Before we go to bed we vegetate No need for teacher but a compost heap. And as we vegetate, we drift to sleep While in our dreams our other mind debates
But mostly we’re unknowing in this dark Where God himself may manifest at will. His dazzling darkness makes our souls be still And wait a strike by living, glowing spark.
But in the morning, we come back to strife Take up our work and suffer every stroke. From sapling to the oldest, strongest oak Each thing must choose again its proper life
Every look we cast at others strikes Reflects and shows us what we have become And when there is no movement, we are done Our mind and heart have chosen what they like.
So in our end, we vegetate again And no more rise to labour in the day For now, we fertilise the fields passed on our way And show the end of woman and of man.
A daily round becomes our life and death. We live because we’re breathed by sacredness.
Why do people say it sucks when it’s babies that suck?
But can you think of any?
I can’t
How is it that children fail maths at school yet they can do do anything at all with computers tablets smartphones or without really seeming to make an effort?
It must be osmosis.
Why can’t you learn mathematics by osmosis?
They don’t want you to to because it would take work away from us nerds.
So just forget it
The four letter words are two common now so we will have to have 5-letter words.
Many learners of English have problems with articles (the words a, an and the), especially when they don’t exist in their own language. This blog looks at some of the basic rules.
The number one rule is this: if a word is countable (e.g. one book, two books), you must always use an article (or my, his, etc.):
I read a book. √
I read book.
This is true even if there are adjectives before the noun:
He drives an old car. √
He drives old car.
Never use a or an with a word that is plural (e.g. books, trees) or uncountable (e.g. water, advice):
Apparently Oxford students must sit exams with no clothes on What about menstruating people? Stop being so negative I always try to face reality Everyone will have to wear a napkin And who is going to pay for these? Who do you think? The general public, of course
There are no men’s and women’s toilets So who are the toilets for? Anybody. But not men or women? Not labelled as such
I don’t want to walk in and see men peeing blatantly You’ve seen them on the beaches, you’ve seen them on the sands Who are you, Winston Churchill?’t Who is he? You don’t know? I’m just teasing you.He was our War Leader I can’t imagine Boris leading us.We never see him The invisible man made flesh Why are these leaders going downhill? To evade the enemy within What’s that? Constipation How ridiculous! But they have glycerin suppositories They can’t use those in War No,we fire them at our enemy Who is that? We’ve not decided yet Rome or the Palestinian Territories They won’t harm us, they have no army Yes, that’s what is so cunning See a doctor asap Why? Never ask the reason why Why not? It’s a doctrine Does it breed? Not here.Do you I try my best It’s not good enough I know that. Can’t you do better? No,I am at my wits’ end At least you can punctuate What is grammar without a text? Why, you are bright after all.I will make you The Vice Chancellor What type of vice? Do stop tormenting me.Make it up as you go along Is that what you do? Yes, it’s all I have from 7 years of higher education Even higher education can be low in the UK So true.
“Students can learn how to utilize grammar in their own writing by studying how poets do—and do not—abide by traditional writing rules in their work. Poetry can teach writing and grammar conventions by showing what happens when poets strip them away or pervert them for effect. Dickinson often capitalizes common nouns and uses dashes instead of commas to note sudden shifts in focus. Agee uses colons to create dramatic, speech-like pauses. Cummings of course rebels completely. He usually eschews capitalization in his proto-text message poetry, wrapping frequent asides in parentheses and leaving last lines dangling on their pages, period-less. In “next to of course god america i,” Cummings strings together, in the first 13 lines, a cavalcade of jingoistic catch-phrases a politician might utter, and the lack of punctuation slowing down and organizing the assault accentuates their unintelligibility and banality and heightens the satire. The abuse of conventions helps make the point. In class, it can help a teacher explain the exhausting effect of run-on sentences—or illustrate how clichés weaken an argument.
Yet, despite all of the benefits poetry brings to the classroom, I have been hesitant to use poems as a mere tool for teaching grammar conventions. Even the in-class disembowelment of a poem’s meaning can diminish the personal, even transcendent, experience of reading a poem. Billy Collins characterizes the latter as a “deadening” act that obscures the poem beneath the puffed-up importance of its interpretation. In his poem “Introduction to Poetry,” he writes: “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it./They begin beating it with a hose/to find out what it really means.””
A bird taps on this window every day, Frail as flying leaves are in a gale. But now he perches on the potted bay. He feels the weather like the blind do braille.
This bird is faithful and I hold him dear. He’s fearless as he pecks upon the glass. We hope he has a modicum of fear, For who knows when a sparrow hawk will pass?
I see him like a human soul forlorn Struggling to discern a newer way. For soon he may be taken by a storm But blithely he will eat, and after play.
The smallest bird has trust in the Unknown By his example, our own way is shown
I want you what it would be like if I use speech to text and did no corrections because easy my hands hurt
Even with something very simple it could come out very old
It has lots of words source and some of them are much more heavily than others so it’s nice to put one of those in so what you writing because that’s the most likely want to be correct but it is not necessarily the one that you wanted what the computer thinks is correct it’s not hurt
Sometimes we do the simple things our self. When we are with a friend try to fix what they say in 2 what is the most common inside our head but it might not be what they mean preceding people can be fraught with errors to 2
Keighley reminders of someone we love or someone we hate or a fighting girl it’s all brown is trying to fit the new reality into the patterns we have become familiar from the past
Mary Oliver arguments ikos bye people filling in too many places with the old vision and not with what their country is there open their eyes properly in a sentence
It’s time for lunch and then I’m going to eat a chocolate from a box I have just got to celebrate
My help from NHS England
Do you have problem with your doctor or similar NHS England are very useful indeed and swift to act
While my husband kissed me in our bed Our cat would lounge on top and lick his head No matter what gyrations that cat saw All he did was pat us with his paws The happy days of learning, how love feels How to entertain with spicy meals Of walking by warm rivers hand in hand Watching coots and moorhens ,washing pans Buying an old kettle in a Sale Driving out to Ongar ,stubble fires Smokey Essex cornfields, insects’ pyres Driving down the Saxon Cliffs at Hythe Soft teal Sea,Capel le Ferne, men’s eyes Happy in a cottage in the wilds Singing with the birds, we walked for miles Kersey where the ducks bathe in the street Kissing in the hedges, oh my Sweet Getting our own garden, growing beans Growing spinach, lettuce and snap peas Picking our blackcurrants, making tea Making jam from raspberries what glee This proves that when you marry love won’t end Cooking dinners talking with our friends Wearing jeans and hair so long it flowed My husband liked to brush it till it glowed I dream some nights my hair is still like that And how the cat slept with his paws in it How his father died and mother grieved Life is joy and pain and knotted love On we went, that love was what we grew Though anger did rise up and strain the glue First the cat died, then my man went too I will not sleep with ghosts when I love you
I was walking in a desert grey and bleak All alone, with none to speak or eat I shuddered when I realised the truth I was unmarried, pregnant, mere refuse.
Cast out for other failings all unknown My baby came too soon and I alone A doctor with no face appeared and said Your baby died ,I see he’s never fed
He flung my baby on his heap of dead I lay there in the dirt, red with my blood I had to leave or I would die of grief The will to live just stronger than a leaf
I went to see my baby, and he smiled He was still alive, my love,my child I took him in my arms, where should we go? I walked into that darknessfull and slow
Now we’re used to hearing “fuck” and “shit” What words can we use to let off steam? Oh, what a twit omitting words like “twat” However will I have erotic dreams? Few words are forbidden in our books Little children learn to swear and scream On the television, some won’t look As words like this flow out in lengthy streams Lady Chatterley, you were the cause But what will be the affect and effect? Lawrence, you were eager to enjoy But who could know what others might detect?
I think I shall say ” sorry” when I rage Would “lies and curses” draw more to my page?
Before the referendum Before I rang 999 When I didn’t know how near the end you were
Before Nigel Farage Jo Cox The lies of Michael Gove Before Boris Johnson’s genes left Turkey
Before Leonard Cohen sang,save the last waltz for me Before I heard Suzanne Before you haemmoraged the bathroom into wine Before you consecrated the bread Before you were dead
Before by a journalist we were led Before children said,fuck everything Before Cohen died Dylan got the Nobel Prize
Before aspirations were merely for another shag and a new denim hat Before marriage was for licking each others’ groins What poems fell dead And the snow fled Before the hatred of slow reading came and glued itself to our minds Then we had the hottest September In December And the ice cap floated down the globe Observed by toads
When you were still alive And the lawn was unmowed
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times in a very real sense. Mary dreamed Stan was in heaven enjoying the company of Wittgenstein,Jesus and Pascal , not to mention Lady Jane Grey Ann of Cleves,Juliet,Cleopatra and an angel. At least at this point in time he can’t sleep with them ,she thought as she woke up.Though did that matter? Can men be faithful and monogamous? Look at Leonard Cohen.Was he better off flitting from flower to flower? Was he so stunning that women threw themselves at him and he could not resist?Sometimes people are actually afraid of intimacy or feel life is short and want some new experiences.Was he a wolf? It t akes one to know one It was indeed almost the worst of times when Mary remembered she had no food in the house except cat food for Emile.He was all she had now as her daughter Lyra lived in Australia and Stan was in heaven, she hoped. Here I am, she thought, pondering unanswerable questions and not looking after myself .It is probably best to err on the side of buying food and going out rather than lying in the bed wondering if life has any inherent meaning. or if we must create our own. Even discussing that with someone else would be better.But men folk don’t want to discuss serious topics with their lovers. It was an even worse time when she recalled a man who once loved her leaving her because she asked him if he knew what post-modernism was one night after going to the cinema to see a comedy.She realised then that she would have to play a part,To act like a woman.So far it was but moderately successful owing to her myopic view of life If only I had kept quiet, she told herself,I could be lying beside him now enjoying a few kisses and hugs and asking him how to light the electric fire.Still ,there’s many a slip twixt cup and lip Now then, said a loud voice.Stop ruminating and get up. One stitch in time saves nine. Who are you to say that to me, she called nervously ? She wondered of stress had driven her round the bend.She had begun reading a book which said mental illness in not an illness like flu. It is a reaction to bad events and other life strains. It doesn’t matter who I am,just do as I say, came the answer Mary recognised the voice.It was her dad who had died when she was 9. Dad, she called, why are you here now? Because Jesus told us to love our family, he revealed pleasantly. Why now after all these years? she persisted. I have missed you. I always did have a bad sense of direction,he told her.But do as I say.You won’t recover easily if you never get up.Stan is here but he is busy cleaning the gold cutlery for an angel. Alright, but I never knew there was cutlery up there, she murmured as she put on her new clothes.She had bought some purple trousers and two new jumpers.One was pink and one was teal.The trousers were exceptionally comfortable being in a last years’ sale by a famous label..She then found some Weetabix in the cupboard and some long life milk.As she drank her tea she admired the acer’s brilliant red leaves. Almost too bright, she thought.It’s due to the hot September.Plants are affected by their environment and so are we.Especially by bad or hot tempered men and women Poor people may have more than in the past but they tend to live in the ugliest areas of the town with no gardens nor parks. And seeing the better off walk by wearing expensive clothes it is surprising there are not even more muggings. She recalled seeing a man with a Rolex watch and gold earrings on talking on his new iPhone as he wandered through the Mall.I suppose we think everybody else is like us; we don’t mix with very poor or very rich people on the whole.Unless we are one of those two types. Mary went outside and found a neighbour wheeling in her bins. Thanks ,Tom, she cried.I wondered who it was.I am very grateful.What is post modernism,by the way?Nobody will tell me. Emile was watching from the window sill. I knew it was Tom, he mewed. But you didn’t tell me,Mary replied. You didn’t ask. Tom wandered off ,while Mary admired the autumn trees lining the road.Tom turned back and looked at her but she didn’t notice. Time for coffee, she muttered and went inside again.She was embroidering a table mat which said “Rumination is for the birds”.Where it had come from was a puzzle.But it may be a good thought
He thought I was an enemy , he said The eyes see what we fear or what we need I gave him love,but hate grew there instead
If you need to hate, try someone dead Do not say cruel words that make us bleed He thought I was an enemy , he said
Do not dwell where people hate the good If they curse, it’s best to pay no heed I gave him love,but hate welled up instead
Emotions mingle, wanton like fresh blood Let them be till form can be perceived He thought I was his enemy , he said Do not confront the paranoid nor mad The agony of their minds has them deceived We give them love,but hate wells up instead
Never take such people into bed Let them run away, they’ll be relieved. He mistook me for an enemy , he said I gave him love and care now I feel bad
With words. he pulled some in and pushed some out He wanted love but still encountered doubts Should he make commitments then feel trapped? Should he disappear from lovers’ maps? He joined an online dating site and smiled His profile photo strong and slightly wild He got ten ladies asking for a date Did they want a lover or a mate? He gazed upon their photos,felt confused Did he want a wife or perhaps a muse? He could not bring himself to use the phone Spent the evening time at home alone
He fell into obsessive thought and dreams A new friend may be party to a scheme Could he trust his judgement or their truth Soon he lost his temper, gnashed his teeth Should he seek a therapist for aid? Was his mind withdrawn or in decay? Should he join a gym or grow a beard? Was he what they wanted, what they feared? In the end he thought his life away He died in bed alone one autumn day It does not matter deeply what we choose But life is more important than these clues
Oh,mother dear wherever have you been To leave a cat all day is very mean Emile,I need my freedom now and then I can’t love Dave but I would like a man I must go out to buy a handsome coat Cognac is the colour I love most
Emile cried, whatever do you think I saw some frogs a-courting in the sink I was on the draining rack up there They asked me to avert my amber stare Are frogs faithful, don’t they just leave spawn? They are cold towards tadpoles unborn We saw them by Moss Bank in shallow pools Mary wonders if all frogs are cruel Stan came in with his angels right behind They are tired of heaven, they’ve resigned Here’s a pin upon which they can dance Mary was delighted and entranced Do you need a dinner now you’ve died? I wouldn’t mind a steak, the old man sighed Some buttered new potatoes and a fool Rhubarb or vanilla would be cool I have done no shopping, Mary cried I have no money for the food you like Shall I get a pizza, fish and chips That will put some colour in your lips I am only joking, Stanley said I shall merely visit you in bed Emile wept with joy to see his Dad What a spirit, is he going mad? In came Annie in her long green coat Her eyes were black and scratched was her throat I fell into the Croal when eating chips See the bruises on my purple lips Never walk on water,Mary screeched Even when you cross all Southport Beach Stay away from danger,I’ll ring Dave He will dress your bruises with his gauze
Annie did not tell them all the truth She had fallen off the sloping roof
I dreamed she tried to smother me one night I had had suspicions with deep roots I screamed ad yelled and kicked her, as one might Then she tortured me with brilliant light As her minions climbed down from the roof I dreamed she tried to smother me, alive
She looked so ugly, she gave demons fright I wished I were a donkey kicking hoof I screamed and yelled,confusedten megabytes
Her muscles strong, her grip was over tight I tried to crash her laptop, no re- boot I dreamed she tried to smother me last night
I wished I were a tiger with cruel bite Or God whose name to angels was a proof I screamed and shouted 999, please write
She was more sadistic than astute She gave me pain, this action her debut I dreamed she tried to cut me off last night The two pint flask saved tea, my perfect right
1.You must eat exactly one meal a day.This will make you lose weight, stop shopping, save money and wreck the economy.Thin people cough less 2.You must make your phone accessible to the Government. We mean Us. DC and BJ 3.If you commit a crime and are jailed, you will get a meal on alternate days.You may lose weight So you can slip through the bars! 4.You will wash your undies once a week.Yes, the same pair.Save water, we sold it to Spain 5.Please do not get hunger pings or pangs while in the street or at home 6.If you feel too hungry, you may have a boiled eel on toast cursing you 7.You can be too thin; it is not illegal. 8.You can’t be too rich anymore… the tax man cometh 9.Please sweep your street and eat any pizzas you find 10.Your cat can eat as much as she likes.So you may eat her leftovers Not the whole tin 11.Do you swear to fix the roof, the whole roof and nothing but the roof? 12.Please do not eat refugees before we count them.Data matters 13.If the pandemic spreads we will put you all in cages.Like in the USA 14.No pretending to be a twin.Not even a tub 15.Lose weight,pray and soon you will be in Heaven.
Wanted: Disguised spies in each street in Britain.No questions in Nothern Ireland Just take photos. Pay £7.00 per week plus bonus at Xmas [ £2.00]
Trees lean over,watchful as we meet The tall ones do not shiver in the breeze Trees can hear the torment in our speech We have flowering cherry in our street But mine died like my lover with great ease Trees lean over listening as we meet
The tree won’t bend too close, it will not reach As panic,worry, horror,nightmares squeeze Trees discern the music in our squeaks
Alas, no tree has mastered human speech But when they can, they coax the honey bees Trees lean over sweetly as we meet
The leaves will rustle,wrestle and may tease Smile for selfies,what’s the word, it’s cheese Trees lean over, wonder, and conceive Yet trees hate noone, nor do they believe
Envy poison, friend of vicious hate We know Cain for he still lives within Society is built on hellish states
If not so, how can we lay love waste When time is short, why cut it down with sin? Envy, poison, friend of vicious hate
Do not hide it, saying this is “fate” Through brilliant Sylvia,Ted asked spirits in Marriage too is built on awful states
Only with her death, did he relate One had to go to let the other win Envy, poison, friend of vicious hate
We suffer when we think that we need fame All paper one day ends up in a bin Society too is built on loveless states
Comparison and judgment are no game Virtue rendered void, our hearts are lame Envy, poison, friend of vicious hate Can society be built on other states?
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.
I walked,I stumbled where I’d never been No friend nor ally guided me nor could In the mesmerising sharp pain of my grief
Wandering like an outcast , never queen Reason was no aid in that dead wood I wandered through the shadows of my dreams
I felt the ground beneath me swirl and seethe As if to kill me too or spill my blood In the desolate place of darkness deep
Rosemary,remembrance, flowering wreaths Inside the heart will mercy come to flood? I wandered where to love would be obscene
But in the arctic wastes , surprised by god In late winter trees will start bud I wandered on until my heart revived From that place of peril came new life
Human sacrifice had disappeared Would God bring it back to strike with fear The hearts of children washed in Jesus’ blood His heart so sacred died, does that sound good?
Why stress the Cross, the crown of thorns, the fear As if God is a sadist, cold yet nuclear Who might wish to propagate this myth? In Eden dwell to hear the snakes that hiss
Jesus, kind and brave, had no cruel wish To feed a crowd he conjured loaves and fish He walked on water, perhaps he loved to tease No Caesar he, his stories were decrees.
And in the night, he wept but never cursed God, at last, knew humans at their worst
Pray Father,I jave no sins to confess.What is the most common sin you hear about?
Hurting the feelings of loved ones or strangers by projecting our ill will into them and
then attacking them.
How about adultery?
Is that a proposal?
You naughty little animal!You know what I mean.Don’t tease me.I am sensitive but I’m ok.I sleep all night and sin all day.Is adultery common?
It is very common and shows poor taste ,so if you want to be less vulgar leave it out.
I am long past adultery now.I am too stiff for sexual athletics.Though with more
acupuncture,one never knows.Besides I am not married any more.
Surely there is something else wrong you must have done recently? You are only human
To be honest,Father,I believe we are often blind to our faults and we would need to bringsome other people along here to say how we have treated them.And then we’d find out
our sins more easily from them.
Well,there is some truth in that but we only need a random sample of your sins.
One will be a metonym for the rest.
Is that the right word?
Well,if it’s not it’s near enough,my child.
I am older than you;you must know.
I am sorry to say that is not a sin,my dear lady.Try harder.
I suffer from scruples…………… is that bad.?
Very bad.What are they about?
Doubts.
Give them up.Believe you did your best.
How can I be sure?
Well, we are never sure of anything in this life but we it will kill us to brood all day
Well, it does sound selfish when you put it like that
Now, drop that heavy bag of worries and run about the garden
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“In 1926, more than a decade before a team of Harvard psychologists commenced history’s longest and most revelatory study of human happiness and half a century before the humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm penned his classic on the art of living, the British psychoanalyst and writer Marion Milner (February 1, 1900–May 29, 1998) undertook a seven-year experiment in living, aimed at unpeeling the existential rind of all we chronically mistake for fulfillment — prestige, pleasure, popularity — to reveal the succulent, pulsating core of what makes for genuine happiness. Along her journey of “doubts, delays, and expeditions on false trails,” which she chronicled in a diary with a field scientist’s rigor of observation, Milner ultimately discovered that we are beings profoundly different from what we imagine ourselves to be — that the things we pursue most frantically are the least likely to give us lasting joy and contentment, but there are other, truer things that we can train ourselves to attend to in the elusive pursuit of happiness.
In 1934, under the pen name Joanna Field, Milner released the results of her inquiry in A Life of One’s Own (public library) — a small, enormously insightful book, beloved by W.H. Auden and titled in homage to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, published three years after Milner began her existential experiment. Milner would go on to fill her ninety-eight years with life of uncommon contentment, informed by her learnings from this intensive seven-year self-examination.
In the preface to the original edition, Milner admonishes:
Let no one think it is an easy way because it is concerned with moments of happiness rather than with stern duty or high moral endeavour. For what is really easy, as I found, is to blind one’s eyes to what one really likes, to drift into accepting one’s wants ready-made from other people, and to evade the continual day to day sifting of values. And finally, let no one undertake such an experiment who is not prepared to find himself more of a fool than he thought.
This disorienting yet illuminating task of turning the mind’s eye inward requires a practice of recalibrating our conditioned perception. Drawing on Descartes’s tenets of critical thinking, she set out to doubt her most fundamental assumptions about what made her happy, trying to learn not from reason alone but from the life of the senses. Half a century before Annie Dillard offered her beautiful lens on the two ways of seeing, Milner writes:
As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience, I found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of awareness in my head; and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw. And I found that the narrow focus way was the way of reason. If one was in the habit of arguing about life it was very difficult not to approach sensation with the same concentrated attention and so shut out its width and depth and height. But it was the wide focus way that made me happy.
She reflects on the sense of extreme alienation and the terror of missing out she felt at the outset of the experiment, at twenty-six:”
“The main problem with empathy is that it works like a spotlight, highlighting certain people in the here and now, making their suffering salient to you. This can sometimes be a good thing. Indeed, one of the best arguments in favour of empathy is that it really does make you kinder to the person you are empathising with. This is backed by laboratory research, by everyday experience and by common sense.
So if the world were a simple place, where the only difficulties one had to deal with involved a single person in some sort of immediate distress, and where helping that person had positive effects, the case for empathy would be solid.
But the world is not a simple place. One problem is that empathy is innumerate, favouring the one over the many. In one classic series of studies, psychologists asked some subjects how much money they would give to help develop a drug that would save the life of one child and asked others how much they would give to save eight children. People would give roughly the same in both cases. But when a third group of subjects was told the child’s name and shown her picture, the donations shot up – now there were greater donations to the one than to the eight. All of these laboratory effects can be seen as manifestations of what has been called “the identifiable victim effect”.”
Because of the shortage of money in the health service my doctor has referred me to a refurbished cardiologist.
Really want to refurbish my heart because I love people.
I could have a factory reset that would be delightful although which have my learnt skills would I be able to download back after doing the resetand after all all a refurbished heart is still a heart not voice box.
I would like my house to be refurbished so it looks like it did when it was first built and and it was decorated inheritors of that era.
Great Bardfield and Dunmow by meadows of blue
Linseed and poppies delight
Narrow lanes curving are leading us to
The Essex of Constable ‘s sight
At Manningtree swans jostle near the stone edge
I recall we have seen them in flight
Like a god might descend to fulfill an old pledge;
A humbling and marvellous sight.
In Dedham, all’s still and wisteria hangs
From a house with the door painted white.
The church was quite empty and no bell was rung
But a prayer could ascend to its height.
After the quiet of the village out here
The A12 was revealed as a blight
We crossed it then turned down a lane that was near
We drove home in the cool of the night.
Windmills not turning and churches not used
Yet a beauty to charm and delight
No mills as in Yorkshire,no hills to denude.
Long Melford and Eleigh ,oh wait!
Autumn time in Essex where we drove When farmers burned the stubble of the corn The earth itself was fiery like young love The smokey air rose like a cloud new born
The Kentish landlocked cliffs are wide and steep The farmers grow their grain on land beneath And there too we have seen the holy fire The flames and smoke arrest me with desire
The earth and soil, the harvest we find there Give me joy both full of wheat or bare Why did burning stubble make me glow? These images affect the heart’s deep core
Now fires are banned., they damage our pure air And I did not like the murder of the hare
I remember riding in that car
Through unknown Essex.Suffolk to the sea
Oh Aldeburgh,Dunswich, where we were
The fields invited love with yellow stars
Beguiling buttercups, and you and me We got lost in Braintree in our car
Framlingham, we saw wild primrose there
Mary Tudor unimagined flees. Ah, Aldeburgh, fishing boats and tar
History so poignant and bizarre
Bloody Mary’s heretics, the siege They might have got away inside our car
Southwold Harbour, walking on the spur
Rowed acrosss the tidal river clear Then Walberswick where Freud’s descendents smirk
As death came down was I the wife you chose
Your pretty one with cheeks of peach and rose? My Wedding Dress , my eyes, my shining hair Your flowered shirt, your eyes , your humour rare
Irony is a term for a figure of speech.[1] Irony is when something happens that is opposite from what is expected. It can often be funny, but it is also used in tragedies. There are many types of irony, including those listed below:
Socratic irony, when someone (usually a teacher) pretends to be stupid in order to show how stupid his pupils are (while at the same time the reader or audience understand the situation).
Cosmic irony, when something that everyone thinks will happen actually happens very differently.
Situational irony e.g. Mr. Smith gets a parking ticket. This is ironic because Mr. Smith is a traffic warden.
Verbal irony is an absence of expression and intention. Sarcasm may sometimes involve verbal irony.
Irony of fate is the misfortune in the result of fate or chance.
The difference between of things seem to be or reality.
In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet takes a potion that will put her to sleep, making her look dead. She does this in the hopes of being reunited with Romeo. He incorrectly learns of her death, and kills himself. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the reader/viewer knows she is not dead, but Romeo does not.
A common example of cosmic irony could be that a child wants some kind of pudding, and misbehaves to try to get it. The parent withholds it because of the child’s behavior.
Verbal irony can be found in sarcasm, but not just that.
In Sophocles‘ play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus acts out based on the knowledge of his fate which in turn leads to the fulfillment of the tragic fate. This is an example of how fate plays on irony.
Try writing nonsense, you will be surprised I have used a comma, that’s the end; How hard it is to know a poet can lie.
Unless you have a calling,shut your eyes Do not break where you can also bend Try writing nonsense, you be surprised
When I read a villanelle, men cry. Ask the poet never to 1pretend For cruel it is to find a poet who lies
Triolets bear sadness to the wise If your aim is cruel, do not send In learning nonsense, we’ve been ill advised
Rubbish is not nonsense,realise. Lewis Carroll’s Alice was no friend How hard it is to know where poets lie.
Sense and nonsense travel in a blend So it is that fiction can offend When writing nonsense, you must be composed How hard is it to learn a poem transposed?
How my heart speaks 
