From time and place and season I am lost,
Disorientated ,missing tracks well worn.
Do not suppose I’m unaware of cost,
Nor label me with epithets of scorn.
For usual paths lead to the usual place.
The safest way to live and perhaps to die,
But wandering through the woods I find new space
and in wild grasses with the fox I lie.
Through distant trees, I see a way to go
As narrow as a slit in pale limestone.
I pass in silence as if in deep,deep snow.
My courage rises even as I groan.
Remember when we’re lost ,we may then find
Another way,a place,another mind.

Describe this now, the sky called out to me

Copper clouds turn pale above the tree

No motion but a trembling of the boughs

And leaves that shake by rhythm well endowed

So I bought a pen with murderous ink

As I wrote the sun began to sink

Why am I thinking about original sin? No one talks about sin nowaday nor about evil and yet in the last 120 years we had two terrible world wars we had the Holocaust we had Stalin not to mention the other more recent tragedies

The human being can be involved in  evil matters. What original sin was meant to be something that babies were born with something to do is sex being evil according to Santa Augustin of Hppo.

. So what is the problem?

Well I have a different explanation. Someone born into the economic system presently in Britain will be better off the many babies are in other parts of the world.and elderly people e looked after nursing homes

Yet the staff in care homes are not able to do their job with 100% satisfaction because the prime purpose of this care home is to make money for the owners and in order to make money you’ve got to charge a certain fee but not so high that no one will those who afford it with high enough to make a profit.

Well you can do this by having the minimum number of staff and paying them the minimum wage which currently in London is about £10 an hour.

There are never quite enough carers to answer the people’s bells as quickly as critical would like them to. So sometimes the people who can’t walk and therefore are in the greatest need will start to scream and shout or cry and sog and this can be very distressing for all who to hear. Then they criticize the carers but it’s not the carers fault is it if you have say 18 people needing care with only two carers on duty then someone loses out. It’s like Darwin’s theory of evolution that the strongest will beat the weakest and the strongest of the old people even when they have dementia can dominate the atmosphere

They do get more attention simply because you can hear them so much. It can be tragic sometimes but it’s even more tragic to me to see the ones who have not got dementia but maybe you’ve got cognitive decline and they’re just sit there  half dead in the silence.

They are the forgotten people unless they have families close by and some families think that once their

relative has got dementia they don’t need to visit them anymore but dementia is only part of what they are most of their personality is still intact. The name of the person may be forgotten but the familiar eyes on face and voice will be a great comfort

Where I see the sin is even with someone who feels that she’s got a vocation to be a carer to the elderly cannot be a carer in the full sense because she cannot look after anybody except the ones who are fairly fit she cannot lose after anybody to the extent that they need. And there’s nothing in economic theory about a job being there to satisfy and genuine need for human caring for the old or disabled

.

The sin is not in the Carers but it is in the economic system of maximizing profits and minimizing labour costs.

If you looking at a textbook for mathematical ethanolics you will see the letters

L is labour, formerly known as people

C is capital. Representing money

To me it is dehumanising to call people labor and then in numbers which happens if you continue reading this economics book. Once you don’t see them as people then you can move them about do what you like to them make them part of an algebraic equation … So labor must be mobile and people cannot expect to live in the same city all their lives. Don’t worry about the elderly parents or their relatives etc they have to move elsewhere and while this is quite acceptable to some better off people if she’s not so good for people in lower jobs who are getting older. How many devices now we have so we can stay in touch with people far away because we can’t expect to stay near our friends or relatives for any length of time and that might be our children use their phones so much as well.

What it means in a care home is that is it will be very unusual for all the residents to feel satisfied with their care but  they will criticise the carers or the nurse or the manager for those people do not have any control over the number of staff.

It’s possible that some homes are more flexible than others but you can’t be sure of that but you cannot be. sure of anything

The original sin is the economic system together with the flows of weaknesses together with the flaws and weaknesses of human beings which are there in the rich and the poor. Sometimes there are saints as well

.

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2023/01/13/weekend-reads

The trembling leaves hid sparrows as they sang
We were silent,drowning in the sun
Reminding me of Cartmel and Grange sands

I turned the phone off. so no idler rang
In winter we forget that bright light comes
The shining leaves hid sparrows as they sang

My parents had no garden and no land
But judging by fertility,some fun!
I wish we were all down on Grange’s sands

I remember holding Dad’s thin hand
He put me on his shoulders and we ran
He knew the words to all old Irish songs

He was tall and made of smoke a friend
Then he went away to be God’s son
I wish we still were playing on the sands

In theology ,I have no hand
Do we need to know where God has gone?
Can even experts hear what angels sing?

The theologians meanly note their ends
Bishops in their robes are tried and stand
The pure white flowers are scented as birds sing
Haunting me with childhood,Grange O’ Sands

When Mary woke up she could see the sun shining through the curtains. How lucky, it was going to be another bright day. She lay in bed trying to decide what to do. then she remembered that she could not go out because she was waiting for the pharmacy to deliver her medication.
Owing to the cutbacks in the NHS the pharmacy was struggling to cope with all the prescriptions received especially from the older folk of Knittingham who have been put onto statins,calcium channel blockers, beta blockers, tranquilizers, antidepressants mini aspirin, warfarin and even anti-psychotic drugs because they did not believe Theresa May was a was a real living person so were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
f Ronald Laing was here now he would be rolling in his grave because he said schizophrenia was caused by people being put into an intolerable situation within the family of origin or more likely within Society if we can still iue the word
Is Boris Johnson real? Michael Gove… he’s hardly looks human;you see if you do not agree with what the majority of people think then you are defined as mad.
This means that all the Jews in Germany and Austria and other countries in Eastern Europe were crazy in 1938 because they did not believe that Adolf Hitler was a good leader for Germany and indeed was a dangerous and evil human

And when they were taken to Concentration Camps and murdered or shot in their thousands by the advancing German army on its way to “defeat” the Soviet Union in 1941……….. were they out of their minds?
Who do you think was crazy then?
Who is crazy now?

Well, Mary thought this is not going to get me very far I better make myself a big mug full of hot tea so I can take my antibiotics.

I really wonder now if original sin is real or whether it is a society that is evil. Western societies have nuclear bombs, military forces and many such things. That must tell us something.

Mary was looking in her wardrobe trying to find something to wear. She picked out a skirt of many colours rather like Joseph’s coat would have been in the Bible. That didn’t do Joseph much good do it?. With that, she wore a blue acrylic jumper whose neck was too low so underneath she had to wear a purple camisole

My goodness, she thought it takes me half the morning just getting dressed; however did we manage to go to work years back?

Of course, when Mary was working she wore just jeans and a sweater.. She even wore underwear but nobody could see it except on one occasion when the zip on her trousers broke in the middle of a lecture.However, the students were very kind and none of them seemed to be looking at it. that was because her lectures were so fascinating that none of the students was looking at her as a woman despite the fact they could have seen her blue silk knickers poking out through the broken zip.

After that Mary realised that it was better to wear a very long sweater when out of the house. How kind her students had been

Downstairs she noticed that although she had vacuumed the carpet in the hall the day before it was still covered in little bits of paper and other tiny objects. I suppose you can’t have it clean all the time she murmured to her cat Emile
It’s not natural to be clean. Are forests clean, are woods clean, is the sea clean? I’d better think about the latter one she thought. after reading the news about the environmentshe knew there were different kinds of cleanliness

There was a kind of a harmonious dirtiness which fostered the growth of plants and seeds and then there was the inharmonious dirtiness of grass verges being covered in crisp packets and empty bottles of Coke and the inharmonious depths of the sea where plastic bags were waiting to kill the whales or the dolphins Yes it is rather difficult to define she decided.

In the kitchen, her cordless vacuum cleaner was waiting to be charged. Had it committed a crime. Of course not, it was waiting to be charged with electricity.

Through the glass door, she saw her friend Annie approaching slowly as she was wearing very high heeled shoes

Good grief Mary cried. I thought all the top people were wearing white trainers this year with designer clothes

Well, I am not, said Annie. I bought these shoes because I have got an invitation to have dinner with that psychotherapist who lives across the road

You haven’t mentioned him for a long time, smiled Mary but in any case, it’s not the time for dinner yet

No it’s not till tomorrow actually but I thought I would try these shoes out and see what I can get used to wearing them so it won’t look as if I’m making an effort to look especially good for him.

The shoes were shiny red patent leather with 5-inch heels.

What makes you think that he will like them, asked Mary tentatively

All men like these sort of shoes and Annie told her.

You can’t prove that. I don’t suppose that the native peoples of North America would have liked women to wear shoes like that

They probably did not even wear shoes at all : they had moccasins with soles, made from buffalos hides…

Well it’s different nowadays

Modern life has made men’s sexual desire disappear so we need to do things to bring it back again

Why, even teenagers have given up sex now!

I don’t think that psychotherapist is a teenager whispered Mary with a smile on her face.

You may be right

When he was growing up women would have been wearing stiletto heels. I had some myself until they got stuck in a groove in the pavement and I had to leave them behind.

That’s why I did mathematics at University. I wanted something more.

That’s ridiculous,replied Annie. I wore stiletto heels and have been married five times and I never wanted to go to university to read anything at all. Especially not physics, mathematics or engineering or difficult subjects like that.
I think it will be a big mistake for women to believe they can get married after they have read mathematics for 6 years at university.
Well I got married said Mary bluntly

You must be the exception to the rule as you are so stunningly lovely and not dominating at all.

Some men like a dominating woman, Mary kindly informed her.

Well, I’ve never met a man like that so far. her friend responded

Maybe you will

I wonder what that psychotherapist likes. Do you not think he will be married already

I don’t mind. I can be his mistress.

But wearing red patent leather shoes makes it all too obvious to the neighbours ; they will think that you are a tart

What, at my age?

There’s no tart like an old tart

That doesn’t mean anything said Annie nervously.

Not logically but it means something even if it’s only humorous. What kind of dress are you going to wear with this?

I got a dress from Dash last year it’s what they call a wrap dress it’s blue and quite demure but I would like you to see me in it to make sure it is not too tight. I hate a dress that is too tight on a woman

But not on a man, I suppose, Mary replied whimsically

I don’t mind what men wear. If they want to wear a wrap dress let them wear it especially in the summertime as these cotton dresses are very comfy in hot weather

But that’s not why you’re wearing one is it? You are wearing it because you think it will make you look sexually attractive

Well, it might make a man look sexually attractive too.

I suppose we don’t really know exactly what makes people look sexually attractive. But why don’t you want to be friends with this psychotherapist first and get to know him and to understand where he is coming from before you decide to wear provocative clothing. if he’s a Freudian he might think you’ve got hysteria

Oh no no, psychotherapists can’t decide something like that from one meeting

We should not rush to judgment.A woman might be wearing a wrap dress that clings to her curvaceous body because all her other clothes are in the washing machine

It would have to be a very big washing machine to put your clothes into it all at once

Don’t be snide it doesn’t suit your nature, Mary!.

Perhaps my nature will change now that I am a widow. perhaps I will say nasty things to people and steal you fruit from their Orchards

Will you start doing armed robbery asked her friend because if you do I would like to come with you

Do you really mean that, Mary asked

Yes of course I do. although I have no guns and I have no knives except the ones in the kitchen

Well they can be deadly. Marital violence has occurred where a long-suffering wife has killed the cruel husband with the carving knife when she was trying to cook the Sunday dinner and he was asking her to cut his toe nails

That’s true but I am thinking of robbing banks and they will not be cooking a Sunday dinner in there will they?

No ,they’re probably going to McDonald’s for their dinner

That’s alright then

I was just thinking of pretending to have a gun and staring at them brazenly

Give me your money I want £50,000

it’s no use, Mary. you look too kind and gentle to be convincing

In that case, I will have to start practicing looking nasty and aggressive

Please don’t do it to me Annie asked. it might bring out the demon in me

I didn’t know you had got a demon inside you said, Mary. has it got a name?

Not so far but I will think of one soon because I am going to buy it its own mobile phone

Why would a demon want a mobile phone? asked Mary

Don’t be so logical. not everything has a reason. I expect they like to look modern like you and I do

Well don’t spend a lot of money on it You can get a Nokia 1 unlocked for £79.99 on Amazon and then you have to buy a SIM card

I would have thought a SIN card will be most suitable for demons,.I shall go and put my new dress on and return here in a few minutes so that you can tell me what you think

Why Annie thinks that Mary is a good judge of clothing is a mystery to all of us as her main interest is in mending gadgets and studying philosophy while listening to Leonard Cohen singing The Future

And it is to all