I ‘ll try to get it right for one more time
You did not converse with me in words
You were simply present in your Light
Nowhere did I feel your power and might
You were no eagle, but a strong wild bird I ‘ll try to get it right just one more time.
Who made our language with its subtle rhymes?
The ancient people had their well trained Scribes You were always there,oh gentle Light
You gave me warmth, you changed my too fixed sight
A comforter , a Spirit, how describe? I ‘ll try to get it right a final time.
The agony inside me lost its bite
I wanted to go on, to be alive You do not always show your golden Light
We do not know when we at last arrive
We do not reach this meeting place by strife I ‘ve tried to get it right this final time I never saw such Gold until that night
At the very edge of human sight Places we don’t go, till in despair Love is waiting like a golden light
The world in panic, will the virus bite Noone ever said this world is fair At the very edge of human sight
Is there really danger of such might, Where our hidden fears emerged dark ,bare? Love is fading where’s the sun, the light?
Panic like a virus can ignite Responses that are worse than germs out there At the very rim of human sight
Our defences that are usually adroit Now lie like dead young soldiers unrepaired Love is fading to a weaker light
The still,small voice is quieter than a bird The storm is passing by, will it be heard? At the very edge of human sight Love is dying,looks like candlelight
midsummer days evoke the trancelike past where children played in joyous, daisied fields with buttercups so bright the memory lasts a freedom that our conscious growth will steal.
those stones and leaves and many coloured flowers were gathered into images that glow yet later we forget those treasured hours when for a while we lived in life’s deep flow
we did not look and see,but felt at one we lived as did the birds high in the trees now we write , experiencing has gone we cannot live like flowers filled with bright bees
to lose ourselves in nature is a joy which to our adult selves we must restore
Stan was sweeping the garden path.He had a stiff broom with a small head that was useful for cleaning the edges of the steps.Emile, his beautiful cat was sitting in the old apple tree gazing down on Stan.
“Is it time for coffee yet,”Stan asked himself.He had forgotten to put on his watch.
Suddenly he heard a shriek.He peered through a hole in the fence.His neighbor Annie was lying on her back in some mud.
“Hang on,I’ll come round!” he called.
There was a gate in the old fence which was rarely locked
since Annie loved to drop in on Stan.
“Oh,Annie,how are you feeling?” he asked her anxiously.
“Bloody annoyed.I’ve only just bought these,”Not your daughter’s jeans” and now I’ve torn them,” she replied politely.
“But you don’t have a daughter!” he informed her loudly.
“I know that.It’s just they are better cut for the mature figure.”
“Your figure is not mature.You are quite slender.my dear,” he murmured lovingly.
“Well,I never feel happy with it!” she said mutinously.
“Whereas I am very happy feeling it,” he responded romantically.
Tears came into her green eyes lined with purple eye shadow.Alas,it was not waterproof and purple rivulets ran down her cheeks across the peach blusher with which she had valiantly decorated herself earlier.
“Can you get up?” he asked tenderly.
“Yes, but it would be nice if you picked me up.”
He leaned over her and licked the purple streams of tears off her cheeks.
“I hope it’s not poisonous,” she murmured.
Then with the aid of Emile,he lifted her to her feet and helped her into her large trendy kitchen.
The kettle switched itself on as they entered and a robotic voice asked if they’d like coffee.
“God in heaven,what the hell is that?” he cried confusedly.
“It’s my new computerized hot drink maker.After that fall I think a double espresso would be good.”
Emile ran in and asked for coffee too.
“Emile,you usually have milk,”Stan reminded him softly.
“Well,coffee is a new taste for me but I like a little.”
the cat whispered sweetly.
“I’ll give you some of mine in a saucer,” Stan replied.
Emile began to sob.
“Why Emile,whatever is wrong?”
“I want a cup and saucer just like you” the cat howled.
But you have no hands,Emile,” Stan reminded him.
The poor cat was crying loudly now.So Stan rang 999.
“Can you please send the emergency ambulance round.the cat’s crying and all his hankies are in the wash.”#
Soon Dave,the transvestite paramedic appeared.
“I love your light teal kitchen,” he informed Annie,
“And your eyes look like two deep pools in a coal mine.”
She slapped his cheek naughtily.
“Have a look at Emile” she ordered him sweetly.
He turned to the cat who was sitting on the dark pine table.
“Here,Emile,I got you some Kleenex for Cats in Sainsbury’s.” he said gaily.
“I want a real hanky,”cried Emile.Dave took a clean hanky from his own pocket and dried the cats tears.
“What made you cry.Are you feeling bad.”
“Yes,I want to go to Cafe Nero,” Emile mioawed.
“Who told you about that?”
“Another cat down the road has been and he said it’s lovely for people watching.”
“The town is not safe for cats like you,Emile.”
Dave urbanely replied,
“But when summer come I’ll take you to the out of town
Marks and Spencer’s.They have a cat’s coffee corner upstairs.”
“Wow,isn’t it amazing,”Stan wondered out loud.
So Dave poured out the coffee and they all sat down and
discussed Ray Monk’s Life of Wittgenstein.
Ray has discovered that Wittgenstein liked cats but as he moved around quite a bit,he never owned his own cat
though Elizabeth Anscombe let him play with her three cats now and then.
We may all be different but most of us value the love of a good cat.Even boiling their hankies and ironing them is very nice.We all have this problem though.
Where can a cat carry his own hanky?
Do cats need shoulder bags?
What would Wittgenstei
Neuroscientists have shown that our brain does not reveal to us the world as it is, but rather as possible interpretations of what is going on around us, drawn from our past experience. Since no two people ever have exactly the same experience, no two people ever see anything in exactly the same way.
In 1993, I took a left turn one day out of my MFA program and found myself at the National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. There I discovered several poets who were funny for the sake of being funny. Particularly Hal Sirowitz from New York (“don’t stick your arm out the window, mother said” and Matt Cook from Milwaukee (“it was easy to write the Great American Novel, back when there were only five American novels”) Both poets initially delighted me and confounded me: There are no similes, a voice in my head said. What would Tom Lux (my first teacher) say? the voice continued. Despite my resistance, I believe those poets gave me a kind of permission to explore humor a little more vigorously in my second book, The Forgiveness Parade (1998), for “I thought the word loin and the word lion were the same thing. I thought celibate was a kind of fish”. Perhaps in that book there were places where I was too vigorous in my pursuit: looking back there are a few poems that are just a little too jokey somehow, a little one-dimensional.
I am becoming aware of how some humor can set a roadblock for the poetic speaker, making it impossible for the speaker to get back to a serious place. And how some other (less frequent) uses of humor can leave that door open. I want to leave that door open
I saw the dust motes singing in soft air The yellow grey, the light where nothing’s clear The silent chorus hurts me as I stare
The heart feels unprotected, as if bare Only when we’re lonely are we here I saw the dust motes dancing in soft air
The little things we don’t see till we care The eyes that signal bring to birth our fear The silent chorus gabbles as I stare
The Essex fields are huge like mass despair Yet summer poppies bright make them so dear I saw the dust motes dancing on fresh air
Life is like a vehicle we steer Yet unseen hands in wisdom change the gear I heard the dust motes singing in soft air The small still chorus tells me what to dare
When you’re trying to do a very hard Su doku puzzle or even an easy one it’s very tempting to make a big effort to try a very hard to do it.
But in fact this is the wrong approach. Yes you have to read all the information and you have to know what you meant to do to solve the problem but tensing your muscles and trying hard will not help you to do it
The mind is much bigger than we think and once we’ve got the general information the mind itself will be pondering over the problem and will come up with answers
So why don’t we do this normally? I suppose we don’t like to rely on something or someone else we want to feel we’ve done it all by ourselves but we’re never really by ourselves because we’ve always got to the deeper parts of the mind the part that produces dreams and the remembers things and learns things that you didn’t know that you were learning
I think the French used to call this part of the mind
L’autre moi.
The other me.
But this is not talked about at school or even at university. It could be that fear of being dependent on another person when your parents were harsh or punitive may make you want you to rely only on yourself.
It is true that you have to cultivate your garden in other words you’ve got to know something about the problem and I’ve done the necessary reading and preperation or even talk to someone about it
But after that you’ve got to rely on your un conscious mind.
Some people may have a closer relationship where their unconscious than others do
I have read this approach helps in sport for example playing tennis is described in the book
A life of one’s own’ by Marion Milner’ so
If you’re interested in art you might like that book also or just generally well worth reading
Relaxation is the most important skill or should we call it a skill when it should come naturally to us?
Western society values efforts and hard work and of course there’s always a certain amount of that in any situation like running a home for example but even that can be done in a more relaxed manner then we think.
My grandad was a coal miner for 50 years starting at the age of 14 and I don’t know what he would have said about relaxing at work but he was very proud of himself. He brought up six children alone as well and he used to work nights. But it did have some bad consequences like my mother always had problem sleeping. Especially when she was left in the same situation after 11 years of marriage.
The other factor is that tension is one way that we control our feelings and if we let go of the tension we may hear some interesting idea coming from unconscious mind but we might also feel some feelings that we don’t want to feel because we’re frightened of them sometimes with good cause.
When I was at school I was trying to solve a mathematical problem with no luck until I went to bed. When I closed my eyes I saw the numbers I had been trying to deal with rearranging themselves into a new pattern and suddenly I saw the solution. It was a mystical experience.
It doesn’t mean that if you are relaxed you will never suffer pain again you may not suffer the same kind of pain that you did when you were trying to do your homework when you were 15 years old but there is always pain and suffering in different degrees from not being able to have the clothes that you want when you’re a teenager to suddenly realizing a person you thought was a friend is actually someone who doesn’t like you but you’ll never been able to see it before.
Then there’s marriage and it’s problems: life is never easy for most of us. We can’t envy the royal family either.
I had to phone the Guardian customer services today. I told them that white I’ve been ill have found it’s helpful to do su doku puzzles
But I cannot do the medium one today!
I asked him if anyone else complained and he said no so maybe it’s just me that’s my brain has done too many and is refusing to to cooperate now.
Oh dear will I have to read Principia Mathematica again? Well to say again is really telling a lie because I never read it before.
Bertrand Russell said his brain never felt the same after he wrote that book and in a way I wish he had not written it because it’s all based on an error.
Quite what this errorv is I cannot tell you. But there’s something in it at least to a contradiction and you know that we cannot have contradictions in mathematics
What about in theology can we have contradictions there?
Belief in God has been difficult for many because we used to think God was omnipotent and good but if that is the case why do we have evil in the world?
I know that some people like the nuns who educated me would say it’s to prove that you have willpower so that you can resist evil
In itself bitvseems very bad. If God created this world and caused a lot of suffering to see whether we would have the will power to refrain from causing more suffering or even to help those who are suffering it just doesn’t seem to make sense to me I cannot accept it as a theological argument
But then if God is not all powerful and all good is he really God?
If you were to study mathematics and especially numbers you would find that you very soon get into very complicated territory so that very few people could understand it and if this is true of numbers how much more is it true of people and the whole world it may be beyond our comprehension.
Well not maybe but certainly definitely it is beyond our comprehension but I’m not sure where to go from there
There is suffering inherent in the fact that our bodies are made of flesh and can be wounded and damaged either by accident or by evil or by illness etc
So there is going to be emotional pain and grief cause by the suffering of our loved ones including their death.
It’s particularly severe when children die either by illness or even worse in war.
One are my schoolmates died at the age of 15.
The suffering of her parents was very severe not to mention her brother and sister but they did not question God
I realised that Sudoku puzzles are closed systems and therefore every thing is closely connected to everything else
So if you are having a problem with for example the number 3 don’t look directly for the answer because if you start looking at a different number like nine or seven if you can find some movement there or even the solution automatically this will simplify the problem you’re having with number 3.
Now a human life is not a completely closed system on the whole. But even so if you are having a problem with one part of your life and you can’t get any movement there look at something completely different and see if you can do anything about that. If you can it will very likely help you with the original problem or at least it will help you to pass the time.
Sometimes if you are feeling depressed and you can’t do much about it it helps to do the washing up or change the bed sheets or pay a bill anything that needs doing
Something physical is often a good idea.
Movement itself can help. physical movement or doing things like puzzles makes your mind move about a bit
After doing some of these manual tasks often people feel better because at least they have done washing or the washing up or paid their bills
But if it doesn’t help just hang on because life itself is movement and things will change.
In the meantime I’m giving some money to the Red cross because there are problems that other people are having in the complicated world of wars and suffering and even if you’re feeling depressed or anxious you can still give a little help to someone else.
I don’t expect people to be grateful for what they have because when you’re depressed lonely anxious you don’t want people telling you to look on the bright side . Later you can be grateful for what you have and the people around you.
Puzzles can be intriguing or annoying or boring but they don’t usually cause worry
People’s faces can be intriguing as well but they are can also cause us a wide variety of emotions including anxiety fear and worry but also happiness and joy
Solving a hard number puzzle is a lot easier than living life as a human interpret ing other people’s feelings and faces on behaviour
If you were no good at maths don’t worry because you probably good at lots of other things like communication with your beloved people and the families
As long as you can deal with money in your budget then you don’t really need to worry about maths. If you are a carpenter or a cook you will have learned a lot of mathematics without knowing it
One afternoon Mary decided to visit Jean in the nursing home. Jean could not walk and😔 she had severe dementia and was an angry woman but nevertheless there was something about her that Mary liked enough
Can I come along as well cried her cat Emile peevishly,,,?
No Jean doesn’t like cats and she’s a very determined woman so I’m not going to set her off by taking you in there and don’t say you can stay my handbag because it’s hot were and I don’t want you to suffocate silently.
Would it be alright if I suffocated while mewing?
?
Emile I cannot risk you suffocating because I love you that’s why I’m leaving you at home by yourself. You can always go in the garden and meet some other cats
Emile stalked away like a woman with injured pride
When Mary got there, Jean was having a bad day
I want to die she screamed. Will you kill me? Please do please do,,,
It’s illegal for me to kill you Mary told her rudely
Oh you’re such a coward Mary: be brave and kill me. I’d be really grateful
Well it’s very difficult to kill someone like you because you are naturally strong and strangling you would be extremely tough probably impossible and how could you be grateful to me when you were dead?
If you believe there’s an afterlife then you cannot kill yourself or be killed by me it’s murder in either case.
You’re a chuckling print, Jean shouted.
I understand what you mean but I think you’ve got the wrong word! I have seen this written down but I’ve never heard anyone so it out loud that is, c*nt.
Why what’s wrong with it?
Nothing in itself but when it’s combined with another word like f*cking it becomes unspeakably unpleasant and anyway you should not use that name as a curse word. It’s where new life is born. It’s like a flower like a rose or a carnation
Mary thought to herself I think I’m going to write a poem!
I never said it answered Jean but there’s got to be some way of expressing my frustration
Talking about the afterlife Mary said politely you jave been married twice. When you go to heaven which of your husbands do you want to be with you for all eternity?
Thinking about it very carefully Jean sat silent for quite some time. Then she gave a most intelligent response.
I loved them both the same
In that case you are a very fortunate woman although I know it’s very hard for you now. Would you like me to bring my cat next time I come? He is called Emile and he is very very interesting and can speak good English. Or I have a friend who’s a paramedic called Dave and he makes very good cakes and biscuits and likes to wear dresses in the summer
Triumphantly Jean announced that she would like to see both the cat and the paramedic as she was very bored in the nursing home and she loved to talk to people or even to animals
I said I’m writing my blog not I think that you’re God
I said what is for dinner, not I think you’re a sinner.
I said do you know any new words, not I think love’s absurd.
I said try my new bakes, not dive into the lake
I said Donald is mad, not I are you my dad?
I said my heart is so strong, not the charts are all wrong.
I said do you like my new briefs, not you are the chief.
I said is God the answer, not you are a good dancer
I said I’m tired of these puzzles not keep your dog muzzled
It’s hard to communicate apparently most of us live lives of complete fiction or almost complete fiction in other words we invent the people we love and then we get a terrible shock when they don’t behave according to our frictional point of view
I stare at your face as if you are today’s puzzle of numbers.
I can’t read the signs so easily
I know the answers are all there but how to perceive them?
And what if my gaze becomes a glare and I hurt you?
Surely that intense stare is not the way to learn the face of the beloved
How to soften the eyes so they caress rather than sting?
On the train everyone is bowed over their newspaper or on their screen
They’re all trying to solve puzzles but who can solve the puzzle of human existence?
Who can give us a meaning for our lives?
Sometimes the gazelof another can be enlightening.
But we can’t stare into the faces on the other commuters so we stare at our puzzles instead hoping to learn something useful more than just to find out which numbers are missing.
Children do stare, when do they stop doing that?
Like when I walked into the living room with the Guardian and said to my mother in front of the visitors
What’s rape?
She never did tell me but after that we got the Times instead which seemed rather peculiar in our working class Street but who knows what the motives were?
As anyone with a sibling or more than one child knows, people will respond differently to the same situation. How much do individual traits change or mitigate the effect of ACEs?
A. If you take a population of 1,000 people or 10,000 people or 100,000 people and they all have one ACE versus two ACEs versus seven ACEs — what you’re going to see is this substantially increased risk of health problems. Are there still going to be folks who by virtue of their biology or circumstance or environment are able to be resilient in the face of adversity? There are. Just like there’s the guy who smoked two packs a day and drank whiskey every day and lived to be 100. The takeaway for me is how we’re trying to reduce the exposure on a population level.
Q. You’ve said that your work on ACEs led you to your husband. What do you mean by that?
A. I won’t comment on any of my ex-boyfriends, but I was like — whoa — the type of relationship that I have has a profound impact on my life span and my health. Not just how I feel, but this could seriously shorten my life expectancy.
My husband is a person who I feel heals me from the inside out. He’s been really instrumental in what I’ve been able to accomplish in terms of starting my organization
So what is helpful? What’s the cure for political depression? For one thing, liberal conservatives are going to have to borrow from some of the left’s irrepressible optimism. But if my last few months of lethargy and dark doctors’ waiting rooms have taught me anything, it’s that all those in search of a cure for our current political malaise could do well to look at recent advances in the mental health ward. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, is today’s wonder cure – but what does it actually entail, and can it save a country as well as it can a person?
CBT is all about breaking unhelpful mental patterns. It’s also about the art of the possible. Under pressure at work? Find one request you can reasonably make of your boss. Determined to run a marathon to feel better about being obese? Start by using the stairs instead of a lift.
In politics, focusing on the big picture can often seem overwhelming. The future is bleak; there are a lot of battles that the forces of liberalism seem unlikely to win. When I think of Trump in the White House, Erdogan imprisoning critics in Turkey, martial law in the Philippines – I could continue – I curl up and go back to bed. When I think about the two refugee friends who I’ve got coming to stay next week, I scurry up and start readying
I wrote this as a protest against the fashion in medical circles of making everything either a disease or the precurser to a disease.I have not included mental health here but I think it’s used there as well.If you are happy you are pre-mad or pre-neurotic.If calm you are pre-panicking or pre-stressed.
If beautiful you are pre-aged
I went to the doctor.He said I’d pre-flu..
I said “My dear doctor what shall I do?”
Next time I went, he said “It’s pre- shock.”
And then I had pre measles,pre mumps and pre-pox
I ran to the doctor,he said ” You’re pre-well”
I said “Are you sure it’s not just a pre-quel?”
Next time I turned up,he’d gone out for a walk
It’s hard for a doctor who wants to pre-talk.
I went to the optician, who said I’m pre-blind
I thanked him for being so intensely unkind.
I went back to the doctor,and these words I said
“I’m pre -blind, pre-deaf,pre-ill and pre-dead!
How my heart speaks 