“‘I like to say I’m a complete materialist but…’ Pullman allows himself an English teacher’s dramatic pause, ‘matter is conscious. How do I know that? Because I’m matter and I’m conscious.’ Once again, Pullman opts for complexity and nuance, and you can hear the same dislike of hierarchies in his critique of some popular science. ‘What you often get in people of this stripe (and Brian Cox — the TV physicist — goes in for it as well), is a sentence of the formula “X is no more than/just/merely/nothing but Y.” For example: “The world is nothing but the action of molecules” or “Love is merely the movement of electrons in the brains.” Sentences of that sort are nearly always mistaken,’ says Pullman. ‘I would prefer they were put in the form of “Love is a movement of electrons in the brain, among other things.”’
‘Among other things’ would be a great motto for Pullman’s ambivalence (or should that be multivalence?) about matters of belief, fiction and science. He is of the old school of secularism which holds that faith should be kept out of the public sphere, but still refuses the kind of inquisition that seeks to root out mistaken beliefs: ‘What you feel and believe are private to you and belong to nobody else,’ he counters. ‘What you do in the public sphere is what’s important.’
Yet on one thing, Pullman’s faith is profound and unshakeable. He’s now in his mid-60s, and though he thinks about death occasionally, it never wakes him up in a sweat at night. ‘I’m quite calm about life, about myself, my fate. Because I knew without doubt I’d be successful at what I was doing.’ I double-take at this, a little astounded, but he’s unwavering. ‘I had no doubt at all. I thought to myself, my talent is so great. There’s no choice but to reward it. If you measure your capacities, in a realistic sense, you know what you can do.’”
I do not see my future, how to go
But now I have steam cleaned the kitchen floor
If I run out of all my china plates
I’ll eat meat off the floor till I am late.
I only see a half of what most see.
But still enjoy to swill my throat with tea.
The world is so delightful, I must smile
My grin is wider than the Royal Mile,
We wonder about ethics and virtue
But what matters is our choice and choose we do.
The new doormat’s good, for it is bright
My little bay tree loves the air and light
When the dirt is vanquished for a time
I sit down with a pen and start to write.
Dirt’s a symbol of our human sin
Yet without it, plants have nothing to grow in
So dirt and dust, creative elements
Are only bad when they create a stench
I found some fruit that rotted in its bag
The odour was, in its way, very bad.
At first, I could not locate the odour’s source
I wondered if it came from my parts “coarse”
But no I’ve never smelled as bad
As bananas stuck inside a plastic bag
And do it is when we wear manmade cloth
The heat of polyester brings out wrath
For sweat or moisture can’t evaporate
We swelter like a vine of purple grapes.
sexist and racist attitudes are now less acceptable. “But classism, we have made no progress. Urban well-to-do people still make jokes about dumb hillbillies … Even the very progressive people still buy into the meritocracy
Since the beginning of the human cultures, so far as we know, man has always experienced, known and felt his own being through the other. This other was always non-human: a fetish (as in the primitive African cultures); an idol (Buddha is the supreme example); anthropomorphic supra-human presences (the gods of the Greeks abundantly testify to that) or God, that unique invention of the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Sometime in the sixteenth century all this began to change (cf. Gay 1966). The most revolutionary characteristic of Modernism is the European man’s decision to be his own sole witness and exclude God, more and more, from his private relation to himself
. The individual on whom leisure has been imposed in massive doses, and who has little capacity to deal with it, then searches for distractions that will fill this vacuum… A great deal of the distress and psychic conflict that we see clinically… is the result of a warped and erroneous expectancy of human nature and existence. It is the omnipresent fallacy of our age that all life should be fun and that all time should be made available to enjoy this fun. The result is apathy, discontent and pseudo-neurosis.
I have just read in the newspaper that’s a woman died after opening up her ottoman. She went over to put something into the base and unfortunately the bear in the mattress descended and caught her by the neck and she suffocated
It was a gas operated bed and one of the gas cylinders was faulty
We’re not afraid just of bad things in our lives like losing people or treasures or jobs.
No we are not just afraid of the bad things but we’re also afraid of being overwhelmed by joy by beauty by love
We think we want love or to be knocked out with joy
But often the only way this can happen is when we are not expecting it
Is this why dating websites don’t work very well?
I’ve been overwhelmed several times by the stunning beauty of buildings like St Paul’s Cathedral.
That happened as I was in a car in the city but I’d lost track of where exactly we were and so I was not expecting to see a floodlit building when I did
It was a marvelous experience but I wonder how often I have blocked things off because either I think I know what it is I’ve already seen that I don’t need to look at it again
Oh because in some way it’s fearful as well. I think Westminster Abbey is fearful inside because it’s so massive.
Could it be the same as people?
We do and we do not wish to be overwhelmed by people.
Also is it just the English who don’t like to talk about such emotions?
Maybe not. Maybe it’s modern life we don’t have time to be knocked out by something beautiful and be lying on the ground looking up at the cathedral, when we should be at a meeting or during the supermarket shopping etc
York is said to be the most beautiful city in Europe or one of the most beautiful but I know someone who lives there and she said to me one day
Oh, do you get used to it you don’t really notice it.
How can we stop getting like that so that we can see at least some things a fresh with new eyes?
Until it’s happened to you, you don’t know that it’s possible.
It could happen in a bad way as Hitler was said to have hypnotic power. I don’t have enough evidence of this but it would make things more easy to understand if you’ve been overwhelmed by the evil in somebody else it might kill you or it might make you worship them.
That’s the trouble with political parties.
They themselves or others want to know absolutely everything clearly what are they going to do what are they not going to do but surely they will have to see this country with New eyes hopefully a labour government is more likely to have sympathy for the poor. But they’re clone there’s no point having sympathy unless you’ve got the power to do something to make the Econony stronger, to make it grow.
Maybe we don’t want to think certain thoughts. We don’t want to think that there’s no magic one that can be waved after 14 years of austerity and civil conflict
It’s good to be able to be shocked by what you perceive.
It’s not good to be cynical. Because they’re new do not actually want to know or to see how things could be different because we claim nothing is any good anyway
No,despair,I shall not let you win I’l fight you with my being and disdain No,despair, you are a deadly sin I’ll drive you out by writing with my pen
Oh,despair, be not my constant friend. I look for one much brighter and less fey. To you no card or present will I send You must not steal my company today.
Oh, fond despair,I cannot hide from you I fly into your blackness like a bird Yet now it is a golden light I see, Consoling and so warm it clothes my words
Despair,my friend, I’ll fear no more your deeps. You open up a door while I still weep
Furthermore, Milton may have begun to compose one or more of his mature works—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes—in the 1640s, but they were completed and revised much later and not published until after the Restoration.
This literary genius whose fame and influence are second to none, and on whose life and works more commentary is written than on any author except Shakespeare, was born at 6:30 in the morning on 9 December 1608. His parents were John Milton , Sr., and Sara Jeffrey Milton , and the place of birth was the family home, marked with the sign of the spread eagle, on Bread Street, London. Three days later, at the parish church of All Hallows, also on Bread Street, he was baptized into the Protestant faith of the Church of England. Other children of John and Sara who survived infancy included Anne, their oldest child, and Christopher, seven years younger than John. At least three others died shortly after birth, in infancy or in early childhood. Edward Phillips, Anne’s son by her first husband, was tutored by Milton and later wrote a biography of his renowned uncle, which was published in Milton’s Letters of State (1694). Christopher, in contrast to his older brother on all counts, became a Roman Catholic, a Royalist, and a lawyer.
Milton’s father was born in 1562 in Oxfordshire; his father, Richard, was a Catholic who decried the Reformation. When John Milton, Sr., expressed sympathy for what his father viewed as Protestant heresy, their disagreements resulted in the son’s disinheritance. He left home and traveled to London, where he became a scrivener and a professional composer responsible for more than twenty musical pieces. As a scrivener he performed services comparable to a present-day attorney’s assistant, law stationer, and notary. Among the documents that a scrivener executed were wills, leases, deeds, and marriage agreements. Through such endeavors and by his practice of money lending, the elder Milton accumulated a handsome estate, which enabled him to provide a splendid formal education for his son John and to maintain him during several years of private study. In “Ad Patrem” (To His Father), a Latin poem composed probably in 1637-1638, Milton celebrated his “revered father.” He compares his father’s talent at musical composition, harmonizing sounds to numbers and modulating the voices of singers, to his own dedication to the muses and to his developing artistry as a poet. The father’s “generosities” and “kindnesses” enabled the young man to study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Italian.”
Little is known of Sara Jeffrey, but in Pro Propulo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (The Second Defense of the People of England, 1654) Milton refers to the “esteem” in which his mother was held and to her reputation for almsgiving
1795—1821SharePortrait of John Keats by William Hilton.
John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines. But over his short development he took on the challenges of a wide range of poetic forms from the sonnet, to the Spenserian romance, to the Miltonic epic, defining anew their possibilities with his own distinctive fusion of earnest energy, control of conflicting perspectives and forces, poetic self-consciousness, and, occasionally, dry ironic wit.
Although he is now seen as part of the British Romantic literary tradition, in his own lifetime Keats would not have been associated with other major Romantic poets, and he himself was often uneasy among them. Outside his friend Leigh Hunt‘s circle of liberal intellectuals, the generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart “vulgar Cockney poetaster” (John Gibson Lockhart), and as consisting of “the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language” (John Wilson Croker). Although Keats had a liberal education in the boy’s academy at Enfield and trained at Guy’s Hospital to become a surgeon, he had no formal literary education. Yet Keats today is seen as one of the canniest readers, interpreters, questioners, of the “modern” poetic project-which he saw as beginning with William Wordsworth—to create poetry in a world devoid of mythic grandeur, poetry that sought its wonder in the desires and sufferings of the human heart. Beyond his precise sense of the difficulties presented him in his own literary-historical moment, he developed with unparalleled rapidity, in a relative handful of poems
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 Pythagoras 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
One morning Mary went out planning to go into the town to buy some new shoes.
Are you going to buy me some new shoes too, asked Emile her little black cat
I’m sorry but I’m short of money and you’ve got four feet so it’s very expensive to buy you shoes
Well why don’t you buy them on eBay, he asked her politely
I’ve never bought anything on eBay yet said Mary thoughtfully.
How do you know about it?
I discovered that Annie gets her designer clothes from eBay because I saw a package on her doorstep with a big label on it.
Well I didn’t know that I must ask her about it Mary chortled
No no cried the cat she’ll know it’s me that told you
What do you think is going to do? She might be a bit angry.
She doesn’t want me to know that she’s sort of money and can no longer afford to buy a camel coat from Max Mara.
Well most people don’t wear camel coats now or even woolen coats.
Could it be very cruel to camels to remove their coats to give to wealthy Western women or men?Emile sighed with anxiety
Not at all, the camels are probably grateful because it’s very hot living in a desert in the Mediterranean or African part of the world.
Are there camels in the Negev?
I’m very impressed that you have heard of that desert. No I don’t think there are any camels there.
I believe you said Emile cautiously.
Because if there were any camels living there now they would have been rehoused by the Israeli government.
They would have been moved into a town and given their own passports with Israeli citizenship
We are talking about camels here, not people?
Well camels are people to other camels.
Emil it’s a great city that you did not go to Oxford and do a PPE degree like that great man David Cameron who did so much good to this country in 2016.
How are you being ironical the cat cried.
I am trying, said Mary.
Sometimes you are very trying, mother.
Emile I’ve told you before I am not your mother
Well I feel as if you are my mother and I have no other because I can’t remember anything before I was two years old
Your Mother was a cat and she fed you with her own milk
I’m really disappointed to hear that because I thought that I’d been fed by you.
Well you have been fed by me ever since you were weaned from your poor mother.
Why do you call her my poor mother?
Well I am sorry to tell you that she died a year after you were born. She lived down the street near the park and when I heard I said,
please tell the owners that ae would love to have the kitten. Stan himself went down and collected you in a special basket with a rug inside it
Perhaps it was a camel hair rug, Emile cried
I’m afraid I can’t remember but camel hair rugs are not very common in England
No I suppose dog hair rugs would be more common in England
I don’t think the English are patient enough to collect the dog hair and make it into a thread
Perhaps the English used to be patient in the past but since we had the referendum in 2016 we seemed to become like a different people altogether.
Yes,things have gone downhill a lot since we had that referendum. And wasn’t Boris Johnson involved?
I wish that Borus Johnson had gone to them with the camels in the desert wherever that might be
Perhaps we could move to a desert the cat queried
What will the expense of the electricity in the gas this winter I think a lot of people might be wanting to move to the desert but you’ve got to be careful with deserts.
Why said the cat curiously?
Because they are often used for testing weapons.
If it was still catapults and bows and arrows it wouldn’t be so bad but we cannot imagine the kind of weapons the forever available to folj with enough money to buy them.
Well that’s very sad Emile cautiously.
At the bus stop Maty met her friend Nelly
Where are you going asked Nelly?
Do you know I’ve had such a long conversations with my cat that I can’t remember anything at all so I think I’m going to go home and make a cup of tea. Why don’t you come with me; you can always do your shopping later.
The women returned to Mary’s house and sat down gratefully in the pink woollen armchairs in the sitting room
They had quite forgotten that there was no one there to make them a cup of tea but fortunately the doorbell rang and in-ran Dave the transvestite paramedic. He was wearing a camel hair coat and white hat
Thank God you’re here he cried
I just need to make some tea for somebody so that I can have some myself.
How fortunate these women were they did not realise as they were so used to being looked after by men or even cats.
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
Mary dreamed she was riding her bicycle.She was going up a hill and then approaching a very complicated roundabout. How can I look at the map when I am riding my bike,she asked herself.Anyway I don’t have a map and I’ve never been here before.She looked down and saw she was wearing some dark blue denim culottes and red suede knee high boots with laces. I don’t remember buying these,she thought.She felt quite hot even though she wore only an olive needle-cord coat over a Breton T shirt. Goodness me, she cried.I look smart. Her spectacles clouded over as she was sweating.How will I know where to turn off when I don’t know where I am or where I am going to. When she woke up she filled Stan’s beer tankard with tea. What a lot of tea,miaowed Emile. I thought it saves carrying the tea pot. I’m going to go back to bed as I feel a bit peculiar. You have got a fleece nightgown on.Maybe you are too hot,he replied. I am trying to save money on the heating,Mary answered.I see I can save even more money by buying 2 pairs of Hotters sandals for £97.Usually they are £127. That saves £30,the clever animal informed her. I think it’s quite misleading,Mary answered.It only saves money if you were already planning to buy them.I have such strange feet I don’t like to bare them. Do you wear shoes in bed with a boyfriend.Emile asked. I’ve not got a boyfriend.Emile/ But if you did? Well.you know, an older man might not wish to go to bed with me.He might like just sitting holding my hand and kissing me. OK said ,Emile.It sounds a trifle boring to me. Don’t be so cheeky, Emile.Talking to me is not boring. No, he said, but it’s nice running up and down your legs in bed. I could hardly expect a man to do that.He might injure me. It was just a kind of example,he replied nervously.
Suddenly the back door opened and in ran Annie from next door.She was wearing a mustard coloured track suit and orange trainers with matching lip gloss. What a horrible colour,Mary cried. It’s the in colour now,Annie said kindly.I am getting my hair dyed too. Bright yellow is better,Mary told her.Except it attracts insects. Insects,I don’t want those.How are you,dear.You look flushed, she responded emotionally. No wonder. I’ve been cycling all night in my dreams.Why can’t I dream of motor bikes? Don’t ask me,Annie told her.I am utterly ignorant.Do you need therapy? I don’t think so,Mary answered.I need to know where I am going.Do I decide or is it my Inner Wisdom or Higher Power.I could use higher power on that bike. Just take it one rotation at a time, Annie murmured. I thought it was one step.Mary answered You can’t take a step on a bike. I suppose not.But I could ride up a step on the bike. Don’t ride up a step ladder,Anne advised.How would you get down again? Let’s have some coffee,Mary cried.Here we are ,the kettle is boiling. Let’s just sit and brood. But don’t ruminate,purred Emile.It makes you ill. Just let your mind go blank. And so I did.
I recommend this interview very strongly.
How my heart speaks 