Sailing like a flower across the sky

I spent my life on books on how to live
Then  when death was near I really did
I saw the little smile on my friend’s face
I saw the shining eyes, the lost embrace
I gathered up these books and threw them out
I wasted time in thought  and curious doubt
Let’s leave our heads alone and use our sense
To hear a bird sing to enthrall his spouse
To see  a swallow dip and fly away\
To see a  little orange butterfly
Sailing like a flower across the sky
The silken skin of children and  their glee
When father stops to  show them the cat’s flea
The smile of mother, her security
Containing all their woe  transformed and free
To  gather in sweet memories  of joy
Noone else can know what  our life ‘s for

Asking for it

Thank you for your email I’m afraid I’m on holiday at the moment. I will not be at home ma for 3 weeks

My address is 93 Magic Rd Tottenham Edinburgh 31. there is a door key hang8ng from string just inside the letterbox .

Please steal my vacuum cleaner. I don’t like it so if you take it I can claim on my insurance and get a new one please don’t steal anything else because I have locked my gold and diamonds in the freezer for safekeeping and I don’t want you to open the door in case you don’t shut it properly.

If you need help with your work please contact your line manager as soon as possible I can’t be bothered to do anything.

In the end we step with shuttered eyes

Katherine villanelle  

In the dark street with its glaring lights
Deserted pavements, cars that multiply
I see two of everything in sight

Twenty dogs two owls that fly by night
Two black cats  with amber eyes run by
In the dark street with its glaring lights

As I walk I sing  to cats’ delight
I sing Joan of Arc,I wonder why
I see two of everything in sight

The song takes seven minutes,or it might
If I sang like Leonard ,  if I sighed
In the dark street with its glaring lights

No-one can detect my wandering sight
Yet now and then I wail or emit cries
I see  more than you do with insight

These little deaths mount up as our time flies
In  the end we step with shuttered eyes
In the dark street with its errant lights
I see two of everything in sig

Blythburgh thoughts

Today is yellow ochre, damped to grey
Not much contrast from the soft silk sky
No birds nor any brightness, light won’t play

The ones who act so manic are not gay
If there is no truth, there are no lies
Today is yellow ochre, damped to grey

On our backs on Sutton Bank we lay
My acts outcry, my grief I shall defy
No birds nor any life. the light won’t play

Who is born a hunter.who the prey?
The lion has lost the unicorn nearby
Today is yellow ochre, damped to grey

I think of brexit, oh the blush,the shame
The spirits flatten;rise up,do not die
No birds nor any life, the light won’t play

I wonder what the loss is or the gain
I wish we were in Suffolk by the Bly
Today is yellow ochre, damped to grey
No birds, no life ,I’m languid, would you stay?

s

Poetry and lovely images

Flowers on the viburnum fragrans

Viburnum fragrans

Pink flowers on bare wood in winter

The contrast exaggerates both

The delicate flower and the pale wintry wood

The stern branches can bear the winter winds.

Small birds must hide in the laurel

Later the wood pigeons will nest there

The cat hides under the beech hedge by the wall.

I never wanted a red brick wall but it’s warm.

The sharp frosts torture the ground

The seeds split and divide

I didn’t know that when I was a child

Where the air raid shelter used to be we had some soil

And in that we planted a tree.

When we sold the house we took the tree.

I can’t believe that now

The seeds split and start to grow

Exhilarate

Where elegance lies bare

 in summer times when sun do shine

I’m happy on my own

I gaze up through red maple leaves

All transparent in the sun.

But when winter comes I’m lonely

Sitting here beside my fire.

So I want a  winter lover

To keep my spirits higher.

Oh,my winter love come to me

And I’ll gaze deep into your eyes

The light that shines in there

Is so much warmer than my fire.

We’ll go through wintry woodlands,

Where elegance lies bare.

The branches struck by sun

Now feel the frosty grasp of air.

I’ll love you all the winter time.

I’ll love you  in the dark.

I’d like to rest within your arms,

And have a peaceful talk

When summer comes I’ll disappear

To roam across the dales

I’ll sleep on heather moorlands

And send you loving mail.

I can’t be tied in summertime

I must be roaming free.

But ,if you accept this  need of mine,

To you I’ll faithful be.

Published by

An extract from a review of “Three Guineas” by Virginia Woolf, by Alison Light

trinity-long-exposure-cropped

 

 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n06/alison-light/harnessed-to-a-shark

 

 

In April 1939 Woolf began drafting her memoirs and recalled how the long indistinguishable ‘cottonwool’ days of childhood would unexpectedly be broken into when ‘something happened so violently that I have remembered it all my life.’ She gave an instance of one such ‘sudden violent shock’:

I was fighting with Thoby on the lawn. We were pommelling each other with our fists. Just as I raised my fist to hit him, I felt: why hurt another person? I dropped my hand instantly, and stood there, and let him beat me. I remember the feeling. It was a feeling of hopeless sadness. It was as if I became aware of something terrible; and of my own powerlessness. I slunk off alone, feeling horribly depressed.

Against this memory of despair, Woolf immediately set another exceptional moment, a memory of satisfaction:

I was looking at the flowerbed by the front door; ‘That is the whole,’ I said. I was looking at a plant with a spread of leaves; and it seemed suddenly plain that the flower itself was a part of the earth; that a ring enclosed what was the flower; and that was the real flower; part earth; part flower. It was a thought I put away as being likely to be very useful to me later.

Woolf hazarded that in her case the ‘peculiar horror’ of passively registering those blows was always followed by the desire to explain, the delight in consciousness and reason, in putting ‘the severed parts together’ and putting the shock into words. This ‘wholeness’ removed the blow’s power to hurt: ‘I go on to suppose that the shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer.’ It’s as if by the time she reached her late fifties she came to believe that not defending herself had allowed her to become an artist.

For all its fighting talk, Three Guineas is not a manifesto. It pulls its punches. It does not simply unleash Virginia Woolf’s fury at the blows which the daughters of educated men felt they had suffered; such an expenditure of emotion (like the three guineas finally donated to help prevent war) would not, in the end, go very far. But neither does it censor. In a series of feints and passes, Woolf’s writing resists and deflects the aggressive reaction, defuses the volatile emotion, making something else of it. For Woolf, as for Freud, sublimation, not retaliation, is the art of civilisation. Writing, in other words, is at best a way of becoming more mindful of one’s anger.

One amber eye now opens,mouth a-yawn

Limp with love and joy, the cat plays shawl
As my spouse is writing his new book
With warmth across his shoulders, clawless paws.

Nothing moves except the hand and  tail
Twitching in cat’s dream,miaows rebuke.
Limp in happiness the cat’s a shawl.

Males together,thought and work recalled
I stand in silence as I, greedy,look
Cat across his shoulders,paws and all

Each is real, the creative and its role
A sight creates an image  rich  yet meek.
Relaxed at last the cat play acts a shawl.

One amber eye now opens,mouth a-yawn
To be cat’s mother,I am sole recruit
The elongated cat’s in Newton’s thrall.

The trance breaks up,so I’m alone with doubt.
This empty room is theatre for the mute.
Limp with happiness, the cat still calls
From my love’s dear shoulders, gentle frail

 

 

Good will

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Definition of WILLINGNESS [ from Merriam Webster]

Cheerful readiness to do something [ plus ditto to feel or be something]

Thinking about the significance of “willingness” , it comes to my mind that if we are asked to do something pleasurable we will not need urging.We will easily be willing unless we are masochists are have pressing needs that cannot wait.
So what is the significance of “willingness” when it relates to something unpleasant or painful we must do?
I can imagine one scene where I ask someone to do a small task for me and though they are busy they are “more than willing” knowing my circumstances.But I ask a different person and though they agree there is a grudging quality about their doing what I ask.
Tn the first case we all feel joy when we know someone will go out of their way to help us and in the second we feel uneasy about asking that person and neither side gains much from the transaction.

Now turn inwards and imagine that you wake up feeling in poor spirits and moreover you do not like this.That is, you are unwilling to feel the way you do.
In my experience being unwilling in that way makes the spirits worse. We have secondary anger or depression about our state which can only make it worse.
Now think of the term “acceptance”.We can easily imagine that if we can accept a situation we can deal with it better.So a wife who finds her husband’s hobby is studying maths in the evening is going to have a problem if she believed they would spend every evening chatting together.
The husband too has a problem that he may not have foreseen when he was madly in love.He has to work out how much time he needs alone with his abstractions or whether it is an excuse not to engage with his wife.
The wife who finds her husband genuinely needs to study for long hours or he is unhappy will have to consider whether she can accept this as a way of life or whether she should seek a better partner because nowadays women want to have their needs met too,
If she accepts it and adapts then she may be happy.A problem arises if she keeps up a war with her husband, criticizing and blaming him for his needs.I might say she can’t force him to talk to her as what value does it have when it is not spontaneous?
If people have good will towards each other then they can find a way of living and respecting the other.
If we have good will towards ourselves then we can accept and live with parts of ourself we do not like or parts which cause us suffering yet which cannot be changed and must be lived with.
If we don’t have good will towards ourselves then life is much harder as we attack ourselves with criticism and deprivation of love.
I think willingness or good will is crucially important in human life though no doubt I frequently forget it! Ill will directed anywhere outside or inside harms both parties or splits the self and causes deeper problems.
Of course, it is hard to be willing to suffer painful emotions but what choice do we have? Only to find the best way or at least
“to be willing to be willing”
as I describe it to myself.
Is willingness a virtue or a decision? Or an impossibility for some of us?

Wrap me in your light

As we lay together in the night
Open to the other and their gaze
We saw the spirit and its loving light

Now I dwell alone and out of sight
I miss  my other and his different ways
Did we rest together in the night?

Where’s the spirit,  I’m alone distraught?
Who can be the other to my face?
We saw the spirit, now I’ve lost its light.

God is  not a fish that can be caught
May contemplation  help  to loss erase
Did we dream together in the night?

Grace  to find one’s path as comes midnight
Dies irae, requiem  sauvage.
We saw the spirit and its loving light

What is night and where are my own days?
Can I  endure its  piercing  mental pain
As I lie alone at  dead of night
Send the spirit, enfold me in   light

Together alone

We were alone together
In this sitting room.
I would draw on my laptop,
While he had his head on the moon
We were alone ,together
Now I’m alone, alone.
I am studying poetry
Because he’s not on the phone.
We were alone together
As I sat by his bed.
He still didn’t speak but then he winked
As I laid my hand on his head.
I wish I could be with you
Together and not alone
I wish I could be with you
And you were not as cold as a stone.

People with unhappy childhoods are more likely to exhibit a fear of happiness, multi-national study finds

https://www.psypost.org/2022/12/people-with-unhappy-childhoods-are-more-likely-to-exhibit-a-fear-of-happiness-multi-national-study-finds-64533

It is worth noting that happiness can be defined in different ways,” the researcher added. “People are far more likely to be averse to emotional definitions of happiness (based on pleasure, fun, and positive feelings) than virtue-based definitions (based on finding meaning in life and fulfillment).”

The study, “Predictors

Because real knowledge will hurt.

2 apples

I don’t want to see reality
But I don’t want to lose your care.
I want to go on being selfish
And having you always there.

I don’t want to feel your feelings.
I am aware that I’ve been somewhat curt.
I want to go on ignoring you,
Because real knowledge will hurt.

The longer I pretend to be ignorant,
The longer I choose not to see,
The more I shall hurt my loved ones.
The more unkind and cruel I’ll be.

I don’t want to see reality.
I’m frightened of what I might find.
I am fearful of demons and devils
When I traverse the dark glades of my mind.

I am afraid to discover reality,
I am fearful of broadening my view..
I hope I can get enough courage
To be able to bear what is true

Satan will know

The doctor has put me on antidepressants.e

he said I was looking extremely unpleasant..

Its not yet immoral exactly I said

Since we are ready we should go to bed n

But what is the point of enjoying such lust?

Take me to heaven because I’m feeling bust.

He offered to marry me but I said no

I like adultery Satan and co

Low pay, no pay,double or quits

Only Jesus Christ

Could be called upon

To care for us

With no pay

And even then

We would still have killed him one day.

We can’t ask that human beings should be saints

Unless we start with ourselves.

What a picture that paints

If teaching is a vocation an I say it ain’t

Who will get the money you save

When I did it for nothing.

My retina was tortured into a million pieces

I’m no saviourette now

They were laughing all the way to the bank.

Whike I alone in my kayak sank.

This is no way to run a bank

Tips for When You’re Ashamed of Anxiety

https://psychcentral.com/anxiety/when-youre-deeply-ashamed-of-your-anxiety

D

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Ashamed of Your Anxiety? 6 Ways to Lean into and Move Through It

Medically reviewed by N. Simay Gökbayrak, PhD — By Kimberly Drake — Updated on September 29, 2021

Feeling ashamed about anxiety is common, but there are ways to cope when feelings of humiliation creep up.

Man breathes through his latest episode of anxiety, which brought him shameful feelings

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If you experience anxiety, you may feel easily embarrassed at anxious manifestations — what you say, or what you do. Know first that you’re not alone. Anxiety in itself is not a condition but a natural biological process. However, persistent anxiety may turn into a condition with more prevalent symptoms, and you can manage it with tools and support.

Perhaps you feel mortified after you’ve had a panic attack in public or when you cancel plans with friends at the last minute because of social anxiety.

Shame and anxiety don’t have to bog you down. There are ways to cope.

https://162d9274da7bc803453012c1086a18e4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

The intersection of shame and anxiety

Anxiety can cause more than just uncomfortable physical symptoms. It can also bring out unpleasant emotions such as guilt or extreme embarrassment.

An episode of anxiety or panic could lead to negative self-talk and worry about it happening again. This may exacerbate anxiety symptoms which can then spiral into an anxiety-shame cycle.

If you’re feeling this way, you may wonder: How do I deal with anxiety and shame?

They don’t need spies to find out what’s going on in the UK

We have had people reading here from Russia Ukraine China etc . I regret that our politicians and leaders can’t talk to each other so easily.

I suppose the Russian viewers might be looking at the blog in the hope of making some useful information but there is nothing useful in this blog about intelligence services, the army etc

But if any other country like Russia wants to know what’s going on in Britain they only have to look at at the fact that we have had 3 prime ministers this year to know what’s going on here and how the people are hungry and cold and cannot get to the hospital quickly with broken bones or strokes and that despite this since we have the pandemic the rich even richer than they were before Somewhere deep down they know they are doing something bad.