Maps describe the geometry of space.

But not the feelings woven into place

when we love the beauty and the grace.

on the ancient map my fingers trace

the footpaths are like lines upon a face

No map can locate everything we see.

Only that which matters most to me.

London transport bus map delights those

Who do not have a car or have bad eyes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/opinion/covid-brain-mental-health.html

While the pandemic has undeniably caused extraordinary stress and sadness, research on human resilience suggests that people will recover from the trauma of the pandemic faster than many believe. And while certain groups may need mental health care for the longer term, it’s also true that humans’ ability to overcome adversity is often underestimated and that an overwhelming majority of people who suffer trauma will not develop mental illness but eventually feel better.

Maps imply the geometry of space.

But not the feelings woven into place

when we love the beauty and the days

Here are feelings, mind how they embrace

On the ancient map my fingers trace

Little footpaths, lines upon a face.

Above below the earth is our right base

Singing with its gravity and grace

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/opinion/easter-season-joy.html

1.Joy is not “toxic positivity.” It does not insist that we pretend things are better than they are. It does not refuse to face grief or sorrow. But it does say that they are not all there is and that they are not all that needs to be faced.

My super art

Mary knew too late the bus was due in five minutes.She applied some sunscreen and combed her hair gently with a cake fork while she wondered why she was going out.She looked into her phone camera to get her hair in order
Alas, the familiar footsteps of Annie were heard on the patio.In she flew dressed in red and brown like a robin in winter except she wore pure wool
How do you like my outfit, she cried girlishly
Mary stared at her, noting the pale beige face makeup from Max Tucker and brick coloured lipstick from Wigan’s Makeup Outlet Store where Annie loved to browse for days on end.
I think the brick coloured lipstick does not go with the scarlet jacket,Annie.
Oh, don’t worry.It’s the in thing now to clash
That might be true but men won’t know it’s a fashion unless they read Vogue.Most don’t.
Never mind all that. I’ve brought Emile a new blanket
He’s not a dog,you know.Do cats need blankets?
If you drove it would protect the seat.
I might go round the bend.If we drive we almost certainly would meet bends
Do fish get the bends,mewed Emile?
We don’t know that.It only proves that a question can be asked in a human language but within that system there is no way of answering it,Mary told him quietly, thinking of Wittgenstein her husband’s former tutor.
First of all, fish probably can’t speak English or understand it.
How amazing, the little cat replied.How stupid can you get?
Well a fish would think you were stupid for not being able to live in the sea.
So true,Emile sighed.Shall I try?
Don’t be so ridiculous,Annie whispered.The sea i not near Knittingham.Mary can’t drive and you may drown.Then St Peter will be reading out all your sins
Can cats commit sins, asked Emile with surprise
Yes, because you know you have a choice.You can bite my hand or resist the temptation
I don’t feel like biting it now so if I did it would not give me pleasure.
For God’s sake, stop arguing.Anyone would think you’d been to the Synagogue, today Mary shouted
But in a Synagogue men argue about the Torah not about cats swimming,Emile replied
But then it gets to be a habit,Mary finished.
Still many other people argue,Annie reminded her.
But God does not want it,Mary said
How do you know? He/She may love to hear it.It will provoke thought
And it may provoke a Flood or you being turned into a pillow of salt,Mary screamed
Pillar of Salt,Annie corrected her
Why do people not turn into pepper, the cat asked wisely.
There is no pepper in the Dead Sea, the women agreed.~And black pepper/white pepper could be PIC
They have red peppers in the Market.Annie mused.And yellow too
But where does that leave us?Where was Mary going to and why has she not left for the bus stop? Was it something wicked that she was trying to do in secret?
We’ll see tomorrow I expect

Rosa awoke later than she liked to which indicates a control freak element in her personality.She had stayed at her desk till the sun was rising writing her intriguing diary. which she hoped would rival Sylvia Plath’s.

She got up gingerly and made herself a cup of tea in a china mug on a work surface in her lovely peach and teal kitchen
Passing water into a small bottle for the doctor to have analysed was a task even the most brilliant find hard.Rosa was not even the averagely brilliant amongst the brilliants of history like Plataho, Aristittle ,Simone de Boredwoy or Blazed Rascal not to mention St Coal,

.She grabbed her mobile as a dying man at his wife’s hand and rang the cab service. she used now she was unable to see properly or ride her bike.
Hello,it’s Rosa Benchez here.Can a driver pick up my urine sample and take it to the surgery for me.Thank you so much.
No problem, the manager told her and soon afterwards a young man with dangling earrings arrived.She showed him the sample hidden inside a Sainsbury’s shopping bag.He looked puzzled but agreed on payment of £259.89
She realised she had not eaten any breakfast so decided to have an early lunch instead

.As she ate her toasted cheese and snake oil she fell into a daydream.She was with her online man friend walking through a huge field of her favourite flowers,cyclamen.They were walking along companionably without holding hands but together whilst also being apart which was delightful.This was agreeable since she had never met this very charming man in the flesh.He was called XY Matrix although his parents had never studied algebra as far as historians can tell.Could it be a pseudonym?
Maybe he was being raised to be a mathematical prodigy but he became a writer and musician and managed to earn a good income and he had a beautiful detached house filled with antiques and ceramic lamps like Freud’ study.In fact ,he had copied that from historical photos and descriptions and one day he planned to become a therapist.

Rosie and Fox as she called him got on well and shared a liking for poetry and music.Sometimes he had sent her music as attachments on his emails.He seemed to love Wagner and Britten which is a curious combination to the British woman.He loved Britten’s Donne’s Sonnets sung by the stunning tenor Ian Bostridge.

After lunch, Rosa opened her laptop.She found an email from Fox.
You have been here and broken all my windows and my bath is ruined,he wrote.I am moving house to get away from you.And I am having plastic windows.
Rosa was alarmed as it defied common sense She did not know where his house was and it was in another country.So she emailed him back,
What is wrong ,dear?You only said 2 days ago that my poetry had helped your sick friend when you went to visit him in the hospital
Waiting anxiously for his answer, she sipped some coffee and looked at her friend Dolly walk by, dressed in a pink suede jacket and black linen culottes with matching red boots.

Where is Dolly going she wondered pensively,feeling like a cloud floating over Rydal Water in the winter not knowing which way the wind might blow it
After two hours of utter silence, she decided to wait until the evening when she had put away the groceries and written a triolet or two.She was keen to do it before she lost the impetus
The whole evening went by so she emailed him again.But again he did not reply.
The next morning she found a letter on the doormat.

1,Rancour Villas
Horror Lane
Dumbtown

Dear Rosa
I thought you would be kind and gentle like your poetry but you have wounded me.You asked me what date my dental appointment was which was an invasion of my privacy.You told me you would not mind if your son was gay whereas to me it is a sin to indulge those sick appetites and you should not encourage him
Signed XYM

A dental appointment? It’s not as if she had asked him if had a sexually transmitted disease or whether he believed in Jesus as his Saviour.Nor had she asked him if he liked to smoke cigars in bed nor if he let Lassie his sheepdog sleep on the bed and cuddle with him

.For all she knew, the dog might be his partner or even his wife
She emailed him as she felt anxious in case he was having a breakdown.He replied, saying she was not who he thought and he was finished with her.
I wonder who he thought I was, she asked herself as she sat with tears in her eyes feeling concerned about what was really going on in his dear mind.Her cat Lucy ran up and sat on the arm of the chair gazing frenziedly at her owner and mother
Don’t worry Lucy.I am sure I will soon be ok.This must be a mistake.I think he has got paranoia which gets worse and then better

Rosa looked on Amazon and found a book called

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/21/life-is-hard-by-kieran-setiya-review-philosophical-self-help

Can philosophy help us with worldly troubles? Ancient philosophers thought the answer was obvious. Philosophy is a “medical art for the soul”, Cicero tells us. Its compassionate task is to lead us from suffering towards a life lived well. Contemporary philosophers are likely to be more circumspect. Wouldn’t it be presumptuous to think that my training in philosophy equips me to offer advice? The only CPR I know is the Critique of Pure Reason and the tools of my trade – a careful distinction here, some logic-chopping there – seem laughably inadequate to the fears and worries of modern living.

In his new book, Kieran Setiya disagrees. Through carefully crafted examples, he makes the case that philosophy can 

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2002/oct/06/wageslaves.careers

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/plan-your-life-again-but-keep-it-simple.html

When the pandemic started, Ben Michaelis, a clinical psychologist and the author of “Your Next Big Thing: Ten Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy,” advised his clients to stop planning. To survive the tremendous changes happening, he told them not to think about any future beyond the next week or so. “Planning was working against them,” he said.

As the pandemic continued, the usual markers that define lives and help close one chapter and enter another — birthdays, graduations, weddings — took place over video,…………..

https://poets.org/poem/lullaby-0

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/arts/02iht-defiance.1.19000454.html

Ed 8

The triumph of the three Bielski brothers, Tuvia, Zus and Asael, who fought the Nazis in the deep forests of Belarus and saved 1,200 lives, was unlike anything I had ever read about that dark time. Rather than victims wearing yellow stars, here were fighters in fur chapkas brandishing submachine guns. Instead of helplessness and submission, here were rage and resistance.

I knew of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, yet it seemed to stand alone in the popular imagination as the only moment in which organized opposition took root. Yet I have learned that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the impulse to fight back was everywhere: from the streets of Vilnius to the forests of Bialystok, even unto the concrete slabs of Sobibor and Treblinka, thousands of Jews doing whatever they could, whether seeking refuge in the sheltering woods or recklessly taking up arms against overwhelming odds.

Learning of these defiant acts awakened in me something utterly primitive and deeply personal, a wave of awe, humility and admiration.

And outrage, too. Why, I wondered, had I not known these stories while growing up? Could it be that the necessary commemoration of six million dead had so 

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/opinion/patient-therapist-and-personal-boundaries.html

Please print this letter so that when my patients Google me they will see that their psychiatrist and psychoanalyst has been published in The New York Times.

The fields in flames, the stubble set alight
The earth herself was burning in our sight
The ancient lands of Essex still grew grain
As hares ran into hedgerows fearing pain

The empty road, the smoke, the land on fire
The ashes left a newer crop would sire
The land to Epping vast and flat was bright
Yet covered in its smoke there was no light

Our little human world is but a skin
Destruction easy with a word or bomb
Dependent on the government, those liars
Weak as watered gruel, they must be fired

Caught inside the symbols of the Earth
From destruction comes a brave new birth

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

https://www.contemporarypsychotherapy.org/volume-6-issue-1-summer-2014/bookreview/

P

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/

Note: the author says it’s better for us to believe in free will.

For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will—and that losing this belief could be calamitous. Our codes of ethics, for example, assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. In the Christian tradition, this is known as “moral liberty”—the capacity to discern and pursue the good, instead of merely being compelled by appetites and desires.

This lady has lost her head

Did she also cut off her nose to spite her face?

No she can’t bare the site of blood.

Why ,is it private? .

She doesn’t know how to interpret mens eyes.

Oh those scandal eyes

What caused the scandal?

Why do you think there was a cause for it?

In any case I don’t understand how you can interpret someone’s eyes.

Well I’m speaking metaphorically

They can be dark looks, or they can seem to issue an invitation .

At times I have felt men’s eyes rolling all over my body.

Lucian Freud painting there

What about John the Baptist?

He had an air of je ne sais qua. Then he lost his head completely :unfortunate man.

I wonder how it was how people I could watch beheadings

Well they had no televisions and got bored frequently.

Have they never heard of sex?

What’s that?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/books/review/life-is-hard-kieran-setiya.html

Another theory Setiya challenges is the idea that happiness should be life’s primary pursuit. Instead, he argues that we should try to live well within our limits, even if this sometimes means acknowledging difficult truths. Happiness is a matter of definition; Setiya cites Tal Ben-Shahar, the Harvard professor and psychologist who writes about not only happiness but also the importance of accepting reality.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/health/covid-impact-personality-change.html

My old blue fountain pen allows
The ink across the page to flow

Like wet paint from the artist’s brush,

And words come in a rush.


Enchanted through the hand which writes,

Bewitched  by art, beauty alights.

The script is like a music score

Through which we pass as through a door.

Imagination’s home.

As,mysteriously.to you, to me,

The spirits of our hearts are tamed,

By rhythms of pen,of brush,of mind.

They enter vision quite unplanned,

Like moths to flutter softly round

Fire joined heart and hand.




The pen slows down,the hand goes still

And just as dreams at daybreak will,

They shrink,they disappear,they’re gone.

I almost caught that one