Axes are useful, real and imaginary.Does our earth have them?
Borrow one in sums.Not nice.Arithmetic sucks
Calculus is based on non-understanding of first principles which may not be understandable like certain jokes.
Drawing graphs is an art and a science.
Euclid has frightened some and delighted others.And a right angle to you as well.
Flatland is a book set in an imaginary two-dimensional world.Fractions frighten
Geometry gave way to algebra.Godel studied axiomatic systems.
God was a Word not a number……. think about it.
Hard as maths is, there is a non-sensual beauty in there somewhere
It takes your mind off the pain when you try to visualise 4 dimensions.Be aware some never return.
Jokes are not often found in our textbooks except the biggest.. that God likes jigsaws, geometry and juggling.
Kurt Godel went mad.He proved maths cannot have a complete set of axioms with no contradictions.So don’t go there
Logic is not identical with mathematics.
Multiplication tables were sung by children at school in the past.Matrices are rows and columns of numbers.
Number theory is harder than one would imagine from counting one’s digits.
Operators are imaginary concepts which have an effect on other imaginary concepts which then contribute to nuclear physics, and a few other things like the end of the world.
Probability seems to be part of the nature of the world despite Einstein’s famous words. God does not play dice.
Quantitative methods were what they called maths to stop the anxiety students felt.But it’s a bad name.
Reason is only part of mathematics
Straight lines can meet.
Theorems can be interesting if you know why you are learning them
Why? Why indeed.Wranglers are top mathematics students at Cambridge.
X or x is often the unknown we look for.
Y is like X just by historical usage
Zero as a concept with a sign is more abstract than One.Hence its late arrival on the human scene.
Nothing can be symbolised. Ain’t that wonderful?
Month: October 2017
News for Newts
· 
1.When do you use a colon, the teacher asked?
The girl responded: after our food is digested, until we can evacuate the remains of the prey.
2 What is a full stop, the teacher continued?
Death, answered the child
3.What’s a comma?
A coma spelt wrongly.
4.What is a question mark ?
It’s how high a grade the question gets.
5.What is a sentence?
It is what inferior criminals get.The superior ones get away with everything
6 What is syntax?
Is it a fine for adulterers or companies that evade tax? Or is it a Saint called Axe?
7.What is a paragraph?
Well, it’s got something in common with paramilitary.And with geometry.
The War in Mathematics.
8.What is the Platonic Realm?
It’s heavenly with no sex.
9.What is the Socratic Method?
Is it like the Rhythm Method but harder.Like controlling conceptions by the intellect alone?
10.What is the Solar System?
It’s Central Heating using solar panels on the roof.
11 What is the Milky Way?
Is it bottle feeding babies?
12.Am I astute?
I don’t know what a Stute is.Is it a relative of the Newts?
13 Am I a tutor?
Amae Atuta… Is she a film star?
14 Have you done your best to pass this test?
Yes,I am building a tunnel under your desk into the garden.I’m in league with The Gaza Strip.
15 What is the Gaza Strip?
Is it going through a checkpoint into Israel?
16 What is a Bedouin?
I can’t be doing with this.
17.Where is Jerusalem?
In Shropshire near Wenlock Edge or in South Lancashire where there are dark,satanic mills now used as Mail Order Firms or Call Centres.
19 What is a Temple?
It’s near your forehead.
20.What is a Cathedral?
It’s like an Epidural but they put a catheter in so you don’t need to go to the toilet while you are having the baby.
21.What is the Vatican?
Surely you must know that at your age!
22 What does “when in Rome do as the Romans do mean?”
Don’t be original.Plagiarise like mad.
23 What was the Trojan Horse
It’s what they used in Troja instead of buses.It pulled a carriage or even two
24 Who was Julius Caesar?
Was he the man who worked getting the property off the bankrupt?
25 Why do people go to Oxford and Cambridge?
Is it something to do with particles in quantum mechanics where one particle can go through 2 different holes at exactly the same time.
So one person could go through Oxford and Cambridge simultaneously especially if Bletchley Station was open.
26 Will you get a place at Oxford?
No, I’m too intellectual.I’m thinking more like, Anthrax if I get a scholarship.
27 What about Cambridge?
Is it something to do with Prince George starting school?
28.What do you think of Birmingham?
It seemed a good idea at the time.
29 Durham is an ancient university.What do you think of that?
I’ve never seen it yet.Is it behind the Cathedral? I saw that once from a train
30 What about Newcastle?
It’s still got a coal mine worked by Holy Spirits.They all speak Geordie.
31 How about Tel Aviv?
You tell them
32 And Iran?
I wish it were still called Persia.
33 Do names matter?
Only if you don’t know them.
34 Should we go to Church?
Only if we have OCD.
35 And Confession?
Always an error.
36 Am I mad?
Probably but no worse than anyone else except the man who is on Twitter all night.
37 Are you depressed?
Stop pressing me.
38 And Freud?
The bacon that Jews couldn’t eat
39 .Is it good to understand things?
It’s better to evoke~
40 What is penance?
The size of my pension
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As it tempted us to sin.
My lover stole my comb because
My golden hair too ruly was.
He sometimes brushed it with his chin;
And so our life of love began.
He swept the floor with my hairbrush.
So more tangled and more lush
My locks became and that pleased him.
As it tempted us to sin.
Unruly were his passions once
As on his knee I was ensconced.
But later ,he preferred the cat.
Even as she she scratched and spat.
I see now he preferred furred beasts.
And met them on his nightly trysts.
I should not have cut off my hair.
Nor made it ruly and less fair.
I dyed it to a shade of red
Far too fierce for my dear head.
I dyed it green like apples fair
And I forgot that he would care.
Now it’s golden like a crown
And in ringlets it does fall down.
Alas it is too late,I know.
For he is dead and lies below.
I should have heeded his advice
Never be too kind nor wise.
Hide your eloquence so great.
And always make your courtiers wait.
Unfortunately I was entranced
Watching numbers so advanced;
Infinities of different size
So no ruliness presides.
Yet our own lives are finite.
A few brief hours of gold sunlight.
A few of those by lovers ruled;
Precious days each full of jewels
When we descend into the night
Blackness rules and we can’t fight.
So the ruly come to dust.
Even when they passed their tests.
And the unruly also die.
With the worms the gold locks lie.
Wedding rings and jewellery
Are of no more use to me.
Yes, the unruly also die..
Though they may have felt more joy.
Not compelled to obey all,
They don’t complain when dark night falls.
Oh,my apple, I still care;
I still love you,my own dear.
I think of you and never rue
The love that was twixt you and me.
In my dreams we danced again
Music played and love outran
All the numbers in my books.
Infinite were our loving looks.
Aleph null and aleph one,
By the Hebrews naming done.
No doubt God knows the full gist.
How we sang and dance and kissed.
.
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Lions and tigers pitied the distraught.
A lion must kill, be savage with its jaws
But only other humans desire souls
A tiger has no sense but natural laws
A lion will sleep replete, his head on paws
Jews were buried live with bodies whole
A lion must kill, devour beasts with its jaws
Why do we do evil; what’s our cause?
The earth was heaving live, what can we know?
Thee tiger senses merely natural laws
In a strange dilemma, we are caught
How did we make murder a shared goal?
A lion must kill and eat its prey still raw
The few live Jews came home and home they sought
Yet were murdered, flung alive down holes
Lions and tigers pitied the distraught.
Now the bones of Jews mingle with coal
Where are they dwelling now, who raised their souls?
A lion must kill to eat with its own jaws
A tiger has no sense but nature’s laws
Will you got to Heaven and share with all?
The Warsaw Jews, the European trolls
How the Ten Commandments still annoy
The men of greed, the bankers, souls forlorn
Europe died when Europe made Great Wars
Europe did not live by any law
Staggering on, we do not know we died
When we killed the Jews, the Lord’s allies.
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A letter
Dear Katherine
Your blog is very rude.After I got to the bottom of the page and by the way that was no easy task with all the stuff you write, what did I see but “Older Pests press here”
Well,I am mortally wounded.I know we disagree on much but I thought I was doing you a favour visiting you instead of preying like I used to do.
I can’t believe you have changed so much in the last five years and I am puzzled about how I ever loved you.Well, to be honest, that was a lie.It’s just a rapid way of getting someone to open up without spending years getting to know them in the usual way
Yet I did think you loved me true though I never deserved your patience and gentleness.To prove it I hit you with a brick and a bit if brac as well but does that mean you may demean me and call me an Older Pest? Just Pest is cruel enough, why add Older? We are all older but so I keep mentioning it
Did I ever give you any child maintenance? I think I forgot but as you seem fairly intelligent I imagine you have made money one way or another.There’s nothing wrong with being a harlot as long as you keep it secret.And with your IQ I imagine you did.Now he’s at school maybe I will visit you and give you a piece of my mind
On second thoughts,I confess I am scared of you as you might wish to castrate me like mother tried to do.What is it with women?You hug them, kiss them and then they want a new kitchen!Well I shan’t do that again
Is a Pest always a sexual Pest?From your papers I see you have lots of them/.Maybe it is to them you refer and not to me.If so,I never apologise but I did not mean to offend you for more than a year or so.
I’m in a Care Home now.They care and I moan.Just like being married really.God knows why women still love men
Lots of hate and a dash of admiration
Peter Pesky Ph.D { Oxen}
Professor Superfluous [ fired from 6 Universities ]
Peter
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The sacrifice of meaning, Matthew Bowker
“Perhaps this is the absurd lesson of Job: that our choice is either to accept loss and make it meaningful or to protest it in absurdity, which costs us our ability to mean. If we choose the former, it need not be because we are satisfied that there is a universal order or great warum that justifies our losses, but because our meaning-making power is all we have to trade, and to give it up is to sacrifice our ability to act meaningfully in the world. On the other hand, if we are to follow the example of Camus’ 1958) vaunted “fastidious assassins” who demanded self-sacrifice as the only just compensation for performing acts of terrorism, then when confronted with extraordinary inhumanity or injustice, perhaps only the sacrifice of our ability to mean is meaningful.”
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When it is a long dark evening look at beautiful birds by Mike Flemming
How to come over better at work..for women…..what rubbish
Apparently standing up straight does more for you than going to Cambridge
Looking slim is better than 5 A*’s at A level.What are women for?
Being beautiful is great for career acceleration into the lap of some mad dominating mogul.Carry some tailors’ pins and practice elbowing men in the groin with a rubber male doll.Try to look menacing now and then
Making eye contact is an error as men thin you are coming on to them but if you don’t they will say you are autistic.If you are autistic it’s big advantage should you wish to become a mathematician.We are nearly all autistic… just mildly, of course.Getting obsessed with Fermat’s Last theorem is more fun than gambling or getting drunk
Getting obsessed with yourself is not so good.Get obsessed about infinity and the fact there are different orders of infinity,Make sure you tell your lover about aleph null and aleph one while they are caressing you on the sofa while you watch Henning Mankel’s latest TV film.Who wants to watch TV
Carry a tennis racket to “accidentally” hit men or omen who violate your boundaries.Or a heavy handbag full of pens and keys is often useful.
Tell men you don’t remove your tampon so they can suck your blood.Why don’t they do it like vampires? God,I’ve never heard of such absolutely dreadful things until Weinstein got into trouble.What next? I don’t want to got there
Do men want to suck our blood because they are anaemic? Have you ever heard such things before?
I think I might be a lesbian now.I am a lapsed heterosexual.
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So called paradoxical traits of creative people
https://www.fastcompany.com/3016689/10-paradoxical-traits-of-creative-people
10. CREATIVE PEOPLE’S OPENNESS AND SENSITIVITY OFTEN EXPOSES THEM TO SUFFERING AND PAIN, YET ALSO TO A GREAT DEAL OF ENJOYMENT.
“Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.”
Paradoxical or not, what I have learned most is that there is no formula for individual creation. As Mihay says, “creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals.” So, more than anything else, what it takes to be creative is resourcefulness and the courage not to give up.
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The art of poetry with George Seferis
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4112/george-seferis-the-art-of-poetry-no-13-george-seferis
ISSUE 50, FALL 1970
INTERVIEWER
Do you think there’s an advantage—as I think Cavafy would probably have thought—to being in dialogue with historians? In other words, do you feel that history has something particular to say to the poet?
SEFERIS
If you remember, Cavafy was proud of having a sense of history. He used to say: “I am a man of history”—something like that, I don’t remember the exact quotation. I am not that way; but still, I feel the pressure of history. In another way, perhaps: more mythological, more abstract, or more concrete . . . I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER
How about the relation of the Greek poet to his particular historical tradition? You once said that there is no ancient Greece in Greece. What did you mean by that exactly?
SEFERIS
I meant Greece is a continuous process. In English the expression “ancient Greece” includes the meaning of “finished,” whereas for us Greece goes on living, for better or for worse; it is in life, has not expired yet. That is a fact. One can make the same argument when one discusses the pronunciation of ancient Greek. Your scholars in America or in England or in France may be quite right in adopting the Erasmic pronunciation: for them Greek is a dead language; but for us it is another story. The fact is, you consider that ancient Greek has terminated its function at a certain point, and this enables you to pronounce it—with my regrets—in an arbitrary way.
INTERVIEWER
Then you obviously see the Greek tradition in language, as well as in other things, as a continuous process. That is not the belief of some classical and Byzantine scholars in this country—and, I suppose, elsewhere.
SEFERIS
You know why that happens? Because the subject, the history, of Greece is so large that each scholar limits himself to a certain period or branch, and nothing exists outside of it. For example, Gibbon considered that a thousand years of life were a decline. How can a people be in decline for a thousand years? After all, between the Homeric poems and the birth of Christ eight hundred years elapsed—or something like that—and then presumably there were a thousand years of decline.
INTERVIEWER
On the question of the Greek poet’s relation to his tradition, it has always seemed to me that the Greek poet has an advantage over his Anglo-Saxon counterpart who makes use of Greek mythology and sometimes even of Greek landscape. I remember years ago when I was writing a thesis on what I thought were English influences in the poetry of Cavafy and Seferis, I asked you about certain images that crop up in your landscape, for example, the symbolic meaning of the statues that appear in your work. You turned to me and said: “But those are real statues. They existed in a landscape I had seen.” What I think you were saying is that you always start with the fact of a living, actual setting and move from there to any universal meaning that might be contained in it.
SEFERIS
An illustration of that from someone who is a specialist in classical statues came the other day from an English scholar who was lecturing about the statuary of the Parthenon. I went up to congratulate him after his lecture, and he said to me, as I remember: “But you have a line which expresses something of what I meant when you say ‘the statues are not the ruins—we are the ruins.’” I mean I was astonished that a scholar of his caliber was using a line from me to illustrate a point.
INTERVIEWER
The imagery that a poet gets from his childhood is something we’ve discussed before. You once distinguished yourself from the average Englishman by suggesting that donkeys probably did for you what footballs and cars might do for them. I remember you also talked about the sea and the sailors of your native village near Smyrna.
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Can modern poetry be saved?
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/can-modern-poetry-be-saved/314001/
At the same time, Edmundson’s premise requires some scrutiny. He focuses primarily on the species of poet whose work appears in organs like The New Yorker, where verse is treated, much like the magazine’s infamous cartoons, as page filler, utterly subordinate to the long-form journalism and fiction that dominates the magazine’s feature well. “Many of the poems published in, say, The New Yorker feel just like the linguistic equivalent of a vanilla-scented candle,” the author Courtney Queeney noted in 2009. A year later, Slate observed that New Yorker poems tend to obsess over the craft of poetry itself. By design, New Yorkerpoems don’t distract or tantalize. They don’t grasp for what lies beyond, much less the reality before us. They don’t question authority. Of course, this may concern members of the literati like Mark Edmundson. But it is not exactly proof of a decaying form.
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Golden sun has reason to defy!
The sun came out as yellow in the sky
Golden like a giant lemon pie
I feel so happy, I will not ask why
Do we need a season’s alibi
Glinting sun will calculate no pi
The sun came out as yellow in the sky
The acers burn and they are never dyed
Golden sun has made me see allies
I feel so happy, I don’t know quite why
Logic and its rules do not apply.
Golden sun has reason to defy!
The sun came out as yellow in the sky
If we live, it follows we will die
There was never pi in any sky
I feel so happy, I don’t wonder why
Sometimes the whole world seems set awry
Especially if you are a trapped house fly
The sun came out as yellow in the sky
I feel so happy, I’m a living guy.
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Descry
https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day
Definition
1 : to catch sight of
Examples
In their research, the psychologists descried an association between violent crime and hot weather.
“Recent construction work on the Borough side had uncovered a cache of human bones. Builders soon reported strange noises and moving objects, and some refused to work. A visiting medium claimed to descry hundreds of tortured souls, including the shade of Guy Fawkes.” — Matt Brown, Time Out, 20 Feb. 2008
Did You Know?
With descry and the more common decry (“to express strong disapproval of”), we have a case of linguistic double-dipping. That is, English borrowed from the same French root twice. Both words ultimately come from the Old French verb decrier, meaning “to proclaim” or “to decry.” English speakers borrowed the term as descryin the 14th century and used it to mean “to proclaim” or “to spy out from a distance” (as a watchman might), and eventually simply “to catch sight of” or “discover.” Meanwhile, in French, decrier itself developed into the modern French décrier (“to disparage, to decry”). English speakers borrowed this word as decry in the 17th century. Be careful not to confuse descry and decry. They may be close relatives, but in modern English they have distinct meanings.
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A mournful saxophone and heap of stones
Oh Swedish dramas fill the screens again
Furniture of birch where murder hides
The end of summer and the evening sun
Men and women blond and equal stand
No gap at all and yet it is too wide
Those Swedish dramas fill the screens again
A mournful saxophone and heap of stones
When shall we see once more the bartered bride?
The end of summer and the evening sun.
As from the tomb, the murder victim rose………
Jesus Christ! His hands were open wide
Those myths and dreams will fill the screens of man
Soon the epic Europe scheme disclosed
As the visions and the words elide
The end of summer and the evening’s done
Why was love not love but hate disguised?
Infernos red now burn the Nazis’ eyes
Yes, Europe’s dramas fill the screens again
The end is nearer than the evening sun
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In my end is my beginning
T.S. Eliot > Quotes
“In my end is my beginning.”
Goodreads website
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Read more quotes from T.S. Eliot
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In Western nations civilised, insane
From the vulnerable God. this Jesus came
To know and love his creatures here on earth
He has no power; he shares our human pain
The tortured, weak and lost are his, he claims.
For he has suffered, died without much worth
From the vulnerable God. a Christ has come
In silence and despair and shattered dreams
The souls of those who torture negates birth
Not all powerful, yet god shares our pain
While in the nations civilised, insane
Our greed, our lies, our cruelty are a curse
Through a wounded God. a good man came
In certain states of mind, prayer has no aim
Deep within the dark, hope comes to birth
God is with us, voiceless burning, maimed
Cain and Abel, brothers linked by death
Today, that murder rises, is surpassed
From the broken god., this Jesus came
Human, suffering, he too feels this pain.
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Arched like a fallen moon
old man,bending over,
arched like a fallen moon
in a dark lilac November sky.
joy and pain wrestle my heart across the emptiness
and toss it up like a damp rocket
to fall in a hidden corner where mice live.
would that not be a good ending, to be dust
to these little creatures nesting
in my chewed green twine and my tartan basket?
They have eyes and shiver in my hand when I rescue them
from the cat…
as any heart might.
now night falls on the newspaper basket
where the damp Times and the Guardian mix into glue
and tomorrow the sun will rise
and it will just be garbage
with no poetic undertones nor deathly hushes.
in the heather lit by silver light
you stand on a hilltop like a god
looking over his domain.
strong and now weak
it’s the human condition
everlasting life is too dangerous for mankind.
silent, motionless, home of beetles
bit by bit we fall away
into the mother soil
with cracked jugs and dropped coins
for a future academic to dig into.
a transparent hand touches me.
who are you?
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Lucian Freud .. a tribute
Life and death opposed,
Drawn to and by this prolific genius.
Pictures fell from his eyes,
Like tears.
Children given life.
Creating as he could,
An England richer by his gifts.
Where else might he have given so much?
The work became the man.
Portraits rising from the canvas
To meet in a new space
That he discovered.
And after loss, the gift.
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Don’t start thinking
When Mary was coming downstairs she realised she had lost weight.Her skirt was slipping down
.Oh,dear, she said to Emile, I hope it is not unwearable.
Don’t worry,said Emile.You can put a pin into it
She replied tactfully,yes I will when I get to the bottom of the stairs but before Mary. got to the bottom her skirt fallen off completely and she was only wearing a brown silk petticoats and a pair of teal coloured tights.
You look nice Emile said. Maybe you don’t need to wear a skirt you can wear a petticoat instead,
Thank you very much, said Mary but the weather is very cold and a silk petticoat is not warm enough for going into the town although I suppose I could put a very warm long coat over the top. Suppose I went into a restaurant and felt too hot then I would have to take off my coat and then everybody would see my petticoat.
Life is made up of Conundrums like this and the secret is not to start thinking this way in the first place; once you do this is very hard to stop.
Some of Mary’s friends say to her. Are you sleeping alright or how are you sleeping?
Mary never answers because she knows that if you start thinking about that this a lot it’s not good for you as you can spend all day worrying about whether you are going to be able to sleep that night.
We have no control over our sleep, she pondered, but we can’t afford to ruminate as it causes mental illness .Rumination cuts people off from the world as they are always looking inside themselves.
Similarly being a perfectionist is very bad for you because again you’re not thinking about the work that you’re producing and enjoying it you are always wondering is this good enough or shall I start again oh I am so stupid etc
It is possible ,Mary has found, to control what you allow yourself to think about.You can cut you thought off before it gets going.
Anything that makes you keep thinking about yourself all the time will create a wall around you.Other people can detect this wall; it makes them avoid you.
In general, we should have a few walls as possible both internal and external
Just then the doorbell rang. it was Annie the ex-mistress of Mary ‘s husband Stan.
Hello she cried, how do you like my new coat
Don’t tell me you’ve got another one, Mary sighed
I didn’t buy it Annie murmured. That sweet lady who lives opposite told me that she has put on a lot of weight and she can’t wear this anymore; she asked me if I would like it
But you have already got about 20 Mary said, but I like this one.It’s a lovely colour; is it what we call teal or is it Kingfisher Blue?
I don’t know but it seems to match my other clothes and you know I do like a change.You prefer just to have one coat and wear it all the time unless you are going out to your special functions, hen you might wear your best coat, which is the brown one isn’t it which Stan used to like because he said it hung well
Yes, he did like that very much and I was wearing it only yesterday as it is very warm. I would like to have more clothes like you do but I seem to be too busy to go shopping
Annie gazed up with her large round eyes upon which she was wearing turquoise and magenta eyeshadow and bright blue mascara which clashed with her purple lipstick from East Saint Lawless.
That purple lipstick does not match your coat nor your eyeshadow Mary told her
Well , I think that a perfect costume puts men off.So it’s better to do something wrong and anyway, a lot of men are colour blind so they won’t know that it’s the wrong shade of lipstick. I think that coral would look better and I shall buy some next time I go into the term because teal and coral look very nice together.Purple is good with blues
Actually, Mary said , purple makes you look as if you’ve got heart disease or anaemia.
Thanks a lot, shouted Annie. What kind of friend are you
I am an honest friend ,Mary replied in a warm voice.I think that I don’t often say things which distress you but sometimes knowing that you would like to meet another man I feel impelled to give you my point of view.
That’s very kind of you said Annie but I think now I am too old to find a man who wants a mistress because a younger man could get a younger mistress and an older man maybe past bothering about mistresses and love and such things.And where can I find one, anyway.
I don’t agree, said Mary I think if you look very nice a man may be very proud to take you out and have you hanging from his arm like a trophy even if he is not able to proceed very far with bodily love. After all, everybody likes someone to talk to and some companionship; someone to help them out when they are feeling unwell
As long as that is it is mutual I don’t see anything wrong with it.
The two women stared out of the window and saw a wood pigeon on the shed.Maybe it’s better to be a bird, Mary thought aimlessly before she put on the kettle for a lovely cup of tea and some chocolate fingers
Tea is the best drink in the afternoon.
And so say all of us.
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The book I will NOT be buying for Xmas
-
Chill the Fuck Out and Color: An Adult Coloring Book with Swear Words
22 Oct 2016
by
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How poetry can change lives
“There are poems that have, literally, changed my life, because they have changed the way I looked at and listened to the world; there are poems that, on repeated reading, have gradually revealed to me areas of my own experience that, for reasons both personal and societal, I had lost sight of; and there are poems that I have read over and over again, knowing they contained some secret knowledge that I had yet to discover, but refused to give up on. So, at the most basic level, poetry is important because it makes us think, it opens us up to wonder and the sometimes astonishing possibilities of language. It is, in its subtle yet powerful way, a discipline for re-engaging with a world we take too much for granted.
When the purveyors of bottom-line thinking call a mountain or a lake a “natural resource”, something to be merely exploited and used up, poetry reminds us that lakes and mountains are more than items on a spreadsheet; when a dictatorship imprisons and tortures its citizens, people write poems because the rhythms of poetry and the way it uses language to celebrate and to honour, rather than to denigrate and abuse, is akin to the rhythms and attentiveness of justice. Central to this attentiveness is the key ingredient of poetry, the metaphor, which Hannah Arendt defined as “the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about”. It’s that power to bring things together, to unify experience as “the music of what happens”, that the best poetry achieves.
Most of us feel that this is true of the great dead poets society of history, of Shakespeare and Milton, of Coleridge and Shelley and, of course, of TS Eliot, an American who re-envisioned and so renewed and enriched our idea of England. Yet I would argue that poetry is, or can be, as central to our experience now as it has ever been. To read “I Am Your Waiter Tonight And My Name Is Dmitri”, by the great contemporary American poet, Robert Hass, at the height of George W Bush’s xenophobic repudiation of “Old Europe”, was to be reminded not just of the injustice and futility of war, but also of the very richness and complexity of history that Bush sought to expunge.”
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Jules Henry on infinite need
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Unblank Verse
The leaves are turning red on my computer
The apples ripen better on TV.
But my friend says red won’t suit her
So for a new blue coat, she makes a plea.
But as I only learned to speak in BASIC
I do not know if she will understand.
If I write a letter, she’ll deface it.
For my letters tend to be too bland
An email is a different sort of kettle
Not the type we use for boiling fish
So let the old men find their mettle
And get a frozen fish from off a dish
Toss it into Heinz baked beans a-boiling
Let it simmer for a few long days
Then invite a friend for utter spoiling.
I’m sure she’ll inundate you with her praise.
Follow up with custard creams in gravy.
Serve the peanut butter on a tray
That’s what folk eat the Navy.
Eat and eat and pray and disobey.
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Not dead yet
For the last three years,I have had the problem of what to wear at night.Because inevitably someone will ring the doorbell before I dress.As I get my shopping online I don’t want to miss this and pay £10 for a cab to some sorting office.
In fact, have we ever thought about what and why we wear certain things in bed?
Before washing machines, we didn’t want our day clothes ruined by sleeping in them but that is what we might do now.Though ironing would get problematic, unless all people in the house do their own.
And we don’t want to be too hot.So wearing a dressing gown is perhaps not wise.
I tend to feel cold unless it’s 80 deg F.So I tried out wearing two nightdresses at once.Perfectly warm for reading and more opaque than Cherie Blair’s on her first morning in Downing St.However no one rang the bell.In any case I am cutting back on newspapers, clothes etc so apart from getting some wonderful but small lobster claw extension chains so my necklaces are not strangling me I am not buying anything at all for myself.I like mending things so I have now got a silver chain with two tiny torches on it hanging round my neck.I find them good for reading the instructions on packages.And if the power goes off then I am ok till I get a big torch out.
You can buy packs of little torches and also tiny magnifying glasses.Less heavy to carry a little magnifying glass in the bag.Mine is heavy anyway with various emergency items.I can hardly post a letter without taking some with me just to cross the road.
I have stopped sending holiday postcards.But begun sending postcards of my own town with its ancient church and remains of palaces and old walls and gardens.
I like to get cards and letters but it is rare now.I like handwriting.I like guessing who it might be.I am not wearing a pen around my neck or a Tablet.I won’t be able to stand up if I do that.Why should I want one anyway?
Now.did you see the Stores are selling “modest” clothes for women? I shall be glad when leggings and crop tops disappear from the High Street especially beige or pale pink leggings which make women look almost nude as they potter in the town.Under-dressing? It might be because it’s a cheap style and many people are hard up.But dark leggings are much more flattering.Even old disabled men like my older brother are a bit disturbed by these visions.If I were him, I’d be glad.Not dead yet.
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Melancholy makes us more creative
Digital image by Katherine
https://www.wired.com/2010/10/feeling-sad-makes-us-more-creative/
Extract:
Why does a melancholy mood turn us into a better artist? The answer returns us to the intertwined nature of emotion and cognition. It turns out that states of sadness make us more attentive and detail oriented, more focused on the felt collage. Joe Forgas, a social psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has spent the last decade investigating the surprising benefits of negative moods. According to Forgas, angst and sadness promote “information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more-demanding situations.” This helps explain why test subjects who are melancholy – Forgas induces the mood with a short film about death and cancer – are better at judging the accuracy of rumors and recalling past events; they’re also much less likely to stereotype strangers and make fewer arithmetic mistakes.
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No peace on earth
If only we could have peace on earth but we are descended from the most aggressive primates… why many of them were sadomasochists.Well, some were sadists and the rest were masochists I gather.The ones who weren’t died out as they never mated.
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Silent
This is the first line
Of the poem I wanted to write
After you smiled
But I never wrote it
I didn’t understand what was happening
I didn’t understand
Anything
But remember someone loved me
Called for me
Howled for me
And I went
And now I am all alone
And I can’t call for you
Yet we were in a dream last night
Together
But you were silent
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Refugees
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?
On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from eastern Europe, and a few were officially “stateless.”
The majority of the Jewish passengers had applied for US visas, and had planned to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States. But by the time the St. Louis sailed, there were signs that political conditions in Cuba might keep the passengers from landing there. The US State Department in Washington, the US consulate in Havana, some Jewish organizations, and refugee agencies were all aware of the situation. The passengers themselves were not informed; most were compelled to return to Europe.
Since the Kristallnacht (literally the “Night of Crystal,” more commonly known as the “Night of Broken Glass”) pogrom of November 9–10, 1938, the German government had sought to accelerate the pace of forced Jewish emigration. The German Foreign Office and the Propaganda Ministry also hoped to exploit the unwillingness of other nations to admit large numbers of Jewish refugees to justify the Nazi regime’s anti-Jewish goals and policies both domestically in Germany and in the world at large.
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Take your tablet,for example
This person keeps saying she wants to commit suicide.So I said to her, first you need to buy a Tablet
Will one be enough, she asked in surprise?
Yes,buy a Kindle Fire Refurbished
She said, what does refurbished mean?
So I said,someone has used it but Amazon have cleaned it up
She said, you expect me to take a tablet someone else has already used? I might catch a bug from it.How did Amazon get hold of it?
I expect the relatives sent it back!
Good grief,how many people can one tablet kill?
I said, wait till you see it and then you’ll get to learn a lot of different things
I don’t want to learn anything.
But you asked me how to commit suicide
I just don’t believe one will be enough
Ask for the 10 inch one
It won’t go down my throat.I will choke
There you are, you’ve found your own solution
I think I’ll stay alive.
Tablets, love them, hate them but never mate with the,
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Call centre humour
digital art by Katherine
The reality of the stupid things phone 999 for is funnier than these manufactured jokes
https://www.callcentrehelper.com/more-call-centre-jokes-155.htm
WordPerfect Customer Service Joke
This is rather an old one, that has been around for a few years, but is one of my personal favourite jokes.
Tech: “Ridge Hall computer assistant; may I help you?”
Customer: “Yes, well, I’m having trouble with WordPerfect.”
Tech: “What sort of trouble?”
Customer: “Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away.”
Tech: “Went away?”
Customer: “They disappeared.”
Tech: “Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?”
Customer: “Nothing.”
Tech: “Nothing?”
Customer: “It’s blank; it won’t accept anything when I type.”
Tech: “Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?”
Customer: “How do I tell?”
Tech: “Can you see the “C” prompt on the screen?”
Customer: “What’s a sea-prompt?”
Tech: “Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?”
Customer: “There isn’t any cursor: I told you, it won’t accept anything I type.”
Tech: “Does your monitor have a power indicator?”
Customer: “What’s a monitor?”
Tech: “It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it’s on?”
Customer: “I don’t know.”
Tech: “Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?”
Customer: “…Yes, I think so.”
Tech: “Great! Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it’s plugged into the wall.”
Customer: “…Yes, it is.”
Tech: “When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?”
Customer: “No.”
Tech: “Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable.”
Customer: “…Okay, here it is.”
Tech: “Follow it for me, and tell me if it’s plugged securely into the back of your computer.”
Customer: “I can’t reach.”
Tech: “Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?”
Customer: “No.”
Tech: “Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?”
Customer: “Oh, it’s not because I don’t have the right angle-it’s because it’s dark.”
Tech: “Dark?”
Customer: “Yes-the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window.”
Tech: “Well, turn on the office light then.”
Customer: “I can’t.”
Tech: “No? Why not?”
Customer: “Because there’s a power outage.”
Tech: “A power… a power outage? Aha! Okay, we’ve got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?”
Customer: “Well, yes, I keep them in the closet.”
Tech: “Good! Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from.”
Customer: “Really? Is it that bad?”
Tech: “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”
Customer: “Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?”
Tech: “Tell them you’re too stupid to own a computer.”
——————–
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Unlike Lady Godiva’s
My new coat is described as wool rich
21%…I’ll not itch
It’s mostly man-made fibres
Unlike Lady Godiva’s.
I paid £99 for a stitch.
Years back, we were told silk and wool
Would be no longer here,so I mulled
I decided on plastic
And cardboard domestic
For in Hull there will be no pure wool
Yet lamb is still sold with the meat
So their mothers must be sad as they bleat~
Have their fleeces now been tampered with
Or the farmers been hampered with,
Losing the skill to shear sheep
So if there’s a heat-wave next year
The sheep will be hot,so I fear
Imagine your winter coat
Gripped round your hot flushed throat
As you sit by the Thames swigging beer.
Or if you should walk on cliffs sheer,
Near Dover, they are white,So one hears
Don’t pet a sheep or ram
They are more fierce than men
They may push you off and then leer
So you would drop into a ship
Full of illegal white chaps
They may be from Poland
They may be old Romans
I say, are your rightly equipped?
Suppose that the ship is on its way
To France or to Russia,oh hey
Remember what the Jews went through
As their ship was not permitted to
Dock, so as grey smoke these Jews blew.
And if the wind came from the East
All of us here and our beasts
Would have taken in the gays and Jews
Gypsies as well abused
So don’t take deep breaths when you feast
How my heart sings 