Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

Chang-Tzu

I

It’s 1854 and Napoleon III wheels out
an old treaty from 1740 to insist upon the right of the French to
defend foreigners and people visiting from other nations into the Holy
Land – which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. The original pretext
was monks quarreling – Catholic and Russian Orthodox monks fighting it
out in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. They got in a fight and
some of them were killed over who should have the right to put a star
up over the manger.¹

Tuco had read the first installment of the essay on the celebrated photo called
"The Valley of the Shadow of Death." An essay about more than the photos
or photography - it dove into what we bring to our assessment of photographic art.
And questioned how we assess photography, whether we see what is there
or what is there is what we expect to see.

Now the second installment arrives, he begins to read the grand opening:
"I arrived... within a few days of the 150th anniversary of the fall of Sebastopol
on September 8, 1855. The airport at Simferopol — the Crimea’s capital — was clotted
with dozens of elderly British tourists arrived on the afternoon flight from Istanbul."

Even before going to the Crimea, I had assembled an impressive collection of maps, and
you can see, clearly marked on the maps of the period, the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
And you can clearly see why it was given that name. It is at the confluence of cannonball
trajectories from three major Russian artillery batteries: the Flagstaff, Barracks and Garden Batteries.

[after a false start] ...we retraced our steps back to Sebastopol and took a different road,
which took us up to a ridge to the west of the Woronzoff Ravine. At last we were able to
look down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Miraculously, the area is still
undeveloped. You can still see the remnants of trenches on the hill facing the Great Redan.
The old Chapman Batteries. The cannonballs are gone but the ground is littered with
very tiny snail shells on what is called Shell Hill in many accounts from the Crimean War.
I don’t know why, but the snails made me feel connected to history.¹

Tuco puzzled over the maps. Images of old paper maps.
And the photo of the old scene the essay is about matched to one from today.

After a certain amount of rummaging around, walking back and forth over a smaller and
smaller patch of terrain, a couple of false alarms and a faulty calculation, we found the
actual place where Fenton’s two photographs were taken.¹

Tuco glances at the photos but goes on
He's caught by an exceptional story teller
telling an exceptional story
about an exceptional story.

Later he realises its a story about many exceptional stories

Khrushchev’s dacha was built at the closest point across the Black Sea from Turkey.
I remember reading that Khrushchev would sit on the deck of his dacha and look out across
the water. I see his paw-like hand holding an exquisite crystal glass of vodka. At times,
he imagined that he could see Turkey – a physical impossibility because of the curvature
of the earth. Not just Turkey, but Kennedy’s damn Jupiter missiles in Turkey aimed at
the Soviet Union and at his dacha. That was when he decided on a tit-for-tat policy.
If Kennedy could put his missiles in Turkey a couple of hundred miles from the Soviet
Union – a couple of hundred miles from Khrushchev’s dacha – then Khrushchev could
(with impunity) put his missiles in Cuba. The die was cast.¹

II

It is of course impossible to capture the horror of war in a single image or single letter.¹

It is a casual statement. It is not casually stated.
Tuco turns the words
over
slowly
as he reads on
about the madness
that happened here
for no particular reason
for no particular outcome.

For me, the Crimean War is the “perfect” war. Started for obscure reasons,
hopelessly murderous, and accomplishing nothing.
Even the charge of the Light Brigade was a senseless exercise.
(If you believe Cecil Woodham-Smith’s account in “The Reason Why”...
the charge occurred because of a missing comma in Lord Raglan’s orders to Lord Lucan.)¹

Tuco stared out across the desert for a long time, pondering many things.
As the sun slowly set beyond desert rain clouds, he pondered on.
We think sometimes, that no one is mad as much
as we can be.

Each time we are right
for a time.

III

The path Tuco rode
led up to a ridge
overlooking the valley.
The stream meanders through it
slow paced.
That is a theme here.
Tuco loves this place.
Comes here
when its time
to reset his own pace.

Knowing, all the while,
that some day it too will change
and offer another story.