You stabbed my heart when I was left alone Telling me my writing was like porn Now you give me nightmares, be my pest We all need one or two,and you confessed
My writing is so bad, you envy not Did I hit you on a painful spot? If others have a gift, that is their call You have yours , get out a net and trawl
Ambivalent in love which turns to hate We wound ourselves in making this our fate Talking overmuch lets such thoughts out As tea will pour down from a tilted spout
The ancient virtues,patience and restraint Shall be our wise protectors when distraught
Patience is a virtue! Or, at least that is how the saying goes. But is it really? Patience is defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble or suffering without getting angry or upset,” a definition with several important components. Patience is also a skill. We can work on increasing our ability to be patient and engage in practices to become a more patient person.
Before looking at how to develop more patience, it is best to define what we are actually talking about. Patience (or the lack thereof — impatience) occurs in response to some sort of difficulty or delay in life that is not going according to expectation. A day can hardly be lived without encountering something that interferes with our plans, and so we might say that the “interferences” or “disruptions” are a normal part of life; to expect otherwise will make it difficult to be patient.
This time he followed his feet up Peter’s Hill into St Paul’s Cathedral. It was not his body. He was watching it go up the wide west steps of St Paul’s and paying his entrance fee and refusing the offer of the audio headphone guide and letting someone else do the walking down the nave and looking up at the Whispering Gallery, and all this without giving in to his internal policeman who was getting into his ear with his oh come on, Patrick,
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
I spurned the other cheek. Adjourned but never leaked I spurned the other’s sheep I turned the others weak I learned the maths last week I burned like fire to meet I earned his ire while bleak I turned the gyre ,oh beak The falcon cannot speak My thinking is oblique I’m spanking fit and neat My husband’s hands were sweet I churned, my backside creaked. Yeats wrote twice a week Keats’ letters weep. Was Mozart ‘s mother Greek? Hebrew is our meat Did angels look so chic? God must be unique.
On the art of remaining in doubt “without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”
BY MARIA POPOVA
Despite his short life, the great Romantic poet John Keats (October 31, 1795–February 23, 1821) endures as one of the most influential creative geniuses humanity has produced. Writing to his brothers, George and Thomas, in a December 1817 letter found in Selected Letters (public library), Keats coins the phrase that has come to be the single most emblematic phrase of his entire surviving correspondence, even though he only makes mention of it once: “Negative Capability” — the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. Triggered by Keats’s disagreement with the English poet and philosopher Coleridge, whose quest for definitive answers over beauty laid the foundations for modern-day reductionism, the concept is a beautiful articulation of a familiar sentiment — that life is about living
“When we look into Keats’s expressions of conflict between
imagination and reality we can see the roots of this conflict in the
problem of identity. Keats wrote about the sunset, the sparrow, the
mythological figure as if he had lost his identity in the object. He
experienced these identifications sometimes with a sense of discovery
and sometimes with fear or irritability. Eventually, Keats began to see
that his identity would not be maddened by his imagination and could
be strengthened by it. He realized, in other words, “that a not inconsiderable increase in psychical efficiency” can result “from a disposition
which in itself is perilous.” In-the four years we know Keats as a letter
writer and a poet, we can see the development of his capacity for
retaining a sense of identity even when seized by powerful or seductive
visions. This is the development–the turning of a weakness into a
strength, both as artist and as man-that accounts for many apparent
contradictions in Keats’s thought. The language of negative capability
has been difficult because it suggests a puzzling oxymoron- a negative
and a positive. The figure presents two aspects of a dual process, the
first part of which, in its partial renunciation of control, can be felt as a
negative, while the second, or alternating, state recreates and is felt as a
capability. The creative process in some of its operations posed
dangers for Keats’!; identity. But by the spring of 1819, the period of the
great odes, there appears a new strength in the second aspect of
negative capabilily imagination”
“I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!” Keats
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
The creative life is one defined by insecurity, doubt and uncertainty (as well as overconfidence, arrogance and delusion). We asked 40 poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, actors, musicians and writers to share hard-earned wisdom for every stage of an artistic career.
Pendle Hill , the Langdale Pikes are me They waken up my heart from dull, dark dreams The marvels are the poignant shapes I see I recognise them in the grace and fear Pendle Hill , the Langdale Pikes are me I’m branded with their shapes so known so dear Yet how huge shadows frighten,haunt the seer Pendle Hill , the Langdale Pikes are me They waken up my heart to what may be
I am looking at the painting by Philip Steer that I have described to s friends before of the place in Suffolk where the Freud .. family used to take their summer holidays and know some of them live there. It’s called Walberswick
It’s in Suffolk and when I’m looking at the picture of the girls on the pier going out towards the sea I can see the sea itself in my mind’s eye I can hear the ripples of the waves and I’m standing on the sand and just behind me is a wooden building which is an art gallery which also sells paintings and now I can see this picture as it was .. hanging on the wall which is made of cream coloured wood and there are other similar paintings and more recent ones by modern artists and the sand comes right up to the door of the art gallery and I can see the sea and hear it lapping on the shore.
One benefit of having beenlaud up is that my visual memories have become even more powerful. I can see everything even the sea far out where there are fishing boats.
The air is pure and salty I could almost believe I’m there now.
Next to the art gallery there is a cafe where we sat outside in the garden one afternoon to drink tea and because of my vision just having deteriorated I couldn’t judge the depth of the tea in the cups so they overflowed then the puddles were wiped up by a merry waitress. You see I was using w teapot!
You need three dimensional vision or you’ve got to be very very careful which I now am
I’m determined to see as much as possible of everything in case my vision gets worse so I see the weeds in the grass and I see the the boat man rowing.. he’s rowing people across the river Blyth in his little boat.
The .air is so clear I seem to hear noises from far away
.. children getting out of cars and running about.. the air is clear and beautiful… No other place seems to have air like this.
Now I have dropped my eyes . I am back in this room but the sun is shining today and there are magnificent clouds… Winter will be over very soon the daffodils are coming out too early it’s the crocuses I love best.
I feel like running about like those children with my arms and legs bare just running in circles on the sand…..
Cain and Abel fought the bitter fight Posted on February 11, 2018
Cain and Abel fought the bitter fight Like baby eagles, sharks and all that bite For parents stand aloof as if amused By sibling killing sibling for their food
This may be the crime original So common it may seem to be banal Inside the heart of love lurk greed and hate Genetics brings destruction as a fate
So hatred precedes love if any grows As dead egrets have no claw to show. Families have their scapegoats all will harm No-one seems to notice wild alarm
So Cain was not unusual nor mad Indeed he was a hero, that is sad.
Professor Rosa Benchez was in the staff-room at Middle-Jeans-Rise University collecting her mail and having coffee at 9.30 am on Monday morning after running 10 miles on her rowing machine.It rowed and she ran How are you? enquired Danny her friend and colleague in the School of Learning. I’m feeling very insignificant today,she replied. quietly.I am giving a lecture on Semiotics and it’s those French people who use such idiotically complicated language.We all know that an object like a bird has to have a name before we can talk about it. Well.,said Danny, I thought you’d just say,”In the pink” as usual to my greeting, so you must feel bad.Does each bird have to have its own name,he continued wonderingly? Well,it depends on the context, she informed him coolly and enigmatically. First,if we are looking at birds as a class or set, they just need a name like “bird”.It could have been anything but somehow it was” bird” that occurred like x is used in algebra.We may just study one bird then we give it a number to identify it.That is its name Danny gazed at her beautiful bosom under her semi-transparent pink blouse.Did she dress like that on purpose to provoke men or did she feel so deep;y insignificant that she didn’t realise anyone at all could see her purple lace bra and her green silk and wool thermal vest with matching briefs, though fortunately, the latter were invisible from outside sp Danny,I’m talking to you, she called sympathetically.Why are you quiet? I dunno, the world famous biologist replied.Maybe I am not quite here today. You too,she murmured quietly ,like the stream in Little Walsingham by the ruined Abbey. Are you anxious about your lectures,she enquired softly and caringly? No, not really ,he said tearing his eyes away from her revealing clothing. Is there a biological reason why a scholar like Rosa would wear this unusually exciting outfit. The truth was more mundane.Rosa bought her clothes in Sales and was indifferent pr unaware to the way men might feel seeing her like this.After all,did she notice if they wore deep purple underpants that showed above their low rise jeans or gold coins on a chain with matching long earrings? She only looked at their faces while they naturally were drawn to see what outfit she was wearing that day. and what her new lingerie looked like. What did her partner feel?Had he left her for a woman who dressed in thick beige blouses and stockings with grey skirts? To dress well takes time and Rosa did not give it enough although so far she had not lectured in a string bikini nor an evening dress she had found in a jumble sale. These French people have made a fortune by re-labelling well know things like birds as “signified” and the word “bird” as signifiers! It reminded her of a sociologist who got a large grant to see if women were more scared walking under a railway bridge at night if there were no streetlight there The conclusion seems obvious.And that was what they proved “scientifically” Statistics,numbers, that’s what journals want. She went to her lecture room and turned on the lights.Eighty students gazed at her happily.She was almost the best and funniest lecturer in the place. I put 30 handouts in Dr Bevan-Finnish’s drawer for the seminar but someone has stolen them, she said menacingly.I write these handouts myself and if they do not appear by noon ,nobody will get another one for the entire semester With that, she turned to the blackboard and defined ” the signifier” Well,it’s better than taking the insides out of chickens on a conveyor belt she thought silently as she moaned on while the students took copious notes or wrote limericks on kleenex tissues with their own blood After lunch Rosa was in the staff room talking to some women colleagues when Dr Bevan -Finnish came over,blushing dark red as he approached.He said the handouts were back in his tray Why is he so shy, Rosa asked herself,not realising it was her outfit that provoked his blushes.And that is a very important thing to remember… whoever we are with affects us so a bold man like Bevan-Finnish seemed shy when with Rosa whereas with another more sensibly dressed woman he was quite at ease. There may be a few men who are not affected this way but not many otherwise the human race would die out and then where would we be?Nowhere! What a pity nobody tells a lady like Rosa the facts of life so she goes about causing sinful longings in her colleagues quite oblivious.Even some of the women were getting affected but nobody dared to tell her.At least it drew students to her lectures and who knows, they might have learned some Linguistics as well.And it kept them off the streets.Which streets nobody knows.Yet!