Books ….how not to act old

My books and home 029

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/books/review/InsideList-t.html?_r=1

Don’t wear a watch… unless it’s a diamond one and you are Queen Elizabeth

Do have your mobile on a contract not PAYG… you need it for the time

Don’t ever mention fountain pens

Don’t carry a straw shopper

Don’t do joined up handwriting

Don’t do any handwriting

Do hire a man

Do learn about sexually transmitted diseases

Don’t count on your fingers…

Don’t call your lover,my fiance

Don’t wear a “winter coat”

Do get anorexia

Do at least pretend to be manic depressive.

Do kiss everybody.

Do become bisexual

Don’t mention your cataract surgery.

Do die when alone.

Do have herpes but not IBS

Do learn the decimal system

Do learn what a kilogram weighs

Do have a pocket full of calculators

Do spend a fortune on your hair [I only have one]

Do cripple yourself with 6 foot heels.

Do wear a see through blouse and no camisole [  but a nude bra is ok]

Do ride a horse not a bicycle.

Do get a manicure even when you are dead

Passive-Aggressive Traits…Men

Passive-Aggressive Traits….

This is about men

Cry when the cow sulks

royal family cd cover
royal family cd cover (Photo credit: “Cowboy” Ben Alman)
Royal family
Royal family (Photo credit: spacebahr)

He was a back slapper so crazy, his hand went through me and hit my heart.I had a heart attacker… him!
He truly did have baited breath and once a salmon leaped down his throat.I told him it was dangerous but the salmon killed him so we really didn’t enjoyed eating it even when it smoked a cigar by the table.
Will the Royal Family choose baptism by fire for Prince George?
Beauty is in the buys of the beholder
Beauty is only thin it’s not deep
I have a big head and a small tart
Do we cry over cow’s sulks?
Do you feel me press your organ in my sleep; Or am I dreaming?
Does my heart do you good when you kick it/
I am driving my self crazy so I shall get insecurity benefits or is it impurity deficits?First I have to hear a voice offering me advice.. or swearing at me.Hang on,I’ll phone an old blogger who might shout,Bugger!
Life is endless words with no punctuation except when we get stoned…those
may be full stops when we over blow ourselves and the balloonish egoes burst.
Every dog has his stray cat.
Everything’s coming up our noses so block them up.
A faint art never an oil painting shows
I fall head over wheels into a police van; why am I low sunk?
We fall through the cracks that God left in the world…give him credit for uncommon sense
Ban the old blames now!Burn them all or go to hell… it’s your choice.
Are you nurturing an old wound?Seal it off with “super soul and heart glue!” Yoohoo

Happiness by the book?

Why are there so many books on happiness and yet less actual happiness?I like this piece  by Amy Bloom in the  NYT.I find reading reviews makes me happy.Men make me happy of they are humorous.Women do because they converse well.And peace and quiet make me happy.

I’m so happy

Not to be a baby in a nappy.

I feel so blue

When I miss you

I don’t want a lover.

Too much bother.

I like to be alone

Just me and my comb.

Shakespeare was a poet

I know it

And I am not

I quite forgot

As I felt gay

All  of today

I’ll be sad

Or maybe mad

as rotation

is the human situation

OMG!

Plath’s therapist was not actually trained as a pyschoanalyst

http://www.salon.com/2004/11/29/plath_therapist/

I know that psychoanalysts are not meant to tell patients what to do.So I was surprised this one did.. like telling her to get a divorce.Now I discover she had not even undergone her own analysis.

Make sure your therapist  is trained if you need one

Each face has its intrincic,unmeasurable beauty

numb
numb (Photo credit: jbtello2)

 

my hand 2

Each face has  its intrinsically  unmeasurable beauty.
Inside I am astutely breaking down numbers
into their prime factors;
as I look out I see the polgons on your wrinkled skin
retain their topological invariance as you speak and gesture.
What’s that for?
Yes,my eyes say,I hear you,I am listening;
I’m a lake of warm water,Fall into me and float.
At one end I keep a Thesaurus of real and imaginary words.
They are waiting to inform me of my next disappointment
With the so called Real.

My false self is so true to herself
She has become real….
Declared as such by Royal punctuation.
My real self is waiting to get married…they are both female you see,
~So it’s going to be a really gay occasion.
We hope you can join the three of us.
I am a trinity;I am a reflection of God
in a puddle of rainwater.
There is the real self,the false self
And I who observe… A spirit one might say,for now.

The lacquer which made my pen look expensive is peeling off.
Underneath it is a crude orange..
So it has lost sophistication but gained
An edible appearance to a hungry writer.
And now I am a cheese tart in a dish on your table.
You may gobble me up and I shall see the glint in your eyes.
After a while we’ll have transubstantiation
When I become you though I shall be invisible to human eyes.
Have Faith!

The polygons look weary,Topology may describe but won’t help.
Let me touch you.Let me feel you
And see if my fingers can account for all parts of you…
See it’s all intellectual work and so for my homework
I must take you to bed and count your bits all night…
and of course you can count mine.Then we can dream
Of ripeness and late roses which bloom in winter.
Do we agree or disagree or is such language completelt inappropriate?
This is one kind of examination but not another.
the trick is to know which.

Eat well on a budget plus a few thoughts on prices

Good Food: 101 Budget Dishes: Triple-tested Recipes by Jane Hornby

You can get this for 1 penny on amazon,It’s part of a series of small cookery books aimed at people who are unable to spend too much time and money in the kitchen.

I got a catalogue today from an online clothes catalogue where I have shopped before.But now I’ll be lucky to afford a scarf.The scarf is £55!Also they sell dresses which are not washable!How weird is that?

For fruit and veg most supermarkets are expensive.I find Lidl‘s good and much cheaper.The jam is also very good.We do have a market but the quality is variable there

and the queue is long too

THE CAMBRIDGE INTRODUCTION TO SYLVIA PLATH

 There has more been written,probably, about Sylvia Plath than any other poet of the last century.Much of it is  various  attempts at her  biography.The focus was on her actual life and its events.I  had only read “Daddy” and “lady Lazarus” but lately I read more from her collected works and I am now impressed with her poetic gift and her hard work developing it.Perhaps she worked too hard.Who can say?
So I was ready to read some critical evaluation of her writing.This book is excellent if a little short. I found it quite easy to read even though I have no academic training in literature.

There is a summary of her life but the main focus is on each  phase of her writing For someone of  only 30  when she  died she underwent remarkable transitions and growth of her poetic mind.I am also now re ading her prose which I had dismissed.

I recommend this wholeheartedly.There is another volume “The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath”

Here is a poem I like especially the last verse

Nick and the Candlestick

By Sylvia Plath

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs
Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,
Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—
Christ! they are panes of ice,
A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking
Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,
Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo
Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs—
The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,
Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.
 

On a low income? : a blog about cookery using very cheap ingredients

http://agirlcalledjack.com/

This blog has been much praised here in the UK.I am not as short of money as she is but all our bills are rising far above inflation.

I also recommend,

Good Food on a budget by Georgina Horley

Frugal Food by Delia Smith and

The left over cookery book by Marika Hanbury -Tenison

Cookery Do by  Elaine Feinstein

.BTW        I looked at shoes in Clarks yesterday,what a shock to see the prices on the better shoes and boots.I have to have good thick soles…

So it’s just a new scarf for me this winter.Or TKMaxx

Sylvia Plath and emotional disorders

One person’s views on Plath,thinking too much and emotional disorders…

boyswillbeboys06's avatarThis Is Me

I read somewhere that Sylvia Plath once said, “If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.” You know, I really think she’s on to something. Besides the thousands of people that think she is a goddess of literature, I have personal reasons to concede to her understanding.

Almost exactly a year ago, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but my therapist now thinks that it may, in fact, be only a side-diagnosis with the main problem being Major Depressive Disorder. Ok, make up my mind here, David. Why am I medicating?

Sometimes it’s really frustrating. When I come home from work some days and absolutely collapse and am unable to do anything for hours, I feel like all of this thinking is a waste of time. When I start feeling as though life is absolutely meaningless and I have no purpose, it feels like thinking drags me down. But…

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