I got a scanner and have just found how to scan to my chromebook.This was the nearest sketch I could find

The only way into truth is through one’s own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation. Simone Weil
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/simone_weil_403834?src=t_humiliation

I think WordPress is very rude to folk
As on the page was,Rubbish, and be damned
Who is the demon who to me out-spoke
It don’t like the crap what I have wrote!

Ar least they could send email just to me
I don’t want “garbage” for my folk to see.
“Rubbish, you are nothing” was the line
It sent a horrid tingle up my spine

I don’t mind a tingle in my heart
Just because we’re old, love don’t depart
But fear and loathing are too much for me
I shall have to go and brew some tea

I looked again and “publish” did I see!
The Freudian errer was entirely me

Today I fill the bin with ten dead leaves
A tree that perished in the wintry breeze
A plant that died  inside the house called mine
But nothing that I read about online

Today the kitchen bin is taken out
Kleenex tissues, dirty  little thoughts
So confessing sins was that as well
Clearing out the smut that in us dwells

Boundaries round the purified,the good
Separate it from what we  think is  bad
We must not let two become confused
Holy Smoke, the lines symbolic muse!
!
I throw out stuff that should not linger here
Transgression makes the sinner feel impure.

Anaemia comes in fourteen  hundred types
The steam iron kills the germs and then ignites
Babies use ten thousand paper wipes

We gnaw the fruits of nature,tender, ripe
The kettle boils and  fuses all the lights
Anaemia comes in fourteen  hundred types

Grandad used to smoke a polished pipe
The house flies danced and mother lost her might.
Babies use ten billion paper wipes

Are my sins all mortal, do I lie?
Will the devil die and  leave me right?
Anaemia comes in fourteen  hundred types

Evil is immortal. god is blithe
He thinks,he calculates and then he writes
Babies use ten trillion paper wipes

People  queue for sales all through the night
As angels  scatter from the orange lights
Anaemia comes in fourteen hundred types
But porn  is like a nuclear bomb online

The cold wind slapped my cheeks with hands well chilled
A blind and natural force  cared not for me
A hint that I was soon to pay my bills

First consider death and make a will
There are  no autumn leaves.not much to see
The  wind  of age cracks minds as if to kill

No more  shall we climb  in  the  Cleveland hills
Not lie in heather,drowned in honey bees
The cold wind slapped my cheeks with hands well chilled

How we’re ground in Nature’s  deathly mills
A hand, an eye, an ear, we watchers see
A hint that we are soon to pay  our bills

Who  creates and who if unfulfilled
Shall make a war and set no prisoners free?
The cold wind strikes the soldiers’ eyes  like drills

To God, the orphaned infants make a plea
I look,I see those  Auschwitz silver trees
The cold wind slapped my cheeks with hands well chilled
The ovens burn, the blackbird sings its trills

How different positions of the hand affect our feelings.
In this photo,because the hand is open  and upwards I feel it is very moving.But  when I did one with the back of the hand   showing I felt less affected by it

I was unready for anything,
with no alarm like a bee.
Each fresh day is torture..
If you don’t hate me.

I was as tame as a quango
I was right  far in my mind.
Each night  had its daydreams,
Oh  wish you were kind.

I was charmed by your molars.
They were sharper than braille.
Each dawn brought the moon out.
As you cut your nails.

Rolling stones gathered
Your heart was not mine.
I’ll give you what you wish for.
It is by good  design .
.
As long as the clock speaks
As long as the rose.
As long as the bike pumps..
I’ll remember your nose.

As long as my patterns;
As brief as they are;
As long as my brain’s dead
I shall parsnip a star.

I love a good proverb.
I love no cliches.
When you find some Wisdom
Do not sever my pay.

Justice long as a ruler,
Sharpened to a screw.
When you are more kind,then
I may leak what I brew
.
As long as the flat Earth
As wise as it’s broad.
The moon in the water
Heard the crow caw.

Please hear my tall story
Sing  beside my cello.
I may fail at  the knife Class
But I can  say , oh blow

I went to the Church belle,
And asked for a clue.
The finger on the dial
Kept pointing at you.

As long as the moon’s lined
As wise as a toad
As quick as a stencil
I  have wrought what I ought.

I asked for a doctor
I asked for a nurse
They said you are dead,dear
Where  does it hurt?

The rites of the dead ones
The wrongs of our lives
All will be well when
We can marry our wives.

I ask Leonard Cohen
To sing Joan of Arc
He can’t  do it  proper
Except in the dark

Oh, handheld vacuum cleaner I love you
For one day I can clean the stairs if blue.
You  have power and good design I see
As if your maker was an artist too.
I  had a cordless vacuum once before
It  emitted smoke, I chucked it out the door
As dying is no way to clean a floor.
Even if you are extremely poor.
The makers gave me all the money back
And then a newer cleaner, what good luck!
They charged me nothing for the second one
Because I was so humorous on the telephone.
I’d just got in from a biopsy then.
It was nothing major though, you ken
The taxi driver liked intriguing chat
And so refused to charge me, fancy that!
It seems my humour  is a great asset
As I had cancer   thrice then  lost the cat
Not to mention my old man had died
So in my way, I have been rather tried.
But I do not grumble when I wet my pants.
Nor when the kitchen’s conquered by the ants.
For coughing  is a dangerous thing to do
Wait until you’re sitting on the loo!
The anxiety I feel is of the moral type
Like who’s my neighbour, and what shall I write?
And is it bad to write about old Stan
And his mistress, neighbour, Lady Anne?
For we are told adultery is wrong,
Though not as bad as writing bawdy songs.
Yet here I am with meatballs inside me.
I think I’ll wash them down with some hot tea
I’ll say a prayer inside me for the pain
Of all the refugees and what they feel again.
It seems that empathy is getting low
And we’re more wicked than we ever know.
But soon I shall sort out the mess of years
When I wandered, weeping, down the vale of tears
I shall eventually reclaim all my bed
The empty space is full of books I read.
But then it’s very hard to get inside
Next to the place where someone loved has died.
And so my entire house is filled with books
Or clothes and shoes and radios, please  don’t look
As bit by bit ,I let in emptiness~
By gum, life’s much harder than a game of chess
And when I’m empty I can wait for grace
Or find another man, but not in haste
As I  may be gay for all I know
It never rains but sometimes we get snow

We saw a  piece of driftwood on a beach
Purified and purged by lashing waves
The memory  is almost out of reach

At Brancaster, the sun  sometimes had heat
We walked too far and risked a watery grave
We might have   been two bodies on the beach

The confidence of foolish men is deep
We imitate them and how they behave
Our common sense  is flying out of reach

And I myself am now an ancient witch
In the sea pools ,I will, salty, bathe
I took a  piece of driftwood from a beach

Inspection of the wood had much to teach
It showed a gentle beauty as it lay
Our common heart  is almost out of reach

Oh,like the step of Blythburgh church  pale grey
Broken stones  with cracks where   beetles play
We saw a  piece of driftwood on the beach
So pure and pale, it made the  white sands speak

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2018:16-33

Genesis:

²⁶ The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

²⁷ Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, ²⁸ what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

²⁹ Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

³⁰ Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

³¹ Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

³² Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

³³ When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/blink-and-its-over-short-duration-high-impact-experiences-of-2017/

Extract:

In “Living and Thinking About It: Two Perspectives on Life,” Kahneman and co-author Jason Riis wrote, “An individual’s life could be described—at impractical length—as a string of moments. A common estimate is that each of these moments of psychological present may last up to three seconds, suggesting that people experience some 20 000 moments in a waking day, and upwards of 500 million moments in a 70-year life.” That would mean that a stint in a Kusama mirror room would be about 10 moments, while the eclipse’s totality consisted of a little over 40—so, relatively few to choose from as a “peak,” when you think about it. But these brief bursts of wonder formed the backbone to the story of my year.

February: Infinity Mirrors

I happened to be in Washington, D.C. in February when the Kusama exhibit opened at the Hirshhorn Museum—its world premiere. Nearly 160,000 people visited the D.C. installation, according to the Smithsonian Institution, before it moved on to dazzle Seattle and then Los Angeles. It was an unusually warm winter day, and I was full of energy and curiosity.

What happens in a timed infinity room? Imagine stepping into a large box with mirrored panels inside and a bunch of other objects, and then the door closes. Because of the mirror-reflecting-mirror effect, it appears as though you are surrounded by infinitely many of those things—multicolored lights or phallic-shaped protrusions with red spots, for example.

When I entered the special exhibit area in D.C., a museum docent explained the lines for rooms were up to an hour long (in practice, it was more like 30 to 45 minutes). Each person had about 30 seconds per room—and those of us who came alone shared these visions with strangers. I had not blocked out enough time for so many queues, so I saw four of the six main installations. Like everyone else addicted to validation on social media, I unfortunately spent a lot of the time taking pictures to post afterward—just as I would later do during the eclipse.

The mirrored room in which I felt I truly lost myself, and did not want to leave, was called Aftermath of Obliteration and Eternity. This room is totally dark save for glowing orange-yellow lanterns, flickering and seemingly hanging everywhere—even above and below you. I shared the room with an older couple, but we were all silent in our awe. The sense of peace and wonder in that room was potent enough, even in the 30 seconds or so, that I still remember it many months later.

“Kusama’s goal, in this project, can be described as creating otherwise inaccessible experiences of the boundless and huge. It’s not infinite, of course, because your body necessarily blocks the infinite regress at some point, and because of limitations of your visual system—but it’s a much larger experience of expansive repetition than can be readily created in any other way,” Landy says. “The solar eclipse, of course, does the same thing, both by focusing your attention on the sun and orbital paths of the Earth and moon, and also simply by refreshing your attention on the more mundane hugeness of the daytime sky.”

I’m in deep now,never been this deep before
The world’s hollow like a shell and I’m out its door.
In so deep, the ocean has its own startled floor.
I’m down,down.down.never been so dark , so more

I can’t rightly tell how I got where I am
I think I had an accident,fell over, then I swam.
Sometimes it’s a loss, be times it’s a man.
I guess I only do it cos I know some folk can.

I don’t know if the joy is worth the pain
Would I choose to relive if, I was born again?
The deep joy is the amazing gain.
But the sorrow is  damn sad, let’s admit it plain.

I’m in deep and it’s over my head
What was I thinking of,when I fell  out of that bed?
I look up and  the sea’s so  turquoise like  that mist   is red
When we get good and mad and wish some loon was dead.

At first, it was all just black,black pain
But from the bottom of the  well, I looked up with awed love again.
That’s when I recalled,feelings are deep and sane
Joy is much greater when we’re in the deep,deep zone.

I dunno if I’m  ever comin’ out.
We can’t control it,ain’t that what life’s all about?
I’ll never love with innocence again,nor not feel doubt.
But I’m no teapot and the devil ain’t got my spout.

I’m swimming and the ocean’s so   mysteriously bright
Down here we don’t have no day nor no night
Fish nudge me with  big grins  and teeth white
Sea flowers fondle me and whisper,turn off that light

Making sense of original sin with Reinhold Niebuhr

Extract:

Communal idolatry

For Niebuhr, sin is most clearly seen and expressed in communal idolatry.  This is the context of the epigraph that opens this post.  We see sin every day in the actions of groups, and above all nations.  I discussed communal idolatry in a previous post, so I won’t spend much time on it here.

In sin, we worship the idols of the group.  And not just extremist groups or nations.  In the midst of World War Two, Niebuhr argued that the American idealization of liberty could itself degenerate into a form of idolatry.  As Andrew Bacevich puts it in his introduction to a new edition of The Irony of American History, Niebuhr

went so far as to describe the worship of democracy as “a less vicious version of the Nazi creed.” He cautioned that “no society, not even a democratic one, is great enough or good enough to make itself the final end of human existence.” (Bacevich, p xii; Niebuhr, 1944, p 133)

The New Year is a construct like a clock
Yet we need division and a form
We need times to start and then to stop
Those who die today were once new born

The Resolutions and the Diaries  list
Whether on a phone or written down
All the things we never knew we missed
All the  faces with a smile or frown

A Wedding shall take place with black and white
The Royal blood  mixed with the blood of slaves
Who could have  foretold the marvelled sight
God for Harry, God for the betrayed

Oh,blessed is the family royal and true
Children’s blood will be both black and blue

I am not a rock upon the shore
Nor am I a pebble on the beach
I am sand, a grain and nothing more
Sucked by waves and sea in its outreach

I am small and yet I know I live
With the other people whom I love
Therefore of my being I shall give
To the One who dwells so  high above

I am grateful for my sight and touch
I am grateful for the gift of speech
I    live in faith and do not ask for much
So the unknown darkness  can me teach

Microscosm of all the Universe
How can I express this in a verse?

Now I have got 9,000 posts so  if you dip into them it could save you buying books and magazines.What I’d like is if it makes you happy and it makes you write  or do a creative activity

There was a  young lady from Barnet
Who wore no  damn clothes, just a hairnet
When she was asked  why
She said,I’m a spy
I write on my skin or the carpet

There was a young lady from Leeds
Who was prone to be too hard to please
When her lover shed tears
She just disappeared
She had asthma and thought it a wheeze.

I knew an old cove from Japan
Whose clock was too fast for  a man
We gave him a phone
So he could go roam
To someplace where ladies  made jam

Our honeymoon in Korea was  divine
The earth rocked for us every time
Yet since we got back
And got into the sack
The earthquakes lack reason or rhyme

A beam of light passed through my eyes

• And showed to me a world disguised
• So near,yet far,we do not see,
  Unless by gift of grace redeemed.That world is full of peace and calm
  It’s colours mingle like a balm
  In such a moment all thought dies
  Revealing Love which underlies.

  Colours caress my naked eyes.
  Sunlight blesses new designs.
  I stand enthralled,and do not wish
  For one delight,other than this.

  My breath slows down, and filled with joy,
  I rove my eyes with bliss to toy.
  Everything is just itself.
  This is now my living wealth.

  Beneath the noise of city traffic,
  This mellow joy,love soporific,
  This depth and peace, is always near
  When we choose Love and turn from fear

Midway down the cliff I shiver  ledged
No  guard  rail to  stop me falling off
And there I’m  stuck and  fear to breathe or budge

Of my world, I ‘ve reached the   final edge
The cliff is wet, the sea is wild and rough
Round the cliff, there is a narrow ledge

I cannot see enough to rightly judge
I must guess by watching green sea froth
As here I am fast stuck and  fear to budge

I will move  before the waves out-snatch
Lest in the ocean I am cruelly tossed
From the cliff  on fearsome narrow ledge

Now the demons,gulls and  merlins watch
For human souls who are both here and lost
Here I’m stranded and I  fear to budge

What is round the corner on my path?
I am weak yet fear no holy wrath
Round the cliff, there is a narrow ledge
On that I risk a  move; I cannot lodge