George Lakoff interviewed

https://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_lakoff

BLVR: Can you explain to me in layman’s neuroscience terms how September 11 changed the way we think?

GL: It reshaped our brains. That’s why they had to keep showing the towers falling over and over and over again. The imagery meant that the towers were people. The planes going in are like bullets going through your brain, the people falling are you falling. Here’s a picture of you dying. The other thing was it was framed in terms of war, instead of crime. Then it was not just war, but metaphorical war, where the enemy is this abstract thing: terror. Terror, which is in you. That’s what’s sort of weird. The enemy is inside America. It’s terror, not terrorists, the outside guys. Of course, by saying ña war on terrorî you can never feel safe. The locus of the war is in you.

BLVR: Are the conservatives who formulated all of these terms aware of these other meanings?

GL: Yeah. I suspect Karen Hughes is smart enough to understand that.

BLVR: Really?

GL: Sure. Think about the image of those towers falling. Think about your empathic response. What you see there you feel in your body. You feel that the terror is in you. You feel that the destruction is in you. Just by looking at it over and over and over, it’s come into you, it’s changed your brain. And so you become the war. It’s not over there in Iraq. Now, you justify the war by saying, “It’s better that it’s fought there than here,” which is the relief. But of course, metaphorically, it’s here. There are people all over the Midwest worrying about the war, especially women, who are empathic, feeling it themselves, worrying that the war is going to come to Peoria, Illinois.

BLVR: Karl Rove’s strategy seems to be to take a Democratic candidate’s greatest strength and manage to turn it into their greatest weakness. He’s good at it. They did it with John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary, and with the Swift Boat thing. Is Kerry finally learning that lesson?

GL: That’s the idea. That’s just what happened. He’s learned exactly that lesson. In fact, he’s learned three of those lessons. They came out in that speech the other night. One lesson is to go after Iraq. Two is to go after Bush’s character by questioning his honesty. And three is to bring up the issue of weakening the country. And he finally started doing all three in the same speech and it was thrilling.

BLVR: Were you impressed with the tightness of the Republican convention?

GL: Incredible. Very impressive. What the Republicans did was craft a new complex frame bringing everything together. They had a job for each night. The job for the first night was to take the war on terror and generalize it to include Iraq, to say the Iraq war is an inherent part of the war on terror and is not only necessary, but inseparable. And then to generalize that to say “This is the great calling of our generation.” So you had lots of FDR, Lincoln and Reagan. Over and over again. It was weird to see FDR being pushed by conservatives who want to get him off the dime.

BLVR: Have there honestly been proposals to take him off the dime?

Sent to Coventry

16142652_853309354808944_225912538121751134_nhttps://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sent-to-coventry.html

Quote:

The first known citation of the allusory meaning is from the Club Book of the Tarporley Hunt, 1765:

“Mr. John Barry having sent the Fox Hounds to a different place to what was ordered … was sent to Coventry, but return’d upon giving six bottles of Claret to the Hunt.”

By 1811, the then understood meaning of the term was defined in Grose’s The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

To send one to Coventry; a punishment inflicted by officers of the army on such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial. The person sent to Coventry is considered as absent; no one must speak to or answer any question he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same place. On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.

A well-known example of someone being sent to Coventry is Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), after his falling out with the Liddell family. Dodgson had developed a close relationship with the Liddell’s daughter Alice. In 1863, when Alice was 11, something happened to cause the family to ostracize him. Whatever it was we can’t now be sure as, although Dodgson recorded it in his diary at the time, the entry was later cut out by a Dodgson family member. This has led to widespread but unproven speculation that the relationship between Dodgson and Alice was inappropriate in some way – possibly what would now be called paedophilic.

Is the space for soul still undefiled

Narcissus_2018-1
The inner coil and tangle of the wild,
Where rose run mad and holly are as one
Ensure that nature’s heart is undefiled

To these depths, the winter bird’s beguiled
Until the red dawn’s fetched by lowly sun
Through the coil and tangle of the wild.

On the path’s side, brown-green leaves are piled
A thousand beetles search for food within
A hidden space where nature’s undefiled

The cat is waiting, acting like the mild
Then dancing, hunting, acting like his kin
At ease in coil and tangle of worlds wild.

The sun is setting, and the night clouds pile
As lovers kiss, so smiles the holy one,
Living all his natures undefiled.

Now, at last, the darkness has begun
The trees unmoving shield the riots within
The inner coil and tangle make the wild,.
Is the space for soul still undefiled?

Nature pregnant, uncontained and wild

The sap is rising in the trees nearby
Till the blossom bursts like mother’s milk
When the baby gives her carnal cry
Wishing for the breast, the feel of silk

Soon the great magnolia will please
And the Tudor walls will warm and dry
In the soil, the worms find wriggled ease
The centipedes and beetles heed blue skies

Fruit trees pruned into archaic forms
Line the pavements bulging with their roots
Old men murmur, feeling struck, forlorn,
With no wife to gentle their pursuits

Nature pregnant,uncontained and wild
Obeys no man’s instruction to be mild

Ancient Greek personal names

Asarum_megacalyx_2018-1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_personal_names#Single_names_and_names_within_families

Extract
Compound names
Demosthenes is compounded from two ordinary Greek roots (a structure at least as old as proto-Indo-European):[8] demos “people” and sthenos “strength”. A vast number of Greek names have this form, being compounded from two clearly recognizable (though sometimes shortened) elements: Nikomachos from nike “victory” and mache “battle”, Sophokles from sophos “wise, skilled” and kleos “glory”, Polykrates from poly “much” and kratos “power”. The elements used in these compounds are typically positive and of good omen, stressing such ideas as beauty, strength, bravery, victory, glory, and horsemanship. The order of the elements was often reversible: aristos and kleos give both Aristokles and Klearistos. Such compounds have a more or less clear meaning. But as was already noted by Aristotle,[9] two elements could be brought together in illogical ways. Thus the immensely productive hippos “horse” yielded, among hundreds of compounds, not only meaningful ones such as Philippos “lover of horses” and Hippodamas “horse-tamer”, but also Xenippos “stranger horse” and Andrippos “man horse”.

Ironing by Vicki Feaver

Asarum_megacalyx_2018-2Ironing

by Vicki Feaver
I used to iron everything:
My iron flying over sheets and towels
like a sledge chased by wolves over snow;

the flex twisting and crinking
until the sheath frayed, exposing
wires like nerves. I stood like a horse

with a smoking hoof,
inviting anyone who dared
to lie on my silver padded board,

to be pressed to the thinness
of dolls cut from paper.
I’d have commandeered a crane

if I could, got the welders at Jarrow
to heat me an iron the size of a tug
to flatten the house.

Then for years I ironed nothing.
I put the iron in a high cupboard.
I converted to crumpledness.

And now I iron again: shaking
dark spots of water onto wrinkled
silk, nosing into sleeves, round

buttons, breathing the sweet heated smell
hot metal draws from newly-washed
cloth, until my blouse dries

to a shining, creaseless blue,
an airy shape with room to push
my arms, breasts, lungs, heart into.

From The Poetry Pharmacy by William Sieghart (Particular, £12.99). Poem courtesy of Vicki Feaver and Jonathan Cape

Too many thoughts

When we wonder whether life is good
Disaster, death, misfortune gather near
As if to come inside us if they could

The poisoned thoughts infiltrate our own blood
Makes it difficult for us to steer
When we wonder whether life is good

Who decided most  news must be gloom?
And we’d even pay to have a leer
As if to take it in us if we  could

Tell us  of   more murders and monsoons,
Literacy’s fruit is haunted fear
So we wonder whether life is good

Yet some learn to  hear more joyful tunes
Allow the glad to enter inner ears
So take it in us as we rightly should

Too many thoughts may make gloom  persevere
Empty heads are joyous and sincere
When we wonder whether life is good
Rumination  tortures with its ” should”

Gold and bright

In winter we  are angry with less  light
We feel our troubles more when in the dark
The sun will rise  yet too soon sinks in spite

We envy God who does what deeds he likes
He leaves us kin to Job with vision stark
In winter we’d appreciate more light

Angry, claiming we have done what’s right
We   think that God has now become a shark
The sun will rise  yet too soon sinks in spite

Bow to Nature’s  overwhelming might
Be grateful for the fire lit by one spark
In winter we appreciate the light

Oh,send us humour for the human plight
We are never sated by one lark
The sun looms in the sky  like a red heart

As the cats miaow and dogs all bark
At least we are not trapped in Noah’s Ark
In dark winter  bored with the long nights
The sun will rise  again  golden and bright

 

Your touch is both gentle and bright.

Oh, cradle my soul in your light
As I am in darkness tonight.
Fill me with your love
On earth,not above.
Your touch is both gentle and bright.

Seeing and feeling are one.
As senses conjoin yet are none.
I know it is so
The darkness shall glow
You are both god and person.

It seems like the heavens are weeping
Rain and snow fall while we’re sleeping
The clouds are grey black
As Northward they trek.
As for records, are they all we are keeping?

We dwell in a body of flesh
With others we love to enmesh.
Let’s get up and dance now
Love shows us how…
We dance to the tunes that refresh

We humans need meaning to create.
The meaningless often agitate.
But stories abound.
Pick the best you have found.
Get in there and start to narrate.

In nature time goes round and round
Life’s a spiral, the wise one has found.
Each time I pass you
I see you anew
Until gently we are laid in the ground.

The end is the beginning,they say.
So say what’s important today.
For time flows like a stream
What is ,soon has been.
So we are foolish to attempt to delay

The promised land

Joy sings now with golden light,
Then after day comes deep,black night.
New moon is rising by grey trees,

The earth is where I want to be.

I want the day,I want the night.
I want the dark.I want the light.
I want to see and to be seen,

And not to lose my precious  dreams

The sun has set,grey clouds turn black,
The day just gone  will not come back.
I’ll rest in quiet reverie

Until the reaper’s scythe takes me.

And then I drop and mix with dust,
till worms and beetles sate their lust.
I fall into ten thousand motes,

And dance,in sunlight, music’s notes.

No more striving ,no more ambition
No more fighting,no competition.
Every particle’s the same

Without such thing as unique name.

And, side by side, we all are one,
The lusts of life have been and gone.
We dwell with dirt and grain and sand
At last we’ve reached the Promised Land

Nothing is true or false or it’s erased

Addiction can be learned at any age
There is just  the content  and the choice
Why not do it now,it’s all the rage?

For me,it’s mainly  words on one book page
Ideally spoken by a human voice
Addiction can be learned at any age

Once your will is to your mind engaged
Forget your human eyes were ever moist
Why not scream  right now,it’s all the rage?

Beauty,truth and love can be debased
It’s popular right now to practice  lies
Addiction can be learned at any age

Nothing is true or false or it’s erased
Reality by dream is well advised
Why not kill it now,it’s off the page?

Children grow up and out of toys
Why should the addict be de-voiced?
Addiction can be learned at any age
Does even a baby love their cage?

A dead tree full of live birds

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/5452/auto/0/A-DEAD-TREE-FULL-OF-LIVE-BIRDS

A DEAD TREE FULL OF LIVE BIRDS

A dead tree full of live birds.
Why should I set this down?
On a young man’s palm, a spiky clump
that could be a dried dog-turd
seen through my spectacles becomes
a cluster of baby snails, bodies clear as glass
but horned, shelled, complete,
one climbing toward a finger.
Who wants my news of tiny slow new life,
or flickering life amid stiff, brittle twigs?
The impulse to celebrate
is paralysed after a moment’s thought.It is not merely that another youth,
his bunched up fist aloft, declaimed:
“I am Azania…I have no time for liberals…”
while at the same concert for the Art Centre’s friends
child-mimes with the vivid grace of mice
enacted angry pupils and their wicked teacher
whom in righteous triumph they lynch with stones and fire.
Not just that responsible thinkers announce
demands of History, revolution, sociological times.
Not alone the dumbing of a girl’s desperate death,
its charge of griefs and guilts that my words won’t bear,
by which I’ve lost a line of meaning
and an heir to some of my books, some of my hopes.

Also, in this mortal mood I am appalled
beneath the weight of books. The shelves are laden,
the shelves in my room are laden with books –
and of even the most urgently treasured through decades
of fishmoth and dust, I shall have left many unread.
While beyond, defying the spans of all who care,
are vast collected libraries
expanding to a cosmos of the unexplored.
Not another page, another line,
is needful.
Job and Arjuna already asked my questions.
The “Ode in Dejection” wrestled with my paralysis.
Over such baffling, tragic tides as ours
“Dover Beach” and “Lapis Lazuli” have given
ageless answers.
Whatever I may find to say perhaps was said
before I breathed.
But even if my news were news,
useful, bearing on the predicament,
there is enough already greatly given
waiting to be unforgotten.

The smell of mint this morning
invading the bathroom when the window was opened
will aid no struggle, rescue nobody,
save no one from despair,
nor even yield a Zen illumination
no matter what I may connect into the moment.
Yet I am naming it –
as though the shaping lines that hold
my animal or vegetable moment out of time
could grant me, my own reader, life
before and after.

And those immensities, the libraries,
inhabit only us, our intimate space.
Read and  unread, my shelves of books
are my urgent life, and I,
their possible reader, am possibly theirs.
It is the `dead’ past now that we live out
with no redundancy, no repetition,
live out, becoming its continuing tale.
Defection into silence would annul
the inner galaxy.

Names

Why does nobody seem to call their child Plato?
Plato Chips
Plato Bred

Since Adam and Eve are popular why not Euclid?

Euclid May

Who are Eucliding?

Moses  is a famous prophet and indeed is still a popular name
Moses Might

In the UK nobody is called Jesus but Joshua is popular

I was only joshing you

Jewish  names are common and we didn’t know in the UK

Michael Mary Ann Ruth Rebecca
David
Joseph
John

Herod is not common

But Greek names are not

Socrates Spatt
Oedipus Wrecks
Aristotle Lears
Plato Tarts
Electra Ruin
Eros Again O’Lord
What about Roman names?They are popular
Augustine O’Cummin
Julius O’Jokes
Julia McGenerates
Playme O’video
Gemma G’eneralise’d
Brutus B’erates
Crime N’Punishment ; that’s not Latin,editor.Stop!

 

 

 

Misperception

What I  thought was glowing evening sun
Turns out to be a neon light come on too soon
And what imagination sees a gun
Where there is but a fine toothed hair comb?

The mind is waiting with a bunch of signs
To fit perceptions into  ready truths
Though I’ve not seen  a  gun nor made designs
Nor used a  nit comb since I was a youth

What we see is what will interact
What we desire,we love, or what we hate
From all the memories that are well packed
Into minds with  independent states

And so we quarrel , murder, go to war
With those who  look from different  coloured doors

 

Grief

Grief  and love are linked by  metal chains
Imagination cannot  foresee change
When love’s killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

In our wanderings in our mind’s domains
The  furniture  appears,is rearranged
Rage and love are linked by a  steel chain

The mind itself can change the human brain
The one most strong may be the one insane
When love dies, its shadow will  remain

The hate of loss  is like the mark of Cain
The rational one can be almost deranged
Grief  and love are linked by a  strong chain

What is lost will  heal in its due time
Murderous love   comes from the most estranged
When love’s killed its  ghost will  cause  much pain

Suffering most acute is now in place
Chronic losses cause a pale strained face
Grief  and love are linked by a  gold chain
When love’s killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

Apple wood

I have a piece of apple wood
I have my whittling knife.
I want to make a gift for you,
That will commend your life.
Apple wood is sweet and sound
The tree grew here by me.
I chose the best part I could find
From the virtue of the tree.
Apple wood is a rare gift
We must make something whole,
For if you touch my apple wood
You can feel its soul.
The sweetness of the fruit of love
Is there within the wood.
So all who touch the apple here
Will be moved to good.
What knowledge did the tree conceal
That Eden was destroyed?
This is a good metaphor
Yet why was it employed?

Recycle sins

Rain stopped prayer.
It never drains when it pours.
There’s many a true word spoken as  a test.
“Tis better to have lived at cost,than never to have lived at all.
Where have all the showers gone?
I love you only once a day.
Wisdom is the king of humour.
He shall tear his frock…. stop stealing my clothes!
Was Jerusalem built here,in England’s mares and evil spheres?
We here believe Jesus was white and an Englishman,
I wish you a merry Litmus.
Please don’t leer at the women.They are all wearing vests.
I was tried many times and pleaded for sanity.
Where have all the old men gone?
If,homeless kindly sleep in Church.Thank me,too.
If depressed kindly weep in Church.
If shy,please don’t mention it.
If worried you may gnaw your kneeler.
If paranoid,we are looking at you sideways.
If fasting,kindly faint quietly.
If abstaining,please weep softly.
If dead please report to the Vicar.
If wicked please play away.
Tread lightly for I have shared all my dreams.
Don’t stop till the gnats have all stung.
The vicar went out with a wrangler.
If you need legal advice you are in the wrong place.
Fish and whips available in the bookstore.
Handcuffs are going up as Marks And Spencer go down…
If completely expired keep mum.
If past your use by date don’t rot till after the service then kindly place your body in the compost heap and you can call your soul your own for a while.

Whip up a mousse for the desert.
If weighed down by sins kindly recycle them in the church Bin.

Viruses

dandelion 5.jpg
In winter time we’re forced to give
Homes to naughty viruses
Because these little creatures
Have nowhere else to live.

They take up their abode
In our noses, in our ears.
I need some sunny weather
To make them disappear.

But we have had the coldest winter
For a hundred years.
I’ll have to hypnotise myself
Then visualise sunny days.

I bought myself a little book
From Amazon UK
You can learn self hypnosis
Just inside one day.

I dream I am reclining
On  a beach in Italy
With a beautiful  young gigolo 
Lying next to me.

I dream of soft blue water
Reflecting sunny sky.
While lying on a mattress
Watching folk go by.

But when my trance is over
I come to in my bed
With a  giant box of Kleenex
Right next to my head.

I am strengthening my diaphragm
Coughing night and day
And cursing all these viruses
You should hear what I say.

But is that very wicked
As God made viruses too?
Do they have some special role,
In  enlightening me and you.?

So should we learn  to love them
As our nearest  neighbours.
Whilst our immune systems
Carry out their labours?

I hear the  garbage lorries
Collecting  stuff outside
I wish they’d collect my viruses,
And take them a long ride.

Because winter is so beautiful
The snow,the sun,the frost
If only I was feeling well
And was not fever tossed.

Viruses are not whole beings
They are just bits of DNA.
Be sure that you run quickly
If you see them coming your way.

They carry  information
They want to  reproduce.
And if they get near enough
They’ll put you to their use.

They are like selfish people
Who do not think of you.
Only think what  need you serve,
What they can make you do.

They are  egocentric
They want the central place
We are here to service them.
We’re just the human race!

Being alive

Who has never felt grief
When a small gesture would have helped
but it has ,unknowingly, been with held?
How many people have the imagination
to guess what’s in your mind,
And to embrace you rather than push you away?
No-one,No-one.No-one knows.
No-one knows these numbers.
No-one knows these names.
No-one knows how many feel diffident,
Nor how many feel shame.
Being alive is joyful!
Being alive is pain!
Being alive is all we have,
We’ll never be alive again.
I look into your eyes today
I sense your shame and woe.
I look into your eyes just now
And tell you that I know.
Being alive is lonely.
Being alive is good.
Being alive is pain indeed
For flesh is not like wood.

Love is a raft

Blackcap2014

Some days are sad and blue
And then we feel lonely too;
Or we cause rifts.
Some days are doldrum days.
Some days are like bad plays.
Not such a gift.
Most days have joyful parts.
Most days we can lift our hearts.
They pass all too swift.
Some days love speaks to me.
Some days I feel so free.
I love my craft.
Life is a patterned weave.
Love helps us when we grieve.
Love is a raft.

 

See how the sun comes back.
See how light fills the gaps..
Some days we laugh.
Weep now and I’ll weep with you.
I have known sorrow too.
Yet sorrow does pass.

Sorrow does pass

Hints

With my felt tipped pen as painting brush
I see the context holds the written words
And in the speckled brownness of a thrush
See the paint pot Nature wished to share

I move my hand in  rhythm to letters make
The hours of practice come to seamless ease
Yet I miss the  crimson  in  the  lake
As cerulean blues  my  eyes  appease.

Can a name  or word be colour true?
Can a hint evoke the feel of  you?
Can my words tease out the edges new?
Can   we tell when we are feeling blue?

What ever medium we  humans  may  use
We  can merely hint at  points  of view

Little ladybirds

I used to write when  he was fast asleep
I could concentrate enough and keep my words
Now he sleeps forever in the deep

Will the Resurrection make our bodies leap
Bring back flowers and little ladybirds?
I used to write when  he was fast asleep

He is  vivid presence in my dreams
There his honeyed voice  will still be heard
He’s gone  to dwell where life is dark and deep

In a ray of light, a black sunbeam
Shows the hidden value  of the Word
I used to write when  he was fast asleep

The voice of Place itself  makes widows keen
In the woods, the trees all shake and stir
Yet he sleeps forever in the deep

“God will  give no more than we  can bear”
Must we believe the  traumatized  should learn?
I used to write when  he was fast asleep
Then I’d give him tea and  would not weep

Geese and swans

The geese that once flew by at  dawn and dusk
Have vanished since the swans came back to nest
Swans  show beauty   in their curving  necks
Yet  their wings can kill unwanted guests

I miss the geese as in a mass they fly
A  sacramental moment in my day
They circle as if one when  coming  down
A god of form and force is here at play

The birds are one with Nature and  her rhythms
We,  having minds,  are separate and are sad
For we don’t just adapt but we  have changed
We make war and all the world is mad

Can we love and dwell in harmony?
For hatred hung   the good on Calvary

Let’s be brave

Chick pea pie and cats for the lively - Glimpses between the cracks:Alice's Looking GlassYou have to be brave to write because all you have ever felt,experienced or studied can be drawn up into your consciousness whilst you write.A friend of mine who is a writer put it like this.”It has taken me to places I’d rather not have gone to.” However she said she manage to live through it.At the time I had only written mathematical works so I didn’t understand what she meant.But I have now had some experiences which give me a hint of what she was trying to say.
If you’ve had many fearsome experiences then these feelings may come up when you loosen the grip of consciousness.However I have also found a spirit of laughter in me which is new.Step into the darkness without knowing.It’s only by going there that help may come.But the fear is that it won’t.You can’t get an insurance policy beforehand.

Are you stepping into a void or will there be something there?
Also in drawing or painting it can take courage to draw what you perceive.I found that especially when drawing buildings and studying perspective.I have the feeling,”No,No.It can’t be this steep a gradient.It’s too much”
And in being inside a building like Westminster Abbey or Durham Cathedral trying to assimilate the vision,the huge spaces and the power and size of the shapes can create awe or even terror.One can lose one’s sense of self entirely.But it can also be revivifying when one has returned.The fear is that one will not return.
Maybe it’s the same with relating to people as well?

Sail in a glove

On a  frosty day you need your gloves
The hand that feeds is not one Jack should bite
So in a gesture  of self care and love
Put  gloves on in bed and have a fight

Marriage asks for loving in the night
On a  frosty day you need your gloves
Even with a down duvet so light
Will it make a nice nest for the dove?

My house is cold.I’d undress  if I could
The public library’s fearsome,it’s so  hot
On a  frosty day you need your gloves
On  your head wear a le Creuset pot

Cast iron  may be a la mode today
Yet it was a danger in the  Flood
As it  floated over hills  in antic play
On a  rainy day, sail in a glove.