When I was fifteen or so, my mother waded through the sea of clothes, books, school work and teenage flotsam and jetsam that covered my floor, and sat on the edge of my bed with tears in her eyes. I had to clean up, she said. It was really important that I get the room sorted. I made some excuse, but she cast her eyes downwards, subtly wiping a tear from the corner.
“I had a friend who never cleaned up. Every time you went into her house, the house was a complete bomb site. She had junk all over every surface. And she ended up in Ward 12B.”
Ward 12B, for those who never had the chance to go there, was the mental health ward at the old Canberra Hospital. So apparently, Mum believed that mess drove you mad and that cleaning was protective. It’s a particularly amusing little…
If like me you get hooked on philosophy the NYT has many intriguing articles such has this one.
Is it the case that atheism will damage our morals or those of our children?Can you have morals without religion?Ethics may or may not need a religious base.Now Bible reading is diminishing is that leading to trouble?
NEW RELIGIOUS TAX ON KOSHER DOGS IS UNFAIR! (Photo credit: roberthuffstutter)Easter morning headline (Photo credit: c_neuhaus)Thus Saith The Lord God (Photo credit: premasagar)
And it came to pass that they ate their dinner
and that she did washeth up.
And she did leave the dishes to drain
Whilst she put on the washing machine.
and the man was very pleased.
And it further came to pass
that she gave the man some pudding
and he was more pleased.
And then it came to pass the he fell asleep
By the fire.
And the Lord God,said
who is this man that sleepeth by his fire?
And He said,I shall waken him up
And the man awoke,
And God spake unto him
How is it that the woman laboureth in ye kitchen.
And that thou sleepeth here in an armchair.
And the man said,
But Thou didst order women to labour.
And the Lord God said unto the man
Why dost thou remember so selectively what I have said?
And the man said,
I knoweth not and therefore I will help this woman.
And the Lord God said,
Why dost thou not think of it thyself?
And the man said in reply,
It was Thou that made me,O God.
And the Lord God was displeased with the man.
so he called down a plague of butterflies
To prevent him from sleeping.
And when the woman came in
she was much pleased to see these butterflies
and so she fell onto the man
And he did make love unto her.
And the cat was very pleased.
For it thrilled a cat to watch humans loving
and gave him hope
That the Lord God would take his rib and make a mate for him.
And indeed it doth seem to have happened
Judging by all the cats staring in ye old window here;
And by their ecstatic yelps
That the Lord God was very generous with them
and made them many mates.
For truly there is no jealousy among them
And they mate freely and happily
and never have rows about the washing up..
as they eat straight from the can.Amen
Here endeth today’s lesson.
Be thou kind to thy mate always
“Polonez” train from Moscow to Warsaw departing Beloruskij Vokazal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Panorama of Moscow, Borodinsky Bridge near right, Smolensky Metro Bridge far right (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Elena,a baby wrapped in her woollen clothes,
On the last train,Warsaw to Moscow,
[ change Niegoreloje.]
1939.Father,mother,brother
You passed through the Arctic Wastes of life.
Still as if travellng on a train
To an impossibly far destination.
As you left the German Army crashed into Poland
Lost,your aunts
Your cousins.
Your culture.
How does God select the damned?
Later,you had your own baby,here in England,
Not lost like all those others.
Your father died by his own hand,
The hand of history;
The fingers twitching,
Not sure where to point.
Then settling into frozen grief
A sculpture only your mother saw.
You saw too,Elena.
You always saw,though you can’t remember;
The long journey,your mother’s breast,
Your father’s silence.
Only the dead know that silence.
Only the dead weep
With the rocks and stones .
And the ice in each eye
Fell like snow down your cheeks
As you held your own infant.
Warsaw to Moscow,
Moscow to Jerusalem.
Always journeying
Looking for what they can never find:
The home they left behind
The presence of the dead
Lying in gaunt heaps
Like rubbish
Your aunts, Elena.
Your cousins.
You never knew them.
But there’s a hole in your mind
Through which the Polish wind blows for ever.
One of the insides of the many churches on Sicily (Photo credit: Wikipedia)English: Alan Durst carving “Absolution” on the Woodchurch Rood Screen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If God felt like getting absolution
that’s one drawback to his position
that the priest would not know how to cope
with the very notion
Hello,I’m God,Father.
Oh,you’re with the Mafia,then
I am with everyone
That’s noble.Any sins
I made a grave error.
You don’t have to worry.We all do it.
But I’m God!
If you say so.
I made a man from earth.Then I made a woman.
That’s very wise under the Equal Opportunites Legislation
Then they bred.
Well,surely no one blames you?
I do.
Are you unwell?Shall I call an ambulance?
What for?
To take you to the Asylum.
So you think I’m an asylum seeker?
Well,you don’t look British!
It’s enough to drive me mad.
You are mad.
How come?
You think you are God
I am God.
Do you have any identity card?
That’s rich!who’d give me one?The Pope?
Well,they say,see Rome and die.
I never die.I’m immortal
Well,I absolve you and your penance is to forget yourself
Wham,shudder,bang,bump
Everything is on fire
Lord have mercy.
I’m thinking about it.
Be English!
English… what a joke!I am black.
So am I!
Black And British.. or Black and Foreign
Is God a Foreigner?
Definitely!
Acrobats performing a high wire act (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Image by Katherine Marmalade
Being careful one
loses one’s balance,
Not to please.
Being
Carefully loses.
Not one’s balance?
Please!
Not being careful loses one’s balance.
Please?
Please not!
Being balanced
One loses care.
Pleasing care,
Loses one’s balance.
No?
No pleasing care!
Balance losing full up tonight.
Full of balance
One loses cares.
Thank you.
Please.
Balance please!
Care is not losing.
I don’t want to lose you.
Please balance your cares.
English: Low Sun at Palace Pier, Brighton About an hour or so before sun set the birds swarm the pier, the sea gulls at about an hour before sunset and half an hour later the starlings perform an amazing ritual of synchronised flying around the pier. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By the lake a huge flock of pigeons rose from the trees and circled in precise and moving geometry whilst simultaneously many sea gulls which had been floating on the windblown water arose and formed concentric whirling music in the sky.We stood still on the grass in the deep silence, absorbing the colors,shapes and murmurings.Just a normal day in the country park but I am sure of one thing:
Time Train Super Coilections of Makinga Beautiful Everydav Makeiny Time Very Verv Happines Free (Photo credit: G A R N E T)
Keep off the lass
Keep off the spawn.
Do not wash the cat whilst wearing.
Please talk in single style
Catholic must remain waste until ferried and done for.
Do not iron yourself whilst swearing.
Please wean yourself off the grass.
Do not bleat and talk simultaneously.
Flocks in pastures keep back sliding
Pests in the Lord.
Do not gnash your wreaths whilst smoking.
Please cut out the spire if needful,
Please bait graciously.
No balking on the Sabbath
No needles are told here
Non feet eaters please tell the most
George Boole’s House and School, Lincoln, UK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Loose in the fields of green…
Oh, my own lover!
He was such a bold flirt;
with his love unclaimed,
he could recite George Boole
he was one of the old Cool.
He never reached his goal.
so with my bling and some flair
I hoped he’d open the enchanted bud
To the music of his lyre.
I’ll pray this for him:
t hat he should find what he wreaks
and write it down with a stylus.
Really he is the allurement of angels
He was my epiphany
Make it up, as the clocks clang..
It’s not really you…it’s just an affliction.
I can do nothing for my calves
It’s because of all the punning I did once.
I can’t even lump a stone over a wall now.
My arms are as weak as Trojans.
I never suffer viruses to be declassified.
Like I said,just wink and say a prayer..
In God we dare.
If someone hurts you,retaliation
makes you feel better for a moment but in the long
run it perpetuates the
evil that men do lives
after them and endless
retaliation makes wars inevitably wrecks
the richness we leave for our children’s
children’s children.
What to do or
say,when is enough
Enough.
Enough?
Or is it just a decision we must take without fear?
English: Fish and chips traditionally wrapped in white paper (for hygiene) and then newspaper; frequently eaten with tartar sauce and ketchup; Stromness, Orkney. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Please do not overbake on narrow roads.Think of other losers.
You cannot seat your own food in this cafe.
Please thrash your hands before eating.
Coffee free with disorder.No panic.
Dot of tea,red and bitter,served with all orders.Milk avoidable by bequest.
Fish and whips while you mate.
Beefburgers,100% horsemeat, served here with microchips
Chips free with all sand witches.
Let them eat bait
Spare the cod and boil the child.
Battered cod on Fridays after Mass.No bullying free
Friday is no longer a day of absence for Catholics.
Got to Mass and prey om women.
Wear your best cat in the Synagogue this Sabbath.Make it special
Jewish Cookery books free to first comer.Owner divorced from loyalty to husband.
If bad tempered please play with yourselves instead of coming to the dance.
See here on Sunday… Jesus is the Word.
No sermons during Class by order
Do you eat hake?Come phising tomorrow Discover the toy of sex.Workshop on Mondays
English: Lingerie sale, T. Armstrong & Co. store. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)English: The reality of lingerie, as opposed to the fantasies of catalog photographs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Winter had come very early to Knittingham yet owing to the late summer and wet autumn,many trees still had their leaves,,,,,,,,,,,some were even green.Stan and Mary were sitting in their mock Tudor cottage style kitchen eating muffins and honey with Earl grey tea in mugs.
Wow,it’s so cold,Mary remarked.
Now,Mary I have told you before that Wow is not a word I expect to hear from such a highly educated person as yourself….why waste your learning?All those years climbing over walls in ~Oxford and dating clever doctors from Harvard…
Bollocks,Mary answered in a tone not unlike the late Rose Nordloch,philosopher extraordinaire who was famed for her obscene talk.I am thinking of buying some woollenvests,she continued loudly.Good grief!
What is it, my darling Stan said nosily.Mary was looking at a catalogue of ladies clothing. and lingerie which had come i nthe post
They are £39 each,she said wonderingly.If I get three it will be nearly £120 plus postage.Just imagine,I may be unable to afford wool vests
Can’t you just buy one and wear it all winter like the Tudors did?her loving yet irascible husband replied
I think it would get smelly,my dear,even if I wore my anti -perspirant,Mary answered benignly.We should get wool vests from the Government to save us from going to A and E with double pneumonia,she continued softly…Shall we mention it at the Labor Party meeting? I can get it on the agenda
No,no,Stan cried,I want your lingerie to be a secret…
A woollen vest is hardly lingerie,she retorted.. sounding like a character from Barbara Pym‘s novels
Everything a lady wears under her dress in lingerie he murmured gently….bras,knickers,pantaloons,petticoats,vests,corsets,suspender belts.stockings,tights,trouser liners,lace,fine silk,short underskirts,long underskirts……..n,ighties
But some lingerie is more sensual…Stan said wistfully,recalling the brown silk underwear Mary used to wear before feminism made most lingerie a No,No! Anyway,Mary said,we are too old for sex….we are too stiff and we are too shy now as well
But not too old to have a few fantasies,Stan thought… and woollen vests did not feature in his… he preferred lace and silk with a hint of perfume…. maybe a little embroidery….a dying art
Emile came in and asked for a vest too and some underpants… suppose I wet them? he miaowed in a panic
Well,you can’t have a nappy,Emile.Stan informed him.
I have no desire for such things,Emile mioawed angrily…where is my food?
Oh, yes… it’s in the fridge,said Stan.He took a large goldfish out of the fridge
Where did you get that from? Mary asked fearfully…
.Oh,that tom cat down the road knocked a fish tank over and he gave Emile one.
But they are pets!She shrieked…. ring 999 now and ask for an ambulance
Dave the bisexual paramedic strode in looking merry.
It’s Frank,the gold fish,said Mary fearfully……………Is he dead?
He is not quite dead,Dave answered….get a bowl of rain water.He put Frank into the bowl and Frank began to swim…
Well, that’s a bloody miracle,Mary screamed. almost frightening Stan to death!
Just call him Lazy Lazarus.Dave quipped…he was in suspended animation.. fish are very clever.Would you like me to clean out the kitchen or fetch in some coal for the scuttle? he asked the old dears.
Thanks but not today,Dave.We were just discussing vests.Do you wear one?
Oh,yes.he said, and I wear a short petticoat too….I’dd love a silk one as I am a transexual too,so I believe
Very wise,Mary informed him.Underwear keeps us warm.
And it makes me hot,thought Dave…. but he said nothing.He kept his sex life almost a secret even from himself
Chirikov equation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The Grand Challenge Equations: San Diego Supercomputer Center (Photo credit: dullhunk)Téléportation quantique (Photo credit: Wikipedia)English: Paul Dirac with wife, July 1963 at Copenhagen Deutsch: Paul Dirac mit Gattin, Juli 1963 in Kopenhagen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am so deeply cynical about you,
I am full of love,hateful but true.
But you don’t even email me.
You hold so negatively
To Hawking’s view
About quantum field theory.
You are up the South Pole,
You swallowed his theory whole.
I am lost in the Northern Lights.
I even miss those fights.
I hope a white polar bear
will drag me to it’s lair,
Then I shan’t have to think any more
About Paul Dirac and Tony Blair.
If I’m so caring towards you,
Can’t you love a little too?
I’ll accept String theory,
If it means so much to you.
I wish the square root of three
Less irrational could be,
Because you are irrational enough for me
Especially when you miss your tea
Your blood sugar is too low
you are diabetic you know!
Oh, don’t leave me again
Not now just when
I have at last understood,
I too am flesh and blood.
I’ll do anything to win
Your affection again.
I can learn any branch of topology
Or Aquinas‘ difficult theology.
I’ll even learn how to fly,
And take you up in the sky.
Why can’t we try?
Is my life a black lie?
I’ll do all that I can
If you’ll believe I’m a man.
This could be the Garden of Eden
But you are leaving me grieving.
We could start a family
If you were not so cynically,
Pressing all the wrong keys.
Oh,do love me please!
Hate me too if you like, Ambivalence is alright,
Especially at night
When the full moon is bright.
What a special sight,
When we switch off the lightI shall get permissionFor nuclear fusion
But if it’s fission you lack,
Who am I to hold you back?
We’ll go up with a scream,
That’s all my whole life has been.
Hope you are keeping well in this unusually cold spring weather.Stan has had flu.It made him so bad tempered and waspish that I took up the Duraglit polish and got him to polish all the brass,except the front door knob, as that doesn’t come off.Mind you,it made the bedroom smell odd… a mistake,perhaps…so I sprinkled lavender oil around.
He seems to get thinner and I seem to get fatter.So our average w eight remains constant.What a relief.I’d like to be weighed as a married woman.Can you believe this..I’ve got chilblains! It’s those dratted blood vessels of mine.Still,I polished some old plum colored leather boots and wear them in the house.We seem to be doing polishing frequently here.. boots,furniture,apples.
How is your new book “Nonsense:A.N.Whitehead and Lewis Carroll” coming on?Hope it’s progressing….to a nonsensical ending.I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out in April [from Polar bears publishers] It’s called,”An unpolished performance.”My fourth book on Wittgenstein’s cats is almost finished.And the publishers can’t wait for the photographs…I’ll get a friend to do those for me!!It gives me a change from all that polishing.I’ve begun to talk to myself out loud…. in the street.Just seeing if I can still do my old Lancashire accent.I suppose it might worry people but no one has said anything as yet.They may be afraid.
“That which is unsaid can,nevertheless,still be heard.
Stan is still involved romantically with Anne, our next door neighbor.I can’t blame him as chilblains and Wittgenstein are not very romantic.When I think of how we used to be,it makes me smile and feel sadness too.I wonder if I can find someone new for a romance,myself… someone with Asperger’s syndrome possibly…as I’ve just been diagnosed.It’s quite common in mathematicians.It may be an advantage in concentrating a lot.I need a boyfriend with weak eyes as my clothes are all full of moth holes and I’m damned if I’m going to buy new ones.I can’t see well enough to darn but I’ve sewn the holes up neatly thus giving a strange pleated effect to my clothes.On my merino wool knitted trousers, one hole was right on the ass.It looks now as if I’ve been shot in the rear…but I can’t see it.So it does not exist.Sometimes in the past I would iron on those motifs like butterflies…but I think it would look odd having a butterfly just there…. or indeed anything else like wild rose.I could make a little sign saying
“Keep clear,from my rear.This is a hole where a moth scored a goal.”
Still,not many people are going to look there now I hope….I seem to have stopped knitting but am still drawing.Meantime I’ve just ironed some of my winter clothes as it’s still chilly..and am planning to iron all my pink and blue knickers now as I believe it kills any germs left when you wash at 30 deg.I got those colors in case I should change sex or is it gender?I wonder if I should iron the sheets?Could I do it while they are on the bed?I don’t wash them much as it wears them out and me too.I am going to take up baking again because Stan is getting so thin.I fancy a Russian cheesecake as it had a lot of protein in it.I have a genuine Russian cookbook and also am waiting for a delivery of a Jewish cookery book as I have lost mine..no it fell down onto my head last week.God only knows where that came from.but I believe there were good cheesecakes as Jewish cooking has much in common with Russian,perhaps because once many Jews lived in Russia.I just made friends with one here….he is charming and like me he hates golf.He used to have his own business…He has a lovely collection of hats too.
I have got almost all the Penguin cookery books ever printed but mislaid a few.In fact it’s quite hard to get into the kitchen with all these books on the shelves.And a little food.
I was comforted to read that the parent’s of John Burra,the artist,had books piled every where in their large house….and he was very untidy too.So all I need is talent and practice and I’ll be an artist.After all,anyone can be untidy but not everyone will practice their Art.I’d like to practice the arts of love.They say you should love your neighbor as yourself,but personally I prefer the neighbor or even the milkman to myself.Meanwhile I’m happy with Emile our cat and my 500 photos of Wittgenstein.I shall make Stan a lemon sponge pudding.That is the love he wants…Food.
“If music be the food of love I’ll cohabit with a pure white dove.
And while he coos and sings for me.
I’ll try not to :fall out of the tree,
Get stung by a bee,
Have psychotherapy
Make more enemies,
Let my thought free,
Hurt my knee.
Let moths frighten me.
Well,time for some tea.Now Jane, please write to me soon.I love to see your so strangely beautiful handwriting and to hear about Whitehead and Cambridge and all the weird dons. I hope it’s not too damp and cold there near that river.Keep warm and make a note of any intriguing happenings to relate to me.And anything beautiful you can see or hear.I hope Edward is writing regularly..where is he doing his research now… did you say Stanford.Maybe you should install Skype..then again,perhaps not as you would have towash your hair too much… and comb it too…perhaps we could wear wigs.
Mileage Out of Bicycle Parts (Photo credit: cobalt123)Carl Jung (Photo credit: Psychology Pictures)Loneliness doesn’t come from having no one around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that are important to you. -Carl Jung (Photo credit: deeplifequotes)
Since you went away
I miss your tenderness
I miss your affection
I miss your music
I miss your humor
I miss your voice
I miss your hands
I miss your bony shape
But
I don’t have to hear how the shadow side of your literary persona is feeling…. usually terrible
I don’t even have to know you are not your literary persona.
Was it all that literary?
More pretentious
By the way,it was Jung who invented the term persona for a front we put on
I don’t have to hear your view on a topic I know more about than you but you hate to admit it
I don’t have to pretend to be less intelligent than you
I don’t have to tolerate your sulking for days
I don’t have to spend my money on books you think I should read… especially on politics
I don’t have to worry if my art is better or worse than yours
I don’t have to tolerate your extreme rigidity…it’s hard sleeping with a board!
And a beard!
I hate most of your favorite foods
I don’t have to act like a mother to you… a good mother,that is
I like the space you have left.
Sometimes we really do need more space.
I don’t have to wear a pretty but chilly nightgown
I can read all night and play with the cat
I can go out with the man whom I met in the museum of modern art
English: Group photo in front of Clark University Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung; Back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi. Photo taken for Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts publication. Česky: Foto z Clarkovy univerzity roku 1909. Dole (zleva) Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung, nahoře (zleva) Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is interesting because I think people do dump on others without realising what they are doing… that’s what I have experienced
And the misconception that talking is always good and restraint is bad.Talking can be a waste of time if the conversation is not with an appropriate person.When people share deep feelings at the right time.that can be invaluable
Short extract
“The metaphor that comes to mind for an alternative style of communication is a “sounding board,” because it means that when you transmit information about a difficulty or question, something comes back. To go beyond mere listening is a risky thing to do; you may be experienced as “unsupportive” or judgmental if you say something truthful and difficult, but for me, that’s what real friendship means.”
English: English band “Hurts” while performing at “Magazzini Generali” in Milano, Italy Italiano: Il gruppo inglese “Hurts”, mentre si esibiscono ai “magazzini Generali” a Milano (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Love Hurts (Incubus song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is truly fascinating.Love is not determined by our personalities alone.The nature of our society affects how we can feel.It seems since more “equality” came in…[ironic smile] that eroticism has declined.I wonder if that’s why soft porn novels are so popular… people are trying to feel more erotic?So if you are able to write Sixty Maids in the Hay you can become rich even though you may still feel no love.
Feeling the sadness in my heart
and in my arms a tender feeling
as if the flesh is calling out;
My breath’s coming in gasps and
my throat makes a murmur
as if trying to speak.
Sensitive skin on my inner arms yelps
and my heart aches like
I’ve run too many miles .
My legs feel strong
My mouth is dry and my back
needs an arm around it
for protection.
My eyes are wet with the moisture
that might have made saliva.
Protest against the Israeli attack on the Palestinians of Gaza held at the State Library 4 January 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)English: Photos of empty poison gas canisters and the hair of Jews, taken inside the memorial museum in the Auschwitz camp. z Taken by User:Palthrow. A picture (left) of Zyklon B canisters which produce a deadly gas. (Right) human hair from the people sent to these camps (Photo credit: Wikipedia)David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14 1948, Tel Aviv, Israel, beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, in the old Tel Aviv Museum of Art building on Rothshild St. The exhibit hall and the scroll, which was not yet finished, were prepared by Otte Wallish. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Essentially powerless for some two thousand years, the Jew in exile, in his ghettos, amid the equivocal tolerance of gentile societies, was in no position to persecute other human beings. He could not, whatever his just cause, torture, humiliate, or deport other men and women. This was the Jew’s singular nobility, a nobility that seems to me far greater than any other. I hold it as axiomatic that anyone who tortures another human being, be it under compelling political, military necessity, that anyone who systematically humiliates or makes homeless another man, woman, or child, forfeits the core of their own humanity. The imperative of survival, the ethical ambiguities of its settlement in what was Palestine (by what sophistry does a non believing, – non-practising Israeli invoke God’s promise to Abraham?), have forced Israel to torture, to humiliate, to expropriate — though often to a lesser degree than its Arab and Islamic enemies. The State lives behind walls. It is armed to the teeth. It knows racism. In short: it has made of Jews ordinary men.”
He loves her twinkling ankles.
She like his waves
Her smile is discreet and she is very fleet
He prefers her bosom to Abraham‘s!
He loves himself so he goes Dutch on dates.
He takes a long walk after a short wank.
I take a witch there,she will blast the grove with my wandering eyes
I take a nip of brandy which comes in handy and I feel dandy lions all over me
Why not bare yourself and a bum may come by
I shake till I arrive then I quiver all through dinner.I’m in a fright all night.At dawn I get the blues.I drink tea till I ooze.
Wake me easy…take my knees off
Forsake him and his fleas.I’m off.
I bake it with a flake of sense
I’ll take one snap, so beam now.
Wake her and knock off that awhile
I take the bull by the forlorn women.
I take the well endowed out for the lame
Take the pleasing way out
Take her lover off,I’m the doctor.
This past Sunday 5 May, TheGuardian featured an article entitled “Interpretation of seams? Sigmund Freud’s couch needs £5,000 restoration”. It recounts how the Freud Museum in London has launched an appeal for funds to restore ‘possibly the most famous piece of furniture in the world’:
It is possibly the most famous piece of furniture in the world, but the couch in Sigmund Freud‘s consulting room is now sagging under the weight of more than a century of dreams, terrors, traumas and phobias, and is overdue for a facelift.
The Freud Museum in London has launched an appeal on what would have been his 157th birthday for funds to restore the couch on which his patients lay while they bared their souls to him.
Many of Freud’s most famous patients, whose psychological traumas helped him to formulate his theories of psychoanalysis, lay on the couch. They included the “Wolf Man”, a…
Rorty wrote in favor of historicist thinkers, showed sympathy towards questions asking for “What is it to inhabit a rich twentieth-century democratic society?”, and remarked the importance of the so-called historicist turn, which, according to him, “has helped free us, gradually but steadily, from theology and metaphysics” (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, p. xiii). But Rorty did not talked about an homogeneous group of historicist writers, but of groups of them, and went over to distinguish the exemplars group form the fellow citizens group (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, p. xiv). Some writers searched for private perfection or “aestheticism”, as Rorty called it. Some others engaged in an effort which Rorty qualified as “social”, namely “the effort to make our institutions and practices more just and less cruel” (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, p. xiv). He denominated the former “writers on autonomy”, the later “writers on justice” (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, p. xiv)…
This past Sunday 5 May, The
How my heart sings 