https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/pinchas/elijah-and-the-still-small-voice/

Clouds as light as wedding veils float by

Fitting decorations for the sky.

The sky  so huge and beautiful is calm.

Absent thunder can this cause us harm?

The human world of houses shops and schools

All are shaped and ordered by known rules

And underneath the sky so calm and light

The earth can quake and shudder day or night

The human world is easy to destroy 

Bombs or earthquakes do more than annoy

Our human mind has tempests of its own.

Suddenly the unknown swamps the known

What is the flood that heals, the flood that drown?

Display the Catherine wheels, bring on the clowns

Just keep going, even if it means taking a different route.

Chris Bonington

I have studied and I’ve got my last degree
My heart has learned its lessons one by one.
I’m a graduate of the grief academy

I didn’t know how painful it would be
When the man you love and cherish has then gone
I’ve been studied and I got the third degree

The tears I wept could wash out the Dead Sea
Remove the salt and scour the shore till done
I’m a graduate of the grief academy

I know now I must die,we cannot flee

We turn to dust and that is not much fun
I have studied and I’ve got my last degree

Ii is not real News, not for the BBC.
Unless you’re Stephen Hawkings, that great man
We’re graduates of the grief academy

We can’t control life with a self made plan
God is gone though prayer might well begin
I have suffered till I got a new degree
I’m a graduate of the grief academy

Wasting life when we would like to dance
Walk in ferny woods. exchange a glance
Can we have a decent person at our head?
Jesus Christ,no b*gger understood

Why be happy when you could feel mad?
Glad that Donald Trump is not your dad
Don’t let logic, reason or plain thought
Sell you something Mother never bought

Why not let the police take all control?
They know how to score a self made goal
They can kill a man and wound a child
Yet kneel down in Church along the aisle

Holding a black Bible in one hand

Will not take you to the Promised Land
Cain and Abel,Jacob and Esau
Does he hope to start another War?

As the old man fell towards his death
They offered us a handrail for the bath

Shattered by their honest,wilful lies
I could not speak, my saliva had all dried

He was walking albeit slowly when at home
When they took him off I heard the groan
Lost inside his head, no wife nearby
Even Satan would have wept that night

Gabriel and Satan, hand- in -hand
Neither one will ever understand
We humans waste so much,we’re almost blind
Full of envy,hate and so unkind

G

Joy sings now in golden light,

Then after day comes deep,black night.

New moon is rising by grey trees,

The earth is where I want to be.
I want the day,I want the night.
I want the dark.I want the light.
I want to see and to be seen,~
And not to lose my precious  dreams

The sun has set, grey clouds turn black,

The day just gone  will not come back.

I’ll rest in quiet reverie

Until the reaper’s scythe takes me.
And then I drop and mix with dust,
Till worms and beetles sate their lust.
And fall into ten thousand motes,
And dance, in sunlight,  music’s notes.

No more striving ,no more ambition

No more fighting,no competition.

Every particle’s the same

Without even  a unique name.
And, side by side, we all are one,
The lusts of life have been and gone.
We dwell with dirt and grain and sand
At last we’ve reached the Promised Land

No need to search in foreign parts

Find foreign places in the heart

By grief we’re thrown  off usual roads

Do not desert us from your hold

We have no maps, we fear our friends

Into the suffering we descend.

Our children once sat at our knee

Now the parent they must be.

Some groan and rage for their own loss

Through wild places all must cross

Some may fall and be helped up

As we share the bitter cup

We must drink it to the dregs

As we walk on ancient legs.

Do not shun us when we grieve.

Our maps are ripped yet we must leave

We face again the unknown heart

Of which we only know a part

No package holiday, no deal

We’re on our own how raw we feel.

Though every single human heart

With grief and pain will surely smart

Would you wish to be a stone?

If you have love then you will noan

https://www.google.com/search?q=origin+of+the+word+eight&client=ms-android-motorola-rvo3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8&inm=vs

10 years ago I lost my husband.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/what-the-wild-things-are/201509/grief-and-fear

Grief and fear can feel similar because they both involve a sense of danger, uncertainty, and disorientation. When grieving, you might feel like you’re in uncharted territory with no direction, similar to how fear can feel when facing an unknown threat. Both emotions can also cause physical sensations like a fluttering stomach, restlessness, and difficulty breathing. 

Here’s a more detailed look at why grief can feel like fear

O

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/31/what-is-the-most-common-mental-health-misinformation-on-tiktok?CMP=Share_AndroidApp

O

Several videos about borderline personality disorder suggest symptoms that are everyday experiences – such as feeling anxiety when people change plans, experiencing mood swings, a fear of abandonment and mirroring people’s behaviour to be liked.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/31/more-than-half-of-top-100-mental-health-tiktoks-contain-misinformation-study-finds?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/01/self-help-toxic-books-courses-apps?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

This is interesting but I don’t think she is right because many years ago I had a friend who had just done a degree in a modern language art Oxford and she had a breakdown and spent a whole year in a psychiatric unit but she told me that she was cured over depression after reading a book called born to win by Muriel James and someone else.

But also there’s something odd about buying hundreds of self-help books. If you read several and they don’t help you then it’s pretty plain that the rest are not going to help you either.

It’s terrible going through severe emotional suffering so anything that helps at all is very useful. But like bereavement these things have to be suffered and borne until they go away of their own accord

But like bereavement emotional traumas never go away but you learn how to live with them.

It’s like a journey through a horrible place that you just have to keep going on until you get through.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/27/pat-barker-benjamin-myers-voyage-home-rare-singles-in-conversation-im-absolutely-intolerable-when-im-not-writing?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Aristotle found a bottle

on the settle

by the kettle

Plato

is not read in NATO

is it futile

to be neutral?

Socrates

Like cream teas.

Was water boiling

when he was toiling?

Euclid’s

few quid

got a book with

not a myth.

Aristophanes

had big grey kness…

or was that Derek

or even Eric?

Were ancient  Greeks rational

about the diagonal

being incommmensurable

with the one dimensional?

Hebrews

Read the News.

On radio and TV

and watch the newspapers

to find some new views.

If i m white

Wish I were m ore bright.

Brits are beige

When enraged.

When I looked to the list of my Gmail accounts I thought someone had hacked me because there was a name at the bottom of the list which I did not recognise.

I felt rather nervous about this wondering what to do

On further study I discovered that it said Choose another account

but in Indonesian so it looked like a person’s name

Why it was Indonesian I do not know although I have another blog on blogger which is read a lot by somebody in Indonesia.

It proves that if you can it’s better to try to find out about what’s worrying you rather than trying to forget about it and there was relieved to discover the meaning of this phrase

Well I am glad I found that out

Dear Agatha

I’m sorry it is so long since I’ve written but I couldn’t find any ink to put in my pen

Then when I found some quink I couldn’t unscrew  the top. I stood it in some very hot water upside down for half an hour and now I have one is to open it

Why am I so out of date as to write with a pen?

To me it’s rather like drawing and I also used to love looking at handwriting on envelopes when I got birthday cards or letters etc because every person’s handwriting is unique m

At the moment I’m looking through the window at an elderberry tree. I believe that there is a bird nesting in it and I’m hoping to see it flying in and out but so far I have had no success except that it’s very nice just looking at it all the time through this French window

The beautiful big flowers have a lovely perfume though I’ve never seen it  in a shop or pharmacy.

Mysteriously my neighbours tcats that used to frequent my patio have disappeared. Perhaos staying indoors because of the heat?

They are very large with thick coats

My great niecw is only one year old and she’s already able to run

To think that she is running where others crawl it makes me wonder what she will become in adult life? Perhaps it’s dangerous to be so different from the norm.

Yesterday I was having trouble with my front door as the bolt on one side seemed to be very stiff

I have discovered the truth of the maxim

Two heads are better than one

Last night I couldn’t think what to do until I rang my friend and she didn’t know what to do but just a very fact that she was there made me feel more confident that I managed to do what was necessary and then today it was the other way round when she was trying to bolt the door and she couldn’t do it until I went  stood next to her

It adds to my belief that it’s not natural for us to be alone all the time or even a lot of the time but if you’re in a good mood and relaxed it’s very nice to sit looking through the window  at the garden in tll full bloom with the sun shining or even to sit outside and eat one’s meal in the fresh air.

We’ve already had quite a lot of hot weather this year I hope you were experiencing the same in Ireland.

Of course when you’re working full-time and sharing your home with someone then being alone can seem a luxury that’s hard for you to achieve but equally the other way alround one might long to have another person here who loves you or at least cares about you or is it interested in you in some way.

There is another saying which is

A problem shared is a problem halved

And although I don’t believe in vomiting out all our life story or problems onto anyone nearby it certainly true that talking to someone who listens  (not as common as you might imagine) yes indeed sharing a problem can put it into I absolutely sure about is that if someone especially one of your children or young relatives confides in you you should never tell your friends what they have said. If they find out which is very painful that the secret itself shared with you is now going around the gossip in your street or in your family

Well I’m afraid this letter is not very exciting but I’m hopeful when my health improves I will get more energy to write something more interesting as even when you’re restricted to a small part of the world there are a lot of things that you can observe and participate in.

But I like the long days and I like this sunshine

Sending you my love

Mary

I like to sit down by the fire

Scratching my back with a wire

But it’s not yet invented

Though often circumvented

Everyone I know is a liar.

My ancestors lived in a cave

Until they reached  the end in the grave

So cold in the snow

And when the wind blows

To live well they had to be brave.

A solitary life is not best

It puts us too much to the test

But when you are old

In bed you are cold

Your trousseau  would be a silk vest.

Those who die young are deprived

Of a long and  fruitful  late Life

They leave grief in the bed

In which they were wed

The other is cut by sharp knives

From where does the darkness come down?

Humanity just call it a clown

Darkness at noon

Too late or too soon

The walls will all come tumbling downm

Mary was sweeping the floor with her new 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 blue 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 back door.
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 or leave and please Florenc Tonson? It reminded the women of their convent school 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 to be questioned even in front of mere school girls.
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 girls 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 Horace Wagner and Richard Straussbumt.
Did it help you to concentrate,Annie asked in a puzzled way.
No, it allowed my brother to dominate me and otherwise he might have hit me or knocked over the folding table where I kept my exercise books ,and pen ready to write essays on Twelfth Night and the periodic table.
Annie burst out laughing.Sorry,Mary,I am 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 three sisters 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 u

When Mary got home,she took off her coat and put the kettle on the fire!

She got the tea caddy out and put some tea into the pot.Suddenly the door burst open and Annie her exuberant neighbour fell into the kitchen like a teenager
Are you ok,Mary asked her gently.

Those 4 inch heels are rather dangerous.

Annie was wearing a sky blue track suit,red stilettos and a big green pashmina. Her make up had melted all down her face as she was so warm with running

She had some waterproof make up but had the feeling it might be dangerous to clog the pores.

Where have you been?she asked curiously.You were ages.

I forgot to get off the bus as I fell into a reverie,Mary told her

That sounds like a black hole!Annie cried

I was daydreaming so I ended up by the river and a policeman asked me for a date,sort of.

Did you have any dates with you?

No,I only had Stan in my bag,alas.

Where is he?Have you put him into the wardrobe?

It’s already full.He’s still in the bag at the moment.

The two women fell into a sad mutual silence realising Stan would never now teach Emile to swim in the bath nor return his overdue library books.

Am I liable for his fines,Mary wondered.

I can pay if you like,Annie,said generously.She got out some home made biscuits and gave one to Mary who was wearing a long black dress from Lands End which resembled a defunct nun’s habit.

Are you thinking of retiring to the cloister soon ,she continued.

No,I don’t believe in Christianity any more.Christ.yes,Christianity ,no.

What about Xmas?Will you celebrate?

I shall pray and do out the kitchen cupboards.

Are they that bad,asked Annie curiously, twiddling a ringlet with her fingers.

Possibly,Mary giggled!They didn’t teach domestic science at Oxford!

And Mother was always busy cooking and cleaning the grate after she got home from work.

Talking about grates,I’d better look at the kettle.She lifted it off the fire and held it up in the air.It was very black on one side,just like the one Mary’s mother had had so many years ago.

Why don’t I make some tea,she asked.

I don’t know,said Annie.Is this the Xmas quiz?

No,you don’t understand.It’s a rhetorical question.

Oh,do stop showing off,Annie told her.I only went to Knittingham Polytechnic and we never did Greek,just Aramaic.I have forgotten it now.

Mary poured out the tea into two pint sized mugs and the women sat silently warming their hands on the mugs and meditating on the wilful backwardness of the local poly which now only taught Latin,Hebrew and chemical engineering.The latter was an error as the professors thought that was what Wittgenstein had studied before finding Bertrand Russell more attractive. How to be more precise it was Russell’s ideas that he found attractive to start with until he saw the errors Russell had made

Russell’s paradox had haunted Annie ever since those happy student days.

Though she would have preferred Russell to his paradox if she had been given the choice.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/sep/13/frayed-cables-and-yellow-pillows-how-to-fix-reuse-or-ditch-12-confusing-kinds-of-household-clutter?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/06/private-firms-ran-almost-all-care-homes-forced-to-shut-for-breaches-in-england?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Inside my mind I dream of pearls

Caterpillars,snails with whorls.

Inside my mind I dream of pearls,
Caterpillars,snails with whorls.
I dream contented, all enwrapped;
With reverie and dream I’m lapped.
The inner seas will comfort me,
While gods open my eyes to see

Oh,sweeter than confectionery
Is my Oxford diction’ry.
The words whirl round then fall to shape
The sentences which my world make.
This furnishing is rich and strange
And magically self arranged.

Oh,sweeter than the love of man
Is reading works of poets long gone;
Feeling deeply their dark tides .
Upon which our boat may glide.
The sea infinite we float upon
Is the same warm sea the ancients swam..

Sweeter still is the spring air
And the blossom spreading fair.
We’ll drown our selves in grassy fields
To the gods of poetry yield.
We’ll rise again and spring up tall
To grow more rich until we fall

À

And yet so much of our communication today is defined by a rather ungenerous unwillingness to listen coupled with a compulsion to speak.

“Words,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in her abiding meditation on the magic of real human communication, “transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.” But what happens in a cultural ecosystem where the hearer has gone extinct and the speaker gone rampant? Where do transformation and understanding go? What made, for instance, James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s superb 1970 dialogue about race and identity so powerful and so enduringly insightful is precisely the fact that it was a dialogue — not the ping-pong of opinions and co-reactivity that passes for dialogue today, but a commitment to mutual contemplation of viewpoints and considered response. That commitment is the reason why they were able to address questions we continue to confront with tenfold more depth and nuance than we are capable of today. And the dearth of this commitment in our present culture is the reason why we continue to find ourselves sundered by confrontation and paralyzed by the divisiveness of “us vs. them” narratives. “To bother to engage with problematic culture, and problematic people within that culture, is an act of love,” wrote the poet Elizabeth Alexander in contemplating power and possibility. Krista Tippett calls such engagement generous listening. And yet so much of our communication today is defined by a rather ungenerous unwillingness to listen coupled with a compulsion to speak.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/may/06/obituary-nina-farhi

Mary was admiring her curtains :;what a wonderful sense of colour this woman had. It was the one thing which her mother had praised her for . She had not been praised for becoming top of the class at the convent school not for getting a degree. No Mary realised that her mother has a sense of colour because it will be useful when Mary got married and had to make her own curtains.

What a nuisance Mary was no good with the sewing machine. In fact she was afraid of it. That’s one sure way of getting out of a task. Be afraid of the sewing machine clumsy with the knitting needles and when asked to make a cake always put the oven at the wrong temperature so this is either burnt or it is not ready when the visitors come.

And if people know you’re good at making cakes you will get more and more visitors and you won’t have time to read the Oxford dictionary of abstract words or the Oxford dictionary of new words. It is be very hard if we had to spend all the time making cakes and not being allowed to read a book.

Mary was no good at making her own clothes. She had to get a science degree so she could earn her own money. She was terrified of being on the dole and did not want to go on the game as ehe was a virgin. That’s her version of it

When Mary got married to Stan she told him that she did not make cakes and she did not make curtains. Fortunately they could afford to choose the fabric and then get someone else to make it into curtains,

It’s very important to learn about colour unless you go to art school it’s not often discussed in school. Colourcan help you to recover from illness…….

Wait for the next episode

How can I just write a poem today?

I don’t know precisely what to say

Should I write in form or in  free verse?

What verse  I write will certainly be worse

Worse than Shakespeare, worse than Wendy Cope

Worse than Dante,Milton ,what a hope!

If I write some words, no one might read

I will feel embarrassed by my greed

Greed for admiration praise and more.

I want good reviews and a high score

Expectations hamper human minds

Too much thinking turns the thinker blind

Everyone was once a little child

You learned to talk and walk so now be wild.

Children were fascinated by cracks in the pavement

By gutters  where they rolled marbles

By  grids with slime hanging down into the water

By places where they could hide

By the location of sweet shops

By a few rare places where there were frogs or other amphibians

Sand left by workman

Abandoned hand carts and trollies

They chased tom cats

Climbed the walls and fences  grazed knees and cut  hands

They were alive one way or another