Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

LITERARY OR POPULAR FICTION?

 political-pictures-darth-vader-blasphemy-style
This  is  very good!
This is an interesting article about the difference between literary and popular fiction.I have written short stories but always wanted to write a novel.
I love Nicholas Freeling.His  novels are written as detective stories but they qualify as literary fiction.I especially like Dresden Green.
You can get a full  list of his novels via the link above.I shall be mulling over the thought of writing this weekend and looking a people walking by as I stroll along.
Why do we women wear such clothes?Why is “feminine” a bad word… like flowered dresses?How can one reconcile feminism with femininity?We don’t all want abortions like Simone de Beauvoir.
The other day I wore a dress and my partner said,Auntie E!
Not a compliment is it?I was wondering how good my imagination is.It’s based on experience
Related articles

Guest DJ: Finding Literary Inspiration Just Outside Your Door by Chris Campion(heatherharlen.com)

Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy (scientificamerican.com)

True or False: Feminists Lack Sexuality (feministfalsehoods.wordpress.com)

In Defense of Feminism, and in Rejection of Pseudo-Feminism (alstefanelli.com)

Girls, Girlhood and Feminism (binarythis.com)

Fashion and feminism (thessbook.wordpress.com)

Women’s Institute’s new wave crafts its own politics in crochet and patchwork(theguardian.com)

When a woman says she’s not feminist, we can do better than shout her down | Ruby Tandoh (theguardian.com)

Fiction and/ or truth?

Nuneham_2016-3 [800x600]

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

I also have just read this very exciting essay by Susan Sontag

‘Combat Gnosticism’ by Ian Duhig

Poetry The Guardian
Carol Rumens’s poem of the week

Poem of the Week: ‘Combat Gnosticism’ by Ian Duhig

This quiet, wry poem reflects on the unique, incommunicable knowledge that comes with service in conflict

British soldiers read a tourist guide about France on D-Day
‘Relaxed, they began letting it out
into grey shades of afternoon light’ … British soldiers read a tourist guide about France on D-Day. Photograph: STF/AFP/Getty Images

Monday 30 May 2016 15.46 BSTLast modified on Monday 6 June 201611.44 BST

‘Combat Gnosticism’

Campbell’s term for war writing born
of a gnosis only being there can earn:
I witnessed it once from old soldiers
in a poetry workshop at Age Concern.

They’d lost that battle with the word,
believing too much better left unsaid
to the likes of me and not those pals
now threescore and ten years dead.

How many old soldiers does it take
to change a lightbulb? asked one.
You can’t know if you weren’t there!
They all fell about. Now they’d won.

Relaxed, they began letting it out
into grey shades of afternoon light,
into words they feared betrayed it.
And I learned why they were right.

  • Poem taken from The Blind Road-Maker by Ian Duhig, published by Picador at £9.99

A poem by Fleur Adcock

 

Dragon Talk

How many years ago now
did we first walk hand in hand –
or hand in claw –
through Alice’s Wonderland,

your favourite training ground,
peopled with a crew
of phantasms – Mock Turtle, Gryphon –
as verbal as you?

Your microphone, kissing my lips,
inhaled my words; the machine
displayed them, printed out
in sentences on a screen.

My codependant,
my precious parasite,
my echo, my parrot,
my tolerant slave:

I do the talking;
you do the typing.
Just try a bit harder
to hear what I say!

I wait for you to lash your tail
each time I swear at you.
But no: you listen meekly,
and print ‘fucking moron’.

*

All the come-ons
you transcribed as commas –
how can we conduct a flirtation
in punctuation? –

Particularly when,
money-mad creature,
you spell doom to romance
by writing ‘flotation’.

*

I can’t blame you for homonyms,
but surely after a decade
you could manage the last word
of Cherry Tree ‘Would’?

Context, after all,
is supposed to be your engine.
Or are you being driven
by Humpty Dumpty?

*

I take it amiss
when you mis-hear the names
of my nearest and dearest;
in particular, Beth.

Safer, perhaps, if I say Bethany.
Keep your scary talons
off my great-granddaughter:
don’t call her ‘death’.

*

You know all the diseases
and the pharmaceuticals:
bronchopneumonia,
chloramphenicol

are no trouble to you,
compulsive speller,
hypochondriac,
virtual dealer.

 

You’re hopeless at birds:
can’t get wren into your head –
too tiny, you try to tell me:
it comes out as rain or ring.

Let’s try again: blackbird, osprey,
hen, (much better), kingfisher, hawk,
duckling. But I have to give up
and type Jemima Puddleduck.

*

What am I thinking of,
dragon bird?
How could I forget
that you too have wings?

Fly to me;
let me nuzzle your snout,
whisper orders, trust you
to carry them out.

*

Do I think of you as “he”? –
Beyond male or female;
utterly alien,
yet as close as my breath –

invisible, intangible,
you hover at my lips –
am I going too far?
Are we into theology?

*

Animal, vegetable or mineral?
Who’s playing these games? –
Abstract, with mineral connections
and a snazzy coat of scales.

Gentle dragon, stupid beast,
why do I tease you?
Laughter’s not in your vocabulary:
all you understand are words.

*

Today I saw you cresting the gable
of someone’s roof: a curly monster
smaller than me, but far too large
to hide yourself inside a computer.

They’d painted you red – was that your choice?
But this was only your graven image.
Your private self was at home, waiting
for reincarnation through my voice.

Mary wants to throw out her bed

phon

Mary picked up her mobile  phone to ring for a cab..On it,there was a message.You have missed a call from home.Mary shivered.
Has Stan come back?
Then she recalled she had rung her own mobile before coming out.Her mind sagged like sheet of rubber suspended between four  tall trees in the jungle..
Hello,It’s Mrs Tan.Can you do  a me cab from the  dental surgery to my home? It’s right by the doctor’s surgery.
She stepped outside into the warm air which felt like a caress on  her poor  numb face
When she got home she found Annie in the kitchen looking at her collection of cookery books.
Do you want to get rid of any of these, her friend queried.
I am thinking of  learning some new recipes so I can invite those awful therapists across the road for dinner.But I have to be sure that what I serve has no hidden meaning especially aggressive or sexual.
Well,Mary said,don’t you think that people differ in what they find sexual?
Beats me,said Annie meaningfully.I fancy doing beef in beer with French bread and mustard  baked on the top.
I used to do that,Mary said.Why did we stop  doing that cooking? Penguin brought a new book every month.I have most of them and ,at the weekend, I’d study them for ages looking for things like apple mousse and different stews.
When we first got married I used a kind  of   cheap women’s magazine approach and most often as a pudding I did tinned peaches with cinnamon   sprinkled on grilled till hot and spicy.Eventually, Stan got fed up with it and so I got into cordon  bleu and using real cream  not Carnation milk

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Her blue eyes gleamed in excitement and were rendered even more remarkable by the teal and turquoise eye shadow Annie had forced her to wear which matched the sea blue mascara she already had.Annie said.
it will be good for us both to meet new people especially educated ones
Mary disagreed.I like ordinary people because a certain amount of education makes some people very conceited and only real scholars or mystics realise that the more we know the more we realise our own ignorance.Will such folk  like makeup?
Perhaps one of the psychoanalysts will be a mystic,Annie retorted loudly
But would such a  person want to visit us? Mary bleated childishly.
Why not? They have to eat and they may need a new love interest or someone  sympathetic who  will know  how hard their job is.Someone like me,beautiful funny and willing to look after a man when he needs it.
How about a man who might look after you,Mary said  brightly
Well,it’s not quite the same.I like looking after men whereas you  prefer reading about Fourier series and infinite integrals.And knitting patterns,she added hastily as if omitting  that interest would severely anger Mary.
I think we’ll invite two men and two women ,all single.They can bring their cats for Emile to play with if they want.And we’ll eat in the kitchen to make it more relaxed.
Thank God,said Mary as the dining room was full of paper and books.
Why don’t I have a study,she pondered.Or ,if I slept in the dining room, my bedroom has a lovely view and I have an old desk somewhere.
Mary ,in her younger days, had often moved the furniture around and had even slept on a camp bed on the lawn one summer but she no longer did this as looking after Stan had worn her down to a shred of her former self.
But beds do take up so much room.Without them ,the house would be quite spacious.And how about tables and chairs… her mind ran on as she quite fancied a new start  without moving house.
With fewer clothes ,she could ditch a wardrobe… on the other hand ,she could not afford such quality  clothes again  on her widow’s pension.Isn’t life tough?
To think she might  have to stop wear Bowlands of Wrath  was a rather painful thought.Still most of humanity have got hardly anything so maybe Mary will think more deeply about donating some to Oxfam.
Suddenly the doorbell rang.Dave was outside
Are you both ok?I’ve  not heard from you lately,he remarked as he powdered his nose.
Well,I do have an old desk that you can carry upstairs for me,Mary told him thoughtfully.Then we need the floor scrubbing.I’m sure the NHS will pay.After all dirt might make us ill!
And so prey all of us.

Quote of the Day — Alec Nevala-Lee

The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes. —Glenn Gloud, The Glenn Gould Reader

via Quote of the Day — Alec Nevala-Lee

Will I still be me?

A filling fell out of my tooth
So in public I was uncouth
The dentist got the roots out
And,wow look at this ,shouts!
But I didn’t to tell you the truth.

She said ,  it’s part of your body,my dear
I said,that is precisely my fear
With my retinae detached
I feel rather too twitched
Will I still be me after here?

How many parts  must we lose
Not counting our stocking and shoes?
Before I.m not me.
But who will I be?
Does the good Lord allow us to choose?

The serpent

Battre le fer pendant qu’il est chaud.
Batter the serpent,kill or show!

Butter the four pence.Dante keemest shows

Bien mal acquis ne profite jamais.
Been Mahler who’s the key prophet,I’d say
Behind Mall. a key non-property is away.
Bonne renommée vaut mieux que ceinture dorée.
Bonne renamed ;vote, my eye!Who sent Doh,Ray?;Further on  it evokes miaows!get onto her Faure

Bon sang ne saurait mentir.
 Bouncing, no sore,Eamon,tears
Big sing ;no Faure was mentioned.

Pie Jesus
Peer Jesus.
Poor Jesus

Ce sont les tonneaux vides qui font le plus de

Recently,tons of videos  with indecent lap dances.
Incessant Leighton with key, for  he wants the view

ON FALLING DOWN A FULL STOP AT THE END OF A SENTENCE

If you can’t acknowledge your hatred or rage if you deny it exists, even to yourself then it may cause havoc in your life.This does not mean letting it rip either.It is very painful to hate someone you love.This is the dilemma of the infant and of all of us in life.Perception and its possibilities and flaws are of the utmost importance to me ideas wide and narrow focus in seeing .They came to my notice in the book “A Life of One’s Own” by Joanna Field [Marion Blackett-Milner] and in her later book “On not being able to Paint”

Wonderful books, still available.

This poem is an attempt to describe of the problems of only using the narrow focus in life

2011-09-02 12.40.21-3

Blind sight scattered my wits

Like whitened bones

Across the deserts of my mind.

I descended into blackness.

Love shrank into the tame cat

By the fire,unacknowledged hate

Grew to fill the room.

I stared too much,

A full stop grew gigantic

Crowded out

All the words in the sentence

I saw nothing but this dot

Now a gigantic black hole

Into which I was dragged.

An energy coming from within my own head

Sucked me into the black hole.

That place was the wrong sort of darkness.

Within that full stop,

Love Fundamental became invisible.

Disappeared into the dark.

I dragged my eyes away

And saw the moon appear , so eerie,

It shone,grey silver.

If I had opened my eyes wider

I would not now lament

What I destroyed in the wormhole

Of the black dot that drew my eye

Into a tunnel of darkness

It blinded me to the light

Did not let me read the sentences

Beside the full stop.

An error of focus left hate

Unacknowledged, unmitigated unredeemed,

Kept from love or goodness.

Afraid to spoil my love with hate,

The fear of hate became

That which spoiled all else

By freezing Love itself

Owl

 

I had this printed on the Funeral Service because my husband liked it but now I see that he was in many ways like  this owl.His eyes could be very piercing.He would have loved to hover over the Pennines of the North East.

 

short-eared durham owl
meditating over the dale’s edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.
on windside, careful sight,
may swoop to prey and away.

your yellow broad-eyed look,
at once both sharp and distant,
holds me.
oh, silence,
oh, wind on green,
oh, earth,
sky.
immense your held vision,
sphere without centre,
pied geometer of flight,
sketch your descent and ascent.
Trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home

Effects of writing poetry

Forms of poetry

Most people who read poetry have heard of Sylvia Plath.She was only 30 when she died but  is now a top poet of the 20th century… her  ambition was fulfilled.But if poetry writing is therapeutic as many people believe,why did it not help her?

I read an article about this  but am sad to  say i can’t find the reference.The author claimed that writing  structured poetry like sonnets is more likely to be therapeutic.Nowadays though,free verse and non structured  poetry is what is fashionable.Rhymes are not.Think of modern music cocmpared to Schubert or Haydn… you get the point.

Plath’s poetry was ,in a way,violent.She went to her depths but as she already had suffered a severe breakdown and  more recently deserted by her husband her depths were full of pain and anguish.

So it you feel you want to write for therapy,try writing in  a traditional form.The structure contains the feelings

Lucid

2012-09-13 12.30.28-1MERRIAM  WEBSTER
Word of the Day : June 5, 2016

lucid

play

adjective LOO-sid
PrevNext

Definition

1 a : suffused with light : luminous

b : translucent

2 : having full use of one’s faculties : sane

3 : clear to the understanding : intelligible

Examples

“The sound swelled and enveloped us, and indeed it was like laughter, waves upon waves of … lucid laughter….” — Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil, 1995

“His writing is lucid and perceptive, and his instincts for the arcane and interesting are unerring, making the text scholarly yet still accessible to the lay reader….” — The Publisher’s Weekly Review, 14 Mar. 2016

 

Did You Know?

It’s easy enough to shed some light on the origins of lucid: it derives—via the Latin adjective

 

 

 

Lucidus, meaning “shining”—from the Latin verb lucēre, meaning “to shine.” Lucid has been used by English speakers since at least the late 16th century. Originally, it meant merely “filled with light” or “shining,” but it has since developed extended senses describing someone whose mind is clear or something with a clear meaning. Other shining examples oflucēre descendants include translucent, lucent (“glowing”), and the somewhat rarer relucent(“reflecting light” or “shining”). Even the word light itself derives from the same ancient word that led to lucēre.

Will Mary have a party?

Photo0428

 

Mary was sweeping the floor with her Shark cordless electric carpet sweeper just replaced by Lakeland Plastics, that store beloved of British women.Emile was watching her from the lid of the old gramophone where he sat surveying the sitting room.
Leave that spider alone,he called to Mary
Why,she asked kindly,are you planning a date with it?
No,it’s a good thing to keep them as they may catch flies and other nasty things.
Mary turned and gazed at Emile.She was wearing some tencel jeans and a bright pink top with embroidery round the neck.Her thoughtful face w as covered in Radiant Glow foundation as her friend Annie was trying to make her look more attractive to men.Which men was a puzzle as Mary liked to spend time alone  or going out with her female colleagues to search for books on Dirac’s owl,Schrodinger’s cat or Godel’s ants.
Her  male colleagues were mainly very conceited or shyer than rabbits brought up in the cliffs at Lyme Regis.
However Annie wanted Mary to marry again as she saw her  own vocation in life as being a mistress to a bright and intelligent retired man whose wife worked full time or  was in the Library studying  the Babylonian number system or other esoteric topics.So she could help Mary and herself at the same time.
Shall we have a party,she chuckled to Mary as she came in through the ever unlocked backdoor.
What sort of party,Mary asked nervously..
I want you  to meet some men,Annie reminded her.
I believe that like bombs falling on London in WW2,that if a man has your number on him he will find you,Mary teased.
Maybe your phone number,Annie retorted.Why don’t you get a spare mobile and I can put some posters with that number on the trees down the  side roads saying you are looking for a new partner.
I thought I had made it clear that as some Orthodox Jews believe that Zion will only come when God wants it to do,so a man will turn up when it is God’s will.
That’s a bit much.Do you think  you are God’s chosen person? Is God interested in finding you a new husband? Annie shouted.
Well,it may seem strange to you ,but even seeming trivia like me being married to some new man can have deep consequences for the whole world… a bit like the butterfly’s wings If I am happy it spreads around me and makes others happier too.Or if God wishes me to write a book and I need a man to cook for me then one will turn up,Mary responded in her low and musical Tyneside accent.
On the other hand God may wish me to lead a contemplative life,she carried on.
Annie was puzzled.Why do you think God has all these plans for you,she enquired.
It’s not just me,said Mary.It’s everybody but that does lead into difficulties as we look at the world around us.Does God want all. these refugees to drown or for Britain to stay in the EU?

It reminded the women of their convent school
religious classes where they had studied a simplified version of the writings of Aquinas and his proofs of the existence of God.It was  this book which had given Mary her first doubts about religion and being somewhat dim  in the tact department she had shared her misgivings with the headmistress, who was not happy tp be questioned even in front of school girls.Photo0426
Emile,she cried,I wish I were a cat.My schooldays were so terrible
It’s your own fault said Annie.I just pretended to believe it and kept quiet by fantasising about my new lingerie and how my boyfriend would like it
How remarkable it is that gir ls and boys can be so different in their personalities and ways of coping with puberty.
It was like a prison,Mary said.Still it made later life seem happier.How did you afford new underwear so often,she asked Annie
I wore my mother’s!  this dear friend informed her.
My mother didn’t have that sort of underwear,Mary told her.And see how something seemingly so trivial can affect one’s personal development so much.Still I was fed and allowed to study and play  the piano and do my homework to the sound of Wagner and Richard Strauss.
Did it help you to concentrate,Annie asked in a puzzled way.
No, it allowed my brother to dominate me and otherwise he might hit me  or knock over my folding table where I kept my exercis books and pen ready to write essays on Twelfth Night and the periodic table.
Annie burst out laughing.Sorry,Mary,I asm not laughing because you were bullied but it just sounded as if tables had periods,the way  you said it.
Imagine how hard it was dealing with all that in a tiny house with the loo in the back  yard.It was taboo so had to be  concealed.When we went to Dublin for 2 weeks my two sister and I all had our  periods and we brought back  all the blood stained cloths in our suitcases.Luckily the customs man did not look inside.
Was there nobody who could have burned them for you?
The landlady  never mentioned it so  neither did we.
No wonder I am so peculiar.
Well,I like you,said Annie.You are so kind and sympathetic and good to talk to.And you  are always coming up with new ideas and interesting books.
I suppose we complement each other.Mary said shyly.Maybe we should get married and forget about men.
Annie’s eyes  opened wide.
I think I’d better  ring 999.she screamed.
And so say all of us.

We rush towards death

Patience is a virtue despised
As we see gazing into folk’s eyes
So we rush towards death
in its phantom   address
Then we make out we’re feeling surprised.

Where is it the place of our dreams?
In our coffin, noone will  scheme..
See a blade of grass grow
In a crack where seeds blow
And  life in miniutiae teems

 

Overwhelmed by the rocks in our path
Patience is pushed out by wrath
Yet in a rock climb
We concentrate all the time
Patience will save us from death.

And if diagnosed with a fate
Which will soon remove our fair estate
We may sink into blackness
And feel we are trackless
For what we lose there is never rebate

Yet others with just months  left here
Live intensely  and with far less deep fear
Fair hair on an arm
Eyes’singular charm
The unique,the concrete,they revere.

The World Is Too Much with Us by WmWordsworth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo0510

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. –Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn

Enchantment

How white and blue together recollect us
to the summer sky and the imagined swallows
darting in exquisite geometry
under the great domed space of the heavens,
like the Basilica in Constantinople
containing and giving space.
And how I held you for a moment that was infinite
and then you were gone like an angel fearing enchantment
into some finite boundaried world

Wrongly worded sentences

IMG_0045 1

1.And I’d like to thank Dr Smith for exposing himself  so  often in  postgraduate discussions when all the other fellows had left

2.I’d like to  thank the chef here for all those pots of  free wee in the afternoon

3.And the Babylonians for inventing real  lumber and the Indians for inventing Nothing

4.I’d like to thank my husband for finding a mistress so I could write my   crook

5.And Marks and Spencer for their ready made Wheels

6. l  thank the men for   wearing very baggy trousers so we ladies won’t be distracted by their gorgeous figures.

7  M& S for their  delightful cotton  blunderwear which saves much  coshing

8 And thank you to the Exams Office for their  blindness now and in the past

9 Thank you to Noreen  and Brian for typing my creases  out

10  And thank God I have finished my  studies of jumbles now and forever.I hope to  work in an other dimension if dimwitted.

 

 

The globe may look quite bent

 This is a very old poem.I find it interesting to look at them now
Geo ti guarda
Geo ti guarda (Photo credit: silgeo)

I’ll draw a graph of Mother Earth
I’ll need a lot of paper.
It won’t be easy,I know that,
But Geo’s my alma mater.

Geo came to our maths class.
We had to find her metre.
If we did then we could write
A poem with which to greet her.

With ologies and eulogies,
The earth is deep in waste.
Give me some green graph charts
I’ll do some cut and paste.

I’ll rearrange the entire globe,
Without a deal of fuss.
If anybody notices
They won’t know it was us!

I’ll put all the mountains in the world
Into one continent.
And if I am that way inclined
The globe will look quite bent.

I’ll put the lions and tigers too
Into Parliament.
Let them eat not cake but men
And don’t charge them a rent.

I’ll paste all the seas that I  can find
Onto my washing line.
With less water around the world
The weather should be fine.

Oh Geo was a darling child,
So promising and bright.
Mixed up with the graphs and charts
I hope she’ll see the light.

I’ll put all  stars into a box
We have far too many.
Yet only one sun and one moon,
So,would you pickle  any?

Geo return,I love you so.
I’ll give up cut and paste to show.
That you are all I’ll ever know,
and i do love you so

Startled too easily?

82288-duckdrawing001

http://www.effective-mind-control.com/startle-response.html

A few years ago I was sitting here sketching the mantelpiece which like my mother in law’s was full of shells.pebbles,little stone cats etc.Suddenly a neighbour walked into the room and I screamed.I think my husband was in the hall so he saw him coming before he rang the bell.This man wanted to see me so My husband  told him to come in here without telling me.I must say both me and the man were shocked.So I think sometimes it might be good to be  less easily startled.

Eros and philosophy

English: Amor stringing his bow, Roman copy af...
English: Amor stringing his bow, Roman copy after Greek original by Lysippos. Musei Capitolini, Rome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Eros. Attic red-figure bobbin, ca. 470 BC–450 BC.
Eros. Attic red-figure bobbin, ca. 470 BC–450 BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Eros in philosophy

This is an especially good article from the NYT.The comments are interesting,

Related articles

Glory be to God for dappled things

Nuneham_2016-1 [800x600]

Mike’s photos made me think of this poem and as we were raised in the Catholic tradition we found Hopkins partly through that connection as he was a Jesuit priest

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
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Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.
13. Pied Beauty
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;         5
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:         10
                  Praise him.
See Notes.

Goodbye

 

 

Nuneham_2016-2 [800x600].jpgI find it hard to get angry or perhaps to know when I am angry but I realise now I am still angry about my husband being cruelly treated.But a year ago it was too painful to put into words.I tried not to dwell on it.But  I  have felt the quite appropriate anger  today and at the same time I am relieved that I managed the whole business when even our  long time GP gave little help.I have come to the conclusion that I am braver than he is
OK I get anxious.Is that strange? Should I have been happy  and smiling seeing what was happening?Sometimes I envy cultures where they still have rituals for such times in life.But I invented my own.I felt that last day as if we were suddenly in a better place and everything was wonderful including my sister driving for 5 hours alone down the motorway and arriving in the hospital just when I thought I’d better leave.My friends has been there all day so I didn’t want to ask for more time from them.If I had not been so very sad,I would have been very happy… if you can understand that.I had done it… the much feared thingNuneham_2016-3 [800x600].jpg

The best place

Nuneham_2016-5 [800x600]The hospital was the best  place   for you to die.
Nurses, neat as sparrows, ran to and fro
Blankets used in the Himalayas warmed you
They kept you
Clean and tidy.

For three hours
The Sacred and the Profane intersected
I sang you away on a river of music
And you  floated out of  our world
Hearing my childlike  high voice.

Maybe you thought I was washing up
Or making you a drink in the kitchen;
And I was your mother as well.
The good mother who kept her premature child alive
Who kept a good larder
Baked bread and  played games with   you and your Dad.

Did you know what was happening?
I think you did and  you wanted me to help you.
Help you out?
How a  little audience had gathered.
Now we have  no rites,the chaplain was absent
Absent too the priest.

I had to make it up…. like a game,but it was real.
You smiled and winked as if to say
I’m sticking around but you won’t see me.
So much love in  your eyes…
What can I do but be glad?
And be sad….but we made it.

 

Quip no more

Shadow of nails on the Cross.
Wars like diamonds..expensive,useless,hard,yet we must have more and more.
The human is descended from the most aggressive apes as they would mate more often..we will always have wars until the end of the world…which may be getting nearer.
War,I can quip no more.
Take my hand and help me cross the big Quiver I feel coming up…
I’m all worn out like an old rag…throw me into your washing machine,Lord and use some strong soap on me..I need a change.
Wash me with your holy river or send me home and get your money back,Lord

The mind has its eye …. the soul’s window

 Nuneham_2016-4 [800x600].jpg

 

 

I am cleaning the wind’s eyes tomorrow and  my eyes.You have to clean windows in Spring time because the sunshine shows up the dirt.Reading about the origin of the word “window” made me think how all language was originally metaphor and that poetry and song preceded speech in the way we know it now

What I find the most fascinating is that language evolved,not in universities but in the lives of ordinary people and their needs from economic,to artistic to religious.I think now our language can seem dead which points to the importance of poetry.We don/t want the only new words to be those made up by advertisers or by newspeak in technology..Babies learn to speak one or even two or three languages….Strange how many children here leave school functionally illiterate…the learning process goes wrongWe should place a higher value on ourselves and our natural abilities and not worship the experts.Our senses are our windows and inside we have our  mind which even has its own eye..and though that eye we see God

“The eye with which we see God, is the eye with which God sees us”

from  Meister Eckhart.[Sermons]

The Windows

By George Herbert

Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
    He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
    This glorious and transcendent place,
    To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
    Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
    More reverend grows, and more doth win;
    Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.
Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
    When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
    Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
    And in the ear, not conscience, ring.

Different kinds of emptiness

 

A first look at emptiness

This is a preliminary attempt to examine the ideas about emptiness.I once  Iquoted Lao Tzu
“Hollow vessels are useful by reason of their emptiness.”
But emptiness is not just one concept.
To make an initial point,our first notions of emptiness are related to the stomach.An empty one is painful to the infant who cries until fed.A full stomach then feels pleasant.
But a stomach can be empty in a good way….and there is a feeling of desire and appetite,So this can feel good.On the other hand there is the emptiness of a stomach which has just vomited up something bad and is reluctant to take in anything new for a while.hopefully desire will return.Anxiety can take away appetite and keep the stomach empty when it needs to be filled with good food.If this continues we become ill.
Anorexics may keep themselves empty as a mistaken form of self control.
Ideally there is a movement between fullness and emptiness.We need to be empty for the right things.A woman may have an empty womb crying out for a child but by mistake she may fill up with food instead.So we need to know what we are empty for.
Empty headedness can be bad…if you have never received anything good into your mind like poetry,classic literature etc you will be a poor person indeed.On the other hand people get creative ideas when they are half dreaming,resting,in the bath and so on.There is a little more space in the mind for a new idea to emerge.But the idea will have meaning only within a structure that is already partly there within the mind.The answer to a writer’s block won’t come to someone who never writes.The block may be a creative void but it’s no good if one’s entire mind is a total void.The emptiness needs a container.We rush to fill out empty sad hearts when we feel we can’t contain them within ourselves,as holding them may be agonisingly painful.
Emptiness  in itself may not achieve much.But look at a new baby.They are looking and taking in both food and sensory impressions.And how the mind is growing,if conditions are favourable.
An empty table is no good to an empty stomach.A professor with no knowledge/learning will not give anything to the empty headed students to take in
Or biologically,the egg needs the sperm but the fertilized egg needs the kindness of the nurturing Womb and the ability of the woman to be there whilst development occurs over time……and for woman we could put artist or writer,speaking in metaphor.
My first thoughts end now! A need for space has arrived

Source: Kathryn