The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

Explicit.

Todd served at Camp Slayer in Baghdad with the 164th Engineer Battalion, Headquarters Company, of the North Dakota Army National Guard in 2007 and 2008.

Recorded in 2011 in Todd’s home in North Dakota while looking at Baghdad on Google Maps and at his photos, with the television in the background.

Todd’s recollections are filled with charm and dark humor, wonder and sudden horror.

-The Voice before the Void

Todd in Baghdad with the North Dakota National Guard during the Iraq War

Sections:

1. Stray Bullet

2. We Didn’t Have a Bunker, We Didn’t Have Shit

3. Victory Over America Palace

4. One Night with the Wrecker

5. Work Area

6. All Demolished

7. Patriot Missile Launcher

8. They Were Trying to Hit That but They Could Never Hit It

9. What Kind of a Damn Tree Is This?

10. Quick Response Force

11. Weird Bunch of Boys

12. Our Flags

13. Blimp

14. Orange Sandstorms

15. Crammed in There

16. Little Fox

17. Towers and a Firefight

18. Destroyed Vehicles

19. Up-armored Humvees

20. Totally Destroyed the Shit but What Are You Going to Do?

21. Civilian Peterbilt

22. Convoys

23. Trouble

24. They’d Get Nailed

25. They Had It Rough but They Had It Made

26. Firing Range in Kuwait

27. Camels

28. Flying in a Tanker

29. Loaded to the Max

The spectacle of that woman’s grief being exploited in the U.S. Capitol embarrassed me and disgusted me; commentators and newsreaders describing it as “moving” amplified my revulsion. The commonplace exaltation of murdered military personnel paired with the commonplace disregard of militarily murdered people remains perpetually disappointing… and embarrassing, and disgusting.

-The Voice before the Void

“A highly successful raid”

R.L. Johnson and The Voice before the Void

Children and Ryan Owens fall dying,

the dust turning to soft mud in their eyes;

amid gunshots and wailing and crying,

the Devil alone can claim any prize.

The sounds of the battle are but distant,

the flashes of light dim and far away;

young lives pass into death nonexistent:

I read it all in the fake news today.

“America First” is clearly the motto

as bold leaders call Owens a hero

and make a spectacle of his widow,

so Americans snack and play the lotto

as their soldiers die for ol’ PepsiCo

and Yemeni children die for nothing.

Immigration has been a charged – and ugly – political issue in the U.S. for all of its history. It seems almost miraculous that this sonnet, and the French statue in New York, exist as components of U.S. culture.

Perhaps one day a colossal metal monument of welcome to tired, poor, wretched, yearning masses will be built along the U.S.-Mexico border.

This quoted in the Wikipedia article on the statue:

“‘Liberty enlightening the world,’ indeed! The expression makes us sick. This government is a howling farce. It can not or rather does not protect its citizens within its own borders. Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the ‘liberty’ of this country is such as to make it possible for an inoffensive and industrious colored man to earn a respectable living for himself and family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of the ‘liberty’ of this country ‘enlightening the world,’ or even Patagonia, is ridiculous in the extreme.”

–“Postponing Bartholdi’s statue until there is liberty for colored as well,” The Cleveland Gazette, 1886 November 27

“The New Colossus”

Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Orwell logically and accurately predicted the Cold War – and creeping tyranny.

-The Voice before the Void

“You and the Atom Bomb”

George Orwell

Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected. The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that the bomb ‘ought to be put under international control.’ But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely: ‘How difficult are these things to manufacture?’

Such information as we — that is, the big public — possess on this subject has come to us in a rather indirect way, apropos of President Truman’s decision not to hand over certain secrets to the USSR. Some months ago, when the bomb was still only a rumour, there was a widespread belief that splitting the atom was merely a problem for the physicists, and that when they had solved it a new and devastating weapon would be within reach of almost everybody. (At any moment, so the rumour went, some lonely lunatic in a laboratory might blow civilisation to smithereens, as easily as touching off a firework.)

Had that been true, the whole trend of history would have been abruptly altered. The distinction between great states and small states would have been wiped out, and the power of the State over the individual would have been greatly weakened. However, it appears from President Truman’s remarks, and various comments that have been made on them, that the bomb is fantastically expensive and that its manufacture demands an enormous industrial effort, such as only three or four countries in the world are capable of making. This point is of cardinal importance, because it may mean that the discovery of the atomic bomb, so far from reversing history, will simply intensify the trends which have been apparent for a dozen years past.

It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans — even Tibetans — could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success.

The contemplation of suicide in the aftermath of loss.

-The Voice before the Void

“Oh, For a Home of Rest!”

Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

Oh, for a home of rest!

Time lags alone so slow, so wearily;

Couldst thou but smile on me, I should be blest.

Alas, alas! that never more may be.

Oh, for the sky-lark’s wing to soar to thee!

This earth I would forsake

For starry realms whose sky’s forever fair;

There, tears are shed not, hearts will cease to ache,

And sorrow’s plaintive voice shall never break

The heavenly stillness that is reigning there.

Life’s every charm has fled,

The world is all a wilderness to me;

“For thou art numbered with the silent dead.”

Oh, how my heart o’er this dark thought has bled!

How I have longed for wings to follow thee!

In visions of the night

With angel smile thou beckon’st me away,

Pointing to worlds where hope is free from blight;

And then a cloud comes o’er that brow of light,

Seeming to chide me for my long delay.

Watching a YouTube video.

This one:

youtube.com/watch?v=7PC7CG1qj6M

-The Voice before the Void

Stargate in the Gulf of Aden

Alsazzi Terrato and The Voice before the Void

Ambiguity breeds speculation.

-The Voice before the Void

“Piri Reis map”

Wikipedia

The Piri Reis map is a world map compiled in 1513 from military intelligence by the Ottoman admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. Approximately one third of the map survives; it shows the western coasts of Europe and North Africa and the coast of Brazil with reasonable accuracy. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands, are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan.

The historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, and in its claim to have used Columbus’s maps, otherwise lost, as a source. It used ten Arab sources, four Indian maps sourced from the Portuguese, and one map of Columbus. More recently, it has been the focus of pseudohistoric claims for the pre-modern exploration of the Antarctic coast.

1. Description

The map is the extant western third of a world map drawn on gazelle skin parchment, with dimensions reported as 90 cm × 63 cm, 86 cm × 60 cm, 90 cm × 65 cm, 85 cm × 60 cm, 87 cm × 63 cm, and 86 cm × 62 cm. These discrepancies are largely due to the damaged corner. The surviving portion primarily details the western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America. The map was signed by Piri Reis, an Ottoman-Turkish admiral, geographer and cartographer, and dated to the month of Muharram in the Islamic year 919 AH, equivalent to 1513 AD. It was presented to Ottoman Sultan Selim I in 1517. In the map’s legend, Piri inscribed that the map was based on about twenty charts and mappae mundi. According to Piri, these maps included eight Ptolemaic maps, an Arabic map of India, four newly drawn Portuguese maps from Sindh, Pakistan and a map by Christopher Columbus of the western lands. From Inscription 6 on the map:

“From eight Jaferyas of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind [India], and from four newly drawn Portuguese maps which show the countries of Sind [now in modern day Pakistan], Hind and Çin [China] geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by Qulūnbū [Columbus] in the western region, I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps to one scale this final form was arrived at, so that this map of these lands is regarded by seamen as accurate and as reliable as the accuracy and reliability of the Seven Seas on the aforesaid maps.”

There is some scholarly debate over whether the 20 charts and mappae mundi in Piri’s inscriptions includes the eight Ptolemaic maps, the four Portuguese maps, the Arabic map and the Columbus map. From one perspective, the number of charts and mappae mundi used by Piri equals 20, while in the other, it could mean a total of 34. Some have claimed that the source maps were found in the ancient Library of Alexandria, based on Piri’s allusions to Alexander the Great, the founder of Alexandria, Ptolemy I, who ruled Alexandria in the 4th century BC, and Claudius Ptolemy, the Greek geographer and cartographer who lived in Alexandria during the 2nd century AD. Gregory McIntosh states:

“Arab writers often confused Claudius Ptolemy, the geographer of the second century C.E., with Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s generals… Piri Reis has undoubtedly made the same error, resulting in his believing the charts and maps were from the time of Ptolemy I instead of Claudius Ptolemy.”

2. History

The map was discovered serendipitously on 9 October 1929, through the philological work of the German theologian Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866-1937). He had been commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Education to catalogue the Topkapı Palace library...

As all is unknown.

-The Voice before the Void

“At the Piano”

Anna Katharine Green

Play on! Play on! As softly glides

The low refrain, I seem, I seem

To float, to float on golden tides,

By sunlit isles, where life and dream

Are one, are one; and hope and bliss

Move hand in hand, and thrilling, kiss

‘Neath bowery blooms,

In twilight glooms,

And love is life, and life is love.

Play on! Play on! As higher rise

The lifted strains, I seem, I seem

To mount, to mount through roseate skies,

Through drifted cloud and golden gleam,

To realms, to realms of thought and fire,

Where angels walk and souls aspire,

And sorrow comes but as the night

That brings a star for our delight.

Play on! Play on! The spirit fails,

The star grows dim, the glory pales,

The depths are roused—the depths, and oh!

The heart that wakes, the hopes that glow!

The depths are roused: their billows call

The soul from heights to slip and fall;

To slip and fall and faint and be

Made part of their immensity;

To slip from Heaven; to fall and find

In love the only perfect mind;

To slip and fall and faint and be

Lost, drowned within this melody,

As life is lost and thought in thee.

Ah, sweet, art thou the star, the star

That draws my soul afar, afar?

Thy voice the silvery tide on which

I float to islands rare and rich?

Thy love the ocean, deep and strong,

In which my hopes and being long

To sink and faint and fail away?

I cannot know. I cannot say.

But play, play on.

U.S. Inauguration Day:

The portentousness can be petrifying.

As the First World War was obliterating millions of lives in Europe, before the United States entered that war, military “preparedness” was a key political topic in the U.S.: Should a nation presently at peace prepare for potential future war?

Clergyman Jefferson argues here that to refuse to arm yourself against your fellow humans is an act of pure strength; to arm yourself, an act of pure fear; and, Clergyman Jefferson writes, “Christians” ought have nobler emotions than fear to motivate their actions.

Genuine “Christian” morality of uncompromising pacifism and self-sacrificing charity – pacifism even when your enemies murder you; charity even when you starve – is as powerful and as impressive and as deserving of veneration as it is rare to find publicly expressed, either eloquently or vulgarly; and, where expressed, it can be expected to be popularly ignored if not outright derided.

Clergyman Jefferson also writes that if you “create a war machine,” you cannot know who will use it, nor whether the next U.S. president will be a “megalomaniac… who, when he wants a thing, takes it.”

-The Voice before the Void

Money for the Machinery of Human Slaughter

from “Military Preparedness a Danger to Democracy”

Charles Edward Jefferson

published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1916 July

edited by William Dudley and The Voice before the Void

“Oho,” indeed.

-The Voice before the Void

“A Fairy Glee”

Eugene Field

From the land of murk and mist

Fairy folk are coming

To the mead the dew has kissed,

And they dance where’er they list

To the cricket’s thrumming.

Circling here and circling there,

Light as thought and free as air,

Hear them cry, “Oho, oho,”

As they round the rosey go.

Appleblossom, Summerdew,

Thistleblow, and Ganderfeather!

Join the airy fairy crew

Dancing on the sward together!

Till the cock on yonder steeple

Gives all faery lusty warning,

Sing and dance, my little people,—

Dance and sing “Oho” till morning!