Jesus never wished to be adored.

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Image by Katherine

We spent 10 years a -wandering Southport Beach
You may wonder how but I don’t teach

I went to Sinai just to have a look
Now it is in Egypt . bless my boots

The Bedouin people have not found a home
In the deserts of my heart, they roam

I washed my dishes in some water cold
They are greasy but I’m going blind

Would you vote for leaving Asia next?
Brexit has put patience to the test

Are we in New Zealand’s trading zone?
We could cut the cord and be reborn

I read the Times and leave a comment too
To be quite clear I asked them , is I you?

The Bread that is so sacred feeds the poor
Jesus never wished to be adored.

I saw a beggar lying on the ground
I gave him my down coat, was that unsound?

I thought I’d go out on the River Thames
But then I went to Kew to make amends

The Inquisition, torture and then death
Jesus would be shattered by this mess

Don’t we pay the Hebrews for their Scrolls?
They told the stories , made the Bible whole.

All of Europe forced to go to Mass
Those unwilling, burn them up like grass

I hated sermons for men gave no clue
How to do in practice what they knew

I made some salad green and ate it all
The slugs and snails are looking up appalled

English grammar is no use to me
I want to go to Norway and catch flu

I made a rule :it is a sin to pee
Like sex and drugs and eating from my shoe

Why not work out what we’re made to do?
Making babies may be the real clue

Getting mystic, lying on the lawn
Is that a cat that bit me on the arm?

I fear my cat has grown her claws yards long
If she liked my boyfriend, she’d grow fangs

When in Egypt do not speak in code
They invented it to please the Lord

Do you long for marmalade in bed?
The duvet’s bitter orange matching bread

My husband phones when I’m asleep
I can’t pick it up, so it is cheap

Wandering in the Estuary of the Ribble
Stand on Sinking Sand and play the fiddle

If Britain travels like the great Titanic
Boris Johnson will sell us our own Panic

If you see a Polar bear at night
Take a photo followed by swift flight

I’d like to phone my husband but he ‘s gone
Get BT to lay a line for one.

I don’t believe in mourning over-long
I’ll soon be dead myself and feel the prongs

Grief is free for all of us on Earth
It hurts like Hell and makes the World seem cursed

Good night my little cat and my tame snails
I’m off soon to New Zealand with my tales

Fish dancing with the daffodils

I flindered lokely as a louse
That sleats on high o’er piles and phrills,
When at a seance I saw a fowl
The ghost, of hilden waffotills;
Depide the bike, Coneath the blees,
Pluttering and strancing in the frieze

Conpentred as the shores did pont
And swondleon the mokiway,
They briched in never-blinding stine
Along the gargins wovt a rey:
Ten thousand jaw, I after flounce,
Wessing their shids in glightly spance.

The Daves deside them panced but loy
Out-did the sparkling waves in schlee
A waite could not clutt ie glay
In juch a ferund timpanee:
I glazed- and jazed- but little ploat
What gealthy wasps shrew thlee had cloght:

For poft, when on my louch i pi
In racane or in trensive slood,
They flush upon that innard plie
Rich is the blass of molitude;
And then my tart with leisured gills:
Fish dancing with the daffodils

Mary writes

The Pilchards.23,Sweetnames AvenueKnittinghamNear Nottingham.England

Dear Jane

Hope you are keeping well in this unusually cold spring weather.Stan has had flu.It made him so bad tempered and waspishthat I took up the Duraglit polish and got him to polish all the brass,except the front door knob, as that doesn’t come off.Mind you,it made the bedroom smell odd… a mistake,perhaps…so I sprinkled lavender oil around.He seems to get thinner and I seem to get fatter.So our average w eight remains constant.What a relief.I’d like to be weighed as a married woman.Can you believe this..I’ve got chilblains! It’s those dratted blood vessels of mine.Still,I polished some old plum colored leather and wear them in the house.We seem to be doing polishing frequently here.. boots,furniture,apples.How is your new book “Nonsense:A.N.Whitehead and Lewis Carroll” coming on?Hope it’s progressing….to a nonsensical ending.I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out in April[from Polar bears publishers]It’s called,”An unpolished performance.”My fourth book on Wittgenstein’s cats is almost finished.And the publishers can’t wait for the photographs…I’ll get a friend to do those for me!!It gives me a change from all that polishing.I’ve begun to talk to myself out loud…. in the street.Just seeing if I can still do my old Lancashire accent.I suppose it might worry people but no one has said anything as yet.They may be afraid.”That which is unsaid can,nevertheless,still be heard.Stan is still involved romantically with Anne, our next door neighbor.I can’t blame him as chilblains and Wittgenstein not very romantic.When I think of how we used to be,it makes me smile and feel sadness too.I wonder if I can find someone new for a romance,myself… someone with Asperger’s syndromepossibly…as I’ve just been diagnosed.It’s quite common in mathematicians.It may be anadvantage in concentrating a lotI need a boyfriend with weak eyes as my clothes are all full of moth holesand I’m damned if I’m going to buy new ones.I can’t see well enough to darn but I’ve sewn the holes up neatly thusgiving a strange pleated effect to my clothes.On my merino wool knitted trousers, one hole was right on the ass.It looks now as if I’ve been shot in the rear…but I can’t see it.So it does not exist.Sometimes in the past I would iron on those motifs likebutterflies…butI think it would look odd having a butterfly just there…. or indeedanything else like wild rose.I could make a little sign saying”Keep clear,from my rear.This is a hole where a moth scored a goal.”Still,not many people are going to look there now I hope….I seem to have stopped knitting but am still drawing.Meantime I’ve just ironed some of my winter clothes as it’s still chilly..and am planning to iron all my pink and blue knickers nowas I believe it kills any germs left when you wash at 30 deg.I got those colours in case I shouldchange sex or is it gender?I wonder if I should iron the sheets?Could I do it while they are on the bed?I don’t wash them much as it wears them out and me too.I am going to take up baking again because Stan is getting so thin.I fancy a Russian cheesecake as it had a lot of protein in it.I have a genuine Russian cookbook and also am waiting for a delivery of aJewish cookery book as I have lost mine..no it fell down onto my head last week.God only knows where that came from.but I believe there were good cheesecakes as Jewish cooking has much incommon with Russian,perhaps because once many Jews lived in Russia.I justmade friends with one here….he is charming and like me he hates golf.I have got almost all the Penguin cookery books ever printed but mislaid afew.In fact it’s quite hard to get into the kitchenwith all these books on the shelves.And a little food.I was comforted to read that the parent’s of John Burra,the artist,had books piled every where in their large house….and he was very untidy too.So all I need is talent and practice and I’ll be an artist.After all,anyone can be untidy but not everyone will practice their Art.I’d like to practice the arts of love.They say you should love your neighbor as yourself,but personally I prefer the neighbor or even the milkman to myself.Meanwhile I’m happy with Emile our catand my 500 photos of Wittgenstein.I shall make Stan a lemon sponge pudding.That is the love he wants…Food.”If music be the food of love I’ll cohabit with a pure white dove.
And while he coos and sings for me.
I’ll try not to :fall out of the tree,
Get stung by a bee,
Have psychotherapy
Make more enemies,
Let my thought free,
Hurt my knee.
Let moths frighten me.Well,time for some tea.Now Jane, please write to me soon.I love to see your so strangely beautiful handwritingand to hear about Whitehead and Cambridge and all the weird dons.I hope it’s not too damp and cold there near that river.Keep warm and make a note of any intriguing happenings to relate to me.And anything beautiful you can see or hear.I hope Edward is writingregularly..where is he doing his research now… did you say Stanford?Maybe you should install Skype..then again,perhaps not as you would have towash your hair too much… and comb it too…perhaps we could wear wigs.Do write soon,Love always,Mary.

 
I wish I were an apple I wish I were an apple
and you were eating me
I’d like to make you happy
As you sat by this tree.
I wish I were a blackbird
So I could sing for you.
I’d like to make you cheerful
And stop you feeling blue.
I wish I were the sun
So I cold warm your frozen heart.
And then your heart would melt for me
And you would be less tart.
I wish I were the moon
so I could protect you all night long.
But being only me may I
Present you with this song?Why 1.Why is denim now a sign of conformity not rebellion?
2.Where are the best jeans from?
3.Should you wear “double denim”?
4. Why is denim too hot for summer and too cold for winter and yet we wear it anyway?
5.Why don’t most people wear winter coats nowadays?
6.Why are the shops so hot they make one feel sick
7.How shopping makes me feel sick and other ways of saving money.
8.Why did the Russians have the best novelists?
9.Is 8. true?
10.Is life worthwhile?
11.What does 10.mean
12.Who can come up with the best ideas for small talk?
13.Food processors…are they a good thing to own?
14.Did you see the second version of Dr Zhivago?
15.Why is Russian Orthodox liturgy so moving?
16.Have you been to Walsingham?
17.Do you like day trips on a coach?
18.Why is fish and chips our national dish.
19.Why is roast beef our national dish.
20.Do other nations have fish and chips?
21 Is rapeseed oil any use for chip frying?
22.What an odd name rapeseed is.
23.Did Einstein eat chips?
24.Is your skin sensitive?
25.Why do women wear deodorants but men don’t usually bother?
25.Do you need suncream in the winter?
26.How many grains of sand are there on Brighton beach?
27.Why is the sea at Hythe sometimes teal
28.Why are the Saxon cliffs in Kent a mile from the sea?
29.Can the Kent authorities move the cliffs back near the sea again.
30 Isn’t it odd that the railway line runs at the bottom of the cliffs near Folkstone as the tide might come up
as a train goes by?
31,Is this small talk?

I offer you my words and rhymes

I muttered as I spoke out loud

I wrote my diary, made my will

Then more than once the oak tree bowed

Unto the red brick cotton mill

Singing as I walked along

I lured the men folk from their dogs

I wonder if my acts were wrong

I sat down on the oak tree log.

Should we do what others want?

Should we please ourselves alone?

Should the foxes mankind Hunt

Kill us with a brick or stone?

Who should make the laws we keep

And who should try the criminal?

Do not let this harm your sleep

Or masquerade as liminal

I wonder lightly as I dream

Do not awake me with a scream

This year is perfect, it’s sublime

I offer you my words and rhymes

Learn mathematics the easy way with Mary and Annie

After Edna had gone home,her neighbours Mary and Annie had to vacuum the carpet where Edna had knocked over a box of biscuits of a crumbly nature and then trodden on them
Edna is hard to relate to,said Annie warmly
I wonder if she will get easier as time goes on?
You mean you are going to ask her again?
I’ve not decided,Mary told her.It is a lot of effort in winter.
Suppose she asks us over to her place,Annie wondered
We’ll have to see how we feel.I suppose it would be interesting to look at her furniture and see if she has lots of books,Mary said
If we go and borrow a book, don’t pencil in your comments down the side of the page
As if I would! Mary said indignantly.I only do that to my own
Just sayin’ ,Annie replied
Did you like her purple coat?
I think it doesn’t go with red hair but who cares? I’d wear yellow even if I looked sick
That seem stupid,Mary cried anxiously
In the dark of winter it means drivers can see you.
I suppose so.. yes, quite a wise idea.But one rarely sees a yellow coat in a shop.
I think you can get them in shops that sell sailing gear,Annie mumbled
Since we are right in the middle of England, there are none here.We’ll have to go to
Orford,Mary warned her
Where’s that,Annie asked?
Not far from Aldeburgh,Mary said knowingly
It’s too far to go in a day in winter,Annie decided
How many miles is it?
About 159.468 each way
That is 319.435 miles altogether
So if we go at 60 mph it takes 5.3333 hours
And at 50 mph it takes 6.4 hours
40 mph would be 8 hours
10 mph would take 32 hours
2 mph would be 160 hours

Stop, stop!

at 0.5 mph I tbink it’s 640 hours

Well that is that.We can’t go it would be nearly 24 days nonstop or 48 if we stopped for sleep daily

Just get a black coat and wear a yellow hat

Love is always better

We must face up to things or lose our heads

Why  have eyes and act as if we are blind

That is what I thought the parson said

When I heard my body turned to lead

An accidental change made by design

We must face up to things or lose our heads

Without a head where would we put our minds?

That is what I thought the parson said

I lost my glasses lying on your bed

Were they stolen by a man malign?

We must face up to things or lose our heads

I saw God in the hallway looking red

He lost his son and so  cut short his reign

Love is what I thought the parson said.

There is no part of life without its pain

I often. wonder why god gave us brains

We must face up to things while we have heads

Love is always better live or dead

The saviour newly born

Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
Tinged with grey from lack of proper care,
While from the Channel sing the dread foghorns

Sailors in the night long for new dawn
Fear boats of refugees may still sail there
Snow clouds hang like canopies well torn

A dinghy holds the Saviour lately born
There is no space on earth safe from great fear
From the Channel sigh the families drowned

From maternal space, Jesu is torn
His father holds his arms around those dear
Snow clouds hang, are lacy wings no more

The hearts of British ” natives” have turned sour
Into Jesu’s side we thrust our spears
Tune the channel.Requiems need scores

All lives now, and all of time is here
Do not mistake the song of silent choirs.
Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
While in the Channel, stuttering are the horn

Shall I my life of evil start?

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When true love’s gone and doom hangs over head
When life runs like a river to the sea
Then shall I take new lovers to my bed
And with their carnal touch consoled be?

When my love lies and breaks my human heart.
When life is grey and rocks bestrew my path.
Then, shall I my life of evil start,
And on the world shall I bestow my wrath?

When true love lies and wrecks all loyalty.
When puzzlement makes all my world seem mad.
Then I shall upend causality
And let myself do deeds which make me glad.

For I have love’s own child inside my soul
And I shall tend her till at last she’s whole

The letter of Ted Hughes

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n23/tom-paulin/entrepreneurship

 

“Hughes’s prose in his letters is always urgent and compulsive, but there are moments of tender observation, as in a letter to Edna Wholey in 1950, where he says he

heard a commotion in the hedge, and after a while, out trundled a hedgehog, merry as you like, and obviously out for a good time. I thought he might make a jolly companion for an evening so I brought him in. After a while I noticed he had disappeared and later heard a noise just like the sobbing of a little child, but very faint, and it continued for long enough. I traced it to a pile of boxes, and there was my comrade, with his nose pressed in a pool of tears, and his face all wet, and snivelling and snuffling his heart out. I could have kissed him for compassion. I don’t know why I’m so sympathetic towards hedgehogs.

Such moments are like dummy runs for poems, and they remind us of the animist tenderness in Hughes’s writing, a tenderness that plays against his celebration of feral power. It’s like the last line of a short early poem ‘Snowdrop’ – ‘Her pale head heavy as metal’ – where nature and human artifice come gently together.

Inevitably, though, it is biographical interest that these letters stimulate. We catch Hughes’s early undergraduate life at Cambridge in 1952, when, writing to his sister, Olwyn, he says that sometimes he thinks Cambridge is ‘wonderful’, at others ‘a ditch full of clear cold water where all the frogs have died. It is a bird without feathers; a purse without money; an old dry apple, or the gutters run pure claret.’ This sounds very like Lawrence, except for the balancing, divided attitude. Hughes, it’s clear, is the most important writer to emerge from English Nonconformism since Lawrence. Like him Hughes writes to the moment with a voracious intensity. Yet in an unusually assured comment on the Anglican Swift (he was only 22) he tells Olwyn that Swift is the ‘only stylist’. Swift’s excellence is a talent for ‘clarity simplicity and power’ (note the lack of commas as in ‘mud water fire and air’). Swift’s writing is ‘the bedrock from which every writer must start’.”

The British turn to verse

administration architecture attractions big ben
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-britons-poetry-writeapoemaboutbrexit_n_576f87dae4b0dbb1bbbad011

 

Jo Duffy@JoDuffy91

Bigotry hijacked the vote
Unleashing real dangers
Now we’re strangers in a country
That doesnt’ welcome strangers

The bus was cancelled so we had to walk
They blamed Eastern Europe   for the pain
I listened to the idle,foolish thought
I fear  it’s Jesus crucified  again.

Is that leap unjustified, my friends?
It seems God’s punishment will never end
He made us  leave the Garden of Delight
Even though we’re English and quite white
We blamed the blacks and women  and the Jews
Yet mother’s breast was emptied and abject
Look upon the world we may have wrecked
Get to work and sweat and toil  all day
Mathematics, war and bombs  shall prey
To gain salvation we must  love and work
Life is hard and often it will hurt
Acceptance is  survival   and remorse
Jesus came  without the use of force

I’m lonely just for you

I didn’t know I’d love you
With both my heart and mind
Every love is different
Each is a special kind

I didn’t know I’d miss you
In quite the way I do.
For we can’t feel emotion
Before its time is due.

Yet all human lovers
Must part and go their ways.
Some may die and fall to dust
Some may go astray.

I didn’t know I’d miss you
With all my tender heart.
But .as we’re made of fragile flesh.
We all must sadly part.

I should be grateful
For being found and known.
I wish you were still sitting here.
And I were not alone.

When we feel so lonely
No-one else will do.
It’s not that I’m just lonely.
I’m lonely, just for you.

Officious or official?

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http://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-difference-between-officious-and-official

 Usage Notes

‘Officious’ vs. ‘Official’

Plus, a limerick to help you distinguish between these two commonly confused words


The words officious and official are often confused, which is reasonable enough, since we frequently have this habit with words that share a beginning. But they needn’t bedevil, and by looking at the history of each word it becomes fairly simple to distinguish between the two

As an adjective, ‘official’ means “of or relating to an office, position, or trust.” ‘Officious’ describes an annoying person who tries to tell other people what to do in a way that is not wanted or needed.

The words share a parentage in the Latin word officium, which could mean either “a helpful act,” “duty or obligation,” and “a person’s regular employment or position.” Officium gave rise to two distinct words in Latin, each one of which subsequently became one of these two English words under discussion here. Officiosus came from adding the suffix –osus, indicating “full of,” and the word took the meaning of “eager to serve or help.” The suffix –alis (meaning “relating to”) when added to officium brought about the word officialis, which in Latin initially had the meaning of “relating to duty or obligation,” and later took on the meaning of “a magistrate’s assistant.”

When officious came into English, in the 15th century, it retained the meaning that it had had in Latin. The earliest sense of the word was “dutiful,” but it also had the meaning “eager to serve or help” at about the same time. It did not take long, however, for the word to take on the additional, and now most common, meaning (“volunteering one’s services where they are neither asked nor needed”); there is evidence that this sense was attached to officious by the end of the 16th century.

Official came into English somewhat earlier than officious; it has enjoyed a wider range of meanings and seen greater popularity than its meddlesome cousin. The earliest use of official, beginning in the 14th century, was as a noun, referring to a person who has been appointed to an ecclesiasticalcourt. It began to see use as an adjective soon after, with the now-obsolete meaning of “performing a function or service.”

If you are uncertain about how to distinguish between these two words there are a couple of ways to tell them apart. The first, and most obvious one, is that officious will typically only function as an adjective in English, and not as a noun; official, on the other hand, hopscotches between these parts of speech with aplomb. Additionally, words that are formed with the –osus suffix (as officiousis) tend to be more likely to be used to describe unfortunate characteristics than those words that are formed from the –alis suffix. The former group includes such specimens as contentious, bilious,flagitious, and meretricious; the latter group includes such specimens as fiscal, hebdomadal, andlittoral.

It is perhaps a stretch to say that one is incorrect in using officious as a synonym for official, since the word did indeed have that meaning at some point in the past, and there are many instances of writers in English referring to “officious capacity” or “officious role”. However, it is highlyanachronistic, and if your goal is to be readily understood you are advised to eschew this use in your writing.

In the event that you still have trouble keeping these two words straight in your mind we offer the following limerick.

An official may well be officious,
(or tendentious, even malicious)
While the words may share roots
They are not in cahoots
And conflating them is injudicious.

 

Do straight lines exist?

Only learn nonsense if it’s written by Lewis Carroll

When we were at school some of us came across a little geometry probably concerning triangles squares circles etc and I learned something valuable not from the teacher but from the other girls when we were 16 years old.

We had spent a long time studying Pythagoras’ theorem

And when we sat our O level exam  one of the questions was to prove Pythagorasy theorem for which they kindly provided a triangle

The triangle had three points labeled A,B,C.

So I thought that’s an easy question when you spent probably two or four weeks studying this theorem

After the examination was over I was talking to some of my friends and one of them said to me I couldn’t prove pythagoas theorem.

Because in the textbook it was labeled

X,Y,Z

Maybe I was naive to think that the proof did not depend on the letters that we used to denote the points of the triangle.

This was the A stream in a  convent grammar school.

So everybody must have had an IQ above 120 if that means anything which I don’t believe it does by the way. IQ is not really very significant or importance which is fortunate because the last time I did a test I got 65 when a hundred is the average.

I think I must be an imbecile how amazing this i managed to get a degree

If several girls { probably more than half the class} were not able to answer the question because they had learnt the answer by memory they did nothing to understand what they were doing.

Furthermore they didn’t know that was not the right way to learn. They believed studying was memorizing passages which were nonsense to them or proofs which were nonsense.

So it just makes me wonder just how useful education is to most of us

Maybe there’s a problem about dealing with the abstract rather than the concrete.

I never taught geometry so I don’t know what it’s like but I would have thought it’s important to get across to the children or the students that this theorem does not depend on the name you gift the points of the triangle.

It seems obvious to me but perhaps I’m not like other people but I really don’t believe that…… I think people don’t realize that it ought to  make sense and if it doesn’t make sense they have to ask the teacher to explain it again

I have taught at Oxford I have taught at a  polytechnic and I did not find many students who were unable to learn mathematics if it was presented in a sensible way. Even in people who had not done O levels or A levels

But it’s worth remembering that even the cleverest children find geometry quite difficult and do not grasp what is important about it.

And it is not just geometry that they are learning by heart in a meaningless manner I think it was apply to a lot of what they learn.

And so it must be that learning and study can be very destructive to the mind. It’s just a way of keeping adolescents off the streets

Never learn nonsense by heart unless it is written by Lewis Carroll

It is not good to learn parrot fashion or to memorize proofs that you don’t understand

So if anyone in your family asks you for help with their homework try to see whether they understand the general principle behind it do not help them to learn proofs by heart when they have no idea what it’s about at all.

I can’t really see why we spent five years in my school to reach the peak of Pythagoras’s theorem

No ok I understand why it takes five years to do o level at arithmetics containing six wonderful things as compound interest and percentages; how could that take five years?

It goes to show that school is a prison in a way to keep children under control.

I recollect that I had done o level arithmetic by the edge of 11 in the primary school working at my own pace.

I’m going to spend 5 years learning it all again

Yes compound interest is quite difficult but if you get a job on your earning money and you want to save you will learn about interest very quickly when you really need to and if you don’t need to it’s very  tedious

Next time, who invented the straight line?

Odd shoes

  • photo-2 122
  • After Mary went off to the Oxfam shop on her bike with a bag of surplus shoes Stan decided to clean his laptop computer.He was trying to open the plastic box of Screen Cleaning Tissues and wondering if he could have used a damp microfibre cloth instead.
  • He was feeling excited because he was going to take Mary away for the weekend to a Pie Museum on the Lincolnshire coast.
    There was a knock on the back door.He saw Lisa and Tom,two students from Knittingham University.Tom’s grandmother was a friend of Stan’s.
  • “Hello,”said Tom,”this is Lisa Stoat my girlfriend.”
  • “Hello,Lisa.How are you?And where do you come from?”
    “Hello,I’m fine, thanks.I believe my mum found me under a gooseberry bush near the A19 to Teesside.She’d been out rambling with the gypsies.Anyway she met my dad when I was 2.He’s doctor in Middlesborough,he adopted me and several other children my mother found from time to time out in the country.There are six of us now.There are lots of gooseberry bushes on Teesside.”
    “Thank you for that,Lisa.”Stan said
    “Please don’t mention it; you are more than welcome!” the lovely girl told him gently.
    “Would you like some gooseberry pie.”Stan asked her modestly
    “Yes,I’m ravenous.” the girl replied shyly,her cheeks turning bright red
    “Well,you know you are a growing girl.” Stan chuntered .”I’m afraid I can’t find the cake forks”
    “That’s a pity,” replied Tom.”I’ve never seen a cake fork in my entire life.”
  • “Oh,goodness,”Stan called.”What did you do?”
    “Well,we used an axe to cut the pies up and then lay on the floor and grabbed bits with our teeth.!”
    “Where you raised by cats?” Stan cried querulously.
    “To a certain extent,”the boy honestly admitted.”But I can use a knife and fork now for meat and veg and also I can now use a lavatory rather than digging a hole in the soil or using a plant pot.”
    “Have you thought of writing your autobiography?”Stan demanded curiously
    “I feel I’m a bit young for that and the cats, Lucy and Mario, might be offended.”
    “Can they read?”Stan muttered loudly.

“Not yet but I’m doing phonics with them. the government recommends that according to the News of the Failed.”
“But not for cats,surely?” Stan replied jovially.
“Well,you win some you lose some!” Tom answered with the unique and original turn of phrase typical of one raised by cats
Lisa got over. excited.”You could call it “A tale of two Kitties”” she cried hysterically.
“Oh,my God.Is she bipolar?” Stan thought nervously
“But what would Professor Fittsgenstein think?”
“I rarely think,” said a man who had crept into the kitchen through the cat flap.”And I have to confess that I too was partially raised by cats.”
“Welcome.Professor”, they all shouted
“What a coincidence!”
“Well,”said Annie, who had been listening through the keyhole,”It’s very common in Knittinghamshire you know.The mortgages are so big,both parents have to work so they have no alternative but to leave the children at home with the cats.They all learn to mioaw which can be useful.” She then gave a loud”mioaw” and disappeared.”I’d better ring 999 ” Stan whispered.”I think she is going crazy.
“Oh,no” Tom stated knowingly,”If you could enter into the narrative of her life and reach the place where she is you would see it all makes perfect sense.”
“What even the thick layers of makeup and the T K Maxx perfume.”Stan enquired philosophically”Yes,indeed.” the lad told him ardently
“Didn’t Schopenhauer advise against about pretending to be someone other than your true self?” Stan said thoughtlessly

“I’m sorry but we have only reached pi and the Ancient Greeks.Is Philosophy actually meant to help you with real life problems?”
“What sort of pie did they eat?”Stan wondered anxiously.
“I guess maybe apricot or peach,”said Lisa womanly
“Well,I have the Fanni Far Mer cookery book here.I’ll look it up.”
“But she’s American? poor Lisa said peevishly
“I thought she was a Turk!” Stan informed her humorously
“What about Gud How Ski Ping?” She debated
“Yes,I do like Chinese. food” he informed her.”It is very popular all over the world.
I’d better brew the tea,Stan decided…the kettle was now boiling noisily on the hot red coal fire… frightening Emile who was sleeping on the rag rug in front of it…

So it’s goodbye from Knittingham and Nottingham too

A symbol is a well

A symbol is a well in which we dig.

To find the holy water we desire.

The light is not apparent at the start

  The  work the heat. the force and then the fire…

We do not have the light to act as guide

Stumbling down the darkness like the mad

And when we stop and stare in our dismay

We do not find  the light for we are sad.

Yet despair itself has merit,makes us pause

The slowing of the mind the heart,the blood

Helps us see the light that  we will praise

Paradoxes, opposites and shades.

Help us learn the world and sing its prayers.

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W B Yeats,his life and works

Photo0056.jpg
http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/

Extract

Poetry: full of his nature and his visions

Fresh from school and in his early twenties now, I was full of thought, often very abstract thought, longing all the while to be full of images, because I had gone to the art school instead of a university.”—from his memoir Four Years (1887-1891) (1921). The Yeats were now living in London in Bedford Park where Yeats’ aesthetic sensibility was oftentimes offended by the ubiquitous red brick, however their home was the lively gathering place for their many writer and artist friends to discuss politics, religion, literature, and art. Around this time Yeats met George Bernard Shaw and William Ernest Henley, editor of London’s The National Observer who became a friend and mentor. He also met many of the other up-and-coming authors and poets of his generation and writes of one in his memoir “My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment. I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all over night with labour and yet all spontaneous.”(ibid). In the year 1890 he and Ernest Rhys founded the London-based Rhymers Club. Yeats’ pre-Raphaelite inspired The Wanderings of Usheen [Oisin] and other Poems was published in 1889, which included “The Ballad of Moll Magee”, the traditional Irish song “Down By The Salley Gardens” and “The Stolen Child”.

Yeats was often homesick for Ireland, of which his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” was one of the results,

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Though he visited Sligo almost every summer, he also kept a busy schedule in London: when he was not attending lectures or meetings with the Club, he spent time in the British Museum of Natural History doing research for such collaborations as Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), Irish Fairy Tales (1892), and A Book of Irish Verse (1895). He was often shy around women but made the acquaintance of many who became friends including poet Katharine Tynan (1861-1931) and Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), founder of the Theosophical Society of which Yeats joined in 1888. A year later he met his muse and source of unrequited love; poet, feminist, actress, and revolutionary Maud Gonne (1865-1953).

The Abbey Theatre and Beyond

In 1894 Yeats met friend and patron Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) of Coole Park and thus began their involvement with The Irish Literary Theatre which was founded in 1899 in Dublin. (It would become the Abbey Theatre in 1904). As its chief playwright, one of the first plays to be performed there was Yeats’ Cathleen ni Houlihan, with Gonne in the title role. The Abbey Theatre, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland, opened in December of 1904 and became the flagship for leading Irish playwrights and actors. Yeats’ On Baile’s Strand was one of its first productions. Of his many dramatic and successful works to follow, The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894) and The King’s Threshold (1904) are among his best known. When Synge died in 1909 Yeats helped to finish his manuscript for Deirdre of the Sorrows. In 1911 the Abbey Theatre embarked on a tour of the United States.

As a successful poet and playwright now, in 1903 Yeats went on his first lecture tour of the United States, and again in 1914, 1920, and 1932. Yeats and his sisters started the Cuala Press in 1904, which would print over seventy titles by such authors as Ezra Pound, Rabindranath Tagore, Elizabeth Bowen, Jack and John Yeats, and Patrick Kavanagh, before it closed in 1946. At the age of forty-six, in 1911, Yeats met Georgie (George) Hyde Lees (1892-1968) and they married on 20 October, 1917. They had two children; Anne (born 1919) and for whom he wrote “A Prayer for My Daughter”;

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Michael was born on 22 August 1921, for whom Yeats wrote “A Prayer for My Son”;

Bid a strong ghost stand at the head
That my Michael may sleep sound,
Nor cry, nor turn in the bed
Till his morning meal come round;
And may departing twilight keep
All dread afar till morning’s back.

Rhythm, meter, movement are our guides

Actors are the poets of the real.
They mould the air with bodily appeal
The body is the soul  through which we feel
Imprisoned bodies kill the soul ideal.

Dancers fuse with music stretching air.
They push and pull the freedoms that  live there
They play with Newton’s laws as they change gear
The bodies bend and flow with utter zeal.

Singers touch us deeply to the core.
As we listen with  our shrunken hearts  so sore
We  will cry out, oh, more,oh, more , yes, more.
As deep into our inner self ,they gore.

In every aspect of our human lives
Rhythm, meter, movement are our guides

With love thread through its heart

by-the-lily-pond-in-a-wood-brighter

I get out my sewing gear
In the quiet times of life,
When I need to mend the tears,
Torn by stress and strife.

I hold my soul so carefully
And gaze at every part.
I hope that light will come to me
As I wonder how to start,

.I take my needle out
With love thread through its heart,
I scrutinize each inch.
And then I start to stitch.

In the quietness of the night
You heal me all the time
You talk to me in dreams
And I write them down in rhymes.

Another day will come
And more fractures form.
That’s all part of life
Strife ,and mend, and strife.

Keep that cocoon whole,
Till the soul’s completely there.
Then through its love-sewn folds
A butterfly will flare.

How to have better arguments online | Society | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/16/how-to-have-better-arguments-social-media-politics-conflict

When a debate becomes volatile and dysfunctional, it’s often because someone in the conversation feels they are not getting the face they deserve. This helps to explain the pervasiveness of bad temper on social media, which can sometimes feel like a status competition in which the currency is attention. On Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, anyone can get likes, retweets or new followers – in theory. But although there are exceptions, it is actually very hard for people who are not already celebrities to build a following. Gulled by the promise of high status, users then get angry when status is denied. Social media appears to give everyone an equal chance of being heard. In reality, it is geared to reward a tiny minority with massive amounts of attention, while the majority has very little. The system is rigged.

The spaces in between

The places in between were much too wide

Yet i struggled on until I found

The touch of love, the hands that touched my sides ll

Across the floors the feet of dancers glide

All the time our feet must touch the ground

The spaces in between where much too wide

The touch of love the hands that held my sides

Was this why Jesus was at last betrayed

And in the distance I could hear sweet sounds

The place is in between were much too wide.

And then my feelings rose like one great tide

The suchness of your love, oh hands oh sides

And so onto the crucifix we’re bound

To live with love and pain and to be found

The places in between we’re not too wide

I felt your arms around me side to side

We must live until we die

Is feeling low to be admired

Is deepness good, my heart enquired

Superficial’s criticisd

For in the depth love may arise.

When we rise high then we will fall

Like the wheat when rich and tall.

When trodden down it makes our bread

It feeds the soul the heart the head.

All that’s good must be destroyed

Before it finds it’s true employ

Do not fear your death and end

For in the darkness love descends

We become the food of worms

Of Beatles and the things that squirm

But without these creatures there’s no lifel

0pen your heart and feel the knife

From the seabed to the sky

We must live until we die

Then in death we are the food off

From which all new things are conceived

Like the circle we rotate

Life goes on in every state

Giving up

I wish I’d given up the whole idea

Shakespeare’l muttered as he wrote king Lear.

Who am I to tell folks what to do.?

I’d rather be a cobbler mending shoes..

Who will want to read about bad luck

Choices foolish as the day they struck?

Why not give up thinking of good works.

Who will read the Bible else the Kirk?

I wonder why I taught myself to write

. Instead of having fun with something light.

There’s something other lives inside our soul

Its wishes are quite different from our own.

Giving up the gossip is good news

Giving up the likes and counting views.

The word of someone thoughtful counts far more

1000 views are no more than a score

And places full of light

When the sun is high and bright and strong
We feel that it will always be the same
But when we live on earth we know we’re wrong
And for that darkness we have got a name

Now in England we have lights and screens
We do not fear the dark,the devils’ night
But often in the winter we will dream
Of summer heat and places full of light

The steps at Aldeburgh where we saw the sea
The cliffs at Lyme and Charmouth in the spring
But from such places I dread memory
The pain of loss is hard and no child brings

Now the sky is lilac in the dusk
In creation I find what I trust

To the electric kettle

Oh, lidded kettle boil me water fast
I cannot live without your heated blast
Your spout is small but perfect for its use
And, as your lid is hinged. it can’t get lost

An electric kettle made by Russell Hobbs
A teapot with a spout and lid with knob
Are what the Britons need in times of storm
If crisis comes, we need tea hot,not warm

I don’t object to diverse kettle brands.
We had a coal fire once with kettle stand.
Its metal black from soot and burned by coke
We made our neighbours tea which seemed to smoke.

Ah,kettle ,instrument of civil life
We cannot boil our water on a knife

Everything creative is play

Everything good is play: everything creative is play

How I miss my playmate and brother P. And my sister also. 

Still I remember our adventures 

And I remember our  risky games

When our senses are full of vitality and our minds are full of new ideas then life is full like a ripe apple. 

I have eaten of the apple

And I am glad

A sea of words

As poetry itself can’t earn me fl cash

Ill live on sausage meat and buttery mash

I’ll have to take cocaine to get some words

A sentence here and there, a paper charred

What would happen if  the poets went on strike

And  got some other work from their old bikes

Then there’d be a flatness to our talk

. No more  would our words dance, they’d have to walk.

What kind of work could an old poet obtain ?

Could I be a scarecrow in the rain?

Could I be a nurse and help the sick

I could study clocks,how do they tick?

Yet all I have that is unique to me

Is my  own words that flow,the silver sea

And in the sea of words we float with joy

Do not drown but give your words employ

Even were it crime to play with words

The sound of a new rhyme coulf still occur.

What are the words that form our dialogue

Merry bright and free thermse are my drug

Geese fly by

 

Pink tree It’s Autumn weather, geese fly by;
Autumn rust,red,gold,so gay.

Drystone walls edging fields,

Apples gathered,holly berries

Flash so brightly

Look like flowers

Sun shines sideways,shadows long

Of trees appear I dwell among

Woods of gentle beeches sing

Swaying with the sideward wind.

See their roots, all intertwined.

Feel their geometry in the mind.

Look up now into the sky,

See the V formation high.

Geese fly home at end of day.

My heart is moved by patterned dance

In this peace and great silence

My mind widens like the sky

And in this moment I would die,

So I would stay with this still vision

Of geese set out on autumn mission.

Snails in rain pools slither near

My feet upon the terrace here

And look,upon their whorled backs

All the sense of life is packed.

And yet so easily Life’s destroyed,

When blind foot steps into the void.

But I am left with only words

Leaves  fly off so suddenly
Small birds float on the wind
Like boats astride a choppy sea.
Their swaying soothes my mind.

Wild geese fly past at dusk again,
They head towards the North.
The holly berries glow in sun,
Nature gives all birth.

I gaze intently at the sky,
The clouds hang dark and low.
If I  too were a mere wild goose
I’d know which way to go

But I am left with only words
To find my destination.
Yet words do carry down to us
Wisdom of generations

We use old words in unique ways.
We structure them to form
A new design not seen before
A new sentence is born

I send my words with love to you
I hope you safely catch them.
Give me answers from your heart
And I’ll do my best to match them

Now shivering alive

The myriad random movements, words and signs
Inanimate, cold blooded,hot or warm
In mystery make the world, complete, designed

From the stars at night, to needles’ eyes
Every size is present eye to horn
The myriad random movements, words and signs

Yet, not robotic, shivering, alive
Like a human baby when new born
In mystery the world is fresh, designed

So every morning we awake surprised
The dreams we had afflict us like flung stones
The random movements, words and latent sign
s

Are dreams the truth or can the unknown lie?
Are we subject to their nightly roams?
The mystery is the world makes its design
s


As the wild geese land at one in storms
The murmurations of the starlings charm
The myriad random movements, words and signs
In mystery make the world, replete,divine