and took refuge with his brother-in-law, Baldwin V, Count of Flanders. He even travelled to Normandy and attempted to form an alliance with William, who was related to his wife. Baldwin provided him with a fleet and he landed in the Isle of Wight in May 1066, where he collected money and provisions. He raided the coast as far as Sandwich but was forced to retreat when King Harold called out land and naval forces. He moved north and after an unsuccessful attempt to get his brother Gyrth to join him, he raided Norfolk and Lincolnshire. The Earls Edwin and Morcar defeated him decisively. Deserted by his men, he fled to his sworn brother, King Malcolm III of Scotland. Tostig spent the summer of 1066 in Scotland.

He made contact with King Harald III Hardrada of Norway and persuaded him to invade England. One of the sagas claims that he sailed for Norway, and greatly impressed the Norwegian king and his court, managing to sway a decidedly unenthusiastic Hardrada, who had just concluded a long and inconclusive war with Denmark, into raising a levy to take the throne of England. 

Harald

William of Normandy passes. Baldwin of Flanders passes, although he gives Tostig a few ships to make him go away. Malcom of Scotland passes. Harald of Norway, on the other hand, knows a good thing when he sees it.

Heimskringla

Jarl Tósti changed direction in his travel, and turned up in Norway and went to see King Haraldr. He was in the Vík. And when they meet, the jarl reveals his errand to the king, telling him all about his travels since he left England and asking the king to give him support in getting back his realm in England. The king’s reply is this, that Norwegians would not be keen to travel to England and lay it waste and have an English ruler over them.

“People say that those English are not very reliable.”

Harald

His own brother Harold hated him so much that Harold kicked Tostig out of Essex and sent Tostig to York. The people in York hated Tostig so much they killed all Tostig’s housecarls and plundered all his gold. When their father died Harold disowned Tostig and kicked him out of Northumberland. Did I mention that Tostig has an incredibly punchable face?

Heimskringla

The jarl replies: “If you will not tell me, then I will tell you. King Magnús won Denmark because the leading men of that land helped him, and you did not get it because all the people of the country stood against you. King Magnús did not fight to conquer England because the people of the country wanted to have Eatvarðr as king. If you want to gain England, then I can bring it about that the majority of the leaders in England will be your friends and supporters. I lack nothing more in comparison with my brother Harold than just the name of king. Everyone knows that no such fighting man has been born in Northern Lands as you, and I find it surprising that you have been fighting for fifteen winters to win Denmark, but you will not take England, which now lies open to you.”

Harald

I knew that Tostig was full of shit. I decided to do it anyway. I was fifty years old – how could I resist the chance for one more great adventure before I passed the kingdom down to my sons and retired to Halogaland to drink Rhenish wine and watch the northern lights.

It could work. William would be invading from the south, I would be invading from the north, the English forces loyalty would be split between Harold, Tostig, and their home villages. It worked in Sicily. It worked for Cnut. Why couldn’t it work for me?

Heimskringla

King Haraldr considered carefully what the jarl was saying, and realised that much of what he said was true, and on the other hand he began to get keen to have the kingdom. After this the king and the jarl spoke together long and often. They settled on this plan, that they should in the summer go to England and conquer the country. King Haraldr sent word all over Norway and called out troops for an expedition, a half levy. This now became widely known. There were many guesses about where the expedition would be going. Some said, reckoning up King Haraldr’s achievements, that nothing would be impossible for him, while some said that England would be difficult to defeat, the population there being enormous.

Harald Hardrada - Chapter 12: 1066

 

Wikipedia

In 1066 Halley’s Comet was seen, appearing to be four times the size of Venus, and shining with a light equal to a quarter of that of the Moon. Halley came within 0.10 AU of Earth at that time

Halley's Comet is visible from Earth every 74–79 years.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle

Then was over all England such a token seen as no man ever saw before. Some men said that it was the comet-star, which others denominate the long-hair'd star. It appeared first on the eve called “Litania major”, that is, on the eighth before the calends off May; and so shone all the week.

Harald

There are two sea routes from Norway to England. The Dane way is south down Jutland, turn east along Friesland and then go straight across the English Channel. Not much wind, but a safe route for cargo ships under oars. The Viking way is south down the coast of Trondheim, straight across the North Sea to a halt at the Shetlands, then Orkneys and follow the coast to Northumbria.

Heimskringla

King Haraldr’s army assembled in Sólundir. And when King Haraldr was ready to sail out from Niðaróss, then he first went to King Óláfr’s shrine and opened it and cut his hair and nails and afterwards locked the shrine and threw the keys out into the Nið, and the blessed King Óláfr’s shrine has never since been opened. There had now passed from his fall thirty-five winters. He had also lived thirty five winters in this world. King Haraldr took the troops that were following him south to meet up with his own troops. A large force was collected there, so that it is people’s report that King Haraldr had nearly two hundred ships, and in addition carriers for provisions and small craft.

So when King Haraldr was ready and there arose a favourable wind, he sailed out to sea and came to land by Hjaltland, though some of his troops came by Orkney. King Haraldr lay there a short while, before he sailed to Orkney, and he took with him from there a large troop and Jarl Þorfinnr’s sons, the jarls Páll and Erlendr, but left there Queen Ellisif and their daughters Maria and Ingigerðr. From there he sailed south past Scotland and on past England and came to land there where it is called Kliflǫnd. There he went ashore and immediately made raids and subjected the land to himself, meeting no resistance.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle

Soon after this came in Earl Tosty from beyond sea into the Isle of Wight, with as large a fleet as he could get. When Tosty understood that King Harold was on the way to Sandwich, he departed thence, and took some of the boatmen with him, willing and unwilling, and went north into the Humber with sixty skips; whence he plundered in Lindsey, and there slew many good men. When the Earls Edwin and Morkar understood that, they came hither, and drove him from the land. And the boatmen forsook him. Then he went to Scotland with twelve smacks; and the king of the Scots entertained him, and aided him with provisions; and he abode there all the summer. There met him Harald, King of Norway, with three hundred ships.

 ...

Came Tosty the earl into Humber with sixty ships. Edwin the earl came with a land-force and drove him out; and the boatmen forsook him. And he went to Scotland with twelve vessels; and Harald, the King of Norway, met him with three hundred ships, and Tosty submitted to him; and they both went into Humber, until they came to York.

Heimskringla

After that King Haraldr made for Skarðaborg and fought there with the citizens. He went up onto the cliff that is situated there and had a great fire made there and set ablaze. And when the fire was burning, they took great forks and flung the fire down into the town. Then one building after another caught fire. Then the whole place went up in flames. The Norwegians slew many people there, and took all the wealth they got hold of. There was then nothing else the English people could do, if they were to stay alive, but submit to King Haraldr. He then subjected all the land to himself wherever he went. After that King Haraldr made his way with the whole army south along the coast and landed by Hellornes. There he was met by an assembled force, and King Haraldr fought a battle there and was victorious.

Jarl Valþjófr and the troops that got away fled up to the city of Jork. There was a very great slaughter there. The battle was on Wednesday, the next day before Matheusmass.

Jarl Tósti had come from the south from Flæmingjaland to King Haraldr as soon as he got to England, and the jarl was in all these battles. It then turned out as he had said to Haraldr before this meeting, that multitudes of people thronged to them in England. These were relations and friends of Jarl Tósti, and it was a great enhancement of the king’s forces. After this battle that has just been related, troops from all round the neighbouring districts submitted to King Haraldr, though some fled. Then King Haraldr prepared his expedition to capture the city and stationed his army by Stamford Bridge. And because the king had won such a great victory against great leaders and overwhelming forces, all the people were afraid and despaired of standing up to him. Then the citizens decided to send a petition to King Haraldr and offer themselves and also the city into his power. The result of this whole petition was that on the Sunday King Haraldr went with his whole army up to the city and set up an assembly, the king and his men, outside the city, and the citizens attended the assembly. All the people accepted submission to King Haraldr, and gave him hostages, sons of high-ranking men, it being the case that Tósti knew details of all the people in that city, and in the evening the king went down to his ships with an automatic victory, and was very merry. An assembly was arranged for early on the Monday in the city. King Haraldr was then to set up the organisation of the place with men of the ruling class and hand out ranks and fiefs.

Harald

Everything was going according to plan. What I hadn’t planned for was exactly how much Harold hated Tostig.

Heimskringla

On the Monday, when Haraldr Sigurðarson had eaten breakfast, he had the trumpets blown for going ashore, then he makes his army ready and divides the troops, which parts are to go and which are to be left behind. In every company he had two men go inland for every one left behind. Jarl Tósti got ready for going inland with King Haraldr with his company,

The weather was now extremely good and the sun was hot. The men left behind their mailcoats, and marched up with shields and helmets and halberds and girded with swords, and many also had arrows and bows and were very merry. But when they advanced into the neighbourhood of the city, they found riding towards them a large troop. They saw the cloud of dust raised by the horses and beneath it fair shields and white mailcoats. Then the king halted his troops, had Jarl Tósti called to him and asked what troops these would be.

The jarl speaks, saying he thought it more than likely that it would be hostile, saying also that it could on the other hand turn out that this would be some of his kinsmen, looking for mercy and friendship, so as to get in return the king’s support and trust.

Then the king said that they would first of all hold still and find out about the army. They did so, and the troop turned out to be larger the closer it got, and to look at it all seemed just like a heap of bits of ice with the glittering of their weapons.

Harald

Instead of hanging around the Isle of Wight waiting for William, he puts his whole army on a forced march for a month, just to kill Tostig. And the Northumbrians hated Tostig so much, they did not give us any warning that the English army was approaching, and in fact they fell in behind the Saxon army as it approached.

Heimskringla

After that King Haraldr drew up his troops, making the battle line long and not deep. Then he curved the wings round backwards so that they met. It then formed a wide circle and a thick one, and the same everywhere all round the outside, shield against shield and the same above their heads, but the king’s company was within the circle and the standard was there too. It was a picked troop. In a separate place was Jarl Tósti with his company. He had a different standard. It was drawn up in this way, because the king knew that mounted men were accustomed to ride forwards in small detachments and withdraw immediately. So the king says that his company and the jarl’s company should move forward to where the greatest need was. “And our bowmen shall also be there with us, and those that are standing foremost shall set the butts of their spears in the ground, and set the points before the breasts of the riders, if they ride at us, and those that are standing closest, they are to set their spear points before the breasts of the horses.”

Heimskringla

King Harold of the English spoke to the Norwegians that were with him: “Did you recognise that big man with the dark tunic and the fair helmet?”

“That is the king himself,” they said.

The king of the English says: “A big man and he has a stately air, and it is more than likely that he has run out of luck.”

Heimskringla

Then spoke one of the horsemen: “Is Jarl Tósti among the troops?”

He answers: “That is not to be denied, you will find him here.”

Then spoke one of the horsemen: “Your brother Harold sends you a greeting and has this to say too, that you should have pardon and the whole of Northumberland, and rather than that you should not be willing to pay homage to him, then he will give you a third of the whole kingdom alongside him.”

Then answers the jarl: “Then there is something on offer other than hostility and dishonour like last winter. If this had been offered then, then there would be many a man still alive that is now dead, and the kingdom in England would then have been in a better state. Now if I accept this offer, what will he offer King Haraldr Sigurðarson for his trouble then?”

Then spoke the horseman: “He has said something about that, what he will grant him of England: a space seven foot long, or so much longer as he is taller than other men.”

Then says the jarl: “Go now and tell King Haraldr that he should prepare for battle.”

Heimskringla

Then King Haraldr Sigurðarson spoke:

We creep not because of weapons’ crash

The discreet valkyrie ordered

In battle into the shield’s hollow.

To hold my helmet-stump

high the necklace-prop

long ago commanded me, in metal-din

where met skulls and battle-ice.

King Haraldr Sigurðarson stepped forward in the battle to where the fighting was densest. There was then the most violent of battles, and many troops on both sides fell. Then King Haraldr Sigurðarson got so furious that he leapt forward right out of the formation and struck with both hands. There stood against him then neither helmet not mailcoat. Then all those that were closest took to flight. The English men were then right on the point of fleeing.

King Haraldr Sigurðarson was struck in the throat by an arrow. That was his death wound. Then he fell and all the company that had advanced with him, except those that pulled back, and they held the standard. There was then still the harshest of battles. Then Jarl Tósti went beneath the royal standard. Then both sides began to form up a second time, and there was then a very long pause in the battle.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle

It was on the eve of St. Matthew the apostle, which was Wednesday. Then after the fight went Harald, King of Norway, and Earl Tosty into York with as many followers as they thought fit; and having procured hostages and provisions from the city, they proceeded to their ships, and proclaimed full friendship, on condition that all would go southward with them, and gain this land.

 ...

Thither came Harold, king of the English, unawares against them beyond the bridge; and they closed together there, and continued long in the day fighting very severely. There was slain Harald the King of Norway, and Earl Tosty, and a multitude of people with them, both of Normans and English; and the Normans that were left fled from the English, who slew them hotly behind; until some came to their ships, some were drowned, some burned to death, and thus variously destroyed; so that there was little left: and the English gained possession of the field. But there was one of the Norwegians who withstood the English folk, so that they could not pass over the bridge, nor complete the victory. An Englishman aimed at him with a javelin, but it availed nothing. Then came another under the bridge, who pierced him terribly inwards under the coat of mail.

Harald

So that’s where I died. 25 September 1066, on the banks of a muddy Yorkshire stream, with my boats and my bodyguards a full days hard march away at the coast. Over the years several wanna-be cathedrals claimed to have a piece of my corpse as a holy relic, but it wasn’t true. I’m still here.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle

This year died King Edward, and Harold the earl succeeded to the kingdom, and held it forty weeks and one day. And this year came William, and won England. And in this year Christ-Church [Canterbury] was burned. And this year appeared a comet on the fourteenth before the kalends of May.

Tosty went thence, and did harm everywhere by the sea-coast where he could land, as far as Sandwich. Then was it made known to King Harold, who was in London, London, that Tosty his brother was come to Sandwich. Then gathered he so great a ship-force, and also a land force, as no king here in the land had before gathered, because it had been soothly said unto him, that William the earl from Normandy, King Edward's kinsman, would come hither and subdue this land: all as it afterwards happened. When Tosty learned that King Harold was on his way to Sandwich, then went he from Sandwich, and took some of the boatmen with him, some willingly and some unwillingly; and went then north into Humber, and there ravaged in Lindsey, and there slew many good men. When Edwin the earl and Morcar the earl understood that, then came they thither, and drove him out of the land. And he went then to Scotland: and the king of Scots protected him, and assisted him with provisions; and he there abode all the summer. Then came King Harold to Sandwich, and there awaited his fleet, because it was long before it could be gathered together. And when his fleet was gathered together, then went he into the Isle of Wight, and there lay all the summer and the harvest; and a land-force was kept everywhere by the sea, though in the end it was of no benefit. When it was the Nativity of St. Mary, then were the men's provisions gone, and no man could any longer keep them there. Then were the men allowed to go home, and the king rode up, and the ships were dispatched to London; and many perished before they came thither. When the ships had reached home, then came King Harald from Norway, north into Tyne, and unawares, with a very large ship-force, and no small one; that might be, or more. And Tosty the earl came to him with all that he had gotten, all as they had before agreed; and then they went both, with all the fleet, along the Ouse, up towards York.

Then was it made known to King Harold in the south, as he was come from on ship-board, that Harald King of Norway and Tosty the earl were landed near York. Then went he northward, day and night, as quickly as he could gather his forces. Then, before that King Harold could come thither, then gathered Edwin the earl and Morcar the earl from their earldom as great a force as they could get together; and they fought against the army, and made great slaughter: and there was much of the English people slain, and drowned, and driven away in flight; and the Northmen had possession of the place of carnage. And this fight was on the vigil of St. Matthew the apostle, and it was Wednesday. And then, after the fight, went Harald, King of Norway, and Tosty the earl, into York, with as much people as seemed meet to them. And they delivered hostages to them from the city, and also assisted them with provisions; and so they went thence to their ships, and they agreed upon a full peace, so that they should all go with him south, and this land subdue. Then, during this, came Harold, king of the Angles, with all his forces, on the Sunday, to Tadcaster, and there drew up his force, and went then on Monday throughout York; and Harald, King of Norway, and Tosty the earl, and their forces, were gone from their ships beyond York to Stanford bridge, because it had been promised them for a certainty, that there, from all the shire, hostages should be brought to meet them. Then came Harold, king of the English, against them, unawares, beyond the bridge, and they there joined battle, and very strenuously, for a long time of the day, continued fighting: and there was Harald, King of Norway, and Tosty the earl slain, and numberless of the people with them, as well of the Northmen as of the English: and the Northmen fled from the English. Then was there one of the Norwegians who withstood the English people, so that they might not pass over the bridge, nor obtain the victory. Then an Englishman aimed at him with a javelin, but availed nothing; and then came another under the bridge, and pierced him terribly inwards under the coat of mail. Then came Harold, king of the English, over the bridge, and his forces onward with him, and there made great slaughter, as well of Norwegians as of Flemings. And the King's son, Edmund, Harold let go home to Norway, with all the ships.

Heimskringla

After the battle, King Haraldr Sigurðarson’s marshal Styrkárr got away, a splendid person. He got hold of a horse and thus rode away. In the evening some wind arose, rather a cold one, but Styrkárr had no clothing other than a tunic and a helmet on his head and some kind of sword in his hand. He got cold when he recovered from his weariness. Then he was met by a wagoner and he was in a fur-lined coat.

Then spoke Styrkárr: “Will you sell the coat, farmer?”

“Not to you,” he said.  “You must be a Norwegian, I recognise your speech.”

Then said Styrkárr: “If I am a Norwegian, what do you want, then?”

The farmer answers: “I would like to kill you, but unfortunately I have no usable weapon.”

Then said Styrkárr: “If you cannot kill me, farmer, then I shall try whether I can kill you.”

He swings up his sword and brings it down on his neck so that his head flew off, after that took the fur-lined coat and leapt on his horse and went down to the shore.

Anglo Saxon Chronicle

And the while, William the earl landed at Hastings, on St. Michael's-day: and Harold came from the north, and fought against him before all his army had come up: and there he fell, and his two brothers, Girth and Leofwin; and William subdued this land. And he came to Westminster, and Archbishop Aldred consecrated him king, and men paid him tribute, delivered him hostages, and afterwards bought their land.

Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings

The background to the battle was the death of the childless King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, which set up a succession struggle between several claimants to his throne. Harold was crowned king shortly after Edward's death, but faced invasions by William, his own brother Tostig, and the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada (Harold III of Norway). Hardrada and Tostig defeated a hastily gathered army of Englishmen at the Battle of Fulfordon 20 September 1066, and were in turn defeated by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge five days later. The deaths of Tostig and Hardrada at Stamford Bridge left William as Harold's only serious opponent. While Harold and his forces were recovering, William landed his invasion forces in the south of England at Pevensey on 28 September 1066 and established a beachhead for his conquest of the kingdom. Harold was forced to march south swiftly, gathering forces as he went

After defeating his brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada in the north, Harold left much of his forces in the north, including Morcar and Edwin, and marched the rest of his army south to deal with the threatened Norman invasion. It is unclear when Harold learned of William's landing, but it was probably while he was travelling south. Harold stopped in London, and was there for about a week before Hastings, so it is likely that he spent about a week on his march south, averaging about 27 mi (43 km) per day, for the approximately 200 mi (320 km).

Although Harold attempted to surprise the Normans, William's scouts reported the English arrival to the duke. The exact events preceding the battle are obscure, with contradictory accounts in the sources, but all agree that William led his army from his castle and advanced towards the enemy. Harold had taken a defensive position at the top of Senlac Hill (present-day Battle, East Sussex), about 6 mi (9.7 km) from William's castle at Hastings.

The exact numbers present at the battle are unknown as even modern estimates vary considerably. The composition of the forces is clearer: the English army was composed almost entirely of infantry and had few archers, whereas only about half of the invading force was infantry, the rest split equally between cavalry and archers. Harold appears to have tried to surprise William, but scouts found his army and reported its arrival to William, who marched from Hastings to the battlefield to confront Harold. The battle lasted from about 9 am to dusk. Early efforts of the invaders to break the English battle lines had little effect. Therefore, the Normans adopted the tactic of pretending to flee in panic and then turning on their pursuers. Harold's death, probably near the end of the battle, led to the retreat and defeat of most of his army. After further marching and some skirmishes, William was crowned as king on Christmas Day 1066.

There continued to be rebellions and resistance to William's rule, but Hastings effectively marked the culmination of William's conquest of England. Casualty figures are hard to come by, but some historians estimate that 2,000 invaders died along with about twice that number of Englishmen.

 

 

 

Harald Hardrada - Chapter 13: Afterwards

 

Heimskringla

King Haraldr was a powerful man and a firm ruler within his own country, very intelligent in his thinking, so that it is universally held that there has been no ruler in Northern Lands that has been as profoundly wise as Haraldr or as clever in his decisions. He was a great warrior and of the very boldest in fighting. He was strong and better able to use weapons than any other man, as has been written above.

 

King Haraldr was a handsome man and noble-looking, fair-haired and with a fair beard and long moustache, one eyebrow a little higher than the other, large hands and feet and both well shaped. His height measured five ells. He was fierce to his enemies and harsh in punishments for any opposition.

 

King Haraldr was most ambitious for power and for any advantageous possessions. He was hugely liberal towards his friends, those that he was well pleased with.

 

King Haraldr was fifty years of age when he fell. We have no noteworthy accounts of his youth until he was fifteen winters old, when he was at Stiklarstaðir in the battle along with his brother King Óláfr, and after that he lived thirty-five winters. And all that time he never had any respite from violence and warfare. King Haraldr never fled from a battle, but he often took precautions in the face of overwhelming odds that he had to deal with. Everyone said, who followed him in battle and warfare, that when he was in a situation of great danger and it had suddenly come upon him, that he would adopt the course that everyone realised afterwards had been the most likely to work.

 

…

 

Brynjólfr gamli úlfaldi’s (Camel’s) son Halldórr was an intelligent man and a great leader. He said this, when he heard people’s talk, and people were assessing the characters of the brothers King Óláfr the Saint and Haraldr quite differently, then Halldórr spoke as follows:

 

“I was on very friendly terms with both the brothers, and I was acquainted with both their characters. I never came across two men more alike in character. They were both most sensible and most bold as fighters, men ambitious for wealth and power, imperious, not in sympathy with ordinary people, natural rulers and stern in punishment. King Óláfr forced the people of the country to Christianity and right conduct, and harshly punished those that turned a deaf ear. The leaders of the land would not put up with his just and fair judgments and rose against him here and killed him on his own territory. As a result he became a saint. But Haraldr fought for fame and power and forced all the people to submit to him, as far as he could. He also fell on other kings’ territory. Both the brothers were men that were virtuous in general conduct and high-minded. They were widely travelled and men of great energy and from this became widely renowned and famous.”

 

…

 

King Magnús ruled over Norway, the son of Haraldr, the first winter after the fall of King Haraldr, and after that he ruled two winters with his brother Óláfr. There were then these two kings. Magnús held the more northerly part of the country, and Óláfr the more easterly. King Magnús had a son that was called Hákon. He was fostered by Steigar-Þórir. He was a most promising man.

Krisha and Kamsa - Notebook 2

Conversion by the sword, baptism in the sand.

 The leader spoke to Kamsa.

 “As a captive of the Uttara, you have two choices: either you become one of us, adopting us as your brothers, working only for the good of the tribe, killing the enemies of the tribe, sharing equally the burdens and the profits, or you can die here in the desert, by the sword or in the sand. It is up to you to choose”.

 Kamsa chose the sword.

 

“You shall at least die like a man”.
Goliath, to David.

Kamsa was led to the edge of the compound and given a sword. The champion of the Uttara approached. They fought.

Kamsa’s training in the arts of war served him well. After some preliminary feints, thrusts, and parries, gauging the strengths and tactics of his opponent, Kamsa attacked, and soon had him at his mercy. Kamsa, sword raised and prised for the mortal strike, looked around him as saw the rest of the tribe, weapons at their hips, and beyond them only the gentle rise and fall of the dunes. He thrust his sword deep into the sand, and said in his native tongue, “I accept you, my brothers”.

 

 

Kamsa became versed in the ways of the Uttara. The man he defeated, Kura, was the son of the chief. Kamsa, Kura, and Kura’s sister, Vaisti, spent much time together.

 

An epic as a short story

Scale

Man – God                          Kamsa – Krishna

Tribe – State                      Uttara – Dwarka

Emperor – King                 Court – Castle

Human – Ideal                   Peasant – King

 

Kamsa is not actually the prince. He is really the son of his nanny, substituted for the prince at birth and sent to fulfill the tribute.

 

“I am the man born to be king”

 

The Uttara were free; they struck their tents, loaded their camels, and were gone, leaving only footprints.

 

They travelled to the great market of Jaisalmer, three days to the north, a sand brown city rising out of the desert like a glittering flat-topped mountain. It was one of the great meeting points; like Timbucktu or Constantinople it drew merchants, goods, and wealth from an entire continent and beyond, and in its streets are heard the babble of a hundred languages all translated into the clink of gold coins. The streets entering the city are lined with merchants displaying their wares; textiles and dyed fabrics, spices, worked metals, perfumes, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds, the booty of a thousand wars and production of entire villages. Nearer the market the crowd became denser; locals hawking food and beds, prasad and soma. Finally, one reached the central square, where the market bargained and bartered, the Jain merchants looked down from the verandas of the mansions and smelled the enticing scent of commerce and profit.

 

Inside the haveli is was dark and cool. An inner courtyard and atrium gave one a view of the pale blue sky and a slight breeze. The outer walls of the haveli slanted out, sheltering the ground from the sun, and each window wore a hood, so that direct light would never penetrate. The floors were cool smooth stone, washed by a woman on her hands and knees every morning. The house awoke around dawn and bathed in the water from the well, drilled 200 ft into the earth in the middle of the inner courtyard and giving ferrous and slightly cloudy water. They drank hot spiced tea, leaves from the hills and milk from the grasslands. In the afternoon they slept like animals, prostrate from the heat. In the evening the concluded the business of the day and ate a meal of curried vegetables and unleavened bread. At night they lit oil lamps and reclined on bolsters and cushions under the stars. The men recline and watch the young lightly clad women singers and dancers while drinking deep blue wine from Rome, or smoking opium from the poppy fields of Myanmar, and playing games of skill or dice. It was a crescent moon.

 

In the desert you cannot refuse a man water or his camels feed.

 

Kamsa, Kura, and Vaisti played together every day. Kamsa and Kura were almost the same age and Vaisti was two years younger. Kamsa and Kura would shoot at targets, competing for bulls eyes,and Vaisti would run and retrieve the errant shots. They would play a game of hide and seek called stalk, in which two of them would be assassins and one would be the victim. Sometimes they would play spy, and concealing themselves, would watch someone all day, discovering their comings, goings, and habits. This made the privy to many adult secrets, which they shared among themselves as a bond, amin much giggling and impersonation. Sometimes they would take a camel and go exploring; Kura in front and Kamsa in back and Vaisti held between them, carrying a skin filled with water and lunch wrappe din palm leaves, and go far from the camp, stopping in the afternoon and sleeping in the shade of the hobbled camel, the three of them curled around each other, sleeping the calm sweet breathed sleep of children. They saw antelope and deer and snakes sleeping in the sun, bulging in the middle with the half-digested remains of a desert rat, packs of wild dogs, and vultures, soaring on thermal currents, spiralling ever upwards into the blistering sun.

Kamsa was 14 years old.

 

Kamsa lived among the Uttara for a year and a half. His skin, which had been pale in the reflected glory of the court, became dark. He clothed himself as the Uttara did, ate their food, spoke in the dialect of the tribe. He never told anyone the secret of his birth, they never asked. They treated him as a member, he regarded them as his brothers. He had been adopted by the chief of the tribe; he lived with Kura and Vaisti.

Kamsa was then 16.

There was news of a giant caravan, laden with riches, approaching from an oasis two days away. A raiding party was quickly organized and sent to intercept the train. Kura and Kamsa were selected to lead the party.

One’s experiments are confined by the available materials.

Many pages on the history of the Uttara tribe. Not good, omitted.

Societies, when resources have firmly defined possibilities and have grown to maturity, generate splinter groups, colonizers, rebels. This partition is natural.

Plot Summary (in chronological order)

 

Jayesh rules Dwarka, a petty kingdom in India, at an unspecified historical time. He must pay a tribute to the emperor (by suggestion, a Mughal). One of the forms this tribute takes is that the heir apparent must reside in the emperor’s court util he reaches the age of succession.

 

Jayesh’s wife is pregnant. They are no longer young, and do not want to give up their child. One of the palace servants is also pregnant, with a similar due date. When the children are born, they exchange the babies. The servant, not wishing to be separated from her child, is sent along to the emperor’s court in the role of wet nurse to the prince.

 

Kamsa, as the child is named, grows up in the imperial court, never knowing he is not the real prince. He receives a Mughal classical education while retaining the cultural habits of Dwarka. He studies the arts of war as well as philosophy and law. He is much impressed by the glory of the imperial court.

 

When Kamsa and Akayla (the true prince) are 12, Jayesh breaks peace with the emperor, does not pay the tribute, and establishes Akayla as the crown prince. Kamsa’s nanny hears of this and sends Kamsa off with a trader, telling him the secret of his birth, that he is actually her son (fathered by the king?) and switched at birth with Akayla.

 

Kamsa flees with Al-Haroun, concealed in a bale of silk. On the third day the caravan is ambushed by a group of pirates called the Uttara. After being discovered in the booty, Kamsa is adopted by the tribe.

 

Akayla is cruel, autocratic, ostentatious, and hugely unpopular. Many believe that he is an imposter.

“What happened to the true prince, held by the emperor in tribute?”

“He was killed by the emperor himself.”

“I heard he escaped.”

“He is not Akayla in any case.”

 

Kamsa has never told the Uttara of his birth or past. One day, when the Uttara are in the market, selling their plunder, Kamsa is recognized. Propelled by the will of the people and the military might of the Uttara, Kamsa ascends the throne of Dwarka.

 

Kamsa’s character is shaped by dualities. He feels great affinity with the common people, regards them as his brothers, and expresses his love through democratic egalitarianism. The people perceive him as the man born to be king and express their love for him through a total allegiance to a hierarchical class system. Kamsa is a reformer and uses his popular mandate to implement his enlightened program of social equality. However, in doing so, in destroys his political base, the hierarchy which determines that he is king.

 

Kamsa is also limited by his inability to discard the imperial structure in which he was raised. His belief in the “benevolent dictator” and “philosopher king” co-exists with his knowledge that he is not truly the man born to be king, his pure idealism can only be sustained on the basis of a falsehood, he is not really who he is supposed to be. This is a dangerous secret, and he uses all his cruel and regal powers to protect it, subverting his social and political program.

 

The fundamental contradiction in Kamsa’s nature is an inability to perceive differences in scale. His ruling is based on an imperial model, having enormous wealth and power at the disposal of the king, yet he rules a petty principality, with limited means and resources. His social philosophy is base on a small tribe, without history, yet he rules over tens of thousands of people living in an ancient social framework.

 

Thus, the basic problem is a problem of scale.

 

The solution is the story itself, a tale of epic concerns: political, social, historical, religious, cultural, geographical, taken from a miniature episode in the great epic the Mahabharata, and expressed as a short story.

 

However, all this is merely a prelude to the story of the Mahabharata. The story in the Mahabharata is this.

 

Kamsa is a wicked tyrant. There is a prophecy that the son of his sister shall slay him. To protect himself, Kamsa systematically kills his sister’s children at birth. However, by a miracle, one of his nephews, Krishna, is born and is immediately transported to a village, where he grows up minding the cows, playing the flute, and seducing the girls of the village out in the fields.

 

Krishna eventually kills Kamsa and takes over the throne. There are two interesting parallels:

 

Krishna goes from being a commoner to being king, but this is totally correct.

 

In the Gita, Krishna reveals to Arjuna the secret of scale.

Krishna and Kamsa - Notebook I

Kamsa

Kamsa, lying in his bed at the top of the palace, fanned by an unseen servant, is unable to sleep. Palace intrigue, assassination attempts, his ultimate place in history, his lack of an heir, all weigh on his mind.

He is a modern man, with existential fears. He feels trapped by the extent of his personal power and the use he has made of it; all his plans have come to naught.

Kamsa gets up and walk about the walls of the fort, bathed in moonlight, feeling very alone yet followed by a cadre of guards.

He is ruler of all he surveys, yet it brings him no happiness. Everywhere events are spinning out of his control. He sees foreign armies marching on him from beyond the horizon, his infrastructure collapsing, himself as an old man.

Gorbachev – the last Communist?

Kamsa awoke, and was afraid. For many years he had thought that this was a consequence of being a king; it was only recently that it had occurred to him that fear was a consequence of being a man rather than a king. 

In his youth, in the palace of the emperor, he had encountered the greatest minds of his generation, absorbed the riches of a thousand cultures, observed first hand the greatest philosopher king of his era rule with wisdom and justice, for the god of the people and the glory of the empire. He had travelled among the people, incognito, learning their ways and their speech. When he ascended the throne, he felt as if the world was at his feet and history at his fingertips. He was still a young man.

He began with radical reform. The ministers, sycophants, hangers-on, and flatterers of his father’s court, who had served for many years in their posts, grown comfortable and content, he fired. He brought in his own advisors, friends who he had met on his travels, his teachers, and his followers, all men he knew and trusted, who bad been with him through the thin, he brought with him for the thick. They were friends of his boyhood, he thought of the as his friends for life.

 

Glasnost and Perestroika

Kamsa’s first move was to abolish the class system. That priests and nobles should enjoy wealth and privilege simple by virtue of their birth seemed to Kamsa inherently wrong, he himself brought an untouchable to the palace, and washed the man’s feet, and embraced him as a brother. The crowds cheered, the priests sat in stunned silence, the nobles gathered and issued a call to arms.

Kamsa impounded the noble’s arms and the priest’s temples and icons. He seized all the wealth in the kingdom, and then redistributed it, according to the amount of need and the enhancement of labor; he gave the beggar enough to feed his family and the skilled weaver his own loom. He gave land to those who worked the fields, horses to those who cleaned the paddocks, houses to those who cleaned the floors. He decreed that every citizen was entitled to food, shelter, and clothing, and that any citizen who needed could simply come to the palace, and ask, and it would be given. All this he called restructuring.

He threw out all the unjust judges and said all trials and crimes would be judged by a jury of peers, in an open court. He created a forum where any man could come and protest a law he felt was unjust; if enough people agreed with him, the law would be changed. If there was no law, one would be created, according to the concerns of the people involved. Private estates were turned into public parks. And all people were invited to take any dispute straight to the palace, where the king would personally hear their complaint, and rule in favor of the wronged party, and see that justice was done. All this he called openness.

Kamsa issued decrees; that did not make it so.  A group of nobles banded together in a castle on the outskirts of the kingdom. They banded together under the aegis of “tradition” and “our sacred way of life”.

Kamsa, gathering the friends of his youth around him, massed his troops and marched 20 days across the desert, and defeated the rebels. He used a new technique of battle, discovered on his travels, called “blitzkrieg”. The battle was bloody, but it was the first step.

 

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” != “Peace, Land, Bread”

His time, incognito among the people, taught him the reality that all men are equal. But over time, as he surrounded himself with advisors, it became less of a reality and more of a concept, until finally it was simply the words that were said while know-towing to the king. Perestroika became patronage. It was difficult to explain the concept; the kind himself, when pressed, would say it meant that when you meet a man in the desert you give him water. As Dwaraka was on the sea, this made very little sense to the people.

The problem is administrative. Kamsa himself could not hear the facts of every dispute; he then appointed the incorruptible friends of his youth as judges; they became corrupt.

Kamsa wondered why people continued to steal when property had been equitably distributed. He thought it reasonable for the poor to steal from the rich; in the end the poor stole from the poor; the courts were full as before, and equality slipped further into a concept.

Kamsa began as a populist and became a tyrant.

 

Absalom, Absalom 

The circle of advisors grows closer …

While there were problems, Kamsa continued, in large part because of the class structure he had worked so hard to dismantle. Eventually, as the momentum for reform slowed, and Kamsa’s personal popularity waned, the divine right of kings became the sole backing of Kamsa’s populist edicts.

After the clergy had been banned, the temples stood empty for many years. Kamsa tried to turn them into housing for the classes that had been oppressed. But the people would not inhabit the dwellings, saying the old prayers and covering themselves with ancient superstition, they could only be put into the sanctum by force, against a frenzy of fear for their everlasting souls, and the backed out of the temple as soon as the guards had left, murmuring fervent apologies to the idol and leaving the temples once again deserted.

The sycophants eventually proposed a solution; the structures should become temples once again, but re-dedicated to Kamsa, who of course would merely represent the collective will of the people.

The priests were brought out of hiding to maintain the edifices and write new prayers. The idols were brought back. The people once again came to humbly pray. The only difference was that the name over the doorway was Kamsa’s, rather than Vishnu’s.

In the temple of Kamsa, before mirrors rather than idols, the people prayed to Vishnu for deliverance. The untouchable man Kamsa had brought to the palace, and seated on the throne, and washed his feet, this man knelt outside the temple, fervently praying for a Messiah to come and free the kingdom from the yoke of the great Satan. Vishnu answered him, “yes, I shall come, and live among you, and when the time is right, I shall reveal myself, and slay this tyrant.”

The untouchable, his prayers answered, returned to the hole in the ground where he slept and where the priests dumped the waste of the temple.

 

David and Jonathan 

The level of intrigue increases proportionally with the amount of power involved.

To ensure loyalty and obedience, the emperor required that the eldest sons of all the kings in his domain be raised in the court of the emperor. Kamsa, less than a year after his birth, was separated from his family and brought to the court of the emperor, where he was to spend the next twelve years.

In the court Kamsa learnt many things: astronomy, mathematics, music, archery, painting, horsemanship, law. The most learned men in the world came to the court, to pay their respects to the emperor, and Kamsa listened to their tales and stories of distant lands and different peoples and cultures with great interest.

He got an exposure to learning and a respect for ideas. He also saw the imperial glory that wealth, power, and sophistication can create. He learned the language of the court, the lingua franca of scholars and poets. He heard the greatest poets of the age recite their works, and the saw the emperor get up and recite some couplets of his own composition, and head the court arise, and applaud, and praise the greatness and qualities of the emperor.

He had with him a small retinue of servants and keepers. His nanny sang him to sleep with the lullabies of his home, his cook prepared traditional meals, despite the differences in produce and spices. They spoke their local dialect, played the tribal game with stones and sand, dressed in the style to which they were raised and kept the customs of their home alive. Once a year, on the emperor’s birthday, Kamsa’s father, the king, would come, to pay the tribute to the emperor and to visit his first son. Kamsa thought it was odd, this old man who came with hundreds of strangers, and asked him what he had learned. When he was very young, Kamsa had hidden in his nanny’s skirts, when he was older, he learned the proper modes of address and bearing, and these yearly meetings took on a formal and staged air. Kamsa never met his mother, he had not yet been weaned when he was taken to court, and his earliest memory was taking suck at the breast of his nanny, a local peasant woman who worshipped him as her life’s glory, that she had nursed this future king.

Kamsa had a group of peers in the court, other local princelings of his age. He became friends with the heir apparent of a neighboring kingdom who was almost his age, Jinnah. They grew up together, playing children’s games, then learning the adult pastimes. In the arts of war they were evenly matched, many nights they stayed awake, reconstructing the great battles of history with pebbles and sticks, creating the terrain with the contours of a blanket. They swore undying love for one another and shared blood; in swordplay, when one had the other at his mercy, he would laugh, and pick to other up, and embrace him.

It was a period of great scientific progress, these young princes of the court, witnessing every day reports of tremendous advances, felt that the secrets of the universe were just around the corner, that one only had to take the next step, and all would be explained. They didn’t realize that ultimate knowledge retreats like the horizon, ad each step of progress only brings new vistas, not the edge of the world. Still, they felt armed with this knowledge, and their soon to be assumed power, that this was the dawning of a new age, and age that was theirs to shape and form according to the most enlightened principles on the age.

As the emperor’s birthday approached in the twelfth year of Kamsa’s captivity I the court, Kamsa noticed people treating him differently. Then, the night before the emperor’s birthday, Kamsa’s nanny woke him up. Outside the city was celebrating, the sounds of revelry and intoxication filled the air, and bonfires raged in the central squares. The nanny said “You must flee, your father is not going to pay the tribute. My brother will take you into the desert. Cover your face with this cloth and do not speak. Here is some food. May Vishnu be with you. Now go.”

Thus ended Kamsa’s youth.

 

Into the Desert 

The streets are alive with the sounds of celebration; laughter, screaming, music and drunken missteps. Kamsa slipped through the crowd, protected by his cloak of anonymity. He walked through the narrow, twisting alleys, stepping over cow feed and human excrement. Oxcarts rattle over the cobbled streets, pigeons roost in the carved sandstone facades of the havelis, men spit red-stained mucus onto the pavement. Kamsa moves across all this life, not entering but stepping carefully through the shadows.

The sentries are not at their posts; Kamsa slips unnoticed through the checkpoint and out the east gate.

A Camel’s Load of Silk 

Al-Haroun traveled at the head of a train of camels overburdened with bales over bales of silk, white foam covering the bits in the phlegmatic lips. They traveled by night.

Soon the tents and squatter’s huts set up to catch the wealth trickling down through the cracks in the royal edifice begin to thin out. They ascended a rocky incline, the camel’s strides keeping their narcotic rhythm steady. At the ridge Al-Haroun stopped the train and got down to piss onto the ground. Kamsa got down as well. Three strange men arrived on the rise and greeted Kamsa in the language of the court. Suddenly, as huge noise split the silence. All four turned back towards the city.

Fireworks, gifts of the emperor of China, flared across the sky, bursting into explosions of color, marking the first minute of the emperor’s birthday. They stood and watched until the explosions ended. The three kinds consulted among themselves in a strange tongue, pointing repeatedly at the spot in the sky where the fireworks had been. Finally, they remounted their camels and started down the incline, towards the city of the emperor. Al-Haroun started the train again, and they descended into the shallow sand, away from the kings, into the fathomless desert.

The moon rose full over the crest of a dune, surrounded by thousands of stars, pinpricks in the deep blue blanket of the nighttime sky. It was very quiet. They passed some tumbleweed and desert trees, where Al-Haroun stopped and let the camels feed on the prickly leaves. He offered Kamsa a drink of water, and Kamsa drank. He slipped off his chappals and felt the cool dry sand between his toes. Then they started again.

They travelled like this for several nights.

On the third night they were ambushed. A group of diacots came over the crest of a dune, screaming war cries and brandishing their curved Rajasthani swords. The fight was short, Al-Haroun was one of the casualties. Kamsa did not resist. The pirates led the camels to the north, into the loin of Ursa Minor.

The brigands returned to their camp, hobbled their camels, and unpacked their booty. The elders sat around the fire, in order of power and seniority, eating from a large common bowl with their fingers, hunkered and balanced on their heels, commenting on the quality of the items that the raiding party spread out before them.

Trussed and blindfolded, Kamsa listens to their speech. It is a patois of the imperial lingua franca and Kamsa’s native tongue.

The tribe feasted late into the night on the provisions that were to last Al-Haroun and his drivers all the way to Tashkent. As morning broke over the desert they reclined on bolsters of raw bundled silk.

---

In the desert all men are brothers.

The women are beautiful and free.

How superficial is Kamsa’s understanding of the tribe?

At what level does division of labor take place? At what level does society generate splinter groups?

Cyclic theories of Political Economy.

A problem of scale.

Kamsa: Birth – Court – Desert – Coronation – Reform – Invasion – Fear

Krishna: ?

---

Nagpur, 1991

True

He comes to me
With trusting eyes
In his hour of need.
Because he knows
I could never do him
Any harm.
Thankfully,
He won't remember this last time
When it wasn't
True.

Walls and Bridges

Indra's lightning cleft the mountain
Water poured from Shiva's head
A river flowed into the valley
Vishwa-karma, build us a city

A bright roofed palace to shine in the sun
A great temple carved from living rock
Every person should have a place
And every place should have a purpose

The making of a city is not for one man
But assistants, crew chiefs, workers, and foremen
Of all these helpers, there was one favorite
Kshitija-mitra built the bridge

This story exists in many versions and forms
In one, the bridge is a mighty success
Acclaimed by man and god alike
Till Vishwa-karma, in a jealous rage
Curses his student, saying to him
Each bridge you build will stand on its end
And there on its end it will become a wall

In another it is not a commission of the gods
But a gift to his wife, that goes horribly wrong,
And her curse to him is the walls of her silence
To which he is bound forever long

Every time I build a bridge it turns into a wall

I looked at the ruins
Of the land bridge to Lanka
I swayed on a foot bridge
With the Indus below
I walked a pontoon
In the midst of the Yamuna
These may be bridges
But this is not my bridge

My bridge must be more
Than a way one could cross
It should be, above all
A place for people to meet
To sit, to converse, to enjoy the breezes
Of the river as it flows
Below your feet

Rocks and rubble and
Stones and rubble and
Mortar and rubble and
Rubble and rubble

Every time I build a bridge it turns into a wall


h/t B. Shivkumar

Jammin Johnny B.

Jammin Johnny B. was a guy I knew in high school. He was a couple of years behind me, but he was part of the same social scene, and we hung out quite a bit.

The biggest reason was music. He was by far the most talented/advanced musician in our crew. He always played the guitar leads while the rest of us tried to keep it together on the most rudimentary, repetitive backing parts - 12 bar blues, Down By The River, Hey Joe, Tales of Brave Ulysses, I'm Waiting For My Man - songs with no changes that you could learn by watching someone's hands and could be "stretched out" to 10 or 15 minute epics.

He also had the best gear of any of us: a black and white American Strat and some kind of silverface Fender amp. He also played piano, but when he played piano there wasn't anyone who could manage the lead parts, so he usually played guitar.

The other pull to hanging out with Johnny B. was that his mom was pretty cool. We could get high, smoke cigarettes, play music as loud and as late as we wanted to, and if someone wound up crashing on the couch she would feed us breakfast and send us back to school in the morning without an undue amount of threats or lecturing.

Their house was pretty nice - way better than his single mom should have been able to afford on a town librarian's salary. I knew that his dad had died several years earlier and that we didn't talk about that, so I assumed that there was some kind of life insurance money that they were tapping for living expenses.

The endless jams eventually ended - the rest of us got good enough so we didn't need to watch John's hands to learn the songs, and John got into more advanced stuff - he would want us to back him on "My Funny Valentine" and the rest of us would be like "no, let's play I Wanna Be Sedated". Another reason was that John really didn't enjoy drugs and the rest of us really did enjoy drugs - he wasn't a dick about it but there were different sets of motivations in play.

College didn't go as smoothly for Johnny B. as it did for most of the rest of the crew. I think he started out at one of the hippy/granola private schools - Hampshire? That didn't work out, so he came home. Then I think he went to Berklee for a while, but after a few years he was home again, and by then I had moved away and didn't see him that often.

Almost entirely second hand after this point, but depression became a severe, unrelenting problem. He was in and out of institutions and the occasional status reports of "oh yeah, he doing great, he moved out to X and he's doing Y" became a steady drip of "yeah, he's still .../aw man, that sucks".

I guess they had exhausted the avenues on medications and were trying more radical treatments to get Johnny B back. Last weekend they were running electro-convulsive treatments on him, but then his heart stopped and they couldn't get it to beat again.

The funeral is tomorrow but I'm 8 hours away and have a couple of trips to airport(s) to pick up the family as they return from spring break so I probably won't go.

Not asking for mojo now - he's dead, nothing to be done about that. And honestly I don't think there was ever a point where mojo would have made a difference - there was something wrong with his brain chemistry and we don't know how to fix that.

But I miss him, and I wish we could go back up to his attic and play those endless jams just one more time.

RIP JB

A Question of Agency

I was raised in a house where we never said Grace. My father did, however, invariably thank the cook for preparing such a wonderful meal.

The Fantasy of Fifty

The women stayed up past
Their self-appointed bedtimes
The men they drank well past
Their self-apportioned quotas

And we talked of this and that
Deep into the night

(She said)
You guys look just the same
Which seemed a little strange
As many years have passed

But when I looked
I saw that it was true
These are the faces that I knew

Back when our kids were small
At soccer in the fall
Or at the camporee

The sparks fly up
The flames die down
But the coals keep burning red
Until the morning

How could this come to be
This quirk of memory
Has time been standing still

Has familiarity
Buffed our faces free
Of all the things we’ve shared

Or wiped away the masks
That flatten out our pasts
Affording us a glimpse
Into each other’s souls

The sparks fly up
The flames die down
But the coals keep burning red
Until the morning

In the bathroom light
My eyes are deep and dark
With bags as black as coal

I was so surprised
When I looked into my eyes
I didn’t know myself

It’s the fantasy of fifty
The fantasy of fifty

Here's to 2005

So, what happened in 2004?

Well, none of the important things changed:  same wife, same kids, same job, same house. 

Laura got a new job, working in the Budget Office of EPA. 

Arvind is four.  He started the year still liking Thomas the Tank Engine, but then he got into super heroes: Superman, Batman and the Superfriends, watching the tv cartoons and reading the comic books, hitting up his parents and grandparents for ever more elaborate super hero costumes and pyjamas, refusing to wear anything but a super hero costume (accessorized with the appropriate cape, natch) to school or to bed.  As soon as we had gotten up to speed on the lingo and had acquired sufficient super hero clothing so that we were not doing laundry every night, he, of course, moved on, leaving us the state of uncool parenthood where I expect we will be spending most of the next twenty years.  Now he is into PowerRangers and Scooby Doo.  I’m sure by Spring it will be something else.

Ravi is 18 months.  He has picked up all the human-type skills, like walking, talking, eating solid food and watching tv.  He thinks Arvind is the coolest – follows him around and imitates whatever Arvind does.  Ravi now enjoys Thomas the Tank Engine, so hopefully we’ll get another round out of the super hero stuff as well.

The house has a new coat of paint, new steps, and additional flowers/bushes/ground cover.

We traveled quite a bit this year, mostly short visits.  We went to Rhode Island in February, to Manhattan for Padma and Salman’s wedding in March, to Lancaster County, PA to see Thomas the Tank Engine and Amish people in April, to New Jersey for JJ’s 60^th birthday party in May, to Chicago in June, to West Virginia and Virginia in July to see steam engines and Harini/Umesh/Avinash, to Rhode Island in September and to St. John, USVI for a week of sunny relaxation in December.

I was reading Greek history early in the year: Herodotus, Thucydides, Arrian and Plutarch’s Life of Alexander.  I had moved on to Roman history (Gallic Wars) in Latin when I started biking to work which severely cut into my reading opportunities.  I read some Jane Smiley, a Paul Bowles novel, a book of I.B. Singer stories, and I finished Derek Walcott’s Selected Poems while we were in St. John.  No writing except for some song lyrics.

I got a 20GB mp3 player this year, so I have spent a lot of time moving my music collection onto the device.  The CD’s went fairly quickly, but the analog 2/3’s of the collection takes almost twice real time to transfer, so I have many hundreds of hours left in that project.  It is nice to listen to things I haven’t heard in many years, but I am finding that the audio fidelity has declined significantly in the interim.  No original music this year, although I am hoping to put something together in 2005.

So what else.  I rode my bike 10 miles to work most of the summer/fall, which was great.  The route took me along the C&O Canal, the Potomac river, the monuments and the mall, and my mp3 player came in handy.  I played soccer most of the year (twice a week in the fall).  No tennis.  I watch a lot of European soccer on Fox Sports World and RAI.

The Red Sox won the World Series.  I thought I would never see it.  I cried, I called my father.  For my birthday, Arvind got me the DVD.  I still haven’t watched it.