Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

Come live with me

 

Come live with me and be my helpmeet now

I’ll share my only bed with you and how!

If you let me love you

I’ll darn your old wool  gloves 4 you..

If you come and meet me brow to brow.

Come live with me ‘n teach me all you know

About poetic licence and Defoe.

I’ll mend your vacuum cleaner,

learn expressions meaner..

How cheerfully the hours to come will go,

Come live with me and be my lover true

Without one,however  shall we  do?

I’ll set up  England’s railways

And learn the Chinese weekdays

Come live with me and I will sweep your flue.

Come live with me in Norway on a fjord

I’ll use  my Canon powershot  even more.

I’ll watch the flowers growing

And see the waters flowing

How happy Wittgenstein’d be if he’d knowed.

Green?

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I know why  shyness make one blush bright  red .It’s to make people steer clear but why does envy make one green?Is it a metaphor as it’s sickness that usually makes one go green.Envy may be  sickness.Is that it?
I went white all over  when he rejected me.I looked as if I was dyed
She has the blues but it’s not obvious unless you know her really well.Like if she cuts her finger.I blame Edward the 7th.He’s dead, you see.

Our language problems

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Keep your sentences  pithy with  a full  stop.Do not fall into it.

He has to have a semi-colon investigation soon.Is it the period or the comma, we may ask.

She has been in a comma for years.It’s a miracle she’s not read as yet.
He came to a full stop by the British Museum.He wants to end it there.I am distraught as I was mistaught.It was not a  real sentence.No verb.

I said he was in the para-military,not he’s got a paragraph on the Mirror.They don’t know what a paragraph is and neither do I. In fact I could write enough about it to fill  a third of this page.But don’t worry,I shan’t.So there!

Comma here,my darling.I have room for two ,,

Don’t reply to me,imaginary data.Exclaim please!!!!

When  do you  use a colon, the teacher asked?
The boy responded:after our food is digested,  until we can evacuate  the remains of the prey.

Why has the whole industry come to a full stop? It’s a cliche.Let’s start it up again.There’s more in this than meets the spy.

At the end os his sentences he always  drew a full stop.Well, he was an artist  ionce.,so he thought but he was autistic,  though on a  bend in the spectrum.Or was it  blend?

As I entered the room I saw a question mark hanging over Mr Smith’s bed.He likes to play puzzles in the night.His wife wants a divorce on the grounds of punctuation games interfering with her sex life.When she looks up. her whole life passes before her.How would you like that?
It depends on the life!

 

When to use a semi-colon

 

oxford2016-1

 

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/semicolons.asp

 

Even Oxford educated people can forget the rules of grammar,just like nearly everyone else in the UK.In fact, if you are too  good at grammar it might make you bad at it in a very real sense, at this moment in time.I hope you can grasp what I write and use it  for something or other,like, er,what d’you call it?

 Extract

It’s no accident that a semicolon is a period atop a comma. Like commas, semicolons indicate an audible pause—slightly longer than a comma’s, but short of a period’s full stop.

Semicolons have other functions, too. But first, a caveat: avoid the common mistake of using a semicolon to replace a colon (see the “Colons” section).

Incorrect: I have one goal; to find her.
Correct: I have one goal: to find her.

Rule 1a. A semicolon can replace a period if the writer wishes to narrow the gap between two closely linked sentences.

Examples:
Call me tomorrow; you can give me an answer then.
We have paid our dues; we expect all the privileges listed in the contract.

Rule 1b. Avoid a semicolon when a dependent clause comes before an independent clause.

Incorrect: Although they tried; they failed.
Correct: Although they tried, they failed.

 

 

Jane Smiley, the novelist

smiley-1976

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6402/the-art-of-fiction-no-229-jane-smiley

“Do you know the writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? He’s a Hungarian psychologist who writes about the state of flow. If you’re in a creative state, then essentially things sort of coagulate and you enter a state of hyper­consciousness—you can write for an hour or so, but it only seems like a few minutes because you’re so concentrated on it. I’ve experienced that a lot, which doesn’t mean there’s no frustration, but I don’t really remember the frustration very well. I remember more when the writing comes together. And I’m willing to seek out that coming together. If I get frustrated, I’ll go eat something, I’ll go open another Diet Coke, I’ll go the barn, I’ll distract myself, and then the parts in my brain that were working click and I get an idea. I read an article about how to learn to play a musical instrument. You practice, practice, practice on Friday, then you walk away. And then when you sit down on Saturday, you’re better. Not only because of all the practice, but also because of the walking away. I’m a firm believer in walking away. ”

 

Acquainted with the Night

BY ROBERT FROST

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Spirit lost in wars,what is our aim?

I feel this needs improvement but so far I have not managed it
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 In the past,  we thought the world  our own

Created for  us by a loving Lord
So on its lands , we made our little homes

Existentialists  claim we have no home
Dislocated,life can’t be enjoyed
In the past,  folk felt  the world  their own

Hell is other people, Sartre claimed,
Dividing us to monads ,deeply flawed
Yet in  the  past ,community was sane

Why do  we feel lost with  lone hearts maimed?
Are we  shocked by  new  techniques and awe?
In the past, communion  was our  own

Spirit  lost in wars,what is our aim?
If  God  is dead, who shall declaim the Law?
We’re  ” civilised “, how mute Ethics  forlorn

The tablet  Moses  found  has been disdained
We  submit  to nothing but our toys.
Machines and war  destroy communal aims.
Who can raise us ;how  can debts   be paid?

 

 

 

 

 

Autumn Sky BY CHARLES SIMIC

BY CHARLES SIMIC
In my great grandmother’s time,
All one needed was a broom
To get to see places
And give the geese a chase in the sky.
               •
The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.
               •
Oh Cynthia,
Take a clock that has lost its hands
For a ride.
Get me a room at Hotel Eternity
Where Time likes to stop now and then.
               •
Come, lovers of dark corners,
The sky says,
And sit in one of my dark corners.
There are tasty little zeroes
In the peanut dish tonight.

Dwell on things or let them go?

Do we have a choice?

 

oxford2016-3Sometimes we have to reflect.But it can turn into rumination which is linked to much mental suffering and even illness.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24444431

Extract:

“We found that people who didn’t ruminate or blame themselves for their difficulties had much lower levels of depression and anxiety, even if they’d experienced many negative events in their lives,” says Peter Kinderman, who led the study and is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool.”Dwelling on negative thoughts and self blame have previously been recognised as important when it comes to mental health, but not to the extent this study has shown.

“The findings suggest both are crucial psychological pathways to depression and anxiety”

Charles Simic and his writing

rumoursofwar2

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/charles-simic

charles-simic
Some of Simic’s best-known works challenge the dividing line between the ordinary and extraordinary. He animates and gives substance to inanimate objects, discerning the strangeness in household items as ordinary as a knife or a spoon. Robert Shaw wrote in the New Republic that the most striking perception of the author’s early poems was that “inanimate objects pursue a life of their own and present, at times, a dark parody of human existence.” Childhood experiences of war, poverty, and hunger also lie behind a number of poems. In the Georgia Review, Peter Stitt claimed that Simic’s most persistent concern “is with the effect of cruel political structures upon ordinary human life….The world of Simic’s poems is frightening, mysterious, hostile, dangerous.” However, Stitt noted, Simic tempers this perception of horror with gallows humor and an ironic self-awareness: “Even the most somber poems … exhibit a liveliness of style and imagination that seems to re-create, before our eyes, the possibility of light upon the earth. Perhaps a better way of expressing this would be to say that Simic counters the darkness of political structures with the sanctifying light of art.”

Why Charles Simic still writes poetry

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Photo by Deirdre W..Copyright

 

Why I Still Write Poetry

 

” My early poems were embarrassingly bad, and the ones that came right after, not much better. I have known in my life a number of young poets with immense talent who gave up poetry even after being told they were geniuses. No one ever made that mistake with me, and yet I kept going. I now regret destroying my early poems, because I no longer remember whom they were modeled after. At the time I wrote them, I was reading mostly fiction and had little knowledge of contemporary poetry and modernist poets. The only extensive exposure I had to poetry was in the year I attended school in Paris before coming to the United States. They not only had us read Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine, but they made us memorize certain poems of theirs and recite them in front of the class. This was such a nightmare for me as a rudimentary speaker of French—and guaranteed fun for my classmates, who cracked up at the way I mispronounced some of the most beautiful and justly famous lines of poetry in French literature—that for years afterwards I couldn’t bring myself to take stock of what I learned in that class. Today, it’s clear to me that my love of poetry comes from those readings and those recitations, which left a deeper impact on me than I realized when I was young”

Just the one

Even now I can’t accept you’re gone.
When I wake it hits me hard again.
I’ll never love another,you’re the one.

I’ll never have a man to lean upon
They invite me, but I  say I dinna ken.
Even now I can’t accept you’re gone.

I  daydream of  others but  have none
I imagine meeting  someone by Big Ben
But I’ll never love another,you’re the one.

Some days are lonely for folk shun
The widow and the orphan as unclean
Even now  they won’t accept you’re gone.

Maybe I’m too dogmatic,saying none.
Believing  that by many I’m unseen
Can I ever love another, even one?

I’d like a man who loves some jokes and fun.
But how to start, to finish or begin?
Even though I can’t accept you’re gone,
I  may love another,just the one.

And thinking too,by Love’s despised

 

Your face is map enough for me

Your gaze,your smile,your frown,your glee.

And if I want to know the rest

The shape your posture’s made is best

For showing what your life is now.

A look,a gesture,all this show.

Till all you are is then disclosed

And I am in your arms enrobed.

Love vanishes when analysed,

And thinking too’ by Love’s despised

Use the means to fit the end

And then I’ll be what you intend.

I thought in neither ribaldry nor play

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I caught those   ten fried  rhymes on dying ebb
And so I would not jump nor fight today.
But  then I thought of Adam’s  folding rib,
And how the hard enjoy a lady's  fry

I believed  scored rhymes  were  left  for dead.
My incompetence was on its languorous bed.
But then we  felt  old  fleas that bit us good
And lo I  sought to  buy piss off the  web.

I thought no bird could ever  click  its beak
And so I fell into a writer’s wok
Bad eyesight made  the   grilling chickens leap
While I prised  the deadheads  off  the crocks.

I thought I’d incite ribaldry  or play
Dutch cows I love, and I  am thrilled by hay.

Should we learn another language?

https://www.articulatemarketing.com/ten-reasons-why-learning-another-language-will-improve-your-writing

 

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If I learn another language,  should it be
A language made of words and history
Should I start with what is basic?
Will they tell me how to phrase it?
I’m afraid of sounding like a Pharisee.

Should I learn the body’s  special language  first
Without that  will my French sound even worse?
The vocabulary’s not sufficient
If our movements are deficient
It’s dancing with the sentences, each blessed.

We can’t separate a language into parts
If we want to  speak or write with all our heart.
Non-verbal skill proficient
Makes up for what’s deficient
As our meaning crosses over like a dart.

 

Animals do not read Dr Spock

Worms and frogs and beetles need no clock
Human beings  learn to tell the time
Animals do not read Dr Spock
Worms and frogs and beetles need no clock
Neither have they doors which need a lock
They communicate without  a word  or rhyme
Worms and frogs and beetles need no clock
Human beings  learn to tell the time

 

Did we once   feel natural  like the beasts
Who follow sun and moon and unknown signs
In winter sheep will grow a thicker fleece
Did we once   feel natural  like the beasts
Who need not worry that their clothes are creased.
Who have to wear  the coat Nature’s designs?
Did we once   feel natural  like the beasts
Who follow sun and moon and unknown signs?

British Summer time ends in two days

This day is  warm and balmy  like mid-June
Though British Summer time ends in  two  days
So dark will be our evenings very soon
Today is warm and balmy  like  hot June
Alas the   summer flowers are not  in  bloom
In  damp earth, the worms and beetles play.
Today is warm and balmy  like mid-June
Though British Summer time ends in   two  days

Why one should write every day

img_0042img_0034img_0039

 

http://www.writing-world.com/life/everyday.shtml

I didn’t write every day at the beginning.I only wrote when I got inspiration.But when I wanted to learn to write in form, I did it every day because I wasn’t going to get inspiration before I began.
Also , I am not writing to earn money and so if the quality of one poem is worse than others it  may surprise some people but it doesn’t affect my life.Sometimes it can help to try to understand why some  are better and what qualities they have.
Also ,you  can become inspired after you start writing.Writing humorous pieces or playing with words can sometimes throw up a good idea.
Bob Dylan could write  the words for a song in 15 minutes.Leonard Cohen could take months.Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel in a few weeks but at other times she was less prolific as she was having her children and  helping Ted Huges.
The other thing about putting them on a blog you need not use your own name, so none of your family or friends needs to know [until you get better].
You don’t have to  put them on the web,you might like just to write for yourself.However , it is good to share them as they are meant to be read or heard.
There are sites just for poetry like Poetry Soup.I was amazed how many people write.But it is addictive in a sense.
Learn   about free verse as well as form.Write all in rhymes if you like that.Do what makes you pleased.

 

A poet explains how he makes a living

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/03/22/so-you-want-my-job-poet/

So You Want My Job: Poet

jordan chaney african american poet on stage with microphone

Once again we return to our So You Want My Job series, in which we interview men who are employed in desirable jobs and ask them about the reality of their work and for advice on how men can live their dream.

There are legions of aspiring writers out there–would-be journalists, novelists, and bloggers are a dime a dozen. But I had never met someone who aspired to write verse, until I connected with Jordan Chaney. Perhaps you too never gave any thought to being a poet as a job, figuring that full-time poets died off a century ago or were reserved to those chosen to be poet laureates. But as Mr. Chaney discusses in this interview, being a poet can still be a real career in this day and age; it just takes a lot of hustle and heart.

1. Tell us a little about yourself (Where are you from? How old are you? Describe your job and how long you’ve been at it, etc.).

My name is Jordan Chaney, and I live in Kennewick, WA, right in the heart of wine country–though I was born in Alexandria, VA all the way across the map near Washington D.C. When I meet a person for the first time and they ask me what I do for a living, I tell them very confidently, “I am a poet.” I usually get a raised eyebrow or shy “ah, ok” or “hmmm, interesting.” And I don’t blame them; in my 32 years on earth I have never seen an ad in the classifieds that read: Wanted: An energetic sap that has a soft spot for metaphor & rhyme. Must have their own pen, paper, and car and be willing to travel to random locations on any given week. No 401K. No healthcare provided. A road less traveled indeed. I started pursuing life as a poet in 2003 and have been at it full-time for about a year now. Between the ages of 16 and 24, I had over 54 different jobs. I was everything from a concrete form layer to a pharmaceutical rep, and every job that I ever held had one very agonizing thing in common: a boss! I’m not the type that has a problem with authority or anything like that, it’s just that I believe I have just as much personality, creativity, and go-getter-ness in me that I decided to take a leap of faith and go after my wildest childhood dream, and that is to be who I am today: a poet with a paycheck.

2. Why did you want to become a poet? When did you know it was what you wanted to do?

When I was 7 years old, my mother showed me a poem titled “Mr. H.” The poem was about a young woman who was in a poisonous and toxic relationship with a man by the name of Mr. H. Mr. H was abusive towards her. He was controlling and jealous and spent all of this young girl’s money, but no matter how evil he was to her, she could not leave him. She wouldn’t leave Mr. H even though the relationship was truly becoming deadly; this woman would do anything she could to be with him. At the end of the poem it is revealed that Mr. H is really the drug heroin and this woman is losing a battle to her addiction. I know that that is really heavy reading for a 7-year-old, but it did two very powerful things for my consciousness. 1) It illustrated a very real and scary issue that a lot of people face in our world. 2) It gave me a high understanding of metaphor as a tool for expressing myself with word. I didn’t know then that I wanted to be a poet, but 14 years later when I was living in one of the most crime and drug-infested neighborhoods in Phoenix, Arizona, I was up late writing and watching HBO, and a movie came on called Slam, and a poet by the name of Saul Williams recited a poem called “Amethyst Rocks.” The poem reminded me of “Mr. H;” it felt like the message came full circle. It gave me the chills, and I knew then at 21 years old that I wanted to save the world with my poetry…………………..

 

10. Any other advice, tips, commentary, or anecdotes you’d like to share?

I have been successful at what I do because I understand something about grinding to make your dream come true, and I’ll sum that up in this short anecdote…

Every day in Africa when the sun comes up a gazelle knows that it must outrun the fastest lion in order to survive. And every day in Africa when the sun comes up a lion knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle in order to survive. The moral of the story is this: It doesn’t matter if you’re a lion, gazelle, or a poet: when the sun comes up you better start running.

Don’t be a dreamer be a dream Do-ER!

The blind dance free

Why did you  shout at the French police?
Hallucinating  bulls who  cross the sea.
Know  what I thought mirages must  cease.

You  say you’re wrapped in jelly  for  the geese
Yet you  have  heard voices  speak to   me.
Deluded, you  cut out a   flounce  for peace

The prodigal will  not  have  a watch  unswitched
What seemed  good now will not   say, Hi Di
Such wry  messages  are  all  untidy,  creased.

My  specious  grace by worry is now teased.
I would have graded all the people’s  wee
You  shut out  my dance by wearing fleece

Those  who  feel  commotions are the least.
What’s  a bum?Whatever let it be!
So , from  messaging, I  made  a frieze.

 

In   private parts, I shall curtail your lease.
No longer   yours, I   want   the BBC!
Why did you   snack on the ounce of peace?
Now my Cohen oranges make beasts.

“We judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves (as though in panic).

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https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/23/against-self-criticism-adam-phillips-unforbidden-pleasures/

Freud termed this droll internal critic superego, and Phillips suggests that we suffer from a kind of Stockholm syndrome of the superego:

We are continually, if unconsciously, mutilating and deforming our own character. Indeed, so unrelenting is this internal violence that we have no idea what we are like without it. We know virtually nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves (as though in panic). Or, to put it differently, we can judge only what we recognize ourselves as able to judge. What can’t be judged can’t be seen. What happens to everything that is not subject to approval or disapproval, to everything that we have not been taught how to judge? … The judged self can only be judged but not known. [We] think that it is complicitous not to stand up to, not to contest, this internal tyranny by what is only one part — a small but loud part — of the self.

Stan wants a chamber pot.

Stan was recovering from his long feverish cold and cough.He had Emile standing on his desk under the windows
cleaning it with a microfibre cloth fastened to his right front paw.
Very good,Emile,he said in a husky voice.I think I’ll get up and make a hot drink.I feel better now than I did and I
enjoyed the Reith lecture on the radio.Mary came into the room wearing a long dressing gown with a zip front.
Where did you get that,Stan enquired jocosely.
It was hanging behind the door, she said.I must have bought it in a sale.I get almost all my stuff in sales.It makes it more of an achievement.
But are they really want you want,Stan enquired tactfully
I am happy with them because I like bright colors but most folk don’t so they end up in the sale.I just bought
some pewter shoes for £29.99 when in black they were £79.99.
Will pewter shoes not be too heavy?Stan joked.
It’s the colour dearest.It’s a good colour for when we are going out in the evening to a do.
But we never do go out nowadays .he told her sadly.
I live in my imagination,Mary responded, and so I get clothes and shoes for any possible event
… funerals.weddings,evening balls.circuses…
The only balls you see in the evening are at home ,he murmured vulgarly.
I don’t think that’s very funny,Stan,she told him.I am a woman of gentle birth even if I was born in a coal mine.
I am sorry dearest,my mind is not right since I fell out of bed and banged my head on that heavy tin chamber pot.
That’s a flower vase,she told him honestly and directly.We no longer use chamber pots now we have an ensuite
here and a cloakroom downstairs plus an outside lav too.
Well,I do.Stan said.I was brought up with one and I always use one at night.
That’s strange Mary told him.Where do you find them? I have never bought any,not even in the Sales.
In the kitchen,Stan said.In the cupboard
Those are my baking bowls, she said crossly.I forbid you to use them to wee into.
Well,will you buy me one? he asked her tenderly as he stroked her curly light blonde hair just washed in Boots Dandruff and Acne shampoo. with Rosemary and Rose Essence.
Of course,darling,if it will make you happy.I’ll go online.I am sure they are still made though originally they were used when people had outside loos.
That can be my Xmas present,he joked,if you pay for express delivery but don’t have it gift wrapped.
Adulterous Annie their neighbour came in.She wore a grass green trouser suit and pink calf high boots.Underneath she had spanx hip and thigh control pantees and a blue lace bra which peeped out as she had forgotten to put a blouse or jumper on despite the cold weather.
What is that, in your hand,Annie ? Stan asked thoughtfully.
It’s a pewter chamber pot that we inherited from my granny, she said
Gosh,how amazing,it’s just what Stan needs,Mary informed her.He’s been using a vase..
That is very naughty,Annie told him.You should know better
Naughty!That’s a  strange word to use.I am a man.I can do what I want.You’ll see.
But can you want what you do,Mary asked like an Oxford don on speed.
I can if I choose to ,he said.
So do you believe in will power? Annie asked curiously.
Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, he replied ambiguously which was one of his defense mechanisms when he was with two clever women.
I see,you twist the world around your little finger.
That’s a strange parallel,Stan told her.But parallel lines on the earth’s surface do meet at the Poles which proves
that Euclidean geometry is not the only sort possible.
Why is that?Annie asked,though she really had no idea what he was talking about
Because one of Euclid’s axioms is that parallel lines never meet .
It sounds a bit like men and women nowadays,Stan said thoughtfully.We will only meet if we go up the pole
I wonder what the origin of that phrase is,Mary said curiously.It’s a strange world.
Meanwhile ,Emile finished the window and was polishing the dressing table mirror.What luck for Mary and Stan that Emile loves microfibre and Windolene.Next they are hoping to buy him tiny vacuum cleaner… that would help to
gather up all the dust from the floor and let Mary get on with her book :Mirrors and the development of the pre-oedipal child’s theory of integers and meta-language as hypothosised by
Jack Lacanne.Part 1a.

I miss handwritten letters

 

10311359_705010262972188_5083699697339120623_nI can’t remember now the last time I got a real letter..These days all the addresses are typed and even cards may come by email.Why does it matter?
How nice it was when mingled with the bills there was an envelope with your name on with handwriting you recognised.
When I became  an adult this was still common because long-distance phone calls were expensive.And at that time not everyone had a phone.
I can tell a lot from handwriting.It is the person,in a sense.So emails and texts are impersonal by nature. And is it because we have no time to write letters because life moves faster in cities in modern states?Or has life got faster because we can fit more in.The washing is inside  the machine.The ready meal is in the fridge.And it was ordered online.Most people don’t iron their clothes.So we should have more time.
But we must check  emails and texts and reply ASAP.
We may have photos to download, the computer to update.We wash our clothes and bodies more often.
Yet we don’t entertain at home like we did in the 70’s.We might meet in a coffee shop instead.
The home is different.Both adults may be at work full time,children at a minder’s.Then they need lessons after school.
They don’t play out much.Purposeless activity seems to have disappeared.The traffic is too dangerous and hordes of villains roam the streets ready to kill or kidnap anyone they meet.
Actually, crime has not gone up but we are afraid.
Is this why we have Call Blocking, ignore Withheld Numbers,let the answering machine answer.
Every blessing has a curse, or we think it does.People want phones and computers  but now criminals  have found ways of getting money from us by pretending to be friends.
We are genuinely afraid.Wars abound.We hear too much beyond the boundary  of what we can affect.The world seems dangerous. Maybe even  using our own handwriting seems to give away too much.Typing hides our personality.We want to hide but have 400 friends on Facebook.Paradox and contradiction have left philosophy and come  into real life.
And the cost of living rises because we need to have computers now to deal with our bills,access government services etc.So  money to pay for broadband is needed.Children may need iPads or other devices.And phones. All the family need their own car.In London, it’s not so bad to travel on a bus  except late at night.Elsewhere buses have  gone, like local shops.
We need phones because GP’s send texts with test results or reminders.And because we are lonely.Letters could be carried around and re-read.
Well,it’s not going to change backwards so we just have to find other ways of telling people they matter to us.