“A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.”

Speaking as an ex-lecturer in maths and statistics, how can I prove this is wrong?
By collecting data?

To be uncertain.live in mist and fog
To tense the eye and feel the mind’s  a bog
To hope but not to know what it’s for
To be afraid of who comes to the door
As  if the visitor may be a dog
Fierce  yet irritated by  a frog

Who owns this machine, am I a cog?
Or am I lonely, mentally unfed?
Friendship is not purchased from  a store
We feel uncertain

Life is easier, teachers do not flog
Criminals not hung   nor  flung in mud
Yet of all  the world’s ills we are made aware
As at our little screens we  fearful stare 
Seeing refugees and  children dead
Calm is uncertain.

What time is it, the old man said to me.
Time for conversation with no fee
We have to pay the therapist to hear
Why we feel we need to live in fear

Lurching yet graceful ,the old black cat sets off.
Slowly he circles the edges of the garden in joy.
In the car ,though still in a shut basket,
He always knew when we came to the turning of the road.
Was it the cherry trees in blossom,a scent
Or something we could never be aware of?
I would open his basket in the car.
He comes out and descends so carefully
Onto the pavement,then tries to bound up the path,
The long wooded back garden is his total joy.
He would sit watching tiny frogs in a deep pond in the sun.
No doubt he longed to catch one.
He once brought a robin indoors,
The bird was completely unharmed.
Must have been his gift to me
We released it later after its shock had worn off.
Now he can only hobble,
And soon, his thinness warns me, he'll be gone.
No cat has ever loved or will love like this cat,
A rescued, terrified animal.
His eyes say everything to me.
I look into their clear-jewelled greenness
I look into a deep,still glowing sea of light.
The last day,finally, all day,he's on my knee.
I say"goodbye,goodbye,Pussy".
And he's gone,just before tea.
Now the garden seems empty.
Love leaves a gap.
Love leaves us bare
Love leaves us stripped.
Yet Love is eternal grace.
A mystery of faith.
I believe.
Believe.
Be.

https://thescribeunbound.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/that-chaunge-sank-into-myne-herte-roote-depression-and-medieval-literature/

Extract:

“Thomas Hoccleve wrote his Complaint [to a friend] in around 1420. That’s nearly five hundred and ninety four years ago. Yet, we read with empathy as he struggles with feelings of listlessness as the summer turns into winter. The Complaint‘s Prologue opens as follows:

After that hervest Inned had his sheves,
and that the broune season of myhelmess
was come and gan the trees robbe of ther leves
That grene had bene and in lusty fresshness,
and them in-to colowre of yelowness
hadd dyne and doune throwne vndar foote
that chaunge sank into myne herte roote (l.1-7)

Hoccleve describes the ominous visual signs of the transition between autumn and winter as Michealmas arrives and robs the trees of their adornment. The yellow leaves that fall and are ‘throwne’ under careless feet contrast with the green, ‘lusty’, fresh, feeling of summer. The most sinking feeling comes as the change of the season sinks directly into Hoccleve’s ‘herte roote’ – the innermost depths of his heart. We know that feeling, right? That sense that the cold, dark, days are physically seeping into the depths of our souls?

Hoccleve continues:

…and in the end of novembar, vpon a nyght,
syghenge sore as I in my bed lay
for this and othar thowghts which many a day
before I toke sleape cam none in myne eye
so vexyd me the thowghtfull maladye. (l. 17-21)

It’s the end of November, as it is today, 593 years later. Hoccleve is lying in his bed, sighing from the bottom of his heart, thinking over the thoughts that are bringing him down. These vexful contemplations drag him so low that no sleep will come. He lies awake, in turning sleeplessly in ‘thowghtfull maladye’. The very process of thinking is a disease to Hoccleve – his invasive thoughts afflict him like a physical malady.

Read it all.Click the link

I was tailing a pest again.Join the police and  get paid for stalking.

He said he was going birdwatching in Snowdonia.I didn’t know eagles bit men.

I unrolled a stone of Andrex
Then I suffocated but got the kiss of life.
From a policeman.He is now my husband

Never be tasty if you are near a lake.Mosquitos will wallow on you.

We had real toad in the hole in France.No wonder toads are always hiding

Can you drive men mad? No,I can talk them out of it.Besides I have no licence.

Do you need a licence to kill? To kill whom, Boris Nonsense?

Feel free to do whatever you like.
Alright, but I think I’ll go into the bathroom.
Why?
I want to  put some antiperspirant on.
But why?
I am going to clean the entire house.
Will it matter if you sweat?
You tell me.
Well, after that you’ll have to wash your hair
Why?
To stop me making love.
That would be hard while I am washing my hair.
So, why not buy a wig?
Buy  one!
Nothing is free in life
Except life.
Women are too clean.
Women are to clean…….

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability

Extract

“And Keats touched again on the idea of the passivity, humility even, of a great writer, in a letter he wrote to his friend Richard Woodhouse on 27 October following year. The ‘poetical Character’, he maintained,

is not itself – it has no self – it is everything and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in an Iago [the villain of Shakespeare’s Othello] as an Imogen [Shakespeare’s heroine in Cymbeline]. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the camelion Poet.^[3]

The word ‘gusto’ was used by Keats’s contemporary, the essayist and critic William Hazlitt, to describe the power and passion with which an artist creates another form. ‘The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shakespeare takes from his gusto’, Hazlitt wrote in the Examiner on 26 May 1816; ‘The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He never insists on any thing as much as he might, except a quibble.’”

Perhaps instead of criticising
people
for  excessive use of smartphoness,
we should ask what kind of society we live in where people need this?
I believe people who have come to work here
from another country want to keep in touch with their families.
And to see them on Skype
In London many of us are from other parts of Britain.
When we were younger  we could dash up and down at the weekend
but now that is tough.
So we may be lonely for them,or just lonely anyway.
If people eat bad food .we can’t order them to starve instead.
What does surprise me is folk watching TV on a phone.
A TV now is  cheaper than a  phone.
[cheaper than in the past]
On a laptop,yes.
On a phone,why bother?
However for people who hear voices,
the music from their phone can block them
so we must not desire to remove that aid
This shows we should be less critical if possible

Be patient, oh my heart, I cannot rush
Or that which lives in me will soon be crushed
Noone can speed constantly through life
Nor bear a load of enmity and strife
Who would see God burning in a bush
Or hear his voice or  find stillness enough?

Keep away from those with voices rough
The strong need not  behave as vile or tough
Noise may be a pestilential cry
Be patient

As our little life like candle’s snuffed
As our offering to our friend’s rebuffed
As in ruined monasteries we   cry
We seek a message from the very sky
Yet  voices we hear sound like  pigs in trough
Be patient

Poetry and psychoanalysis

“Joanne Limburg talked beautifully about how grief used to be considered merely as a process of withdrawl and detachment but that now it can be considered more as the ‘renegotiation of a relationship that is ongoing’, with writing that deals with loss part as ‘an act of symbolic reparation’. She talked of how a person may ‘remove their breathing presence’ but the mother remains their mother, the father remains their father. In loss, the deceased becomes ‘an internal object’ and a ‘legacy of complicated emotions’. Poetry is thus a process of reassembly, repair, reparation, through which the poet reassembles the deceased, thought by thought, and by incorporating the many fragments of real experience (with them). Nonetheless, she questioned the ethics of producing ‘capital’ (poetry) from loss and considered how, in guilt, we might seek to hold onto pain, as if keeping the pain of loss is a way of keeping a person inside you forever.”

Mary lay  in bed sighing and wishing Stan were there to bring her a cup of tea
All alone and it wasn’t even a Bank Holiday.So she had no excuse for being short of money.
She remembered her days at Oxgrudge University studying Dysfinancial Analysis and Knotology.How she swept down the  library stairs knocking youths over with her large  black gown and  her   continuous humming like a human bee
Men fell over like ninepins while Mary’s head was in another space so she never noticed the devastation and disorder  she caused simply by existing
What was it about this   tall, skinny ,shortsighted woman that had such a powerful effect? Nobody will  ever know now ,least of all Mary
Then she  recalls how she met her husband to be as he stood outside Boots  Pharmacy swallowing a handful of antidepressants  with a glass of lemonade and brandy the asssistant had given him free of charge as he looked so sad
Mary tripped over  his foot as she looked around for her stolen bicycle.
Hello, he cried.I am Stan Brown
Well, how kind ,may I have a sweet from your box?
Yes, I shall give you everything
Can’t you be more explicit ,she said shyly.In mathematics   we are very precise and careful.
Mary  was embarrassed at her recollections.He might have been a tramp or an unemployed  milkman.
Would you like to go on the river,  he murmured?
I can’t walk on water, she responded
I mean in a boat,Stan replied
Why  not, she whispered.The water’s wide and I  cannot cross
Is that a metaphor, he asked her?
I suppose it might be an allegory.It’s a song.
I say, you are clever, aren’t you?
Is that accurate? My IQ is only 80 but I am teaching  pure mathematics at Heartwords College.
How chaste,Stan replied.Do they pay you well?
I wouldn’t teach free there, she answered.Even so I can’t afford another bike and the problems I have to solve each week  are extremely difficult.
You mean  like cooking  your own meals?
No,I mean the maths questions, she answered.I don’t eat much.It takes me 10 hours a day to solve the student’s  problems
Well,I will take you out for a roast dinner.You look like you’ve got anorexia
I can’t have that, she answered.It’s not been invented yet!
Well, you look like  celery if it were white.
That’s not very  nice,Mary muttered.It’s usually a flower.
You look more like a grass stalk ,he informed her scientifically
And somehow after that they were married and living in Knittingham a  lovely old town in  the Northern hills with their delightful cat Emile and a  BT telephone.Eventually  they got some furniture and a bed.But at first they never noticed the petty trivialities of life
Alas.Stan is dead and Mary is struggling to feed herself again.Emile is unhappy  as he loved Stan  like a father.
I’d better go to the Bank before I forget my PIN number, she thought.I used to buy so many lovely books and socks and cutlery and now I eat off the Guardian and it’s £2  a day! Where is the crockery?
The newsagent rang the bell.You owe me money
Yes,I am just off to  the Bank, she told him quickly
Maybe you should get dressed, he told her in a kindly tone.
These pyjamas are all the rage now
Not with Indian women, he replied.
Quite so,Mary mumbled.They look better than I do.Can I borrow a few saris?
After you pay the bill.
You win,Mary told him politely.I have my debit card waiting for me.
Where?
In a cup on the book case
Don’t tell me cups are the new handbags, he laughed
Actually, that is a creative idea…. and  jugs.I need a new look
And so do all of us.

Fancy having to  calculate how tall a hill was by  using projective geometry  before it had been invented.That  really affects me.
But  if we did not have mass markets we would not  need to measure our waists.
Measuring.. do we need it to keep getting more precise like  I am a  million atoms wide and  the square root of 2 long,Who am I?

To be  of will grim
Oh,hell, he will grin
Onward instant soldiers
He who would by talent see
To be a madman
Who is a pagan?
The Lord is deafened
The Lord’s own weapon
Guardian angels, did you see  Newsnight?
Underneath your arches,I’ll scream  till  you see me
Blessed is the word in the clue.
Did you ever get to Devon?
Oh,well. Orwell?
Near lustful daughters he needs me
He imbibed my glass of spirits.
Wraith of our Fathers  living will
Good will to all men kind.
God of our blathers
Oh,little  wall of Bethlehem.
Jerusalem was  built  on  a hill.They couldn’t afford to move the hill ,you see
[I made that up]

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/08/laura-van-den-berg-by-heart/567964/

If anything happiness is a feeling of being essential”
― Fay Weldon

Pay attention to the feeling heart
Do not crush yourself   before you start
What seems mad and stupid may be wise
A new world may live just beyond your eyes
Revealed by  pen,constructed as  is Art

Be uncertain like Rene Descartes
Live through moments unseen on the chart
 Self deception can be caught,  surprised
Pay attention

We learn to see what is ,despite the dark
Yet we need  our friends when truth’s too stark
From hesitation ,truth at last arrives
Never total, never undisguised
A whale may seem at times a deadly shark
Pay attention

One of the most profound and universal realizations of later childhood, a realization that probably is never totally integrated, is the discovery that one’s parents are not necessarily representative of the human species, that one has grown up in an idiosyncratically structured family with its own peculiarities and dramas.

• Stephen Mitchell
• Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 275

On Quora someone’s asking for advice
Can they wear thigh high boots and  few clothes
Their grammar is   too insubordinate
As house flies  on your  cake make icing late

Are there rules for  everything we do?
Can I wear tomatoes  on my shoe?
Must I wear my  dressing gown in bed?
Could I wear the eiderdown instead?

Then morals clutch and ethics give us strain
As we kiss our dearest husband ‘s counterpane
Should I  apologise for drinking tea?
Is there still  a dyke on Zuiderzee?

Why should we believe what we read there?
Or come to think, not there but anywhere?
We want some one to talk to,  it is true
Why not tell a tiger in the Zoo?

How to Format Your Book for Kindle Using Microsoft Word in 6 Easy Steps

I find it  is not as hard as I thought but it  uses up energy.Of course I should have read this article before I began.There are books that tell you more if you  look on Amazon/Google or in your bookstore

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/01/ian-dreiblatt-is-the-brooklyn-poet-of-the-week-thank-goodness

Extract:

After the low start to the week, may this excellent interview with Brooklyn poet and translator Ian Dreiblatt at Brooklyn Poets cheer you up. Quick background: Recent translations include Gogol’s The Nose and Comradely Greetings, a book of prison correspondence between Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Slavoj Žižek. Last year he published two chapbooks: sonnets, from Metambesen, and barishonah, from DoubleCross Press. We’re so lucky to get to know a bit of this wonderful mind–read (and listen to) it all here.

Who were your poetry mentors and how did they influence you?

Oh wow, very hard to list everybody! I’ve learned so much from so many different people. But any list I made would include Robert Kelly, who turned me on to a huge number of the poets that have meant the most to me, and has for all the nearly twenty years I’ve known him been exorbitantly generous with response, encouragement and suggestions.

Ann Lauterbach was another early teacher whose responses to the work she let me share with her, even many years later, continue to bounce around productively in my head.

For a while when I was younger I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, and had the incredible luck of knowing and working with Arkadii Dragomoshchenko. He was a mentor in a very literal way—he would sit down with translations I had made of his work, and go over them in great detail, explaining what, from his perspective, was working, and what wasn’t.

Peter Dimock is another friend and mentor, who’s lived in Brooklyn for most of the time I’ve known him, altho he just recently moved upstate. Peter’s a novelist, but in a mode of novel-writing that is very nearly poetry, and his thinking about the relationships between writing and editing, the literary and the social, language and power is incredibly nourishing.

If  stuffed cabbage is too much
Have a sprout, from Brussels  lurched
A joint of beef is excess now
Try a calf’s foot  not a cow’s
Try a sausage  stewed in milk
If it spills I shall not wilt
Roast potatoes make me sad
Grill tinned peaches, they’re not bad
Try a carrot for a lark
Eat  it when your mood is dark
Make a salad, apple, nuts
Celery must face the cuts
Walnuts  come in bags not shells
Just as oil comes  out of wells
Why not ask a guest if blue?
I  can’t eat enough for two!

tr

Frail and sad ,the man  is changed
Not  beginning in his course
He’s had the best and now  the worst
He submits to death  arranged

He protects his   family
He’s paid his mortgage filled the Bank
As he ponders spirits sink
What of this must they each see?

He  has got restricted hours
As doctors all  must improvise
None can say what way is wise
The immune system, fearful, cowers

But now  he’ll  bear the setting  sun.
In vocal skies, the eyes of owl
The breath  of cats,  the throats that growl
Michaelmas   and deep autumn

The total darkness earths at last
Midwinter candles, the  great feasts
Hannuka, Christmas,blessed yeast
We’ll rise again but not in haste.

Make the  body’s rhythmic moods
One more way to  hear the tunes
In deep winter’s gathered gloom
Cry, I love you ,cry aloud.

Let the tears of pity come
Gather them to water him
In this place his tree will grow
When with love  his seeds we sow

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/04/your-favorite-poems-on-people-and-power/524874/

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

Don’t you think  the Christians have been rude
Stealing the Hebrew Bible from the Jews?
Should they sue  for plagiarism and more
Changing name and selling in the Store?

Do you think that God  has been purloined
The Old and New, the  stories all combined?
If we own the God of still small voice
Should those  folk who heard him have a choice?

When we stole the stuff from off the Jews
Did unconscious guilt   make us confuse
The God who spoke to Prophets from a  Fire
With Evil Ones who killed his people dear

Oh,Jesus was a Jew, what news ,what ire!
God mistook his lady in the Byre

?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/english-language-destruction-technology-internet-jargon-political-war-poets-a8523796.html

The Cobweb (Raymond Carver Poem)

“A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
of the house. From there I could see and hear the water,
and everything that’s happened to me all these years.
It was hot and still. The tide was out.
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned
and went inside. There was no wind. The sea
was dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade.
Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath
touches it. A fine thread. Intricate.
Before long, before anyone realizes,
I’ll be gone from here.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/27/yuval-noah-harari-trump-patriotism-global-threats-sapiens

“Harari also took a dim view of Brexit, which he described as “basically a distraction. I don’t think inherently it’s a bad idea … but the timing is terrible… If the EU breaks up into 28 different countries, it’s going to be much more difficult to negotiate climate agreements, to have a common front against the hi-tech giants. Every minute the UK and EU institutes are spending on Brexit is a minute they don’t spend on climate change. And they spend a lot of minutes on it.

“Also it’s all just a fantasy about being independent. But there are no longer any independent countries in the world. It doesn’t matter what’s written on some document.”

According to Harari, technological disruption – through the rise of artificial intelligence, biotechnology and surveillance programmes – is a threat to freedom, due to the use of personal data by corporations and governments.

“That’s a very big danger,” said Harari, who does not own a smartphone and was meeting press in London to promote his new book about the dangers of accelerating technological development, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. “If we reach a point when governments have the ability to press people’s emotional buttons in a very efficient way, then elections don’t mean anything anymore. And we are quite close to that point.””