http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/book-review-marion-milner-the-life-by-emma-letley-1-3008515?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

What she knew was how to write about joy. She knew about moments when what you sense is suddenly vivid and full of energy: looking out at a tree, perhaps, and in that moment discovering a response in your whole being, in body as well as mind. Travelling, she had a brilliant eye, but it was for the “wide, unfocused stare”, not the “narrow, deliberative concentration”; she goes out after rare orchids and stops in wonder at the white blossoms of a whole hill of wild garlic. Falling in love was her model for such moments, “images with a ‘still glow’”. She wanted to get past the cant idea that the unconscious mind is a kind of dustbin of the soul where everything is shameful, and to reconnect mind with body. She’s the useful version of fashionable talk about consciousness because she knows writer’s block but she also knows the moments when you put away intellect and let the mind go as it wants; when the block breaks. She thought creativity, whatever its form, was the whole point of being human. You may not know Marion Milner, but you will be glad when you do.ost cutting insults
Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/book-review-marion-milner-the-life-by-emma-letley-1-3008515?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3440/margaret-drabble-the-art-of-fiction-no-70-margaret-drabble

” I don’t like placing other writers much and avoid the temptation to do so when asked, though I don’t mind admitting my immense admiration for Angus Wilson, Saul Bellow, and Doris Lessing.
INTERVIEWER
I know you’ve done your share of interviewing. What is the first question you ask someone?
DRABBLE
Oh dear. I never know how to begin. I find it to be a very difficult job, actually. I’m rather a bad interviewer because I never ask people things that they don’t want to be asked. As soon as they look annoyed or nervous, I never persist.
INTERVIEWER
I read your interview with Doris Lessing and I thought that many of the things that came out of it could have been said about you as well. You quote her as saying, “In writing novels, we bring into being what we need to be.” Can you comment on that?
DRABBLE
In a sense, the fiction creates the reality, but it’s a very complicated relationship. I think if you imagine a certain kind of person, then that person comes into being. You become that person. Or at least this kind of person becomes a possibility. But you have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person. The fact of going in a certain direction has something to do with what you imagine as good or proper for yourself.
INTERVIEWER
But it also seems to me, that as far as you’re concerned, the kind of person you are has as much to do with fate or accident as it does with self-creation.
DRABBLE
This is what is so interesting about life: choosing to be something and being struck down while you do it by a falling brick. The whole question of free will and choice and determinism is inevitably interesting to a novelist. Perhaps I go on about it more than some. Are your characters puppets in the hands of fate or are they really able to make free choices? I think we have a very small area of free choice.”

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6223/michael-holroyd-the-art-of-biography-no-3-michael-holroyd

“I’ve always believed that there’s no such thing as a definitive biography and, particularly if you write about writers, that you are offering your subject the opportunity to write one more book, posthumously, of course, and in collaboration with you. Even if you and I were writing about the same subject, and even if our research were identical, we would produce different books. The dates and so on would be the same, but some themes would seem important to you and insignificant to me.
INTERVIEWER
You have written that you have “traded somewhat in invisibility as a biographer.”
HOLROYD
I believe that we are there between the lines, but most readers are not particularly aware of us.
INTERVIEWER
Are there subjects you considered but didn’t pursue?
HOLROYD
I thought a long time ago that Katherine Mansfield was a good subject. And I was asked to do one or two other books—Pamela Hansford Johnson, Stephen Spender—but I was always in the middle of something else. I was also asked to do a life of Jacqueline du Pré, whom I met, but I wasn’t competent to do it.
INTERVIEWER
Because you felt you didn’t know enough about music?
HOLROYD
Yes. It would have been interesting—in a way my subjects have been the tutors I never had, because I didn’t go to university. So I would have learned a lot. But it was difficult, too, because she was alive, and she suggested how I should do it, and I thought, This won’t work. I think it’s important to keep a distance from the person you’re trying to get close to.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44367/love-iii

BY GEORGE HERBERT

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Source: George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1978)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/17/george-herbert-poetry-faith-vocation

The poem takes its title from the parable of a perfect pearl hidden in a field: a man finds it, and goes and sells everything he has so that he can buy the field and own the pearl. In the final verse, Herbert uses this metaphor of buying and selling to great effect, making it clear that he went into the bargain of ordination with his eyes open:

“I fly to thee, and fully understand / Both the main sale, and the commodities.”

Pray Father, give me your guessing.

My guessing!Don’t you mean my blessing?

Oh, probably.Possibly..who knows.

So have you any sins to tell me?

Yes, I broke a glass jug.

Whose was it?

It was mine, Father.

Surely it’s not a sin to break your own jug?

It is if you hit yourself on the head with it!

What made you do that?

I was angry with myself…I had been committing effrontery.

Do you mean adultery?Your main problem seems to be bad language.

No, Father I never say” F*ck”

You just did.

Well, I had to do.I had no choice!

That’s what they all say…if only I heard some original sin I’d find life more interesting.

Well, it’s hard to think of anything original to do especially if it has to be a sin too.

You are just not using your creativity.

All right Father, Put your hands up.i’ve got a gun.

Where did you find that?

In my wife’s handbag.

Now we are getting somewhere.. that’s threatening a priest, interfering in your wife’s privacy and stealing a gun.Any other sins?

I could shoot you, I suppose.

No.no!That is going too far.

Shall I slap you?

No… just say something rude to me.

Your sermons are the most boring I have ever heard.

Well, that’s enough…I’ve never been so insulted in my life.

You have been very lucky then… you should hear what people say to me!

Well, you are both ugly and unintelligent.I don’t know how you had the nerve to marry.

I had no choice.She forced me.But I gave in quickly in case she changed her mind.

And you have seven children.

No, they are not all mine. .And they are Jewish.How can they be Jewish?

My wife is Jewish!

I thought she was just a lapsed Catholic.

No, she’s Jewish but not even an arranged marriage could be arranged for her so she used her imagination and decided an overweight ugly Catholic would be grateful for her love.

And are you grateful?

Yes, and so are all her lovers!

Who are they?

The curate is one of them and has two children .. they look just like him too.

And does she want them raised as Jews?

She lets them rise naturally and go with the flow.

Do they have to wear hats?

Only in the Synagogue!

Are you Jewish too.

Yes,it’s quite handy as we have Sabbath on Saturday and then we have Sunday on Sunday if you see what I mean.

I never met anyone who practised two religions before.

Well,I figured it would double my chance of salvation!

Well. I must speak to the Rabbi.For your penance you must give £50 to Homeless at Xmas.

Am I absolved.

If you stay any longer you’ll be dissolved!

Thank you, Father.

And take that gun away.I don’t want it.

I can get you a good price for your cassock.

Why,thank you ,my child but I need it.

Well,Jesus had no cassock!

Well, he was a Jew…I am a Catholic.

Now,that makes me think.

Think what?

About the Vatican…

Let’s not go there,

Shalom

The garden’s now a Wood,where dwell three wolves
The maple red is now the president
And all the laws and rules have been devolved
For the sake of all the residents

This green country gives heart like mine no grief
For hidden are the houses standing near
And as the wolves dance, I watch with relief
As ants and beetles stand around and stare

For wolves are never seen in suburbs tame
And maples are at home in foreign lands
It may be that the satyrs play new games
And smuggle in some creatures contraband.

Let explanations die their long due death.
Let’s lose our minds and dance in happiness.

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Why not eat breakfast now and sleep in your work clothes Free advice £990 cheques or cash or food [tinned]

Twenty Questions with Benjamin Ludwig, Writer

Stories were the most important thing in the world to me, growing up. Whether it was acting them out, reading them, or just telling stories with friends, that’s what I loved to do.

Which fictional character would you most like to meet?

I’d love to sit down and chat with the clown/fool from Twelfth Night. He’s one of my favorite characters.

Ankle grazers, are they men who love to gaze
Or kiss the ankles of the one for whom they long
Humans do have curious, little ways

I remember my own ankles praised.
But noone commemorated such in song
Ankle grazers,are they men who love to gaze

My early life seems covered in a haze
Except for when I thought I had done wrong
Humans all must suffer in their way.

See how Shakespeare great emotion plays
Even by the means of dance and song
Ankle grazers, are they men who gaze?

We need love to help us and amaze.
Our psyche’s sometimes stricken by its prongs
Humans each must find their destined way

One day Gabriel will strike the gong
And all the heavens will be filled with song
Ankles,faces, eyes and hearts arranged
Humans do have curious by the ways

All things grow with time — except grief. All things grow with time — except grief.. Jewish Proverb.

Read more: http://www.special-dictionary.com/proverbs/source/j/jewish_proverb/2.htm#ixzz4wdKPXink

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dangerous-liaisons/

Her constant threats of suicide hurt me
For she need not seek attention by such means
I’ll offer soon to help her choose a tree!

I know how deep and awful grief can he
But every word and action tossed has been
Her constant threats of suicide hurt me.

Humans need each other, yet I flee.
She makes me feel her feelings are insane
I’ll offer soon to help her choose a tree.

I wish that I could aid her so she’d see
That sorrow is a part of love that’s been
Her constant threats of suicide hurt me.

She wants an answer, threatens with her scenes
Till I fell over backwards,now I’m mean
I’ll offer soon to help her choose a tree.

She feels her tongue has freedom to give pain.
She repeats once more her grief and her disdain
Her constant threats of suicide down me
I’ll offer soon to help her choose a tree

Stan was feeling somewhat glum,nay even despairing,on Monday morning.
Mary had gone to work on her new folding 6 gear bicycle with own basket and an extra basket from Wells-next -the- Sea 1995
[the wicker basket now somewhat grey in hue.]
He was left at home sorting out all his art work and materials as well as doing the baking,cooking and bathing Emile,the delightful yet trying male cat.
Sunk in dark misery,Stan sat in an old uncomfortable chair in the darkest part of the room, while Emile snored on the rug by the bright French windows.Stan went through all the possible reasons for his state of mind.Was he guiltyabout his flings with his alluring next door neighbour Annie?
Could it be his failure to toilet train Emile? Or his omitting to carry out the penance given by Father Brown after Stan confessed to stealing sweets on the way to Confession in 1956?
The longer Stan brooded the more reasons he found for his depression.
He could hardly get up to make a cup of coffee ..even instant seemed too much trouble.Would he even clean his teeth which somehow he’d failed to do?
The doorbell rang… it was a new cord for his laptop as Emile had been chewing the current one ,and 29 books in a sack from Amazon which his wife must have ordered,as he had no recollection of any such foolish spending.How would they pay the bill on the credit card? he ruminated.
Later in the day.Annie peered through the window.She tapped on the glass with her well manicured blue finger nails.Let me in she cried.
I’m too tired for any hanky panky he murmured lovingly as he ran his fingers through her thick red tresses.What is this delightful perfume,beloved,he questioned her.
It’s Poison! she replied.Oh no,sorry it’s Iris and Jasmine Eau de toilette from the Bodyshop.
Despite his lowly sunken state Stan loved this perfume.He sniffed rabidly at her well rounded form.Well,shall we have some tea,she enquired.
Stan sat there hand on chest.I’ve been feeling a little gloomy,he muttered.She peered at him.You look terribly pale,Stan.Where’s your angina spray?I can’t recall,he said.Oh,here it is in my vest.
What a strange place to keep it,she responded.
Mary made pockets for all my vests.at one time you could buy vests with pockets
She’s good at sewing despite being so clever.In fact she loves doing things with her hands.
Annie got the GNT spray out and handed it to him.Have you got a pain?
Well,yes,now you mention it,I do,he replied verbosely.
Well,in the name of God, use the bloody thing,she whispered endearingly into his left ear.
He opened his mouth,raised his tongue and with his hand resting lightly on his chin he pressed the button with his forefinger.
His head began to throb.
Annie appeared with a cup of Earl Grey tea and a biscuit.Why,you look a little better.Do you need another dose?
No,I feel much better now.I’ve had it before.He drank the tea but didn’t eat the biscuit which he threw out later in crumbs for the field mice in the shed.
His spirits began to rise.Why did he always forget that physical ailments can worsen a mood?He still felt a trifle glum but nothing a meringue wouldn’t put right.
OK,what shall I make for Mary’s supper? he enquired.
You sit there in the window and I’ll just make my special spaghetti,Annie replied gaily,as long as I can stay too.
Yes,I’ll open some red wine he said youthfully,and we can have fried apples and bananas for pudding with non fat Greek yoghurt.
What a wise choice she murmured gently into his ear………that will use up some of the newly picked apples,the bananas were from Lidl’s as usual.
Well,Stan you look better.said Mary happily,You’ve been pale all weekend.Was it Annie who cheered you up,not to put too fine a point on it?
Actually it was nitroglycerine,he said roguishly,but Annie made me use it.
But for us women you’d be dead,she replied equably.
But for you delightful creatures I wouldn’t be here at all,he moaned ecstatically.
Now then Stan,control yourself she urged,After all we have a visitor,Annie!
What a hoot,he thought as he twisted spaghetti round his fork in a careless manner splashing tomato sauce all over his new green acrylicjumper.
Thank the Lord for washing machines,Mary said.
I didn’t know Jesus invented them,Annie said with a tone of mild sarcasm but no-one bothered to reply.

As told by Emile to the local paper.
And believed by all of us.

The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbour who is within reach in any given situation. (Letters, p 381)
Bonhoeffer

White trainers
Huge,red coat with huge red pockets over
Orange anorak with zipped inner pocket over
Metallic gold pleated skirt with no pockets
Top in deep purple with fluted sleeves and no pockets
Fishnet tights with secret waist pocket for your Tablet
Padded bra with pocket for smartphone[s] and wallet
Elastic garter with pocket for keys
Mini torch,biro and magnifying glass in velvet wrist bag
Wine coloured hat with inner pocket for reading glasses.
Messenger bag with pocket for Newspaper du jour.
Trolley for all your other must-haves like your ten cats

I worried about quicksands and escape
Sucked into the sands by giant lips
I forgot that ice is thin and easy breaks

Is worry wasting time and a mistake?
Yet we need to learn from other’s trips
I fretted over quicksands and escape

I fell through ice and now cold makes me ache
A trip, a trap, a tumble, we are stuck
I forgot that ice is thin and easy breaks

In ice cold water, how the brain can creak
No resources, internet or book.
I fretted over quicksands yet escaped

Feeling happy, I forgot to check.
I didn’t measure, neither did I look
I forgot that ice is thin, can crack and break

When we’re on Cloud 9 we are at risk
Not the sands but more the ice unzipped
I worried about quicksands and escape
I forgot that ice is thin, so easy breaks

I got married and my husband had never changed a light bulb but neither of us changed our minds
I got married so that it would be legal to iron a man’s underpants weekly.
I got married so I could pick cake crumbs out of the carpet as free exercise.
I only got married for sex as the forbidden would be a duty then.Still, it felt very sinful so that was ok.
I was so shy, my husband thought I was dumb until I cried,
Do it again,Sam.
Alas, he is called John.
Still, I was a very technical virgin who loved pulling the gas stove to pieces to see how it worked.One day I shall mend it but for now we live on fish and chips.
When you think about it,getting to know the opposite sex is very dangerous.
Getting to know anybody is dangerous but women don’t usually rape you while you are drunk or while you are sober either.Still ,worse than rape is emotional betrayal or spiritual invasion.
Not getting to know anyone will make us very isolated so on balance, get friend, lovers and partners as and when it is possible

The only safe way to live is to commit suicide then no-one can hurt you anymore.Is there a logical error there somewhere?
I think, take a cat or two to bed, have a baby by the usual or by artificial means and have hundreds of friends.Why limit yourself? I do and look where it’s got me.Nowhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/arts/design/art-age-of-terror-imperial-war-museum.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&rref=world/europe&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Europe&pgtype=article

As an artist, Mr.Bridle is interested in the relationship between the digital and physical world, in how the former changes the way we think about the latter. “Drones are one of those technologies that seemed to go from science fiction to completely mundane without going through a critical-thinking stage,” he said. “It seemed to stand for so much: war, crime, violence and technology.” He has since realized versions of the work, called “Drone Shadow,” in locations from Washington to Istanbul.

The latest version of “Drone Shadow” falls across the atrium of the Imperial War Museum London as the first work in the exhibition “Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11.” Curated by Sanna Moore, the show explores how artists have responded to conflict since those calamitous events. Taking the attack on the World Trade Center as a cultural turning point, the exhibition “reflects on the continuing state of emergency we’ve been in and how the world has changed: mass surveillance, civil rights, detentions without trial,” Ms. Moore said.

The scale of “Age of Terror” — the largest contemporary art exhibition ever staged by the Imperial War Museum — reflects the increase in the number of artists responding to conflict in recent years, Ms. Moore said.

The show opens with works that respond directly to Sept. 11 before moving on to consider how the attacks have permeated daily life, in the United States and beyond. Some began in the immediate aftermath: Tony Oursler started filming the footage used in his work “9/11” in Lower Manhattan soon after the second plane hit. The piece “9/12 Front Page” by the German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann assembles 151 newspaper covers from around the world from the following day, many carrying the same photograph.

Wait on God,like waiting on a tide.
The moon exerts her pull with dignity
No human force can change how these seas ride.

We plead with God forever to abide!
Should we fear his great sagacity?
Wait on God as waiting for the tide.

Maybe it is his will which decides
Not ours to go there in audacity
No human force can change how these seas ride.

Do not mock and torment him we flayed
With no control over our temerity
Wait on God be patient towards the tides

When we suffer we obey our pride
Demand he save us from indignity
No human force can change how great seas ride

For a lover, life meets fantasy
How can we see our incapacity?
Wait on God,like waiting on a tide.
No human force can change the wild seas ride.

A mere mirage

My new-found hope may be a mere mirage;
An illusion of no help in my despair.
Yet imagination stirs up love and her courage
And helps the mind and heart in their repair.
I’ll dwell not in the mind’s relentless thoughts;
I’ll use my eyes and ears and skin
Then in that trap, I never shall be caught.
I’ll see and hear to moderate this din.
In wider focus, all will take their place
I’ll focus less on this wound I bear late
And see both good and bad in every space.
So not dismiss the world and all its states.
Changing vision shows us truer measures.
Perception valued brings to us much treasure.

Cut off from land by wiles of tricky sea,
For Norfolk is deceptive in its tides,
He grabbed my hand and said, just run with me

If we had drowned then now I would not be
In England where our shrill-voiced voters stride,
Cut off by hopes installed by trickery

Nor would I, by Donald vexed,fear, see
How he may ask the Good Lord to abide
He grabbed the votes and said, all lie with me

I shall not argue over cups of tea
About how many immigrants God made;
Cut off from thought by wiles of trickery

I believe that God has no pity
He created man to be a refugee
He gave no hope yet said,hey, worship me!

Oh, haunt of mystics send thy remedies
They’re drowning in the places we can’t see
Cut off from land by tides of your Son’s sea
The dark eyed children drown along with Thee.

What haunts  me are the quicksands of the soul
The heart and mind and body all agree
That I will drown by struggling towards a goal

Apparently, we try to be more whole
But this can only come  by grace  all new
What haunts  me are the quicksands of the soul

It’s best to let go of a hope too cruel
To lie quite still without fear of taboo
Or I will drown by struggling towards a goal.

Opposing all that we learned in our schools,
Where teachers spoke to you and you and you
What taunts  me are the quicksands of the soul

The art of living is not found in  rules
But by wandering without any  hint or clue
We can sink by struggling towards a goal.

Though we may use the stars to travel by
The moon is covered by her alibi.
What haunts  me are the quicksands of the soul
Where we may drown by struggling towards a goal

http://www.inspirationalstories.com/poems/clothes-anne-sexton-poems/

Clothes

Put on a clean shirt
before you die, some Russian said.
Nothing with drool, please,
no egg spots, no blood,
no sweat, no sperm.
You want me clean, God,
so I’ll try to comply.

The hat I was married in,
will it do?
White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny array.
It’s old-fashioned, as stylish as a bedbug,
but is suits to die in something nostalgic.

And I’ll take
my painting shirt
washed over and over of course
spotted with every yellow kitchen I’ve painted.
God, you don’t mind if I bring all my kitchens?
They hold the family laughter and the soup.

For a bra
(need we mention it?),
the padded black one that my lover demeaned
when I took it off.
He said, “Where’d it all go?”

And I’ll take
the maternity skirt of my ninth month,
a window for the love-belly
that let each baby pop out like and apple,
the water breaking in the restaurant,
making a noisy house I’d like to die in.

For underpants I’ll pick white cotton,
the briefs of my childhood,
for it was my mother’s dictum
that nice girls wore only white cotton.
If my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I’ve worn.
Still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of Clorox and Duz.
Being sixteen-in-the-pants
I would die full of questions.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/may/19/poetry.features

1,New Rd
Button
Suffolk
IPS0 0NO
UK
Dear Annette
I meant to write before but seeing you kept mentioning rubbish I had wondered if I should prune my blog and leave only the best poems here.However it is hard for me to decide,I don’t even remember many

I find I have to write a lot of so-so stuff before my mind and heart get working.It’s like exercise.But your letter was so funny,  it cheered me up.What a pity we live so far apart.
I miss getting letters with handwriting on them.Wondering whose it might be etc.Why don’t we do that?
I had problems with my homework too.I decided to do Double Maths at A level as it would not take so much time up and then I could read novels.I didn’t know why or how we should do Lit Crit yet the English teacher cried when I was not down for A level.
I can see now what a blessing it might have been but curiosity also led me into maths as well.To be honest it was somewhat boringly too easy.Ah, well
Life goes so quickly.I’m reading Plath’s Journals and I see how she worried away so much of her time.Too much for girls to decide too rapidly when they are so gifted yet also want a family.And her psychoanalyst was not fully qualified……. dangerous
I feel deprived of her later work yet many girls and boys have learned from it

What a  load of rubbish
Cheers

Mary and Emile and the old robin

The robin gave up waiting for your gifts
The seeded bread and bits of Cheddar cheese
Before I knew that time goes slow yet swift.

The sudden loss creates a fearful rift
Your honeyed skin is not for me to please
The robin gave up waiting for your gifts

How we drove, and I sang, then we kissed
Who’s that knocking on my door, we teased
Before we knew that time goes slow yet swift.

The  face I saw each morning, now I miss
And walking by the lily pond and trees.
The robin gave up waiting for your gifts

In my sense of self, I sense a rift
Like the   absence of the sea from Winchelsea
Before I learned that time goes slow  then swift

Remember that scared skylark  and the bees
The hot cracked earth, dried grass, my memories.
The robin gave up waiting for your gifts
Then I  found that time had gone so swift.

Many  years ago we were going to Norfolk at Easter.We both for flu so were delayed by 4 or 5 days.I still had a very painful throat.On Good Friday there was a programme on about Simone Weil.I don’t know if it was  TV or radio.Anyway, it cured me

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

“The term appeared in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929–30) in relation to the application of the inborn aggression in man to ethnic (and other) conflicts, a process still considered by Freud, at that point, as a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression.^[3] For Lacanians, the concept clearly related to the sphere of the Imaginary: the narcissism of small differences, which situates envy as the decisive element in issues that involve narcissistic image.^[4] American psychiatrist Glen O. Gabbard has suggested that Freud’s narcissism of small differences provides a framework to understand that in a loving relationship, there can be a need to find, and even exaggerate, differences in order to preserve a feeling of separateness and self.^[5]

In terms of postmodernity, Clive Hazell argues that consumer culture has been seen as predicated on the narcissism of small differences to achieve a superficial sense of one’s own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness.^[6] The phenomenon has been portrayed by the British comedy group Monty Python in their satirical 1979 film Life of Brian and by author Joan Didion in an essay (part of her 1968 book Slouching Towards Bethlehem) about Michael Laski, the founder of the Communist Party USA (Marxist–Leninist).^[7]”