https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whos-afraid-of-the-foreve_b_5634222.html

“A new study published in the journal Science looked at results from 11 different experiments involving over 700 subjects and found that the majority of participants reported that it was “unpleasant” to be alone in a room with their thoughts for as few as six minutes. The researchers discovered that most people would rather administer painful electric shocks to themselves than be left alone with their thoughts. This effect was particularly strong for men, who overwhelmingly preferred the shock (64 percent of male participants as compared to 15 percent of female participants).

Why do most people hate being alone with their thoughts? Pain. When you feel physical or psychological pain you instinctively move away from it. However, when you feel emotional pain there’s nowhere to go. Instead you may try to escape by distracting yourself with your cellphone.

Pain is an inevitable part of life. In fact, in many ways, pain is good for you. Plus, there is no avoiding it, and trying to escape from it can lead to other problems. Besides the obvious danger of texting while driving and the tragedy of missing out on the life that is going on outside of your three-inch screen, new evidence is emerging that avoiding being alone can hinder your capacity for empathy and creativity.

So what can you do to avoid avoiding your fear of being alone?

Cultivate Presence

The way to wean yourself fear of being alone is to gradually expose yourself to being present with yourself. You can cultivate a sense of presence in just a few minutes a day, either through meditation, prayer or just taking time each day to be silent. This can also be achieved by practicing yoga a few times per week.

In order to endure and grow from pain you must be able to experience it. Avoiding it makes it worse. No one wants to be in pain, but remember that pain is also an opportunity. When you take the time to slow down and experience what is bothering you, you can grow and change from the pain so you can experience the pleasure that is out there for you as well.”

• • Living life in all its fierceness,

    Birth and death and joy and pain

    We struggle on our unknown journey,

    Sometimes lost and found again.

    We are indeed like lambs to slaughter

    Death will be our final goal.

    But while we live,let us live bravely.

    Let us not destroy our souls.

    Climbing in the hills and moorlands

    In the heather, children play.

    The sun half blinds me with its light

    Yet still I see the given way.

    I received a call to climb.

    These hills are my essential home.

    My vocation is to dwell here

    While in the silence,mind may roam.

    Noise in cities is destructive.

    Though nature’s fierce,it’s also true.

    Struggling on life’s craggy slopes

    I offer up my words to you.

Mary watched the beginning of the News because Emile, being male, insisted he should be up to date politically.
First there was a good story that many migrants were rescued  from a boat off  the Italian but alas another  later boat capsized so  far more were drowned.And Boris Johnson appeared like a pale imitation of Donald Trump  complaining about immigrants here..
What do they want,she asked her kind cat.We weep if they drown yet will not admit them here just as it was with the Jews in the early days of Hitler.
Is it a a spiritual   test?Do we value new kitchens and fancy aprons from Harrods above helping others.
Yes,said Emile.I am very selfish.I look after myself
Well you have no money Emile so you can’t donate.I suppose if an immigrant brings a cat you would let them share your home?
Definitely,the cat told her.You could marry a male immigrant and I could have fun with his cat.
Well,we’ll take it more slowly,Mary said..I am not quite ready to remarry and there might be a food problem.
You can have my tinned food if you want and I’ll go out and catch more mice.Cats can still hunt.Definitely.I could even eat another cat’s food if I get through the cat flap
Now,Emile, crime is not the answer,Mary told him with a smile.
I suppose with some brown rice hot cat food might make a good meal.It looks like the potted meat we used to buy from the corner shop when I was a child.It’s  jelly form stewed shin of beef  or in cat food it may not be shin of beef  it might be shin of mouse!Well,you are kind ,Emile although you look odd since you were swimming in the kitchen.Maybe you need a good rinse as the Persil might poison you if you lick it
So she took Emile into the bathroom and he stood in a plastic bowl in the bath while Mary rinsed  him down.Then she rolled a big soft bath towel round him and put him by the fire while she phoned Dave.
Dave,did you get indigestion from the fried batter? she enquired delicately
No,said Dave.I’ll have it again next time I come round. I’ve got a good idea for some games we can play too.
I hope Chess is not one because I don’t like thinking too much.I do enough writing my book on Wittgenstein’s clothes and whether Dirac was autistic.Though really,what mattered was his equation.It was a bit like a mirror where the negative of every positive resided balefully.Even Lacan has written about mirrors  as has Sylvia Plath,
OK said Dave and I’ve met a really nice gay woman  who you  might want to meet sometime
Why? said Mary
You need some TLC
I  might take in an asylum seeker and they can  help me as the arthritis is very bad.I could even register  my house as an asylum.Do you remember the term Lunatic Asylum? Since I am a bit crazy now and then it would be legal
Well, let’s wait and see what the government does
And so weep all of us

http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/read-ezra-pounds-list-of-23-donts-for-writing-poetry-1913.html

Extract:Ezra Pound was a key figure in 20^th century poetry. Not only did he demonstrate impressive poetic skill in his Cantos; he also proved to be a crucial early supporter of several famous contemporaries, championing the likes of Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and H.D.. Before deservedly being condemned for his fascist politics and antisemitism, Pound established himself as one of the leading literary critics of his time. David Perkins, in A History of Modern Poetry, wrote, “During a crucial decade in the history of modern literature, approximately 1912-1922, Pound was the most influential and in some ways the best critic of poetry in England or America.”

1. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as an average piano teacher spends on the art of music.
2. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don’t allow ‘influence’ to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of ‘dove-grey’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale’, I can not remember.
3. Use either no ornament or good ornament.

I leaned against the radio on my chair
Why put a button on the front,I cry
An opera burst out,giving me a stir

The chair is broad and could become a lair
For wolves or foxes, no need to apply.
I leaned against the radio on my chair

I live in a house, so is it fair
That animals have  got no wings to fly
Loud voices sang out,giving me a stir

For opera, one has to have the flair
Good taste and feeling, these we cannot buy
I leaned against an angel on my chair

Yet if   schools did the arts,chance would be there
There is music in an orphan’s sigh.
Oh  people sang  and bells rang in cold air

In late winter many old folk die
Make sure you tell your love  without a lie
I leaned against the radio on my chair
An opera burst out, music’s everywhere!

In between the darkness and the bright,

Graded shades of grey and lilac lie.

short-eared durham owl
meditating over the dale’s edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.
on wind-side,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 center,
pied geometer of flight,
oh, what descent and ascent.
trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home

 by Sue Clancy

Cats at the Bar: Cats and Clean Laundry

I have bought 200  Brillo pads and 499 tea bags.I ate one thinking it was a bun.So that’s why I am losing weight.
I bought all these online because I had an accident and could not go out.Anyway,I burned my best pan made of copper last night so am hoping the Brillo will clean it.That is 10 pans I have wrecked since becoming a widow.And broken many pieces of china that were wedding presents [not on purpose]
I suppose I must be going to break something so better a bowl or a cup than my bones.
My husband used to burn pans and I used to explain that I always put water into a pan as soon as I remove the food.So it seems I am continuing his misdemeanors by not doing this myself
I had shingles recently and I feel tired so I sit next to my packet of mini aspirins all day feeling too idle to get an aspirin out.Still it proves I don’t really need them.
If the doorbell rings, I don’t feel like bothering to get up to see who it is.I’ll have to buy a pillar to live on.Like those hermits in long gone days.
Could I get to sleep on a pillar.How big were they?

https://fullfact.org/blog/2018/jan/fake-news/#

“Lord love a duck” as my Mam used to say

I lose myself in  desolate despair
The silence seems to hiss as I sit here
I find no consolation  anywhere.

I hear priests and rabbis talk of care
But what do men know of a woman’s fear?
I lose myself in  desolate despair

Yet with my holy spirit I will dare
To travel in  grey deserts where men jeer
I have found no consolation ,not so far

In  human lives these  passages occur
Where owls hoot and  black trees bend down to leer
When we lose ourself in  desolate despair

I have dwelled here  and I’m well prepared
Yet panic strikes me and I cannot steer
I’ve found  suffering ‘s better not deferred

Even God is deaf and I’m in tears
Yet  struggling in lost worlds, I know  love’s near
I find myself in  desolate despair
I want no consolation  nor false cheer.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/lyric

He’s gonna ban the Dow Jones average
Be it median,mode or mean
And please never mention Beveridge
Good works make  oranges scream.

I guess hair dye  is selling well
It will boost the USA
Of course we surely cannot tell
He could have bought his hair on E bay

Sadness fills me,overcomes
For women will date evil men
But  if I was a starving Mum
I’d do the same as them

Original sin forgotten now
We are all very good at heart
As Adam pulls his heavy plough
Eve’s labour  pains will start.

The sin is in society
We learn in with our tongue
And maintaining true sobriety
We  equate the left with the wrong

Free health care is socialist
And we know who invented that
Jesus with his corrosive says
Got his bloody care on the Cross.

Oh, damned  world, we’re unredeemed
God was an optimist
Omniscience fooled  by  human schemes
Now with the dust God is tossed

Ground into fine particles
Beaten with stones,bricks and rods
Evil is surely anarchical
Buy  your own compost  of God.

Now it’s God who needs saving
And what man is up to the job?
Leaders are feeble or raving
As platitudes  tortured they lob.

Women lie down with the monsters
Blinded by  poverty cruel
If you are a Charity Sponsor
At least give Satan a duel

Note: mean,mode and median are different ways of  calculating an average or middle point in numerical data.I don’t know which one is used in the Dow Jones as there is also a geometric mean

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

Why can’t we  disagree without fights
Or spitting out words full of spite
Ad hominem swearing
Is boring and wearing
And no-one is ever that right

Why not hear what I  want to say
And let your own mind come to play>
I will respect you
I’ll never reject you
I’ll be happy  on such a good day

“Ad hominem” is Latin.To be brief it means instead of discussing or debating what the other person is saying, you insult them and try to wound them to make them look stupid

It is not a logical or scientific tool.It is a fool’s tool when they can’t think of a good response and it leads to trouble.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ahed-tamimi-soldier-slap-israel-charges-court-everything-wrong-response-a8138276.html

Does she need to be shackled hands and feet in an Israeli Court? Might she slap a man?

Almost dark,no birdsong, absent sun
With pink and mauve and grey the sky endears.
As if by grace , the light has been and gone.

Like an automaton.  I live on.
Full of tight emotion, my life runs
Almost dark,no birdsong,no bright sun

My three cats have vanished,every one
Their company, erratic, creates fun
As if by grace, they eat  and then are gone

In  Northern winter humans feel  undone
Though spiders and small beetles  love this home
Almost dark,no birdsong,no bright sun

By thoughts of endless night I’m overcome
My heart has perished,come oh cherubim
Struck by demons light has been and gone

See me youthful with my long,longs limbs
See me old  weighed down by loss and sin
Almost dark,no birdsong, absent sun
Suddenly my life  has been and gone.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/12/religion-christianity-belief-science

“In most pre-modern cultures, there were two recognised ways of attaining truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were crucial and each had its particular sphere of competence. Logos (“reason; science”) was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to control our environment and function in the world. It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external realities. But logos could not assuage human grief or give people intimations that their lives had meaning. For that they turned to mythos, an early form of psychology, which dealt with the more elusive aspects of human experience.

Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to “believe” it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time.

Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something “true” about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.

Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.

But during the modern period, scientific logos became so successful that myth was discredited, the logos of scientific rationalism became the only valid path to truth, and Newton and Descartes claimed it was possible to prove God’s existence, something earlier Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians had vigorously denied. Christians bought into the scientific theology, and some embarked on the doomed venture of turning their faith’s mythos into logos.

It was during the late 17th century, as the western conception of truth became more notional, that the word “belief” changed its meaning. Previously, bilevemeant “love, loyalty, commitment”. It was related to the Latin libido and used in the King James Bible to translate the Greek pistis (“trust; faithfulness; involvement”). In demanding pistis, therefore, Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity: people must give everything to the poor, follow him to the end, and commit totally to the coming Kingdom.

By the late 17th century, however, philosophers and scientists had started to use “belief” to mean an intellectual assent to a somewhat dubious proposition. We often assume “modern” means “superior”, and while this is true of science and technology, our religious thinking is often undeveloped. In the past, people understood it was unwise to confuse mythos with logos, but today we read the mythoi of scripture with an unparalleled literalism, and in “creation science” we have bad science and inept religion. The question is: how can we extricate ourselves from the religious cul-de-sac we entered about 300 years ago?”

Expectations blind us to the real
Like fantasies that populate our world
Better  learn what’s here and how to feel

By corruption, many  true facts are  concealed
The ” good”  do evil as the snake uncurls
Expectations blind us to the real

The cunning  learn to maximise appeal
Only those who search can find the Word
Better  learn what’s here and how to feel

Obvious ,since cunning is their deal
The Charities  kept guard on what they heard
Expectations blind us to the real

Now we swim in   shallow,filthy seas
Can we find a way to live well and that’s shared?
Notice what is here and how we  feel

We know that life is hard and rarely fair
As refugees torn fingernails are bare
Expectations blind us to the real
Better  learn what’s here and really feel

{Argute means shrewd. I have never heard this being used]

Argute is a new word to me

The meaning’s as clear as can be.

Stan was wearing his best suit topped by a denim apron polishing the big windows with a microfibre cloth as he waited breathlessly for his stunning wife.
Mary entered the room wearing a long purple and mauve dress which clung somewhat tightly to the curvaceous contours of her beautifully rounded body.On her feet she had some smart pewter ballet slippers and in her elegant hand she carried a huge pewter clutch bag which contained some of her many medications.She addressed Stan,
”I think I can leave my handbag behind if I put my mouth spray into my bra.”
“That somehow detracts from the romance of the evening.” Stan pronounced openly.

“Well,you know,I never had a cleavage until lately and I fell I ought to make the most of it.”

“Surely I should be the one make the most of it,” he riposted jocosely.
“Of course you may.my angel,but not in the restaurant,”she answered back sweetly
“I’ll put your spray in my pocket then,shall I?”
Suddenly the doorbell rang.
”Who’s this?”It was Annie,their next door neighbour. She was wearing a coral velvet track suit with matching Reeboks and sun hat .
”Hi,I just came in with a little prezzie,”She declaimed.In her hand was a huge box of chocolates..
”Gosh,Mary you look lovely in that beautiful long dress but you’re not going on your bike,are you?”
“No,we are having a cab,but it’s not come as yet.”
“Well,never mind.I’ll ring 999 and get them to send an emergency ambulance for you!”
Fortunately,as luck would have it the minicab appeared from the sky and it was only as they were entering the restaurant that Stan realised he was still wearing his old denim apron.
“Shall I take it off?” he pondered.
On the pro side I will look smarter on the con side I might spill some soup down my front.I wish I’d done more logic at college.So he kept it on.Mary didn’t seem to notice.She just took him for granted.
If he stood on his head and sang”Jerusalem” she probably wouldn’t pay any attention.
Then he noticed that Mary was wearing an apron too.It was the same colour as her dress.What a brilliant idea,he thought.”There may be money in this.” He could start a small business,”Aprons R You” selling lovely aprons in all colours of the rainbow.
Suddenly he heard noises;he awoke and heard Mary shouting “How can you go to sleep when you are out with me?”
“Would you prefer me to recite the Periodic Table?” he snapped gently.
“I’d prefer a poem,” she cried…
All right,Petal,I’ll think of one soon.In the meantime would you like a fool?”
“No.I’ve got you,” she responded handsomely.
“I mean for a pudding?”
“Oh,yes please.A Rubik fool would be lovely.It will pass the time.You know I get so bored.”
“Well,I do my best but it’s hard keeping up with you.Would you like to read a few truth tables whilst I finish my meat.”
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small leather bound book.
“Truth tables and levitation for geniuses,” by Bertha Russell.
“Oh,Stan,this looks interesting.I’ve always wanted to fly like an angel or an owl.”
“It’s never too late to say ever.” he responded.”Whatever do you mean?”
“I don’t know.Just because a sentence is grammatically correct doesn’t imply that it means something.”
“Yes,quite right.And conversely a sentence can mean something even when it’s not grammatically correct.”
“Isn’t thinking exciting!”
“Yes,indeed.I was thinking how exciting it will be to go to bed with you.”
“Wow,good grammar and full of meaning.I am yours.I am like a ripe plum ready to drop off the tree.I am a cat ready to mate.I am a song waiting to be sung.”
“Gosh,are metaphors your bete noir?”
“Je ne parle pas Francais.

Aimez vous ein Nederlander?”

“Sprechen sie Deutsche?”
Ist sein mutter immer krank?”

And so they trotted off happily to bed like two pigs in clover,as Shakespeare might have said when pissed.

I have the best doctor in town
He wears a nice suit and a frown
But he acts on his thoughts
Without saying aught
Still it all goes to show we can learn

He put his two hands round my throat
Not to strangle me,if so you thought
He was feeling my glands
With his surgeon trained hands
Before I would put on my coat

He looks very sharply and well
To see if there are signs that will tell
If I am anaemic
He won’t believe it
Unless my blood has only   white cells.

“I will say this quite plainly, what truly human is -and don’t be afraid of this word- love. And I mean it even with everything that burdens love or, i could say it better, responsibility is actually love, as Pascal said: ‘without concupiscence’ [without lust]…  love exists without worrying about being loved.”
― Emmanuel Lévinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/12/religion-christianity-belief-science

What makes objects real are shadows dark
A consequence of standing in the light
Against a plain white wall the picture’s stark
We have sunny day and pitch black nights

We paint in essence  what the sun achieves
As it glows above with its bright needs
A god in ancient wisdom,  man believed
It might not rise if we did evil deeds

But God lets sun shine on us good and bad
Who knows which kind human creates hell?
A child who bites her mother and her dad
A  pilate who finds  truth is hard to tell

The shadow of the  world is our domain
Where we must live the joy and  live the pain