Month: April 2018

Is it  not idolatry to graze?

Drifting in a state of reverie
Safe within the spheres of  endless grace
The images within will speak to me

In imagined boat on inner sea
The sky and sea ,intense the glowing space
Drifting in a muse, a reverie

Those who  have been  blessed will each agree
All we are  and do will  leave a trace
The images within will speak to all who see.

Love united is community.
In  creation ,we will see God’s face
Drifting in our will -less reverie

Yet on the News we see the people flee.
The Holy Land  is filled with anguish base.
The images within will show ,.but can  we see?

Is it  not idolatry to  graze
Where  the still small voice itself amazed?
Drifting in a state of reverie
The images within will speak to me

Rewrite your own life?

DSC00069 (1) 22.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/15/how-to-rewrite-your-own-life-story

 

Quote

 

“The final layer of understanding what her own purpose was, and the spur to write her book, came in 2016 when she was caring for her father, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“I’d spent my life trying to control what happened to me. But this was something I couldn’t control. I had to surrender. That taught me an important lesson, which is that it’s not by seeking to control the world that we get the best out of it. So, in the final moments of my dad’s life, I realised the true purpose of my own.””

Instead of a husband

Photo0317.jpg

An electric carving knife… if you afford a joint of beef!
An electric tin opener.For those nights when baked beans are all you have left and your hand’s are not good
A giant size teddy bear.Something to hug.
Money.
A masseuse.
A friend who can climb a ladder.
A dog to bark at you.
A cat to cuddle up to you.
A parrot to repeat the words you said when you dropped a Le Creuset pot onto the floor to your guests.
A person who enjoys conversation.

Not a lot really.

He doth protest too much

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-trump-russia-guilty-20180222-story.html

 

“In other words, Trump’s furious claims of spotless innocence could be entirely consistent with the truth. But as Queen Gertrude observed to Hamlet, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Surprising as this is in a veteran of showbiz, Trump seems not to understand how a close-up magnifies every gesture. His jumpiness around the subject of Russia; his hand-wringing over ways to end the investigation; his rhetorical flop-sweat at the mention of the letters F, B and I — all these and more have his audience thinking: Gee, for an innocent man he sure does act guilty.”

The Holy Land

The weather of the world is growing wild
Sacred values constantly defiled
Where are we to find a different way?
Who will have the special words to say,
The weather of the world is growing wild

Where are now the virgin and her child?
The Holy Land by strife has been beguiled
We will pay the penalty one day
The weather of the world is growing wild

In my mouth I taste the bitter bile
The storm clouds bundled, yellow,deep and soiled
Battering with anguish we  who pray
For what we ask is,”give us our own way”
Who can impart grace to hardened souls?
The weather of the world is growing wild

 

 

Why me,god?

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, “Why god? Why me?” and the thundering voice of God answered, There’s just something about you that pisses me off.”
― Stephen King, Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

The Alphabet by Karl Shapiro

The letters of the Jews as strict as flames
Or little terrible flowers lean
Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages,
Singing through solid stone the sacred names.
The letters of the Jews are black and clean
And lie in chain-line over Christian pages.
The chosen letters bristle like barbed wire
That hedge the flesh of man,
Twisting and tightening the book that warns.
These words, this burning bush, this flickering pyre
Unsacrifices the bled son of man
Yet plaits his crown of thorns.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-alphabet-5/

Where go the tipsy idols of the Roman
Past synagogues of patient time,
Where go the sisters of the Gothic rose,
Where go the blue eyes of the Polish women
Past the almost natural crime,
Past the still speaking embers of ghettos,
There rise the tinder flowers of the Jews.
The letters of the Jews are dancing knives
That carve the heart of darkness seven ways.
These are the letters that all men refuse
And will refuse until the king arrives
And will refuse until the death of time
And all is rolled back in the book of days.

Can feeling bad be good for us?

Narcissus_Xit2018https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201009/emotional-acceptance-why-feeling-bad-is-good

 

“Third, acceptance is implicitly akin to saying, “This is not that bad.” Which is the truth–negative emotions may not be fun, but they won’t kill you; experiencing them as they are–annoying but not dangerous–is eventually much less of a drag than the ongoing (failing) attempt to avoid them.

Finally, when you accept a negative emotion, it tends to lose its destructive power. This is surprising and counter intuitive to many people, but if you think about it for a while, you will see the logic of this approach. Swimmers who are caught in an undertow and feel themselves being dragged out to sea often panic and begin to swim against the current with all their might. Often, they fatigue, cramp and drown. To survive, such a swimmer should do the opposite–let go. Let the current take him out to sea. Within a few hundred yards the current will weaken and the swimmer can swim around and back to shore. The same with a powerful emotion: pushing against it is futile and possibly dangerous; but if you accept the emotion, it will run its course while allowing you to run yours.”

Continue Reading

The God of metal

How interpret actions that seem mad
And how do Syrians “live” in their cruel  state
Will these missiles change the vile Assad?

It’s paranoid to see just good and bad
A mix of feelings of both love and hate
How interpret actions that seem mad?

Should we pray to God to send his flood?
The God of copper,iron and steel breastplate
Will holy missive change the cruel Assad?

Copper in the kitchen,there  it’s good
But metal’s used in weapons by the State
How interpret usage that seem mad?

If the war ends,Syria soaked in blood
Who is left to think and  to reshape?
Can any missiles educate  Assad?

When we’ve finished death,destruction,rape
What will spring up from that mute landscape?
How interpret thinking that seems mad?
No human act  can  make this world be good

The unusual life of J G Ballard

FG2744-3-14ahttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/14/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview10

 

“I came to live in Shepperton in 1960. I thought: the future isn’t in the metropolitan areas of London. I want to go out to the new suburbs, near the film studios. This was the England I wanted to write about, because this was the new world that was emerging. No one in a novel by Virginia Woolf ever filled up the petrol tank of their car.” The proximity of Shepperton film studios was important. “They were why I picked this place. The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.”

Ballard claims that he has “always treated England as a strange fiction”. The real world, in which he was formed, was Shanghai, where he was born in 1930 and brought up as a typical privileged expatriate boy in the city’s International Settlement, without learning Chinese or tasting a morsel of native cuisine. “I didn’t have a Chinese meal until I returned to England.” In 1943, his world flipped upside down when he was incarcerated with his parents in the Lunghua detention camp. In his collection of memoirs, Miracles of Life, published earlier this year, Ballard writes that he was “largely happy” in Lunghua, finding there “a relaxed and easygoing world” that he had not known in everyday life. He claims that he thrived during his two and a half years in detention, “even when food rations fell to near zero, skin infections covered my legs, “

I carry a  knife and fork in my handbag

IMG_0114.jpgDear Aunt Aggie

I am worried about dating.I am not concerned with whether they want sex on the first date as I carry a  knife and fork in my handbag.No,I worry about whether they will want to get married and expect me to boil their hankies every week.My reason is,it’s hard to feel sensual when you have seen their oil stained,inky,damp and mouldy  100% pure cotton hankies.We were taught in the convent how to iron men’s hankies but I can’t see anything in St Paul’s letters about it; nor in the Gospels.And actually I no longer call myself religious.
Ever yours,
Cecilia

 

Dear Cecilia

You seem a rather violent lady.Are you sure you can develop empathy for anyone.There is no need to stab men with a fork if you are not feeling sexual.A few words will suffice like,maybe when you have bought me a diamond ring and taken me to Harrods for a handbag.Or whatever turns you on.A new  novel, a pair of shoes….
You seem obsessed with hankies.Just be grateful someone invented sanitary towels.Come to think of it,Tissues! Why don’t real men like tissues? Are their noses going to need blowing so hard that the tissue will tear? Or is it because tissues are no good for cleaning bicycles with?
Tell them blowing your nose hard is dangerous [It’s true[
In particular,  don’t blow your nose hard after Moh’s surgery.My late husband did and it took me a week to clean the bathroom let alone his handkerchief.

Your ruminations will end if and only if you truly love someone and by good luck, he/she loves you.You are using these thoughts to get away from others./
Most men can use a washing machine and some Oxydol detergent.But maybe he will polish your shoes while you iron his tie and his hanky.Be careful.Sometimes it’s safer just to daydream

Good luck,Aggie

Britain and chemical weapons

pexels-photo-929382.jpegFrom wikipedia

Post-World War II

From 1939 to 1989 experiments on chemical weapons including nerve agents and countermeasures were carried out at the Porton Down research establishment. Although volunteers were used, many ex-servicemencomplained about suffering long term illnesses after taking part in the tests. It was alleged that before volunteering they were not provided with adequate information about the experiments and the risk, in breach of the Nuremberg Code of 1947. This became the subject of a lengthy police investigation called Operation Antler.

From 1950, a Chemical Defence Establishment was established as CDE Nancekuke for small-scale chemical agent production. A pilot production facility for Sarin was built, which produced about 20 tons of the nerve agent from 1954 until 1956. A full-scale production plant was planned, but with the 1956 decision to end UK’s offensive chemical weapons programme it was never built. Nancekuke was mothballed, but was maintained through the 1960s and 1970s in a state whereby production of chemical weapons could easily re-commence if required.[19]

In the early 1980s the government took the view that the lack of a European chemical weapons retaliatory capability was a “major gap in NATO’s armoury”. However the political difficulties of addressing this prevented any redevelopment of a British chemical weapons capability.[20]

An inquest was opened on 5 May 2004 into the death on 6 May 1953 of a serviceman, Ronald Maddison, during an experiment using sarin. His death had earlier been found by a private MoD inquest to have been as a result of “misadventure” but this was quashed by the High Court in 2002. The 2004 hearing closed on 15 November, after a jury found that the cause of Maddison’s death was “application of a nerve agent in a non-therapeutic experiment”.

Chemical weapons

Chemical Weapons Convention

Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction
Condition Ratification by 65 states
Signatories 165
Parties 192 (List of state parties) Four UN states are not party: Egypt,Israel, North Korea and South Sudan

Can mindfulness drive you mad?

Photo0302.jpghttps://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill

 

“Research suggests her experience might not be unique. Internet forums abound with people seeking advice after experiencing panic attacks, hearing voices or finding that meditation has deepened their depression after some initial respite. In their recent book, The Buddha Pill, psychologists Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm voice concern about the lack of research into the adverse effects of meditation and the “dark side” of mindfulness. “Since the book’s been published, we’ve had a number of emails from people wanting to tell us about adverse effects they have experienced,” Wikholm says. “Often, people have thought they were alone with this, or they blamed themselves, thinking they somehow did it wrong, when actually it doesn’t seem it’s all that uncommon.””

How should we remember those we’ve lost?

How should we remember those we’ve lost
The husband, the miscarried child, the dreams
The date they died, or where we loved them first?

The place in time, the lists we make, the ghost
Or should we reimagine  much loved scenes
Should we cling to  memories of the lost?

Who is it that we shall miss the most
The husband or the children unrevealed
The date they disappeared, the last, the first

I do not laugh or cry when all alone
Emotions have no message,nothing mean
When noone  knows  or shares the  space between

While I live, my body and my bones
Prefer the sensuous scents of ripe cornfields
The place he slept, his tenderness ,his arms

I  still feel the  grief  from child stillborn
The Saxon cliffs of Kent,with smoke adorned
How should we remember husbands  gone
When they leave no child and all is done?

Cud yew walk a little faster?

10423980_553244238148792_4594114838931514474_n.jpg

Why did the cow chew the could?
What cud we have for tea?
He said he’d come if he cud but he’s working the late shift
Cud you call the manager,please?
I wood if I cud
You can be persecuted for dumping rubbish or giving tips to flies.By order.
Are the Christians expecting to be prosecuted for  not being Hindhu?
Strange how all the Abrahamic religions are violent compaired to other ones
Children,pare off for the dancing lesson
He almost paired my skin off.
Do not pare off for sexual or romantic love under sixteen  yares.
Your smart watch is really watching you!