Umvelt?

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

 

 

 umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German Umwelt meaning “environment” or “surroundings”) is the “biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal”.[1] The term is usually translated as “self-centered world”.[2] Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The subject of umwelt and Uexküll’s work is described by Dorion Sagan in an introduction to a collection of translations.[3] The term umwelt, together with companion terms Umgebung(an Umwelt as seen by another observer) and Innenwelt (the mapping of the self to the world of objects)[4], have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians, since they offer a solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater.

 

 

 

Fire

The  wordless feelings of the soul  catch light
Like fire,like diamonds, like the dust of stars
With their fire they penetrate the night

To expression, they the mind incite
To where the words may open and be clear
The  wordless feelings of the soul  catch light

Expression by its method brings delight
We see the  molten universe  desire
With great fires , with wonder, what  is wrought?

Like a flock of geese in happy flight
The heart of unknown worlds is not a liar
The sense and feeling  souls will   bring  us light

Of the thunder  and the lion we note
The natural world with its own might conspires
With its  being  it permeates the night

So our hearts and souls does love devour
Never cornered never shall it cower
The  wordless feelings of the soul  catch light
With  such brilliance can we feel the night?

Poetry and spirituality

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems?field_poem_themes_tid=1651

 

The Soul selects her own Society (303)

Emily Dickinson1830 – 1886

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

c. 1862

The rubber face

please-follow-directions

From a newspaper but I can’t remember.Now laugh

 

Please come to my thinner party this week.Water provided
When we lose weight we can eat a chocolate biscuit twice a year.Is it worth it?
What can we eat while fasting? Nothing! I say, that’s a bit steep.How about  bread and water? Or even just water?
Do your roast beside  your husband? Buy our nightwear, cool and invisible and thrill him to  a  near death experience while you sleep in our tiny bikini like pyjamas.
I plead guilty to kissing my husband before and after he died.I don’t care if it was a  crime; it wasn’t a sin.That is what matters,
I doubt if I would marry again as men don’t like  me laughing  while I am asleep.They take it personally.Always a  mistake.I  admit my husband’s  rubber face gave me hysterics in a dream.Is that bad? Was he to blame?What is blame? To assume everything has a cause and it might be me [I]  or you.

Recognition

pasqueflower2“When you talk about prayer in Judeo-Christian terms, prayer is usually construed as a kind of dualistic act. You’re praying to somebody else for something. Prayer in the Western sense is usually construed as making a connection. I don’t think that connection has to be made; it’s already there. Poetry probably has to do with the recognizing of that connection, rather than trying to create something that isn’t there.”

W S Merwin

For a feel

Two golden catsCan you come round for a feel on Sunday?
Can I bring my flamingo?
Sartre is smarter
Are you showing any resistance on Saturday?
What do you make for sinners  on Sundays ?
His food is defectable and his drinks are on tap
Do you like  whips and flesh on  Fridays?
Shall we sin together in the choir?
How many lovers have you broken even with?
Shall I bring a DVD or is it DIY only?
What music do you lark to?
How barge is your TV?
I felt a surge of hatred when Enoch Powell  appeared in a dream,Is it a sin?
What is a sin now ? Anything or nothing?

Slightly shorter book

DSCF0115I have been making a shorter edition of my book so I can sell it cheaply. That is £6.99 instead of £39.99.It’s all about page sizes and the price of printing.I will only get 38 pence per copy so I shall raise tzhe price in a week or two as I am not a Charity yet,Unlike Eton

Red maple tree

photo0152

I lie back in the weather-proofed green chair
To gaze up at the flowering maple tree.
Now, touched by sun,lungs full of scented air
I embrace with joy the beauty I now see.

Old celandine show brightly by my feet
Neglected currant bushes straggle round the path
There is no birdsong yet a silence sweet
Soothes my heart and quietens my wrath.

For my heart's sore and anguished is my mind
Yet in this little wood I feel deep calm.
My eyes are shadowed and my face is lined.
May this green spring bring me a gentle balm.

For even in depression and deep grief,
The mind makes healing medicine of a leaf.

Poetry and prose

5230548http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/p-as_docs/PoetryandProse.pdf

An extract

“Poetry and Prose: What’s the Difference?
Nearly all writing shares the goal of communicating a message to an
audience, but how that message is communicated can differ greatly.
The divisions between poetry and prose aren’t clear-cut, but here are some
generally accepted differences.
Prose
Most everyday writing is in prose
form.
The language of prose is typically
straightforward without much
decoration.
Ideas are contained in sentences that
are arranged into paragraphs.
There are no line breaks. Sentences
run to the right margin.
The first word of each sentence is
capitalized.
Prose looks like large blocks of
words.

 
Poetry
Poetry is typically reserved for
expressing something special in an
artistic way.
The language of poetry tends to be
more expressive or decorated, with
comparisons, rhyme, and rhythm
contributing to a different sound and
feel.
Ideas are contained in lines that may
or may not be sentences. Lines are
arranged in stanzas.
Poetry uses line breaks for various
reasons—to follow a formatted
rhythm or to emphasize an idea.
Lines can run extremely long or be as
short as one word or letter.”

Match of the Day

We hold  minnow parties now and then but with women working it’s too much
He said he had  a tart desire.
Do you  know rice screams?
We meet for toffee after math.
He loved Eve’s pudding more than mine
He followed me all over the net, so now the windows are bare
Did you ask for my hand or an elastic band?
She led me a merry dance all over the moon on its beams
I saw her heart was smoking.I wondered whether to shoot her but my camera was  flat
She was well spoken apart from saying “scuttle my badger” now and then
We live a part.We are actors.
Why have King Lear on Match of the Day?
Richard the Bird has always fascinated people.But he’s dead!

Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent

Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent
Deodorants,shampoo  and strange new thoughts
The anxious adolescent  in torment

Tampons,towels. skin care and defence
Confession, absolution, count for naught
Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent

Wet and dry the dreams are wryly bent
We wake confused from what we never sought
The anxious adolescent  in torment

The virtues and the vices must be learnt
The will and the desire cannot be bought
Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent

Parents’ words our own strength can augment
But for the nervous, it is much too late
The anxious adolescent,  the torment

“Civilised”. we  might just kiss a date
Until we lose our heads and challenge fate
Dandruff, menstruation ,acne , scent
Poor  adolescent in   this  mad torment

 

 

Who are you?

 

11 bbbbbnnnnnnnnnbb875135_607677619372120_8172549615792536178_oWho are you?
Your sister out-law.

And who are you?
I’n the even job man

I’m the pardoner.

I’m the Parish beast

I’m the Kill it

I’m the polouse man

I’m the gatden know ’em

I’m your Freudian angel from Devon

I am your psychotic   analyst

I’ m the pests cat

I am the  brother with paws

I’m the cat’s lover

I’m  wit when wined

I am Professor Blackhead and  this is my strife Whistle

I am a  logical terror

I am Ted, you?

A cat with no legs

I shall now reveal the new proof
Mathematics is a religion in truth
For nothing is  not zero
Unless Newton says so
And Leibniz  swore oaths on his roof

Mathematical objects all float
Around the demon who sails the big boat
If  you have no faith
They leave little trace
Like Father Xmas and fairies   sweet notes

 

Numbers are abstract  and shady
And God is a very sweet lady
I saw seven eggs
And a cat with no legs
I reckon I ‘ll soon have gone crazy

I learned to walk when I could speak

5230546

I was taught to read Latin and Greek
Before I  had managed to speak
Quo vadis ,I printed?
As mother had hinted
The lavatory needed a new seat

I prefered getting washed in a bucket
Till I swore and told mother to feck it
She said, you are no longer mute
And you look  very cute
But keep well away from  light sockets

Our larder was full of baked  tarts
Mother taught me the  best of her art
Apple,fig and lemon
But never a melon
Unless you get sad in your heart

We never had coffee at home
We drank tea or the washing up foam,
So when I went to Uni
The coffee ran through me
And wetted a mathematical tome

 

Nonsense verse

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Nonsense%20Verse.htm

 

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
Edward Lear

The rhythm  of the world

DSCF0113DSCF0116Quite a miracle this morning.
I  just missed the bus
Well,I thought I can sit  down for 15  minutes but even before I reahed the stop
I saw another one coming.
So I held my hand out and they let me on
I was listening to a woman in the Coffee Shop then I felt a  bit odd so I decided I had had some exercise  and sunshine and the bookshop was not  inviting
I went to the bus stop and saw my bus waas due in one minute!
I was whirled up into this  chariot of fire and here I am back home wondering what went so right today.
I know it’s chance but some days it’s all one way and others it’s like this
I call it “walking in tune with the rhythm  of the world” or in this case
Moving in rhythm with the buses of the city.

N

Stan’s new adventure

523055252305485230546

The wheelie bins and Stan’s adventures therein

Stan was in his front garden polishing the wheelie bins with lavender wax polish.
He was not very happy as the garden was only 10 feet by 12. so the huge wheelie bins ruined it.When he got to the third one the lid popped open and out jumped his next door neighbour “Adulterous Annie”.

Hello,Stan” she whispered.”Where’s Mary now ?”
“Why?”Stan muttered into the back of her neck which he licked as he like her salty taste.
“I was thinking,these bins are so big,we could both get inside one.It would make a change!”.
“What a strange idea” he replied philosophically.however age was no bstacle where love was involved, if you catch my drifting between the lines.
Soon Stan and Anne were in the big green recycling bin.Stan being 81 had shrunk somewhat so he took up less space than Annie did.He allowed her to kiss his left eyelid.What a lovely feeling.

Alas, all too soon,as they say, they heard Mary’s bicycle bell.She was getting faster amd faster.As she wheeled her bike up the 30 yard long front path to the porch she heard murmurings and mutters,

She lifted up the green plastic lid and saw the two lovers covered in cuttings from the privet hedge.
“What the bleedin’hell are you doing in there?”she shouted mellifluously.
Well,it’s hard to explain,……………but Stan was wondering about a green funeral” Anne said mischievously.

“Funeral ,my hat!” Mary said coldly.”Get out at once”
“Don’t speak to me like that” Stan beseeched her brazenly.
“Well,it’s a shock to find your husband in the bin with another woman!”
“Wouldn’t it be more of a shock if he was in the bin with a man,or even a sheep?”
“Schmann or Schwommann,sheep,,it’s immaterial.
“Hurry,get out,quickly before the school exit time.what will all the mums think as they go by?”
6610622
But poor Stan could not get out,He was stuck.Oh,my,what an odd phrase.
“Have you got your mobile on you?”
“Yes,it’s here in my bag.
“You’d better call 999”
“What a brilliant idea!”
Soon Dave the paramedic arrived and ran into the garden
Mary showed him Stan’s situation.

Ever resourceful ,Dave was not bothered though the NHS budget might be getting cut.
He tied some rope round Stan’s waist and between the three of them and Emile the cat and his friend Elizabeth, they managed to haul Stan out.

Annie stood weeping with shame.Her silvery blue eyeshadow was beginning to run mixed with tears and black water soluble mascara from Chanel of Paris and London. Her new coral lipstick from Clinique was not as non-allergenic as she hope.
Never mind,it gave her lips that bee stung look that many men admire.It reminded Stan of his boyhood days playing near High Force Waterfalls in upper Teesdale….Teesdale ,still an undiscovered and undervalued part of England
,Contact the English Touring Board for more information. Holiday Loans available from Thwaites of Stockton and Darlington at only 1% interest.

Mary gave Annie a large Kleenex tissue,
“Come indoors,honey, and I’ll make you some Ceylon tea.It’s been the most thrilling event of my entire life and I’ve photographed you with my new Nokia camera phone
[Prices available on request from The Catphone Warehouse,Teesside,Northern England,comes in pink and pink and…pink?How I love pink!]
I’m going to send some to the local paper.

Stan staggered upstairs covered in bits of privet ,lettuce and cabbage hearts, and carrot tops,not to mention a few dozen banana skins and a few potato peelings.
What an afternoon.
Please contact the society for the care and protection of vegetables if you wish to make a complaint about this story.}
“That’s the last time I climb into a  green wheelie bin”,he thought.
“Next time we’ll use the cardboard and newspaper wheelie bin” he proclaimed to the mouse in the bathroom
And we’re all envious!

All photos by Katherine

The cat that bit, the black dog and its bark

The unconscious is  the home of image stark
The faces of our  love and of our hate
The holy, the important  and the dark

 

The cat that bit, the black dog with wild barks,
The bills ,the charge, the  passive, irritate
The unconscious is  the cave of image stark

 

The Northern moors the heather and the lark
Old letters torn up when they came  too late
The holy, the important , the deep dark

 

The marvelled fire, the glowing light, the spark
The holy place immune from every State
The unconscious ,oh  the home of image stark

Here  too dwell envy and   malicious hearts
Yet in that space we  must a soul create
The holy and its candles light the dark

Time has gone, there is no day or date
We are never early or too late
The unconscious lives,  the home of image stark
The holy, the  divided , glossy dark

 

Shyness is egotism?

DSCF0115“Shyness is just egotism out of its depth,” Penelope Keith once told an interviewer – a line the writer Sadie Stein credits with curing her own shyness. “For some reason, the unequivocal harshness of that quote was what I needed,” Stein wrote. “OK, I thought… No one is looking at you; to think they are is the worst form of solipsism.”

 

 

The later poems of Auden

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mendelson-auden.html?scp=28&sq=father%2527s+day+gift&st=cse

 

This is  an extract

Demon or Gift

In his first days in New York Auden felt a new sense of liberation and power. He arrived in the harbor with Christopher Isherwood on 26 January 1939, in the dead of winter, while a light snow disfigured the public statues. During their voyage, he and Isherwood had spoken aloud for the first time of their disaffection with the mass political movements they had hoped to serve with their poetry and plays. Three days after their arrival, the news came that W. B. Yeats had died at seventy-three. Auden, who was not yet thirty-two, had left England with the half-formed resolution that he would begin his career anew in a new country. He now wrote a memorable and audacious poem on the death of Yeats in which he proclaimed the rebirth of poetry and foresaw in the heroic labors of a living poet the renewal of the world.

Two ideas of poetry contend against each other in “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” The opening section, with its solemn, meditative, unrhymed verse paragraphs, acknowledges that the most a poet can achieve in the world is to be remembered by his admirers. The closing section, with its drumbeat stanzas and soaring visionary rhetoric, celebrates poetic language as a force more powerful than time or death, and glorifies the poet as a source of sustenance, healing, and rejoicing. The closing argument wins this debate, but the ironies and doubts insinuated by the opening one remain unanswered.

The first published version of the poem drew an absolute contrast between the dying impotence of the poet and the reviving power of verse. This version—it appeared in The New Republic, 8 March 1939—was not yet the poem familiar from Auden’s books: the opening and closing sections had almost reached their final form, but the quietly discursive middle section, where “poetry makes nothing happen” and “Ireland has her madness and her weather still,” had not yet been written.

The opening section transforms traditional elegy into a bleak new mode:

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the air-ports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

The metaphors point to a world where facts may be counted or measured or reported in news bulletins, where neither poetry nor metaphor is any use. In English elegies, until Auden wrote this one, nature itself mourned the dead while an exclamatory “O” announced the personal grief of the elegist. In Milton’s “Lycidas,” for example:”

Stan smacks his lips:an every day story of masochism and married life


S
Source

I have written many stories about Stan.Time goes backwards and forwards.Ages fluctuate.But the main characters always come in somewhere.”Double entendre” and exaggeration are some of the humor tools which I use.I chose the name “Stan” for the main character as a tribute to our English novelist,Stanley Middleton

Sometimes I give a little instruction about e.g. when to call out the Emergency Services and when not to such as when the cat scratches you or you break a chair leg.You’d be astounded to know what trivial reasons cause people to phone Emergency….. then again,perhaps you are one of the culprits!

My art and photographs

I take my photos mainly with a mobile phone,sometimes with a Fuji camera.I use Artweaver Free3.1 software,Paint.net and Microsoft Paint.Also Google Pixir.These are all free software available on the Internet.Why not try?I find it fascinating.A crack in the pavement or a gnat bite on your leg can make a great image!

My imagination

Source
Source
Source
K 

A strange world

While Mary boiled the kettle in the new greenish blue painted kitchen,Stan smacked his thick red lips.
“I thought we said, we’d have no more corporal punishment,” she murmured loudly.”Why did you smack your lips just now?”
“Well,I can hardly smack yours” he said politely
“But we said no more smacking at all yesterday”
“I just like the noise” he confessed, turning as red as a stalk of ripe rhubarb.
“Sado-masochism may be fun, but after reading,Fifty Glades of Fray,I thought we said we’d abandon it”
“Well,why don’t we abandon ourselves to our bodies or divine providence?” he answered curiously.
“I am unsure if one can do that on purpose or if it just happens whilst doing something else.”
“Elser than what?”
“I dunno” the Oxgrudge educated woman replied sheepishly .
“The Government didn’t give you a three year research grant so you’d say,I dunno” Stan told his slender and silver haired wife and lover.
“Well,that’s their problem.Three years studying Searat’s equation did nothing for my spoken English” the brilliantly brained brown haired and eyed bonny bosomed  beauty told him shrewdly.
“Well,are there rats in the sea?
“I dunno”
“So who wrote the equation?” Stan asked her.Immediately in a peevish tone
The door bell rang.
“Hello,Mary,It’s me” cried Annie their naughty neighbor and man magnet
“No,it’s not”
“What do you mean?”
“You never invented Searat’s equation”
“Pardon me for living,”Annie answered rudely.”I prefer peeling potatoes to this noisy argument.”
“I never knew potatoes pealed”
“Yes,it’s like little bells ringing” Mary informed her kindly
Oh,for God’s sake,”Stan shouted quietly,”that’s Emile’s bell ringing so the birds can escape from him”
The women went red all over with shame.Annie ran into the kitchen and poured a bucket of cold water over her head.
It’s this hot weather;it’s too much.I need a man now!I am mad with desire.
No,it’s just that mid life madness coming too late,she told herself gently
It’s too hot to make love anyway.
Why you must be getting old,she remarked to herself confidently
Heat never turned you off before.Why you once said you’d lie down in the road and sleep with the next man who passed by.
Unfortunately he passed by on the other side,just like in the Bible.
But in my case no Samaritan came to my aid.
“Am I having a mental breakdown/” she shouted pensively
“No,it’s me” Stan told her,I am trying to stop Mary smacking her lips but it is hard work. and it has create a bad atmosphere.”
“Is it wrong to smack your own lips?Can you morally smack someone else’s?” Annie said wonderingly
“Why do you ask me that?”
“Well,it seems lots of things are wrong if one does them alone but are moral if you do it with someone else or to someone one else”
“I just have no idea what you are talking about,”Mary called valiantly.
“Make me some tea.My lips are parched!”she continued
“No wonder,”said Stan vivaciously
Well,thought Emile,I am glad cats have no lips.That’s one thing less to worry about.He sat up and drank some tea from his china saucer
Stan and the ladies sat quietly on the patio watching the birds flying about.
“Do birds ever get obese?”Mary asked.But answer came there none.
Night fell and they all went to bed together,Emile says there is safety in numbers and I find thirty is a safe number to share my bed.I write 30 on a postcard and pop it under my pillow.With my dentures and my hanky and four mobile phones
I seem to manage the night.

And so shout all of us

I’d love a snail

Sometimes when bereft I’d love a snail

Though it might wet my bed with silvery trails

Would snails be lonely living in my house?

Shall I be but fit to love one louse?

I hugged a rowan tree but now it’s dead

The council said they’ll give me oak instead

It stood upon the pavement by the gate

But now it is what McCall Smith calls “late”

I wonder if self massage is the thing

Some perfumed lotion stolen on the wing.

I stroked my arms with Cream E45

Now they say I’m not allowed to drive!

I was sad but now I am at peace

All I needed was a plate of eggs and grease.

Who are we to know what is the best?

To fulminate against the hands of fate
To vent our anger on  beloved friends
Will not repair our ills and our mistakes
But may bring friendships to  a bitter end.

For who are we to know what is the best?
Who are we to choose when loved ones die?
And  do not think this is a needed test.
As if on us God wastes his time to spy.

Once  we were a joining of two cells
The lively sperm, a salmon riding high.
The egg awaiting without  need for bells
Is fertilised and grows that which  shall die.

Astonishing that we should live at all.
Unsurprising, that a loved one falls.

Against sadness

Against  sadness:no new creator weeps
Nor lounges  in  black melancholy deep
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit  his muse.
For  even genius  ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair  but not his views
Nor his  mind where  learning made strange leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.

Happiness  or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News  lies  on our minds
Yet men are  cold  towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone  in old  face   lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men  kill thus?
In Syrian wars  the  innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the  frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We  hold our hands out, thinking we’ll  be nursed
Against sadness

My neighbours are so kind, they share their dogs

portrait of a dog
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

My neighbours are so kind they share their dogs
They let them run quite free into my house
They blame me when  the dogs escape
Or when they swim in dirty lakes
Or frighten cows

The neighbour on the other side is cute
He cuts bits of my trees and throws them out
He threw a big pile over t’ fence
I can see through one eye lens
Fly tipping lout!

So here I am   trapped in between these saints
I am grateful for the topics  they  have lent
I shall not hate them nor despise
But neither will I close my eyes
It takes all sorts

What’s already here

We only see what is already there
What grabs attention ,what we ought to fear
In our minds and hearts own  common ware

We see  the beauty or  what makes us scared
We see the  horror like it is right here
We mostly see what is already there

Men see woman and pick out the fair
Some will ever wink and send a leer
From their mind and heart’s own  common ware

But who can  see the gifted one  and care
Helping them develop in  their sphere
We  try to see just what’s already there

 

We suffer   till we feel a mute despair
There’s music  playing nobody can hear
With the mind and heart’s own well used ware

Who has hands and eyes well fit to steer
At autumnal turnings of these years?
We only see what we  ourselves put there
In our minds and hearts own  common ware