http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6286/the-art-of-nonfiction-no-7-adam-phillips

I am sure most people who learn English are familiar with the  expression

“Burying your head in the sand”  or “Turning a blind eye

which is about a refusal to see.Well I had a dream that my body was buried in sand but my head was not.And my body was suffering pain.

So I think it must mean I am not willing to feel all the pain inside me.A refusal to feel.So if I feel terrible that may be a good thing….And our mind changes reality like I have changed the photograph above.But we don’t usually know about these changes and think the world we see is the real world.
Now some philosophers think there is no real world.However they still go to the lavatory and if they didn’t they’d really feel very uncomfortable.And more!

If belief is a moral act then what status does the belief of someone raised from infancy  in a particular religion have? Is it a kind of  blind belief and hence not really a belief at all?
Then again, we may not know what we believe until we observe how we act.And what we believe may be different from what we claim to believe.

We’ve already seen that life is about living the questions, that the unknown is what drives science, and that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. John Keats wrote of this art of remaining in doubt “without any irritable reaching after fact & reason” and famously termed it “negative capability.” But count on Anaïs Nin to articulate familiar truths in the most exquisitely poetic way possible, peeling away at the most profound and aspirational aspects of what it means to be human.

Anaïs Nin on Embracing the Unfamiliar

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.

I saw this quote below in a book review:

“I shall shortly be proposing to explore four extremely fine hookers’ arresting behinds in the Co-op toilets.”

This is funny but also very interesting.The speaker said something but the hearer didn’t hear what was said,he heard something [which might show his own interests in hookers and their behinds ]and that it would  seem this dignitary shared his interest
.I am sure that is how lots of arguments begin.We mis-hear.And we mis-hear according to  our own fears,desires and wishes.We think we hear one thing and the speaker believes we have heard exactly what he said.So when we begin a discussion we are already out of tune with each other.And it will conntinue to get worse unless we are aware of what might happen.Like asking someone to repeat what they just said.

This title may sound very odd.  I hope I can to make my meaning clear.One way would be to say that in any human life suffering is inevitable;to someone else your suffering over the loss of a friend may seem excessive;their suffering over lack of promotion at work might seem too much.We know as we get older we cannot always imaginatively identify with everyone and in some cases we don’t want to.I am not getting upset because a senior politician is in court trying to defend himself against police allegations that he lost his temper and was famed for cursing at lesser folkOn the other hand we sometimes ought to empathise with a sick person or a hungry person and we choose to ignore them; with too much news we could be overwhelmed,we may  feel.

The point I am making is simple.We have suffering and then we  have suffering resentment,pain ,anxiety,rage ABOUT the suffering.This is true with respect to physical pain as well.Resenting the pain or being depressed by it will happen but hopefully we will let it   go.The suffering about suffering makes one’s life far worse..All  people  suffer and then  we attack ourselves for being affected by an event that we feel a tougher person would brush off like  she would a  fly.If we can choose to give up the second type of suffering then the total burden is much less.We may say to ourselves,it’s alright to feel nervous  or unhappy or  mad  or be in pain today….and tomorrow,

Sometimes it means stopping self criticism and self attack though of course appropriate self criticism does have a big role in life.I shall live with it as with a wild cat…carefully and wisely,This truth is applicable to many parts of one’s private life.We should not ,of course, lecture to other suffering people how stupid they are.Let’s just stick to dealing with our own piling of one problem on top of another.We are all  made from fragile flesh.We can be injured physically or emotionally.Who has not been?Sometimes people who have suffered more are also more compassionate but  sometimes we grow bitter and hard.The ability to share in our imagination how another person feels is what makes human life tolerable.Owing sometimes to brain problems or various syndromes some people do not have that ability and their lives are much worse as they can’t make friends easily.So they can’t discuss their lives and doings.

So, to sum up:If we accept the basic suffering  [assuming it can’t be removed] then we do not add a second level of suffering and our burden is lighter overall.And reminding ourselves that others suffer is a good idea..When we feel down we sometimes feel everybody else around is happy and having fun.I was once a bit envious of a neighbour for her appearance.Then I found she was slim because of a serious illness..Then  her husband lost his job together with the big car he had been entitled to.That taught me a lesson.

Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.”
― George Steiner, Language & Silence: Essays on Language, Literature & the Inhuman

Photo by Mike Flemming.Copyright.

I think many of us would agree that we are happiest when we lose ourselves in some activity.And then how fast time seems to go.Like when you kiss your  beloved
When we are feeling down it’s not so easy to forget our self.We often think distractedly trying to find a reason for our discomfiture.
This is why writing,painting photography give us the chance to look outward.And so even if your work is not very good it’s still worth doing it.Photography is in some ways the best because usually unless we do portraits we will be outside looking at birds,trees,flowers and so on.Also we might meet a neighbour;I met one yesterday who has seen two blue moths in his garden which I’ve not seen for years.
Sometimes we compare our work to other people’s and feel despondent.But all learning takes lots of practise.And blurred photos make a good starting point for using Artweaver or Pixlr online editor.
Also learning new things makes everyone anxious.Some  people give up because of that but if you keep going it will pass.
People think that if you are intelligent you can learn or even know things without learning them,like being a concert pianist!

Yesterday I had an instance of this.I met a neighbour for tea.She has just got a tablet.She thinks it’s a Kindle Fire but it’s not.
Anyway she asked me to set it so that English and Hebrew or both available.~Well I didn’t even know that was possible .I fiddled with it for a while and managed to do it.. so she was impressed but one thing I know is that there are only so many possibilities and if you go through them you will find  the one you want..Of course we were relaxed, unlike in an exam  and that helps.If you are tense your vision narrows,so I read.
I tried it on my Kindle Fire and it just went entirely into Hebrew so if you see my next post from that do remember to read right to left

It’s quite hard to change it back if you don’t know the language.But I did it!The art of doing things is to keep trying different possibilities…but sometimes   one can get obsessed so use a timer and stop after a certain length of time.

pw

I have been struck recently by the number of friends and others  of my age who have just lost their parents.And how they seem to grieve severely.When I thought  about it I realised I lost one of mine as a child  of 8 and the other when I was 35 so it seemed strange to me that people around me still had parents at all.
For my father we weren’t allowed to grieve.And my mother was very disturbed as at 15  her mum died and  she had 5 younger siblings and at 42 she had 5 youngish children to rear alone,a   repetition that was most unfortunate.Though she married a man who was known to have fragile health so maybe that was a mistake.It was during the War so maybe Nature took a hand
Then I recalled that my mother lost her mother when she was 15 and my dad lost his dad when he was 18 .
My sister did some research so she soon found neither of our grandfathers even knew teir own fathers’ names.They were both illegitimate.So having two parents who are still thriving after you grow up seems not to have been the case for three generations in my family.Loss was the pattern.Grief was repressed.My mother rarely mentioned her mother who died because they could not afford a doctor when she had problems with the birth of her sixth child.
Her father’s mother had got married when grandad was about 8  and had two daughters but we never heard him mention them.Maybe his mother was ashamed of him being alive.
Well my parents now have 24 descendants and 19 of them have had two parents all their lives so far.They are between 43 and 2 years old.Two of my nephew’s wives have had cancer but are ok now.So the pattern of loss may have stopped.But I just read an article saying that trauma can be passed down the generations so we may suffer more grief than some people do.
I  notice that my siblings and I have had many  serious health problems but whether that is because of bereavement or an inadequate childhood diet  or just chance I don’t know.On the other hand we were all quite bright.And we had not much money to go out so we spent longer studying then other people..we enjoyed it.I didn’t even know  cafes existed until I was 11..  and coffee bars also passed me by.

My father was one of 14 children and as well as losing his father he lost 5 siblings while he was growing up.One was  killed at the Somme.He was much older than Dad.Their mother was destroyed by grief after WW1 as her husband got the flu and died that year.
And fate also caused Dad’s sister to die the day I was born.
My mother was angry with me for being born as my brothers were only 1 and 2 years old.She harboured a belief that babies chose to come here.The fact that she was a Catholic using the safe period method of contraception [ the wrong way round] was not a factor.
I  was born prematurely, learned to talk  in sentences at 10 months,was toilet trained early  and learned to walk  very soon as well.I couldn’t wait to grow up and escape.I’d have been born at 3 months  if it had been  possible!I felt very sorry for my mother always but I had to escape.I felt

Élan, pronounced \ay-LAHN\, means “vigorous spirit or enthusiasm,” and comes from the French word that means “momentum” or “rush” or “burst” (as in “a burst of anger”).

It comes from the Middle French verb eslancer, meaning “to rush,” formed from lancer, meaning “to throw.” In French, élan originally meant “the progressive movement made in preparation of a jump or exercise” before developing the figurative meaning of “spirit” or “enthusiasm” that came to English.

The word elance was used in English to mean “to hurl” a dart or lance, but it fell out of use in the 1800s. The English version of the root verb, lance, still means “to throw forward.”

I have found God in the depths
Where with kindness he surrounds those who’ve wept
But he makes no demands
As his Love understands
To the paths of our own truths we’ve kept

A  wonderful word is coercion
On it I cast no aspersions.
But to coerce is not good,
Force unwithstood
Is not what will grow our nasturiums.

Sometimes our will is a force
But virtue can’t come just by choice.
Like a flower from a seed
Our virtues we breed
As we listen for that still,little voice.

In school we were given an impression
That knowledge implies good decisions;
So we learned   virtues and vice
The wrong and  the  nice
The existence of hell as a prison.

Believing that terror is a good,
They frightened us with their cold blood
In the Confessional we shivered;
And the wood round us quivered
They’d have tortured us more if they could.

So this education itself was a vice
The nuns and the priests hit us twice
Once in the class
And again during Mass
Where we wondered if the Wafer was Christ.

And having this question in mind
Was a sin of a serious kind
We sinned against Faith
That delicate Wraith
So no personal truths could we find

I have found God in the depths
Where with kindness he surrounds those who’ve wept
But he makes no demands
As his Love understands
To the paths of our own truths we’ve kept