The earth is where I want to be. I want the day,I want the night. I want the dark.I want the light. I want to see and to be seen,~ And not to lose my precious dreams
The sun has set, grey clouds turn black,
The day just gone will not come back.
I’ll rest in quiet reverie
Until the reaper’s scythe takes me. And then I drop and mix with dust, Till worms and beetles sate their lust. And fall into ten thousand motes, And dance, in sunlight, music’s notes.
No more striving ,no more ambition
No more fighting,no competition.
Every particle’s the same
Without even a unique name. And, side by side, we all are one, The lusts of life have been and gone. We dwell with dirt and grain and sand At last we’ve reached the Promised Land
She pulled it out and the label said culotte. I must have got this from a catalogue she told herself
It was made of a very thin fabric so she decided to try it on as the weather was extremely hot
While she was fastening the zip her friend Annie came into the room wearingha pink outfit wity matching shoes
Annie burst out laughing
You can’t wear those, she said dominatingly
Why not, said Mary plaintively?
Much too big for you and they will fall off when you’re walking down the street. It’s odd that you should say that because my lata husband Stan as he was generally known often said in the summer that he was worried that my skirt would fall off
What do you think Freud would have said about that? Maybe it’s a repressed desire.
Maybe he wanted other men to see his beautiful wife’s naked body
Do you think Prince Charles ever wished Princess Diana skirt would fall off when she was walking along through a minefield or receiving some illustrious guests from some foreign royal family?
Well no one could ask Prince Charles that now.
A cat could ask him, said Emile Mary s little pussycat.
Why it says in my books that a cat may look at a king but it doesn’t say the cat can ask the king a personal question.
Mary decided to make some fresh tea
I am getting rid of a lot of my clothes Mary told the pair because I am planning to move to Dover. Annie was very upset ….planning to move to Dover at what about me and Emile?
I don’t know if it will ever happen but it’s just something to amuse myself with looking at the price of flats and deciding what kind of furniture I would like to have.
Listen,you are too old to move to somewhere completely new where you don’t know anybody not to mention the fact that Dover is very hilly.
I don’t know sometimes people have to move regardless of their age or maybe I will buy a very small flat to be a second home for me near the sea
But if you got to Dover beach now you won’t hear the strange melancholy roar that Matthew Arnold heard: no you will hear the sound of wet and frightened asylum seekers trying to get out of the small boats.
You might even see riots such as a happening in Epping outside the Bell Hotel. It could be very dangerous.
Well I haven’t thought of that said Mary I was just thinking of three very beautiful holidays in Deal and Walmer.
But that was 35 years ago. You were a young woman then.
You are very pessimistic, aren’t you, Annie? I don’t know if many people in Dover go to the part of the beach with these poor asylum seekers landing and if they do .. after all Jesus Christ could have been an asylum seeker and where would he go today with all the war in the Middle East? Wouldn’t Dover beach be the sort of place he might come to in a boat with his parents why he might be travelling in a Moses basket as might only be a tiny baby. He won’t have a passport of course
He may already have arrived here and he could be staying in the Bell inb at this moment.
Well I don’t think we can go to Epping to find out but who knows whether the Three Kings are on the way already to worship him in a stable in the forest at Epping.
They may have left the middle East some time ago. I wonder if they brought any gold frankincense and myrrh with them?
Well we certainly need a good cup of tea to take our minds off these troubles . and lf you want to go to the sea you just go and stay an hotel for a few days and I will come with you to make sure that you are okay since your eyesight it’s not as good as it used to be : how would you like to go to Eastbourne?
Mary was silent as she was planning the furniture for her dining room in her new flat in her imagination
I think this time I shall have an oak dining table she mused. And so di all of us
The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse and paragraphs, not in lines or stanzas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I believe it’s very good to learn poetry by heart;I was lucky to study modern poetry in school.Poetry can express feelings and knowledge that ordinary language cannot.
I found out after writing some poetry myself that it made reading poetry much easier.So I recommend writing poetry even if it’s terrible because you learn so much and it opens a door into a new world
I love the Ode by Wordsworth.I never tried to learn it.It learned me!
Inside my shell, I dream of pearls, Caterpillars, snails with whorls. I dream contented, all enwrapped With reverie and dream, I’m lapped. The inner seas will comfort me, While gods allow my eyes to see
Oh, sweeter than confectionery Is my worn old dictionary. The words whirl round and fall to shape The sentences, which my world drape. This furnishing is rich and strange Yet magically self-arranged.
Oh, sweeter than the love of man Is reading works of poets long gone; And feeling deeply their dark tides, Upon which our boats may glide. The sea infinite we float on Is the same warm sea that ancients swam.
Sweeter still is this spring air And the blossom spreading fair. We’ll drown ourselves in deep green fields To the gods of poetry yield. We’ll rise again and spring up tall To grow more rich until we fall.
Sweet it is to live and die And to write my poetry Touch me with your ardent souls My mind and yours shall all be whole
What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world. The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e
To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.
To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.
To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.
What do I know about God and the purpose of life?
I know that this world exists.
That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field.
That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning.
This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it.
That life is the world.
That my will penetrates the world.
That my will is good or evil.
Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world. The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e
To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.
To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.
To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.
I learned a hymn in our old chapel
I realized then God ate that apple
Eve took the guilt and asked no, Whys.
Since then all women need to cty
Yet we went to church and we all sang.
The organ played and the big bells rang.
But we never heard the answer then
till a strange loud voice called out,”Ah! Men!”
I’m not sure if we were made to sing.
Yet, what but joy can we each bring?
The psalms will comfort us at night.
And in the dawn we see the Light.
Then we rise up and our songs float out.
The cats miaow as they run about.
The dogs join in to bark and growl.
And from the sky we hear God howl!
Mary had been reading a new book called,” The Path” by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh.To her surprise, she saw it reviewed on her phone where she read the guardian news
.She had decided to get out of bed on the other side
When she awoke the next day, she remembered her vow.Unfortunately, she forgot she was inside a fleece sleeping bag with a zip on one side only.Should she get some scissors and cut her way out on the other side?Or was that a foolish idea since nobody but she would know she had failed her to keep her first new promise.
She heard a noise and them her friend Annie came in wearing a long satin nightgown and a green velvet trench coat.
How do you like this, she asked Mary?
Mary was very red yet silent
What is wrong, with you Mary?
I need to pee but I can’t get out of bed on the wrong side.
You have no choice, said Annie.You must not wet the bed or die from a burst bladder. Get out on the right side
But I feel a failure on my first day.
Maybe that is your lesson.Accept you can’t do it and get on with your day.
Mary ran to the bathroom.What a relief passing water can be to poor ladies who suffer afflictions in these regions.
Annie went down to the bijou yet complex kitchen and began to make some toast and boil some eggs.She gazed at the peach walls and melon cupboard doors unable to decide if she liked them.Maybe kingfisher blue might have been better.Too late now.Mary could not afford a new kitchen even if this one was really old.At least it was not orange as was common in the 70’s.
Mary came in with her golden hair standing up on end like candlesticks from the Synagogue.
I just got a shock, she said
I can see your hair is standing on end.Was it the electric socket?
No, there was a man looking into the window and I was naked in the bath.
Perhaps it was King David, Annie joked.Why don’t you have frosted glass?
Stan said it would frost itself in the winter.He was the least practical man in the world.
Maybe we could glue artificial frost onto it?
Who was the man, asked Annie her cheeks pinker than her perky pink lipstick by Licumb ; those lips which were so thick and sensual with a lovely curve.
Mary tore her eyes away from these lips.I didn’t have my glasses on, she said.Maybe it was a man from a hot air balloon?
Maybe someone fancies you at last,saidAnnie.
Do you think I’d go out with a man who does things like that?
No, you could stay in with him, Annie joked, as tears of mirth made her green eyeshadow and red mascara stream down her cheeks like rain after a nuclear explosion.No wonder men ran after her in the street.
You could succumb to his charms,Annie whispered.
I think I’d like a man more sensitive than that, Mary screeched.
Well, Mary, you are so lacking in knowledge the art of flirting you only notice men when they do something really wild or unusual
Like what, asked Emile who had just munched up a bowl of dried cat food and was full of energy.
Well, Stan kept pretending he loved reading Newton’s original writings which he bought from some unusual website thinking it would impress Mary. However as he failed O leve; maths 5 times he could not understand it.He sobbed and cried in the public library and Mary was moved by his grief.Later on, though, he became angry at her intellectual talent and took me as his mistress to get back at her.She never even noticed!
I don’t see how having a mistress is a revenge on poor woman who was given her genes by God, said Emile.
Don’t be daft, she buys her jeans from TK Maxx, Annie answered.
And so do all of us.
Western Cork’s relaxed in winter sun
Unexpected pleasure, though desired
Uncork that wine and let’s enjoy some puns.
No-one thinks the Irish need their fun
We may need to have our brains rewired
Western Cork’s pole-axed by winter sun
Now everyone has reason to be glum
Sunny days yet evenings dark as mires
Uncork the wine and let’s thwack our own bums
We like drinking when we’re feeling glum
Spare not the whiskey, hail oh Lanarkshire!
Western folk write cheques in winter sun
When I get undressed, my lover’s stunned.
My generous body shocks his dark green eyes
Uncork the wine and squeeze me, juicy plum
I have no kernel , nut, nor night attire
I studied numbers infinite in desire.
Western Cork can prove dull in mid-June
Uncork the wine and let it make us dumb.
Don’t you know anybody else? Do you actually want to spend Christmas in a stable?
I thought it seemed more Christmas like to be with the humble and the poor. I will buy the food of course but she will cook it. I don’t know if she’s got an oven but we can always have something like hamburgers on garlic bread with a side salad for one or two only one pound fifty in John Lewis . To be honest I prefer Weetabix to Turkey and I prefer the humble to the rich.
Make a Weetabix stuffing then. Just some sausage meat parsley and some mashed up Weetabix stick it in the turkey and Bob’s your uncle. Don’t you have to cook the turkey then?
Not if you’re an eagle.
Do people eat eagles in other countries?
Well I’ve never heard of it yet but I suppose if there’s nothing else then they will try but the eagle may eat them or at least kill them and then we have the vultures coming.
I thought we were talking about Christmas
Well it’s a bit like psychoanalysis you start talking about whatever is in your mind and you don’t know where you’re going to end up.
What would a psychoanalysts think of me talking about eagles?
It’s impossible to say unless they’ve got to know you very very well and they realize that eagle represents your starving child self driven mad by rage.
I think that’s unfair on eagles actually.
Well they don’t know, do they?
But it might get back to them. Then what would happen if you live in your London suburb?
I don’t think there are eagles in the Chilterns
But what about Whipsnade Zoo though?
I know they’ve got tigers but I doubt very much that they have eagles in there
It makes you realise though doesn’t it how wrong it is to have a zoo
Donald Trump likes eagle soup so they tell me m
What rubbish you’re thinking about mock turtle soup
Do you love eagles?
I don’t know any but I know Terry Eagleton.
He believes it was a mistake to publish iris murdoch’s poetry that was found in the attic of her house in Oxford
Once you’re dead you have no control but why didn’t she destroy it? I suppose she didn’t know she was going to get dementia and when she had that then she wouldn’t have been able to do anything sensible like destroying her poetry
Now there’s a thought at least she didn’t publish hers on the internet
I don’t think she had a computer it would have been anathema to her. She would want to feel the pen moving on the paper and that would connect to some part of her brain
Will Terry Eagleton change his mind or will Rose Mather win the booker prize!?
I have never heard of her before
Neither have I
You must have heard of her or why would you have said her name?
Frontiers in Neurology reported that the expression of science through poetry could enrich and better kids’ understanding of science education, in schools. According to the research, it encouraged use of their imagination to deconstruct and reconstruct their learned knowledge. Critiquing and analysing thus could facilitate learning.
Emily Dodd, aficionado and writer of scientific poetry and screenwriter for CBeebies science programs tells me: “There’s something to be said for communicating science creatively and seeing how much knowledge is retained or if people are interested enough to look for more information afterwards.” What she wants to know is why we lose that desire to understand and how we can bring back that desire and the joy that comes with discovery.
This very tendency to reduce things to their minute components is science’s premise and so it is sometimes criticised for losing sight of the wholeness and larger human meaning. John Keats, who trained as a surgeon and apothecary before committing himself to poetry, famously said:
“There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.”
This roughly translates as science ruins the beauty of things by dissecting it into its components. It’s worth noting, though, that Keats was a part of the Romantic era wherein poets were confronted by the Industrial Revolution and the idea that science and technology would pave the way for the future was for them, terrifying.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is perhaps the biggest exception to the norm. A German, and born in 1749, he was a writer and a scientist but he always regarded his contribution to the science of colour far greater than any literature he wrote. His work includes poetry written in a variety of metres and styles, prose and verse dramas; memoirs, an autobiography, literary criticism, papers on botany, anatomy, and colour and four novels.
One of his biggest passions was the study of clouds and in an act of pronounced love and respect between a poet and scientist, he wrote a poem about each of the different classifications of clouds (nimbus, cirrus, cumulus and stratus) and an ode to the scientist who devised them, Luke Howard, as a declaration of his admiration for Howard’s scientific skills.
“To find yourself in the infinite,
You must distinguish and then combine;
Therefore my winged song thanks
The man who distinguished cloud from cloud.”
Stan was leaning over, cleaning the new bath.When the doorbell rang,he rushed downstairs and opened the double front door. “Will you take this parcel in for the lady next door?” The postman asked wearily. “Oh,fine Stan stuttered.He was trying to avoid Annie but here she was,coming down the road of superior semi detached houses suitable for ex-headmasters ,small businessmen,econometricians,surgeons,pie salesmen and theologians. She was wearing perfume, and green sandals from TK Maxx,light khaki tencel cropped combat trousers with a purple silky over-blouse, not to mention her matching raspberry and cream underwear .Round her neck hung a miniature grandfather clock on a solid gold chain,and she had three imitation gold and silver watches on each of her three wrists making a total of 333 watches according to Carnap’s theory of logic and Russell’s terrible handwriting. Stanley didn’t know that she had a mobile phone stuffed into her bra—one advantage for the larger sized woman.In fact she had 4 down there in her raspberry coloured glamour bra,as she had a phobia about their batteries running down all at once The more she had the lower the probability of her being without a phone whilst out and about the town and countryside.So she reasoned in her womanly way. Just then one phone rang.She rummaged around to the consternation and turmoil-uation of Stanley and the postman.She plucked out a pale blue phone. “Hi,it’s Annie” she murmured. “Hi Annie it’s Dave the paramedic with carpentry skills. You’ve not rung 999 lately so we were wondering if all was well!” “Oh,I’m terribly sorry.I’ll try to phone later on.Thanks,Petal.That was Dave,our ex-transvestite converted paramedic”,she informed the men.The postman galloped off on his donkey, his bags full of undelivered males.It’s a tough but interesting life in Knittingham. Would you like a male delivery?Contact Parcel Force without delay. Annie went into Stan’s house and demanded a cup of coffee. “Won’t it make you put weight on” Stan quipped ironically. “Do you think I’m too plump?” she responded anxiously.. “Too plump for what?” he quipped amiably. “To attract men,of course!” “No,my angel,you are just perfect”he quacked definitively.”Nor are you an angel,strictly speaking,as I have good reason to know.Thank you,my beloved for services rendered so generously and freely.” “Oh,my goodness I must get home to render the fat from the beef and to make some gooseberry jam.” Stanley looked uneasy. “I wonder why babies are left under gooseberry bushes? The thorns are so big it’s quite dangerous getting them out,or so Mary told me when Lyra was born. She was covered in scratches and wouldn’t come near me for months.” “Why don’t you come upstairs to look at our new purple bathroom suite.Since the Royal Wedding it’s the in colour.The gold taps were expensive but they do go well.” “My God,let me out.” she bawled,”It reminds me of the Vatican and that’s no place for a lady”, “Not even a gay lady?” Stan muttered parsimoniously, as he licked her eyelashes gently. “Stop that.I’ve got my Yves St Laurent mascara on.” “I prefer the taste of the Chanel,”he disclosed privately in an internal secret memo.[available in 50 years] “Why not lick my neck instead?” she enquired curiously as she tripped over Emile the cat, who had slipped into the bathroom as usual to see what they were up to,you know what I mean, you catch my drift? She fell floppily into the bath and banged her head on the taps. “Oh,gosh,better ring 999” Stan said to Emile. “Have you got your catphone warehouse mobile on you?” “Yes ,it’s in my y-fronts”, the cat amiably miaowed. “Hi Dave,this is Emile.Can you come quick.Annie is unconscious and what is worse,she has scratched the new bath.” In fact it was Emile who had scratched the bath that morning but since Stan had not noticed he hoped to, callously, pass the blame onto poor Annie.How cruel can a cat be? Ask any mouse! Still in the end God made all of us and what a terrifying and beautiful world it is.
The postman was very late coming that morning. Stan was asleep in his armchair whilst Annie was analysing some data on the political alignments of the over fifties group in Knittingham.Mary was upstairs daydreaming. Hi. Mary…Annie called.There’s a letter for you from the hospital. Mary came down, her face a little pale with anxiety.She opened it slowly.Inside it had the following announcement Your appointment on 5th October at 8 am with Dr Paramour has been cancelled.. We can offer you he following appointment: 5th October 2014 at 7.59am in the usual clinic This will be with Dr Paramour unless he goes on holiday again.He will remove your tumour and your humour 📷 Stan read the letter. Why have they sent this? he asked bemusedly as he blinked with his kind blue eyes. Mary phoned the hospital.She spoke to a charming young man. What does it mean? she enquired.Why give such a silly letter out. It means nothing,the man said,It’s the computer. Computers follow programmes.We’ve had this type of stupid letter many times in the last 6 months….it’s using paper and postage apart from the worry.Why can’t someone alter the programme? I don’t know,the pleasant man replied.I think nobody understands it. Don’t they realise that keeping patients calm and trusting is part of the healing process? No,they don’t he answered despondently. We have to answer the phone all day long.So we can hear how upset some people are. Stan called out,it’s in the government too.They wasted millions on a new system which was scrapped before it was ever used… Where are all the intelligent people? That’s what I have been wondering,thought Emile as he hid behind Annie’s new green handbag hoping a field mouse might come by I am sure if I planned the the computer programmes I could fix this,said Mary.But I will never be given a job now.I don’t think I’d want it now with my eyesight. Well,Mary,you are still very beautiful,said Stan.I think I want to go to bed with you. Stan, how can you say it in front of Annie? Well,she can come as well if she likes,he replied tactfully. And what about Emile? Oh, alright then.We’ll all go to bed even he … we need a life changing experience.And I do not mean another daft letter from that blooming hospital,The Royal Wee. We could paper the walls with them. I would not enjoy seeing the walls like that,said Annie. I am just making a point… that they waste so much money…. and time answering the phone to correct their errors………. it’s like Alice in Sunderland. I never knew she was a Geordy, mioawed Emile… I just like to think of her that way,answered Stan. Anyway,upstairs and off with your clothes… we must make love before we die even if it kills us or we have to go to A and E with angina,migraine,a broken rib or other unmentionable discomforts. And being obedient they all want upstairs,got undressed and fell asleep side by side in Stan’s large soft bed… except for Emile. I thought they were going to have a love in,he thought.Perhaps when they waken up,who knows? Maybe the NHS are trying to make people mad so they will pay for private treatment…. Mary was dreaming she was back at Lamebridge teaching real analysis to a group of frightened first year students…what a pity they are so nervous,she thought.They’d do better working in a garden centre or a zoo. And so would all of us
The world that we live in is a very different one from the tiny world of the su doku puzzle.
But there are certain things they have in common.
It seems that everything within the puzzle is connected to everything else so if you’re trying to fill in all the number ones and you can’t do it it doesn’t matter which other number you choose to follow instead because they’re all very closely linked indeed you could say they are chained together.
So wherever you start from or wherever you go on the way you will get to the same place in the end.
Human life may be looked at this way although it may be metaphorical rather than literal
Everything is connected and if you are having a difficult time dealing with a problem in your life which seems insoluble then you could follow this idea and try to deal with a different problem in your life instead. This will take your mind off the problem that you are stuck with and give your brain a rest. You may find afterwards that you can see the way to go forward with the first problem.
Also I imagine that if you do something bad unless you can resolve that in any way that’s possible that may very well affect you in other parts of your life.
I’m not sure if that’s what people call karma but I do think there is a connection.
What you give Life to will help you and what you destroy may ultimately destroy you.
It’s worth thinking about because otherwise these puzzles are rather sterile. I like to look at them from a different perspective a wider perspective or to use them as a way of dealing with more difficult problems
After all there are no straight lines in nature but in geometry there are straight lines and triangles squares and parallelograms that’s because it’s too difficult to deal with curves as they are straight away
So we look at something simpler than curves known as straight lines which don’t actually exist in reality. They’re a great help in geometry and also in architecture and mechanics and all parts of physics
It’s not surprising that we have to invent ways of simplifying the world before we can understand it or deal with it because it’s very very complicated.
So we pretend it’s simpler than it really is.
I have not yet talked about how this could relate to politics
How my heart speaks 