Month: July 2016

Politeness,the history.

Raffaello_-_Spozalizio_-_Web_Gallery_of_Art

From the article

“http://www.thebookoflife.org/politeness/

 

Paradoxically, the polite person who is pessimistic about their own nature, doesn’t in fact end up behaving horribly with anyone. So aware are they of their own dislikable sides, they nimbly minimise their impact upon the world. It is their extraordinary suspicion of themselves that helps them be – in everyday life – uncommonly friendly, trustworthy and kind.”

 

“”The Polite person also passionately cares about spreading kindness, love and goodness on a mass scale, but they are cautious about the chances of doing so on any realistic time horizon. Yet their belief that you perhaps can’t make things a lot better for a huge number of people in the coming decades makes them feel that it is still very much a worthy goal to try and make a modest, minor improvement in the lives of the few humans you do have direct contact with in the here and now. They may never be able to transform another person’s prospects entirely or rescue the species from its agonies, but they can smile and stop for five minutes to chat to a neighbour about the weather. Their modesty around what is possible makes them acutely sensitive to the worth of the little things that can be done before today is over.”

 

Rondeau

11257109-old-mosaic

 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/rondeau-poetic-form

“The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. Therentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR.”

 

“Where the rentrement appears in its traditional French form, it typically does not adhere to the rhyme-scheme–in the interest of maintaining the line’s buoyancy and force. But when nineteenth-century English poets adopted the rondeau, many saw (or heard) the rentrement as more effective if rhymed and therefore more assimilated into the rest of the poem. An example of a solemn rondeau is the Canadian army physician John McCrae’s 1915 wartime poem,”

“In Flanders Fields“:”

 

   In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The challenge of writing a rondeau is finding an opening line worth repeating and choosing two rhyme sounds that offer enough word choices. Modern rondeaus are often playful; for example, “Rondel” by Frank O’Hara begins with this mysterious directive: “Door of America, mention my fear to the cigars,” which becomes the poem’s refrain.

read more rondeaus

 

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

W. H. Auden, 1907 – 1973



I


He disappeared in the dead of winter:

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,

And snow disfigured the public statues;

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.


Far from his illness

The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,

The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;

By mourning tongues

The death of the poet was kept from his poems.


But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,

An afternoon of nurses and rumours;

The provinces of his body revolted,

The squares of his mind were empty,

Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
















Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,

To find his happiness in another kind of wood

And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.

The words of a dead man

Are modified in the guts of the living.


But in the importance and noise of to-morrow

When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the

Bourse,

And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly

accustomed,

And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his

freedom,

A few thousand will think of this day

As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.


What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.


 


II


You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.





III


Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
























From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House.










 







	


	



			
				


			
				


			

			
The Tables Turned
		
	
	

		


SPBF2_20160615






BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH














Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;


Or surely you’ll grow double:


Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;


Why all this toil and trouble?




The sun above the mountain’s head,


A freshening lustre mellow


Through all the long green fields has spread,


His first sweet evening yellow.




Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:


Come, hear the woodland linnet,


How sweet his music! on my life,


There’s more of wisdom in it.




And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!


He, too, is no mean preacher:


Come forth into the light of things,


Let Nature be your teacher.


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She has a world of ready wealth,


Our minds and hearts to bless—


Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,


Truth breathed by cheerfulness.


IMG_0003 - Copy - Copy - Copy - Copy (2)


One impulse from a vernal wood


May teach you more of man,


Of moral evil and of good,


Than all the sages can.


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Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;


Our meddling intellect


Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—


We murder to dissect.




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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA






Enough of Science and of Art;


Close up those barren leaves;


Come forth, and bring with you a heart


That watches and receives.











	


	



			
				


			

			
For sale
		
	
	

		
 


Nuneham_2016-4 [800x600]


1.Archimedes’ bath with hot and cold running water.

2.Eureka’s dressing gown size 118

3. A catapult plus free Brighton rock

4.15,000 English novels most by Nicholas Freeling and  other expatriates

5.Plato’s cave with aluminium age  drawings on the walls.

6.A cloud with golden lining

7.Rotating shoes will turn you towards the sun all day

8.!12 bottles of sunscreen  and a large black hat suitable for Hasidic Jew or English woman or Russian wolf.

9.Sheepskin rug covered in dried muesli free to  first arrival.

10.Ventriloquist’s mummy  in working order despite 40 years in a very small desert.

	


	



			
				


			
				


			

			
The butterflies
		
	
	

		
The flowers are opening though the sky is grey

The butterflies fulfil their inbuilt tasks

While seeming like sweet innocents at play


On hot  flagstones, the little cat will bask

Though one eyes is left open  to the world

With amber bright intelligence, it asks


And should a bird hop by, the cat uncurls

And leaps  so lithely from its seeming sleep;

Akin to acrobats of boys and girls.


To eat or to be eaten is our fate

Else  we  fall to dust inside our shroud.

And there are some who cannot bear to wait.


But do not  think we’re  blinded by these clouds

All things change when all things are allowed

	


	



			
				


			

			
Limericks now
		
	
	

		
A doctor must work hard today

No  time for reflection or play

Ironically this

Means  diagnosis  is missed

Doctors and patients each  pay.


Recall Archimedes’s bath

His creative ideas  found a path

Eureka, he  shouted

But she never doubted

His  genius for physics and maths.


Whatever job we have to do

Ideas need peace to come through

For in the deep mind

Our unconscious finds

The answer when the cat says mioaw.

	


	



			
				


			

			
Living with anxiety
		
	
	

		
 


 


6393348_e92238f4cb_shttp://motto.time.com/4269148/anxiety-disorder-brussels-attack-terrorism/


I think we often believe we should not  have bad  feelings like panic and anxiety  but it seems the best way  to cope is to accept them.If that is not possible we need to get help.But how do we know how much we can or should tolerate?We may complain but that about refugees in camps? How do they manage?Or people who lose a family member or friend in an accident which maybe they caused by poor driving?We are all different.

	


	



			
				


			

			
The yachts by William Carlos Williams
		
	
	

		
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/terza-rima-poetic-term














ABOUT THE POET




William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) famously combined the two careers of doctor and writer,…


VISIT POET PAGE
























The Yachts


contend in a sea which the land partly encloses

hielding them from the too heavy blows

of an ungoverned ocean which when it choosestortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows

to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute


brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails

they glide to the wind tossing green water

from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls


ant like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,

making fast as they turn, lean far over and having

caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.


In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by

lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering

and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare


as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace

of all that in the mind is feckless, free and

naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them


is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling

for some slightest flaw but fails completely.

Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts


move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they

are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too

well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.


Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows

Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.

It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair


until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind;

the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies

lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,


beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up

they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising

in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.






‘The Yachts’ from The Collected Poems: Volume I 1909-1939 (New Directions, 1986), used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. The recording was made on May 5, 1945 at the Recording Laboratory, Library of Congress, Washington DC, and is used with permission of the Library of Congress.
















 


 

	


	



			
				


			
				


			
				


			

			
Obdurate is still used quite frequently
		
	
	

		












Conservative Party Conference 2014
Chief Whip Michael Gove addresses delegates at the Conservative Party annual conference in the International Convention Centre, Birmingham.










































	


	



			
				


			

			
I  read a word I’ve not seen  or heard before:Indurate.Oxford Dictionary
		
	
	

		


Definition of indurate in English:




























indurate


 


Pronunciation: /ˈɪndjʊreɪt/








VERB


[WITH OBJECT] (usually as adjective indurated)


Harden:a bed of indurated clay








Derivatives




induration




Pronunciation: /ɪndjʊˈreɪʃ(ə)n/


 




NOUN




Example sentences






indurative




ADJECTIVE


 








Origin


Mid 16th century (earlier Middle English) as induration: from Latin indurat- ‘made hard’, from the verb indurare (based on durus ‘hard’).



























	


	



			
				


			

			
How not to be popular
		
	
	

		
P1000046


1.Never listen to other people but keep talking non-stop.

2.Never speak when with others.

3.Always forget friends’ birthdays

4.Never  give visitors a drink, not even water

5 Fill your language with swear words and curses if you do speak

6 Go to A & E if you cut your finger and complain when kept waiting

7.Don’t go to A&E with chest pain as you can stay at home and have a heart attack instead which will upset everyone who knows you.

8.Never use a deodorant in the summer nor change your socks.

9.Always keep your seat in the train even when old frail or pregnant people are standing up

10. Boast about how good you are.

11 Never apologise ever.

12.Keep apologising for no reason.

13. Never read books,newspapers or watch  the News so you will not be able to talk to anyone except about yourself


 

	


	



			
				


			

			
Stop biting your males,please
		
	
	

		














The land of silken money is a daydream

You are my past participant

Last stitch efforts have failed to mend my heart.

Doctor, the lost cattarrh has arrived in my lungs

I’ll blow the maths up in a minute then laughs all the way to the bonk

My husband  played down his pauses.He was in denial.Now I am


I play with bards on the card table

I leave no stone unburned when I have cold knight in my arms

Men,please leave your bark here and just whisper sweet laughingsi n my ears.

He said to turn left at the altar and then walk up the knave and wait for more guidance.But then I’d never heard of naves in churches, it was trial and horror

He was a legend for his kindness alone.His cruelty raised his fame even more.He veered from sado to maso-chism like a bipolar wolf

A leopard doesn’t arrange its spots daily but then acne is rare in animals

He is the blesser of two weasels


I let sleeping dogs fly

If you let the cat shout from the bag.I’ll kill you

Let’s call our love over

Let’s split our wounds between us.You have half and so don’t I


I think flicking one’s wounds is a worry.Just bit your males instead

Lie down with Brian? Give me a breast!

Life is the howling of worries

My life as a witch led to a flight of knights all white

She was as quiet as a blathering witch on cocaine… until her corollary was unproved or possibly improved.. it’s my bad handwriting.Was it an art attack?









	


	



			
				


			

			
Nor  lose a wisdom tooth
		
	
	

		
If my brain gets any bigger,

it won’t fit in my head

With logic and with rigor

I’ll prove that I am dead.


So I shan’t pay no taxes

Or vote for Donald Trump

I’ll never look up praxis

Nor   find a worrying lump


I’ll never see a medic

Nor  lose a wisdom tooth

No disease endemic

Will get me,that’s the truth.


I’ll never have to marry

I’ll sleep with whom I choose

I’ll never need to hurry

For I’ve no time to lose


When we think about it

We would be better off

Do not ever doubt it

There,that is enough


 


 

	


	



			
				


			
				


			
				


			

			
  Mary wants to throw out her furniture
		
	
	

		




Mary picked up her mobile phone to ring for a cab..On it,there was a message

.You have missed a call from home.Mary shivered.

Has Stan come back?

Then she recalled she had rung her own mobile before coming out.Her mind sagged like sheet of rubber suspended between four tall trees in the jungle..

Hello,It’s Mrs Tan.Can you do a me cab from the dental surgery to my home? It’s right by the doctor’s surgery.

She stepped outside into the warm air which felt like a caress on her poor numb face.

When she got home she found Annie in the kitchen looking at her collection of cookery books.

Do you want to get rid of any of these, her friend queried.

I am thinking of learning some new recipes so I can invite those awful therapists across the road for dinner.But I have to be sure that what I serve has no hidden meaning especially aggressive or sexual.

Well,Mary said,don’t you think that people differ in what they find sexual?

Beats me,said Annie meaningfully.I fancy doing beef in beer with French bread and mustard baked on the top.

I used to do that,Mary said.Why did we stop doing that cooking? Penguin brought a new book every month.I have most of them and ,at the weekend, I’d study them for ages looking for things like apple mousse and different stews.

When we first got married I used a kind of cheap women’s magazine approach and most often as a pudding I did tinned peaches with cinnamon sprinkled on grilled till hot and spicy.Eventually, Stan got fed up with it and so I got into cordon bleu and using real cream not Carnation milk

Her blue eyes gleamed in excitement and were rendered even more remarkable by the teal and turquoise eye shadow Annie had forced her to wear which matched the sea blue mascara she already had.Annie said.

it will be good for us both to meet new people especially educated ones

Mary disagreed.I like ordinary people because a certain amount of education makes some people very conceited and only real scholars or mystics realise that the more we know the more we realise our own ignorance.Will such folk like makeup?

Perhaps one of the psychoanalysts will be a mystic,Annie retorted loudly.

But would such a person want to visit us? Mary bleated childishly.

Why not? They have to eat and they may need a new love interest or someone sympathetic who will know how hard their job is.Someone like me,beautiful funny and willing to look after a man when he needs it.

How about a man who might look after you,Mary said brightly

Well,it’s not quite the same.I like looking after men whereas you prefer reading about Fourier series and infinite integrals.And knitting patterns,she added hastily as if omitting that interest would severely anger Mary.

I think we’ll invite two men and two women ,all single.They can bring their cats for Emile to play with if they want.And we’ll eat in the kitchen to make it more relaxed.

Thank God,said Mary as the dining room was full of paper and books.

Why don’t I have a study,she pondered.Or ,if I slept in the dining room, my bedroom has a lovely view and I have an old desk somewhere.

Mary ,in her younger days, had often moved the furniture around and had even slept on a camp bed on the lawn one summer but she no longer did this as looking after Stan had worn her down to a shred of her former self.

But beds do take up so much room.Without them ,the house would be quite spacious.And how about tables and chairs… her mind ran on as she quite fancied a new start without moving house.

With fewer clothes ,she could ditch a wardrobe… on the other hand ,she could not afford such quality clothes again on her widow’s pension.

To think she might have to stop wear Bowlands of Wrath was a rather painful thought.Still most of humanity have got hardly anything so maybe Mary will think more deeply about donating some to Oxfam.

Suddenly the doorbell rang.Dave the paramedic was outside

Are you both ok?I’ve not heard from you lately,he remarked as he powdered his nose.

Well,I do have an old desk that you can carry upstairs for me,Mary told him thoughtfully.Then we need the floor scrubbing.I’m sure the NHS will pay.After all dirt might make us ill!

And so pray all of us



	


	



			
				


			

			
  Snails with whorls
		
	
	

		
 


 


 


Inside my shell I dream of pearls,

 Caterpillars,snails with whorls.

 I dream contented, all enwrapped

 With reverie and dream I’m lapped.

 The inner seas will comfort me,

 While gods allow my eyes to see


Oh,sweeter than confectionery

 Is my worn old dictionary.

 The words whirl round and fall to shape

 The sentences, which my world drape.

 This furnishing is rich and strange

 Yet magically self arranged.


Oh,sweeter than the love of man

 Is reading works of poets long gone.

 And feeling deeply their dark tides .

 Upon which our boat may glide.

 The sea infinite we float on

 Is the same warm sea where ancients swam.


Sweeter still is this spring air

 And the blossom spreading fair.

 We’ll drown ourselves in deep green field

 To the gods of poetry yield.

 We’ll rise again and spring up tall

 To grow more rich until we fall.


 


Sweet it is to live and die

 And to write my  poetry

 Touch me with your ardent souls

 My mind and yours shall all  be whole

	


	



			
				


			

			
For love’s sake
		
	
	

		
Inside my heart, this sacred place

 Where freely mingle truth and grace

 Where friends and enemies alike

 Are viewed as equals for love’s sake


Inhabited by deeper self

 In touch with all that in me dwells

 I leave  my failures  gladly here

 I will not live in morbid fear


I don’t insult the force divine

 By pride in any good that’s mine

 For willpower cannot birth virtue

 But  can  attend to the eye’s  view


By trusting in   the vast unknown

 We turn  attention from the known.

 Our eyes relax and  gaze without

 To  bring proportion  to our doubts


Trust, itself. will widen gaze

 And enable us to find our ways.

 With terror,fear or loss of pride

 Constriction comes to human eyes.


Perception is the highest good

 By what we see,we choose our road.

 The blind rush like the swine to hell

 In patient,watchfulness  let’s  dwell.

	


	



			
				


			
				


			

			
The danger of IQ tests
		
	
	

		
 


 


IMG_3052
Enter a caption


Although I only scored 73 which makes me almost mentally backwards,I know quite well that I am intelligent but suppose I didn’t?It was very harmful when these were used at 11 plus.Some of the questions had in fact more than one answer and also they are not culture free.The one I did was very visual which was not a good one for me to do.I found it tiring.

And of you did one and got a low score,ignore it and follow your bent.If you want to write then write.If you do it every day you will get better.A friend of mine wrote three villanelles last week after I put a post on Facebook.She said it was  like doing a jigsaw puzzle but, if she writes more, maybe she will  find herself in the writing and  it may not be just an exercise.She did  two by will power but the third was inspiration so I imagine she could write more but she’s writing up some historical work  and is behind on that.

I hope that anyone who’d like to draw or write will do it instead of watching some awful TV programmes which are repeated through the summer.Or grow plants,knit or bake bread.Let your mind roam free or muse over whatever is happening to you.

	


	



			
				


			
				


			

			
More proverbs
		
	
	

		
another insect bite 3


I made this from a photo of a bleeding insect bite on my leg a few years ago.Nothing has bitten me lately,thank goodness.


Malabar Proverbs




    

  • 1. Anger is a stone cast into a wasp’s nest. Anger is a stone cast into a wasp's nest.. Malabar Proverb.
    • 

  • 2. Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp’s nest. Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest.. Malabar Proverb.
    • 

  • 3. Anger is more hurtful than the injury that caused it. Anger is more hurtful than the injury that caused it.. Malabar Proverb.
    • 



– See more at: http://www.special-dictionary.com/proverbs/source/m/malabar_proverb/#sthash.ht4IYTDI.dpuf

In proverbs we see ordinary people knew years ago what the  dangers of anger were

And like other pernicious emotions it is best allowed to die down naturally or by distraction or talking to a friend.But now we might  feel a lack of confidence and wonder if we should ask an expert.The experts’ views on anger change constantly but one might believe that moderation in all things is a wise path

	


	



			
				


			
				


			

			
Sentences which puzzle the mind
		
	
	

		
http://distractify.com/old-school/2015/04/13/the-19-most-mind-blowing-sentences-in-the-english-language-1197891759


Extract


5 . A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed


The letter combination “-ough” has nine possible pronunciations in English (depending on regional dialect), and this delightful sentence contains them all: “uff,” “oh,” “auh,” “ow,” “uh,” “oo,” “off,” and “uhp.” How’s that for a tongue-twister?

	


	



			
				


			
				


			

			
No poetry
		
	
	

		
 
 
 
  
 
  
  


I have to see the dentist today and it is hot too so my mind is not working.What do you expect with my IQ?If I had known it was so low I wouldn’t have bothered getting any maths qualifications.I’d have carried on working in the old people’s home…. or been a road sweeper!