Check the  meaning of what you hear,  perceive
For wild emotion alters the eyes’ view
Interpretation  un-reflected may  deceive

A gift of love can’t always be received.
Some can only give  a gift to you
Check the  sense of what you hear,  perceive

For some of  us, the facts can’t be conceived
We cannot notice anything too new
Interpretation  un-reflected may  deceive

As the wind blows off the autumn leaves
So the  mind itself can go askew
I’ll check the  sense of what I hear,  perceive

So  in the web of life, we interweave
Creating  patterns  from the many hues
Interpretation un-reflected may deceive.

We fear change and thoughts that are unglued
But talk to loved ones,do not merely brood
Check the  meaning of what you hear,  perceive
Interpretation  un-reflected may  deceive

 

 

 

Awakening in the light, I saw ripe corn
The silence held us in its gentle peace
A field beside the cottage, lit by dawn

A cat sat  on the small and daisied lawn
No cattle grazed nor any horned beast
Awakening in the light, I saw ripe corn

So my heart began to heal where torn
Expanding into gratitude, released
A field beside the cottage, lit by dawn

Just a week, yet this became our home
Cottages of pink and white eyes teased
Awakening in the light, I saw ripe corn

The new perception hit me like a storm
For if I’d never seen would I believe?
A field beside the cottage, gold at dawn

From perception, insight is conceived
And so imagined sights become our dreams
Awakening in the light, I saw ripe corn
A field beside the cottage,  beauty dawned

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/04/us-surgeon-may-be-forced-to-quit-uk-because-of-visa-nightmare

As someone who has needed hospital treatment, I am worried selfishly but also on account of other people.They recruited this American doctor but will not his adopted children in.It seems crazy

How do my blog readers keep a record of bright ideas they get while wakening up? Do you use a notebook or do you speak into your phone? I tried a notebook but didn;t write much into it

You can’t catch God in that butterfly net
You can’t catch God and ask him   precisely what  he said
Be you any wiser than the tide is high?
God can laugh and God  can cry

You know words are metaphors
They unlock that secret door

Be you poor or be you rich
You can’t suppress that nervous twitch

Be you lightning in a storm or a daisy forlorn
You will never be a God who weeps for the torn.

God speaks English, God speaks Greek
He speaks Hebrew as the paralytic creak.

Don’t you go and try to catch
Frogs and toads and baby cats

When you’re in complete despair
You may find that God is there.

You must walk the way of love
Then you will be hand in glove

Yet we envy, we betray
We leave malice on the auto play

God speaks nothing, he’s the word
From all humans it is barred.

When he speaks we all will know
He does not speak it just for show.

It’s more a hint than a logical proof
You can’t leave Mythos off the hook

Logos is and Logos does
Because, because , because, because.

 

Ted Hughes on How to Be a Writer: A Letter of Advice to His 18-Year-Old Daughter

 

So suggests the poet Ted Hughes (August 17, 1930–October 28, 1998) in a wonderful letter of advice to his teenage daughter, Frieda, found in Letters of Ted Hughes (public library) — the same volume that gave us Hughes’s immensely moving letter to his son about nurturing the universal inner child.

Frieda had been half-orphaned at the age of three when her mother, Sylvia Plath, died by suicide. Hughes was left to raise the couple’s two children, for whom Plath had written her only children’s books. Shortly after Frieda’s eighteenth birthday, as she stood on the precipice of her own literary career, her father shared with her the most important thing he had learned — from T.S. Eliot, no less — about what it takes to become a poet.

Hughes writes:

T.S. Eliot said to me “There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing — apart from self-criticism & continual practice. And that is by reading other poetry aloud — and it doesn’t matter whether he understands it or not (i.e. even if it is in another language.) What matters, above all, is educating the ear.”

What matters, is to connect your own voice within an infinite range of verbal cadences & sequences — and only endless actual experience of your ear can store all that is in your nervous system. The rest can be left to your life & your character.

 

 

Don’t watch a  lot of TV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome

Mean world syndrome is a term coined by George Gerbner to describe a phenomenon whereby violence-related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Mean world syndrome is one of the main conclusions of cultivation theory. Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on the effects of television on society, argued that people who watch television tended to think of the world as an intimidating and unforgiving place. A direct correlation between the amount of television one watches and the amount of fear one harbors about the world has been proven, although the direction of causality remains debatable in that persons fearful of the world may be more likely to retreat from it and in turn spend more time in indoor, solitary activity such as television watching.^[1]

The number of opinions, images, and attitudes that viewers tend to form when watching television will have a direct influence on how the viewer perceives the real world. They will reflect and refer to the most common images or recurrent messages thought to affect their own real lives. Gerbner once said: “You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behaviour. It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it’s a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.”^[1][2]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/07/a-readers-manifesto/302270/

 

“Everything written in self-conscious, writerly prose, on the other hand, is now considered to be “literary fiction”—not necessarily good literary fiction, mind you, but always worthier of respectful attention than even the best-written thriller or romance. It is these works that receive full-page critiques, often one in the Sunday book-review section and another in the same newspaper during the week. It is these works, and these works only, that make the annual short lists of award committees. The “literary” writer need not be an intellectual one. Jeering at status-conscious consumers, bandying about words like “ontological” and “nominalism,” chanting Red River hokum as if it were from a lost book of the Old Testament: this is what passes for profundity in novels these days. Even the most obvious triteness is acceptable, provided it comes with a postmodern wink. What is not tolerated is a strong element of action—unless, of course, the idiom is obtrusive enough to keep suspense to a minimum. Conversely, a natural prose style can be pardoned if a novel’s pace is slow enough, as was the case with Ha Jin’s aptly titled Waiting, which won the National Book Award (1999) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (2000).

The dualism of literary versus genre has all but routed the old trinity of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow, which was always invoked tongue-in-cheek anyway. Writers who would once have been called middlebrow are now assigned, depending solely on their degree of verbal affectation, to either the literary or the genre camp. David Guterson is thus granted Serious Writer status for having buried a murder mystery under sonorous tautologies (Snow Falling on Cedars, 1994), while Stephen King, whose Bag of Bones (1998) is a more intellectual but less pretentious novel, is still considered to be just a very talented genre storyteller.”

Love must be so pliant
like a blade of grass

Bowing to the wind
till the storm has passed.

Love is enigmatic
Like the sphinx’s smile.

Waiting for an answer
Nothing is on file.

Love is often near us
Yet we do not see.

Sometimes where we are
Is just the place to be

I’m lying on the sofa with your photo in my hand
I found it in a drawer with my T shirts and my tops
I don’t want to marry you.Do you understand?

You were like an answer phone, your speech bored me unplanned
You had a lovely  profile and  your hair had a sweet flop
I’m lying on the sofa with your photo in my hand

At the picture hous , you said you only liked James Bond
You never asked me what I’d like, so I have  to put a stop
I don’t want to marry you.Do you understand?

I  became more beautiful and a reconquest you planned
I am not a lunatic, I’ve still got my grip
I’m dreaming on the sofa with your photo in my hand

I guess I felt elated but it was just my glands
You never gave me coffee ,  you only gave me lip.
I will never marry you.Do you understand?

 

I’m not  a sadomasochist, with a riding crop
But one way or another, your wooing has to stop
I’m lying on the sofa with your photo in my hand
I don’t know why I’ve got it, I’ll rip it into strands

 

 

 

Source: Thursday Doors – Tende

Some amazing photographs here.Please take a  look

Extract

“Tende is a town on the old salt road from Nice in south east France to Piedmont in north west Italy. It is famous for the Vallee des Merveilles, a remote area in the mountains with thousands of carvings from the Bronze Age. The carvings (petroglyphs) were discovered by a British botanist, Clarence Bicknell, in 1881. The best way to visit the town is by the spectacular railway from the Riviera. But to get to the Valley of the Marvels, you need to hike for 8 hours or take a jeep. However, this blog is about the doors in the town.“

https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/402

https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/402

 

Excerpt

 

Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch

Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons and imagination all steadily increase;
the road whinnies and bucks, neighing; the maned sky gallops;
and you are eternally with me, love, constant amid all the chaos,
glowing within my conscience — incandescent, intense.
Somewhere within me, dear, you abide forever —
still, motionless, mute, like an angel stunned to silence by death
or a beetle hiding in the heart of a rotting tree.

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/poetry-ideas.html

by Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

by Michael R. Burch

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.

Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.

Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

If I were blind, I’d have to feel my love
Your face, your skin, your body, all  so warm
I’d whisper in your ear like a small dove

I’d sniff you everywhere  and touch ungloved
Your arms, your legs, your chest, and bring you calm
If I were blind, I’d have to feel my love

And even all of that is  not enough
I’d want to dance with you, wrapped in your arms
I’d whisper in your ear like a small dove

Close your eyes and  go to sleep, I’ll prove
That I can caress you  with my sweet  balm
If I were blind, I’d have to feel my love

And you could caress me too if that were good.
We must enjoy the plenitude in turn
I’d whisper in your ear like a small dove.

Oh.would that God would  aid my  fierce  distress
As with  my fear, I lie low  in the dust
If I were blind, I’d have to feel my way
But were it God, I’d not know what to say

 

 

To see things from the centre of  our lives
We need to vanish from  our earthly minds
To get perspective from the vanished point
With silent prayer and stillness, we must   haunt

We enjoy  the losing  of the self in flow
With our heart and mind, we let all go
Yet sadly we compete for image fine
As if our clothes and hair are what defines

When in pain, we focus on our self,
We lose that focus as we regain health.
What is our ego to that infinite point?
A point is nothing, can’t be seen, nor caught.

So into Nothing ,we must go with  song
As trusting Nothing, we cannot be wrong.

The vanishing point’s not something we can snare,
For as we move towards it, it’s nowhere.
The two sides of a road will never meet
Despite you run with your eternal feet.

Yet we seem to see it as we stare,
Its existence is remote yet clear.
In the geometry of  dimension three,
Infinitely dear, this point ‘s not me

And so I ask myself if God compares.
We need his “presence” whether he is ” here.”
Without  that “point of view.” we have no “selves”
To see the holy earth in all its wealth.

Fast retreating from the ones who chase
In the  mystic stillness, he is grace

 

 

A