Day: October 26, 2022

Unspeakable Conversations – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html

Harriet mcbryde Johnson I was born with muscular dystrophy but she lived much longer than was expected. This is about a conversation with the philosopher Peter Singer he believes that parents should have the right to euthanize a baby born with such conditions

I strongly recommend you to read this article which is beautifully written and very enlightening about what it is like to be disabled. And that a disabled person is just as likely to be happy as someone without disabilities. You have to admire someone who will take on Peter Singer although he is a very good person but he has his own particular reasons for believing that parents of disabled babies should be able to end the life of their child. In a society which allows abortion till quite a late date if it’s hard to know where to draw the line but birth is one place where you could draw it

Writers’ rooms: Frances Spalding

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jun/27/writers-rooms-frances-spalding?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

But what I gained with this house was an enormous desk. It is an artist’s working bench, with slots on one side where canvases can be stored. In Vellacott’s day it was thick with oil paint and the grime of charcoal. Without my asking, the builders, while renovating the house, one day sanded the surface of the desk, to great effect. As a biographer and art historian, I often work with images and text. Recently, while coping with the last stages of my new book – John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art – the entire desk was covered with page proofs, making it possible to check illustrations against lists, sources and textual references.

With light coming in on all sides, the room absorbs the mood outside. Grey days here remind me of Stevie Smith and her “loamish landscapes”. Despite having written her life, only now do I understand why an empty park, in the winter rain, had, for her, a “staunch and inviolate melancholy that is refreshing”. Then, too, on sunny days, this room fills with light that quivers and slowly slides round the walls, sometimes forming diamond shapes.

Eating in the rain

You sat outside despite the chilly rain

why do I often criticise your actions?

The clocks have changed we can’t do that again

I can if I put on my duvet coat

I took my plate inside, but you remained

Maybe you didn’t want me to be with you

Now the. memory brings me love and pain

That seems rather pointless now

My salty tears will not leave any stain.

I wouldn’t be too sure about that

Yet they make a valley in my brain

I don’t think your family will fish inside your head

What a stupid and mysterious claim

I want to buy a candle with a flame.

Is life important.No it is a game.

Very often I feel deep,deep shame

Look at yourself: you are just a garden gnome

I think I’ll get baptised again in Rome.

Forgot to say why don’t you just get home?

I will stay out if you will stop your moans