Eilon, August 10, 2006
Hello friends
You may not have noticed the Sopwith Snipe that entered Adamit airspace. A camera was fitted on the gun ring, often used to settle scores with its Lewis machine gun. It managed to scurry above hedges and hummocks, calcined outcrops and marled mounds of mint and spiky Spanish broom, purring and purling between caverns where Abu Mutlieb was once detained with his bovine beauties during a sudden autumn storm. Today nothing remains but a few dried husks stuck in ancient manure, and a rusty ferruginous bell encased in dry slurry.
The photos were taken with a quarter plate Cameo camera, its bellows fully extended.
The plane, caparisoned and overlapped with a neat cerulean finish is a special camouflage equal to the tasks of invisibility. The Snipe mounted its "attack" from the safest confines of Wadi Delam, where the Anatolian leopard [panthus pardus tulliana] has roamed. Hence the coincidental namesake of our tabby tool thyme cat-Tuli.
The decalcomania emblazoned on its wings, flared pennons glorious in the breeze, represents the camelry of its time, pacing with great generals across the desert flats toward Damascus. Here it simply set out, unspotted, from the tawny canyon .
The photos were developed in the wagon of an anonymous tin-type specialist, who insists he is not an avowed Luddite, near his cedar-shingled cabin.
Rumors continue to circulate about a wiry drone that still drowsily buzzes overhead.
Love-Barry