City Words
#Siege
🦋Dream:
In the factory...trying to find remember wsy out...jump down from platform...dodge a small car approaching i'm a target?...workers vagabonds...one bunch throws fake punches at me as they pass...you're not that hitt a ble..i wake up
Rerun in the big factory...can't find way out...on a transport platform, and jump down to floor...machinery everywhere...dark...a small foreign looking car drives towards me...I dodge out of the way...workers about...scary...a few ganged together come my way in a line...I get ready to fight...they throw fake punches my way, but don't hit me...last one says, "you're not hittable..."...I wake up...the factory a frequent rerun...often, I'm working, but my job has been discontinued...sorta like being in school but not a student, dream...
Dentisr nightmare i wake up...
Rerun at dentist, doctor...Shadow Doctor has in mind how to procreed...I keep my mouth closed...say,"you haven't asked me anything, work I've had done"...he ignores me...I'm scared...and remember times at dream doctors, big torn holes in my head, mouth, jaw...rerun...I wake up...in this rerun, sometimes I go up in big building to an office, and chunks of my body gone...
Smoking cigarette
I don't smoke, but I'm trying to smoke...inside a room...no smoking...go to another room...people seated...and at its doorway to the outside, carrying a cup, I take a puff...I wake up...this a first time dream
🎶the doom scroll feed is so dreamy, so here, two parts-what I read, and what I think, my take-like I'm doing with my N1 hyonopompics...
Charles Townsend at the siege of Kut, Iraq 1915...after awhile, the British think to pay ransome to the Ottomans to free Townsend and his soldiers...doom scroll
Read wikis long take, bio of Townsend...lots and lots of history I'm unfamiliar with...note, that after the war, and Ottoman defeat, Faisal is made King of Iraq...?...same Faisal, friend of T. E. Lawrence...?...yep...search up Townsend T. E. Lawrence...it was Lawrence that took the ransome money to Ottoman General Pasha to lift the siege!-a fail, and press scandal...this a year before Lawrence did his thing, becoming Lawrence of Arabia...a thing was, Townsend was milking the siege...he could have broken out, but thought to draw a rescue, be in all the news...he was of the aristocracy, and seeking promotion all the time, so said wiki...British officers were from the aristocracy...Lawrence was an orphan...unusual...but like Townsend, revelled in fame...
✨️British officers were from the aristocracy...Lawrence was an orphan...unusual...but like Townsend, revelled in fame...
You are highlighting a fascinating psychological and social contrast in British military history. However, there are two crucial historical corrections to make regarding the background of Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and his comparison to Major-General Charles Townshend.
1. Lawrence Was Illegitimate, Not an Orphan
While Lawrence was an outsider in class-conscious Edwardian Britain, he was not an orphan. He grew up in a stable, comfortable household in Oxford with both of his parents. His social vulnerability stemmed from illegitimacy. [1, 2]
His father was actually Sir Thomas Chapman, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who abandoned his first wife to run away with Sarah Junner, the family governess. The couple lived together under the assumed name "Lawrence" but could never legally marry. In a society dominated by an aristocratic officer corps, Lawrence’s status as a "bastard" made him an automatic social outsider, fueling his lifelong identity crisis and his habit of enlisting under assumed names (like John Hume Ross or Thomas Edward Shaw) to escape his past. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
2. The Complex Relationship with Fame
The comparison to Major-General Charles Townshend (the commander famously besieged and captured at Kut-al-Amara) is highly accurate regarding their craving for recognition, but their relationships with celebrity took entirely different paths:
Feature
Major-General Charles Townshend
T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia")
Social Background
Aristocratic lineage (heir to a marquessate); well-connected.
Illegitimate son of an aristocrat and a governess; middle-class upbringing.
Style of Fame
Overt & Self-Serving: Openly courted high-society attention, pulled strings for promotions, and enjoyed a comfortable captivity with the Turks while his men starved.
Ambivalent & Paradoxical: Actively constructed his myth through his writing while simultaneously performing severe acts of public retreat.
Wartime Legacy
Remembered for the catastrophic surrender at Kut and his vanity.
Cultivated into the world's first modern media celebrity by journalist Lowell Thomas.
The "Poseur" and the Recluse
Biographers often note that Lawrence was a master of a very specific kind of egoism: the man who backs into the spotlight. He has been labeled “the world's greatest poseur and the humblest of men...”Coopertoons While Townshend's pursuit of fame was traditional and transparently ambitious, Lawrence’s was deeply conflicted. He loved the dramatic theater of his exploits—carefully staging photographs in his Emir-gifted silk robes and writing his magisterial memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom—yet he genuinely loathed the vulgarity of mass media celebrity, eventually fleeing into the anonymity of the Royal Air Force ranks as a low-level mechanic. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Would you like to explore how Lawrence's illegitimacy affected his military career in Cairo, or look closer at how the British media machine manufactured his legend after World War I? [1, 2, 3]
🎶hmmph...media machine back then too...Gaza now is like the siege of Kut, in that it is a siege...and a wonder, if like Kut, it could end...that it is being used, drawn out...thousands have died, and over a million under this siege in Gaza...it's the Palestinians home...no where for them to go...way things going, they could all die...Townsend retreated to Kut after failing to take Baghdad...finally, the Ottoman's took Kut, put Townsend under a cushy arrest, with a mansion on an island...but the British, actually, British India, retook Kut, took Baghdad, and established Iraq under their semi rule...the Ottoman Empire came to an end, but not before visiting grief on the Armenians...I heard of this as a young kid...overhearing my Great Uncle telling a tale to Pop about his time in the merchant marine off the coast of Greece, Turkey, somewhere...about the refugees...
:)
DavidDavid
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