Still Travelling, Still at War

The website is coming along and I look more and more foreign as the years pass, which has to be good.

I am excited with the new twist that has happened in the journey: thinking about the old Portuguese Crusaders - they were the same people who founded the country in the 11th Century - and the explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries and how their adventures seem so remote now. Thinking of how my own travels and sense of braving the unknown seems so long ago also, of no interest to others and impossible to recall. However, much is left within us from these journeys. On a national level, a sense of being indomitable and 'up for it', which is communicated to each child growing up; on a personal level, using those experiences of other people to find new paths; in everyday life, remembering the hard moments and knowing that I am able to understand and overcome the present difficulties.
My traveller's tales, however, refuse to stay quiet.  I make these clay pieces with such earnest interest and they are for me like pieces of who I am. I imagine here a primitive war machine, in Africa, made of jagged, angular pieces of iron. Through the scrubby Savannah it moves, much like the Trojan Horse, bearing its gifts of death. Against it, the ululating hordes of Zulu pride, a forest of azegais and spears brandished with powerless menace. The heat and horror of battle. The screams and clashings, the cries and sighs and finally the silence of the circling buzzards and hyenas. The machine, too is exhausted, painted with tints of pain and evil intent. It lies for a while, silently watching over the carnage. Then, one day, someone comes and pushes it gently out of the way of the plough, into the lake. A mighty splash, and there it lies. Rusting, cracking, symbol and embodiment of its own demise. It becomes a portrait of the fallen of long ago.
It is really all still about war. The remembered wars are bad enough, but the ones that have been forgotten really are the worst.
I was listening to Christopher Hitchin talk about the legacy of Agent Orange in the Vietnam war, still being visited on both Americans and Vietnamese three generations later. And we don't know how much longer the Dioxin will go on doing its work. But, as he says, we have forgiven ourselves that outrage as we have forgiven ourselves Enola Gay.
So, it is fortuitous that there is no chance that anyone with the attention span to read through this diatribe will actually find this blogg. It is quite safe to publish, for sure.