Category: Thinkings and poems

Poetic and religious truth

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http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/

Click to access Religion_as_Poetic_Truth.pdf

Religion as Poetic Truth
A lightly edited transcript of an impromptu talk by Mark F. Sharlow

How much truth is there in the religions of the world? How many of their beliefs are true? Before trying to answer that question, I’d like to mention an example that shows how intricate the question of truth can sometimes be. Think about poetry. The poet Carl Sandburg once wrote a poem titled “Fog,” in which he used these lines: The fog comes on little cat feet. Now, is Sandburg’s statement true or not? When you think about the fog coming in over a coastline, as in Sandburg’s poem, do you find those lines true? The answer to that question could be “no,” because there are no cat feet on the fog – no matter how hard you look under the fog, you won’t find cat feet. Or the answer could be “yes,” because those lines describe exquisitely a certain experience of what it feels like when you’re in a place where the fog is coming in. You know what I mean, if you’ve ever been there – that strange hushing, that strange softness that your surroundings develop. It’s a subjective experience, but it’s a real part of your awareness. So, are Sandburg’s lines true? The answer is yes or no, depending on whether what you mean is 1 literal truth – truth of the kind that a scientist would consider true – or poetic truth. If you mean literal truth, then the lines are not true (of course). But if you think of the lines as possibly describing an experience, as being poetically true in that sense, then they are true. Those lines do describe something real – a real subjective feature of your awareness and of your surroundings – even though there really aren’t any feet under the fog. I’d like to propose that we think of most of the beliefs of the major religions of the world in this way. These beliefs might not be literally true, but at least in some cases – at least for the central beliefs shared by most religions – they might be true in some other way. They might point to a significant truth, even though they aren’t literally true. The prime belief of this sort would be belief in God. Now, some people think of God as a being who created the universe and who created everything in the universe, including living species, by supernatural means, by just bringing them into being (boom! there they are), instead of natural causes creating the things in the universe. If this is exactly how you define God, then there is no God. Why? Because things have natural causes. Many things have been found to have natural causes, and biological species, as one prime example, have been found to have natural causes through evolution. So if that’s what you mean by “God,” then there is no God. But the answer is different if what you mean by “God” is a divine presence in the world, some entity or feature of reality that can be regarded as divine – which means, at a minimum, that it’s worthy of our highest admiration and love, and somehow represents and embodies all that is good. If that’s what you mean by God, then there could well be a God. I’ve argued in some of my writings that there is a being like that. It’s what philosophers would call an “abstract entity” – not a ghostly spiritual substance, but an entity that can be known to us as a feature of the world and of things in the world. This entity is a suitable focus for our highest love, because it is shown or manifested in all that is beautiful and good, including the people we love. It is not just some force or some object devoid of spiritual qualities. Instead, it has enough mindlike features that we can regard it as a “someone” instead of a mere “something.” However, it is not what we usually think of as a “person.” I know I’m being rather vague and sketchy here, but I’ve spelled it all out before, in my writings on the subject of God.

A different kind of truth lies in poetry

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Photo by Mike Flemming 2017
Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
George Herbert. 1593–1632
. Love by George Herbert
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
      Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
      From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning          5
      If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
     Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
      I cannot look on Thee.’   10
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
      ‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
      Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’   15
      ‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
      So I did sit and eat.

Poetry ,invention and discovery

Orchid_2017-1.jpg

http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=21541

 

Roger Caldwell

Invention and Discovery:

Poetry and Science Revisited

 

(1)

Poetry, for Wallace Stevens, was “the supreme fiction”. Poets invent things that aren’t there – or, at least, weren’t there before the poem brought them into being. Scientists, by contrast, are said to tell the truth. They discover things – things that are already there. The structure of DNA, Newton’s inverse square law, the speed of light are pre-existent features of the universe, waiting to be revealed. Some lucky scientist or other will get there first. On this model nothing could be simpler: poets are inventors, scientists are discoverers. The model is simple. It is also wrong.

We may not value poems for factual truth, but that is not to say that we value them either as merely spinning magnificent lies. A poem may well encompass or enact an important truth even if its facts are wrong or invented. Robert Graves was famously dismissive about Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” which, amongst other heinous errors, has Sophocles hearing the sound of pebbles flung up by the retreating tide – which, as Graves points out, is impossible, given that the Aegean, unlike the North Sea, is not tidal. But whatever truth-value is in the poem is there despite the poet’s careless way with facts. The facts in a poem are to be understood in advance as being in inverted commas. What is important is the truth that the poet brings to expression – or invents.

Is it possible, however, to invent the truth as opposed to discovering it? Some inventions work, after all, others do not. You can’t invent a perpetual motion machine, because such a machine would contravene the laws of physics: it wouldn’t work. All you can invent is the idea of such a machine. Similarly, if a poetic or other literary invention works, it is helpful to know why it works. Why have Hamlet, Werther, Jekyll and Hyde, Godot all become modern archetypes, part of the furniture of our minds – regardless of whether we have read the works in which they are instantiated?

It is true that, after Shakespeare, after Goethe, there were many more Hamlets and Werthers in daily life than there had been before. The poets, to that extent, had invented them, and changed things. But they couldn’t invent what had no basis in a possible reality. They named, they developed what existed already as potentialities in human psychology. Their invention, to that degree, is therefore, just as much discovery.

Indeed, there is a continuum rather than a disjunction between the two. Where poets like Hardy, Edward Thomas, Larkin are to a large extent discoverers, others, such as Wallace Stevens, Paul Celan, John Ashbery, J.H. Prynne, working at the limits of language, are primarily inventors. Where the poet of the first type fails, it is in telling us something we know already: where the poet of the second type fails, it is in an inability to tell us anything at all. To the extent that the poem of an inventer works, however, it makes a new use of language permanently available in which to explore truths – and perhaps lies – which it was not previously possible to express, rather in the same way that the invention of new concepts in a language makes it possible to think, and ultimately, to live differently than before.

Poets, of course, are not alone in this. Scientists too invent with greater or lesser success. They invented the ether, for example, which must count, in the end, as an unsuccessful invention, since it isn’t there, though it continues to haunt our language as an incoherent idea. But to discover what is there you must also have a theory as to what is likely to be there. Observation in itself counts for little. You must invent in advance. Who has ever seen a quark? What kind of a beast is natural selection?

(2)

We are told sometimes that poetry is its own world, that poets explore the potentialities of language – as if language could somehow be separated from the world out of which it has arisen. As if there could be a pure poetry (or, for that matter, a pure science). Fine poets can be slaves of a deficient aesthetic, just as scientists may make obeisance to a flawed philosophy of science and succeed

Do not copyright your hatred

Shall I give home to grievance and to woe

And cultivate my hatred with my tears?

Shall I remember carefully each blow,

And add this sorrow to my anxious fear?

I thought by hating you I would have peace

And surely I had reason without doubt.

Yet rumination gave me no release..

For wisdom and compassion it did flout

I remembered then past love and shared sweet words

I gave them freedom in my anguished heart.

I did it for your sake, yet then occurred

A sweetness, joy and gladness in all parts.

To forgive,repent and let go of such grief

Helps us more than hatred’s legal briefs

No river flows

I wish we were on Easby Moor again

Or looking down the hill of Hasty Bank

The feel of scented flowers where we had lain

We closed our eyes and into bliss we sank

I wish we were near Saltburn on the sands.

I wish we were near Redcar on the coast.

The butterflies, the seagulls and the Band

Your mother liked the sea and sand the most.

Your father liked the hills and heather moors.

You were torn between them, now you’re gone

Your mother bough some honey for her store

Breathing northern air my loving one

When we got to Stamford you were low

Suburban London where no waters flow

I wish we were in Cleveland on the hills

We have to work in London for the bills.

The little cyclamen

I love the little cyclamen

I grow it in my own garden

The waxy flowers make colour glow

They are my prayer, it shall be so.

When I am gone and in the ground

Plant me flowers like these around

But now I live and sing my songs

In the end there’s nothing wrong.

The Ale House by the sea in lovely Kent

Walmer beach and kingsdown and the sea

The public house the shingle fishing boats

The horses waiting patiently for food

Remember Dover beach,what Arnold wrote

The sea  at Dover now seems civilized

We search for places stranger, more remote

The cliffs are crumbling like our country is

The remnants are too heavy now to float.

Sitting by the table with the beer

The salty air will benefit our throats

The conversation’s easy and we joke

Until some some Tory nonsense makes us choke.

Our lives have been so tainted  by the lies

No one knows the truth, so values die

Mary finds that she is sardonic

Mary was feeling very unwell when the phone rang. It was a former colleague of hers who asked her how she was. But she didn’t want to tell anyone she was ill with covid-19

Oh I am grieving for my sister, Mary told her untruthfully but firmly.

You  have never mentioned your sister before.Were you close to her?

Oh no. I wasn’t close to her I just like grieving for people that I’m not close to, don’t you?

Mary I think you are being sardonic. I’ve never heard you speak like that before. What has come over you?

Am I really being sardonicJust think that you can be sardonic without even knowing it.

I don’t believe you Mary You know what it is I am sure you do.

Well you can know something and practice it without necessarily knowing the name or knowing that there is a name for it

Suddenly she realized that everything that has a name now must have been experienced by human beings before the name was given to it and it was they who had invented a name for it

We don’t know what it will be in another language like Italian or German either

Annie came running in lb into the kitchen wearing some green trousers and a purple top. She had no makeup on at all which is very unusual for this dear lady.What was wrong with her? Could you be about to change gender?

Mary are you feeling better? Who are you talking to? Anything exciting?

Oh it’s Leonora do you remember her? She used to teach in Huddersfield polytechnic where I took a course in algebraic mythology.

Don’t be ridiculous if you wanted to learn algebraic mythology you would have gone to East Barnet University. How Annie got this idea is a mystery since she is a very uneducated and thoughtless person but who knows? Some people become more intelligent as they get older especially if they wear a lot of makeup filled with dangerous chemicals.

Well never mind I can’t remember where I met her but she is very clever and she’s just come back to this country from Australia

Well she must be  short of company if she’s phoning you now after 20 or 30 years of absence. Was she in fact a colleague of yours?

How can you say something so rude to me? I am stunned

Oh I’m sorry Mary. I am feeling  depressed at the moment and sometimes that can make me cruel.

I forgive you  because I’ve known you for many years al. I know chronic pain can make people behave badly as well in fact there’s a higher risk of suicide for  those people. But in the current political climate we’re all at a higher risk of suicide or murder.

Why are you feeling so depressed, do you know? Of course that is the thing we often don’t know why we are depressed and that is what is so horrible about it because we don’t know what to do.

Is it just a chemical reaction that’s gone wrong in the brain or is it some indication that we are locking for a deep meaning to our lives or maybe we just hate the society we’re living in especially the newspapers.

I’m not sure perhaps it’s the spring sunshine that can bring on seasonal ineffective disorder.

Well I will say goodbye to Leonora and I will make you a lovely cup of tea in the kitchen with Emile. He will be thrilled to see you with your purple lipstick and your green eye shadow which had mysteriously appeared by themselves on Annie’s face. Free at the point of contact just like the nhs

Mary I’m so fortunate to have you as my friend.

Some people would never speak to me again if I was rude to them

Well we should never jump to conclusions especially . And this is a very minor offense that you have committed compared to what politicians do every day but even our politicians here are nothing like so bad as Ronald Stump

According to the Times readers we have to become resilient and not let things affect us but unfortunately they don’t say how.

Well we can talk about that while we have our tea

I’d rather talk about fashion really I believe yellow is the color for this year

Oh for God’s sake Emile cried. I hate the colour yellow except on flowers and the sun but I do not like women wearing yellow clothing.

Emil you are just a cat but you are very wise so we will talk about something else altogether namely what we shall have for our supper.

I’d like sardines on toast,the cat purred

Then I will do the washing up for you

I want to wash my fur tonight

Your wish is my command Mary cried

Thus it did transpire

What the two women ate is a total mystery

Send your ideas on a postcard. You might win 10 pounds for the the best suggestion on the other hand you may not win anything at all because I’m too tired to think about it

Sardonicism – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardonicism

To be sardonic is to be disdainfully or cynically humorous, or scornfully mocking.[1][2] A form of wit or humour, being sardonic often involves expressing an uncomfortable truth in a clever and not necessarily malicious way, often with a degree of skepticism.[3]

What is irony?

pair of leather boots hanging on sconce
Photo by Helena Ije on Pexels.com

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

Extract

Irony is a term for aaa@A figure of speech.[1] Irony is when something happens that is opposite from what is expected. It can often be funny, but it is also used in tragedies. There are many types of irony, including those listed below:

  • Dramatic irony, when the audience knows something is going to happen on stage that the characters on stage do not.
  • Socratic irony, when someone (usually a teacher) pretends to be stupid in order to show how stupid his pupils are (while at the same time the reader or audience understand the situation).
  • Cosmic irony, when something that everyone thinks will happen actually happens very differently.
  • Situational irony e.g. Mr. Smith gets a parking ticket. This is ironic because Mr. Smith is a traffic warden.
  • Verbal irony is an absence of expression and intention. Sarcasm may sometimes involve verbal irony.
  • Irony of fate is the misfortune in the result of fate or chance.
  • The difference between of things seem to be or reality.

Examples[change | change source]

  • In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet takes a potion that will put her to sleep, making her look dead. She does this in the hopes of being reunited with Romeo. He incorrectly learns of her death, and kills himself. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the reader/viewer knows she is not dead, but Romeo does not.
  • A common example of cosmic irony could be that a child wants some kind of pudding, and misbehaves to try to get it. The parent withholds it because of the child’s behavior.
  • Verbal irony can be found in sarcasm, but not just that.
  • In Sophocles‘ play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus acts out based on the knowledge of his fate which in turn leads to the fulfillment of the tragic fate. This is an example of how fate plays on irony.

The ancient virtues,patience and restraint

You stabbed my heart when I was left alone
Telling me my writing was like porn
Now you give me nightmares,  be my pest
We all need one or two,and  you confessed

My writing is so  bad, you  envy not
Did I hit you  on a painful spot?
If others have a gift, that is their call
You have yours , get out a net and trawl

Ambivalent  in love which turns to hate
We wound ourselves in making this our fate
Talking  overmuch lets such thoughts out
As tea will  pour down from a  tilted spout

The ancient virtues,patience and restraint
Shall be our wise protectors when distraught

The world’s hollow like a shell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoyment is good for us

If your eye keeps falling on certain unattainable objects why not buy some glue?

That will keep you on the straight and narrow

Because you won’t be able to see anything else.

So are you  virtuous if you walk along the path of righteousness using such a technique? I think not

You should have chosen the broad path that led to destruction;at least you would have enjoyed yourself on the way.

And enjoyment is something that should not be spurned but sought after.

Joy is not the same as pleasure, of course.

Joy can include both loss and gain

I don’t like the idea of this narrow path that leads us to heaven just does not sound right to me.

On the other hand, you could be walking on the water with Jesus in some possible world.

Don’t tell anyone, but you read it here first

Your flowers

The tulips pushed the primroses away
They took the pot from these innocuous plants
Nature is not kind in such display
The powerful plants can do just what they want.

However, I admire their flowers of red
The shape is elegant, the colour clear.
And had they been in a much bigger bed
Both flowers would give us pleasure without fear.

And now magnolias pink my eyes adore
Two of them I see from off the bus.
A visual parable, a story for
The short sweet life of all including us.

We deceive ourselves in order to survive.
But shallowness makes trivia of our lives

London’s Roads

London is bewildered by its roads The Circular, the North,the South, th da wase QCodes The Morse and the Enigma, Turing broke So now we have new bicycles with spokes Once we had the A to Z in hand Turn it upside down and you’ll be grand New technology has made great strides Carrying us to Eden ,what a ride The motorways are empty for tonight God decided we had too much Light He taught the bare cheeked Moon on Jesus’ Mount To turn the other side when love’s about I liked to use a compass and a map But now, my dear, most everything’s on tap I crouch beneath my sister as she drives In the dark on the M 25 But if it’s closed, we are completely foxed We left the old Road Atlas in a box Along with all my ex’s underpants And naturally his principles of Kant We may be in Watford or in Bucks I often wonder what will rhyme with luck We may be near St Albans, we can’t see The car ran up the trunk of an oak tree We rang 999 and they are here A fire engine filled up with Kentish beer A ladder for the ladies to climb down Now they are just women on the town London exists no more as a real spot MI 5 are joining all the dots

My sister’s last WhatsApp message to me

I tried to draw this from a photograph when I had only just begun to learn joy so it’s not at all realistic but there’s something about it that my sister likes and so because of that I have helped her she is the one on the extreme left.

I’m the only one still alive now

It’s the cancer. I’ve not  long left

You’ve been a good sister

For several days I was able to send messages to comfort her and help her and once you could no longer speak one of her sons read out one of my poems to her and a little smile came on her face.

She was still a devout Catholic I never believed that I would consider giving anybody some rosary beads or that  it might help anybody but in fact she told was she was using her fingertips because she had no beads to pray on and so I sent her some rosaries and she was holding them in her hands when she died.

I asked if I could have them then but they had left them in her hands.

So I have to get some more because it’s a sort of link to her and to my mother and others. I don’t think it’s idolatry. People need something to touch when they had no longer speak properly or at all and she knew when she touched them that I had sent them to her so it was all I could do since she was 160 miles away from me.

In a way hearing the diagnosis was worse than when she actually died because at first she was in a terrible mental state and was suicidal but she lived long enough to see her daughter’s second baby born and the baby was one month old when she died

Now the babys 10 months old and very lively and full of interest but of course she won’t remember my sister that is what is so sad for her mother.

Cracked shall be the golden bowl

Soul making is a phrase from Keats.{ link to article by Jeffrey C. Johnson in Paris Review]

We saw Wolf Hall on TV recently and it is so wonderful.I am just writing down a few  of my thoughts not  about that but about Anne Boleyn… I meant it to be funny but I could n’t manage that after seeing the play.

ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn withheld to win
As Henry lusted in his sin.

Once a virgin,sweet Madonna;
Henry turned in rage on her.

She bore him but one living child,
For her quips,she was reviled.

Henry knew not the fault was his
It seems the king had syphilis.

Or Anne was rhesus negative
then just her first born child would live.

We women make our worst mistake
When power for love we wrongly take

Our strength lasts but till we submit.
We need less love and far more wit.

Whatever lusty men may say,
their “love” dies when they get their way.

And they will take their wife by force
As cannons pound on oaken doors.

As for women,we must not
Promise gold we have not got.

Conception is a game of chance;
We come to be by happenstance.

we sin in pride in promising
What only God or Nature bring.

We deceive and trick and charm
At last our hearts bang in alarm

The man who begged upon his knees
Chops off our heads when we displease.

For Emperors and Kings and Lords
Wield fearful power by the sword.

Yet when for judgement they shall stand
How will point the knowing hand?

And just like us they’ll ashen be
When true majesty they see.

Into dust and crumbled ruin
they will go by their own doings.

Each day create with grace your soul.
Cracked shall be the golden bowl.

Keats wrote this extract below [read all by clicking on soul above[ and he died when aged  only 25 years:

I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

If you care about your friend give them a hug to help their immune system

It seems that our friends are part of our immune system in a very real sense to coin a phrase. If you see what I mean etc

We don’t need an excuse to hug our friends

Find a friend or family member and ask for a hug. That warm squeeze will give you a lift — and could even make conflict less upsetting, according to one study.

Hugging could also help your immune system, another study says.

How not to blog

Don’t put a comments box on your post because if people put comments on you’ll have to reply to them and that will take up your precious time.

Never read blogs written by other people. You have read all the great writers so why bother?

Don’t allow “likes” either because people might “like” things that they’ve not read

Then  the only statistics you get will be the number of visitors and their countries. You don’t even need to bother to look at that

So why would you continue to blog once you put all those restrictions on your blog?

Well you  just have to try it. You are still writing and someone might read it possibly but you will never know and you’ll certainly won’t know who they are or whether they are interested in the same things as you etc

Maybe you want to show your friends or your family that you have a blog but you don’t want anything negative written on it although as a matter of fact most people are very courteous and dont write really horrible comments like the following

Do you consider yourself to be a poet? You must be very conceited.

These poems are getting worse month by month so this is my duty to tell you that you’re wasting your time here. You’d be better off going for a walk.

Do you consider these  to be short stories? Even children wouldn’t bother to read them and they normally like  stories are some cartoons as well it might help but I can’t guarantee that unless you improve the quality.

Well if only you would stop writing it would free up 45 minutes of my time every day and I could stay in bed longer in the morning looking at the clouds go past  my window.

Of course I could ignore your blog but you might think that was rude

Perhaps you could write an article about why people like to stay in bed longer in the morning. And is it true when you are getting older?

Personally I’m sick and tired of being in bed and I’m in bed because I’m sick and tired.

I’m clever as well.

He said I can keep the box

Mary was in the teal coloured kitchen of her almost detached house making a jam sponge pudding when the doorbell rang.She wiped her hands on her new purple trousers because she didn’t want to dirty a clean towel.
She found her colleague Dr Rosa Benchez standing nervously outside shivering
Come in , Mary cried.

Would you like a cup of tea? You need to sit by the fire and get warmer
I’d love that, Rosa said politely but distantly
A few minutes later they were sitting looking out of the bay window watching a blackbird sitting on the fence;they hoped it would start to sing
May I talk to you,Mary? I have got rather more agitated than ever before

.I am wondering if I need counselling or maybe shooting, she joked morosely
OK,said Mary cautiously.Has anything unusual happened ?
Yes, my sister has had her driving license taken away because of big panic attacks she had crossing the Humber Bridge …. you know how huge it is.She got out of the car and screamed,Help! Help!
That was dangerous with so much traffic about
She is furious and says we live in a Nazi state and is writing to the Times
Well, it can happen that you lose your licence,Mary said,but when she has learned to deal with the attacks she can re-apply and get her license back.Simple things like not eating and being tired can bring that on so I have heard.And fear of fear, too.
As well as that,Rosa said,my son has got a recurrence of cancer and is going onto some new drug-type chemo.My ex husband is very distressed and so am I as it was unexpected.
And even worse my new fiance Prof. Charlie Blogge has broken off our engagement with no reason.I can’t think of any at all.Shall I ever trust a man again?
He said I can keep the ring which is a blue sapphire ,supposedly, but when I had it valued they said I was mistaken and you can buy them on amazon for £57 and less.
So she took off the ring and hurled it into Mary’s coal fire where it looked very nice as it got hotter and hotter glowing like a lighthouse off Portland Bill in a sea storm or a banger about to explode

Good grief, said Mary.No wonder you are agitated.We may have to phone Dave the bisexual lovable paramedic available on the NHS 24 hours a day.Or we could have our hair permed and dyed red instead, she murmured to herself
Which of these events bothers you most,Rosa? She continued gently while hoping she would cope.
It is my own feelings that worry me most.I wake up feeling very sad and nervous;I wonder if I am having a breakdown.Then I feel worse as I turn it over in my mind trying to decide what to do.Then I get up and get food into me and think it all over and over again while drinking my tea.
Well, you know it is normal to feel sad, anxious or distraught when bad things happen,Mary told her.
But most people look happy when I see them in the town , Rosa shouted angrily
That is because being outside they put on a mask.They could be feeling worse than you.Anyway, why bother about that? We are all different.Some people think I am very calm but they don’t see me when I’m not.I go stiff like a piece of wood.Then I pass out
So what do you do? Rosa asked her nervously,twirling a golden ringlet around her finger as she watched her engagement ring melt in the fire.
I don’t do anything,Mary said.This is one of the fundamental errors in our society that action is needed for so many things and especially for negative feelings.But it’s usually part of life.Things pass.
I pretend I have a big round box inside me and I let the anxiety live in there nice and cosy until my mind has absorbed and dealt with the pain.Once my box was quite small but it has grown bigger now and so it has room for mad or bad feelings.I do little tasks and listen to music.
Then if I feel really bad I listen to Leonard Cohen and tell myself, he had it worse.But he made money out of it! Not that you can make money out of yours. though it’s worth musing about
Well,Rosa replied.Thank you,Mary.I am glad I am not the only one who feels so anxious sometimes.I shall try to get a box like yours.
You are welcome,said Mary jovially.Come round on Sunday for tea.Emile is out hunting but he loves to see you and so do I
The women hugged cautiously and Rosa went out looking less cold and nervous as she bravely carried her box away .It was invisible to the people walking nearby