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.
The postman was very late coming that morning.Stan was asleep in his armchair whilst Annie was analysing some data on the political alignments of the over fifties group in Knittingham.Mary was upstairs daydreaming.
Hi. Mary…Annie called.There’s a letter for you from the hospital.
Mary came down, her face a little pale with anxiety.She opened it slowly.Inside it had the following announcement
Your appointment on 5th October at 3 am with Dr Paramour has been cancelled..
We can offer you he following appointment: 5th October 2014 at 3 am in the usual clinic
This will be with Dr Paramour unless he goes on holiday again.He will remove your tumour and your humor as well.
Stan read the letter.
Why have they sent this? he asked bemusedly as he blinked with his nice blue eyes.
Mary phoned the hospital.She spoke to a charming young man.
What does it mean? she enquired.Why give such a silly letter out.
It means nothing,the man said,It’s the computer.
Computers follow programmes.We’ve had this type of stupid letter many times in the last 6 months….it’s using paper and postage apart from the worry.Why can’t someone alter the programme?
I don’t know,the pleasant man replied.I think nobody understands it.
Don’t they realise that keeping patients calm and trusting is part of the healing process?
No,they don’t he answered despondently.We have to answer the phone all day long.So we can hear how upset some people are.
Stan called out,it’s in the government too.They wasted millions on a new system which was scrapped before it was ever used…
Where are all the intelligent people?
That’s what I have been wondering,thought Emile as he hid behind Annie’s new green handbag hoping a field mouse might come by
I am sure if I planned the the computer programmes I could fix this,said Mary.But I will never be given a job now.I don’t think I’d want it now with my eyesight.
Well,Mary,you are still very beautiful,said Stan.I think I want to go to bed with you.
Stan, how can you say it in front of Annie?
Well,she can come as well if she likes,he replied tactfully.
And what about Emile?
Oh, alright then.We’ll all go to bed even he … we need a life changing experience.And I do not mean another daft letter from that blooming hospital,The Royal Wee.
We could paper the walls with them.
I would not enjoy seeing the walls like that,said Annie.
I am just making a point… that they waste so much money…. and time answering the phone to correct their errors………. it’s like Alice in Sunderland.
I never knew she was a Geordy, mioawed Emile…
I just like to think of her that way,answered Stan.
Anyway,upstairs and off with your clothes… we must make love before we die even if it kills us or we have to go to A and E with angina,migraine,a broken rib or other unmentionable discomforts.
And being obedient they all want upstairs,got undressed and fell asleep side by side in Stan’s large soft bed… except for Emile.
I thought they were going to have a love in,he thought.Perhaps when they waken up,who knows?
Maybe the NHS are trying to make people mad so they will pay for private treatment….
Mary was dreaming she was back at Oxford teaching analysis to a group of frightened first year students…what a pity they are so nervous,she thought.They’s do better working in a garden centre or a zoo…
She is a good writer,mainly in journalism and also she works making documentaries.The title comes from a Society that existed in New York starting around the time of Pear Harbour.It was for musiciand too timid ti play in public.From that which ended in 1946 she goe on to look at many situations which need courage such as bravery in war,in giving birth,in bull fighting.She is well read and has studied Aristotle,read Beowulf and many other serious books and writings.Yet it is not a very difficult read.[I like hard books because I read them several times so they last longer.]The intriguing part so far is about animals and birds which won awards for bravery.. such as pigeons in WW2 and whether an animal can be brave in the true sense.I have read half this book and strongly recommend it as suitable to a wide range of readers and also because it makes reading Aristotle seem normal,not just for scholars and academics
You can get Ethics by Aristotle as a free kindle book
You have to pay a little for Nichomacean Ethics and there is more than one translation so look inside before you buy it.I feel amazed by his thinking and wonder if we’ve gone backwards
When I was at University I spent 6 years studying mathematics.But I always liked poetry and novels.My school thought I should study English Literature,but to me that was not a creative activity.The way we were taught was to criticize books,plays,poems by many famous writers [mostly men!]
Praying
I didn’t want to criticize only.I wanted to write but I never thought I could.I followed my career as a mathematician until my vision deteriorated.I could not read mathematical symbols anymore.Still it had earned me a living
I began going to an Art Class as I wanted to see as much as I could. in case my vision got worse,I was so very embarrassed because all the others were very good whereas I had no idea what all the terms meant [Even for pencil drawing ].I was afraid but I kept going and did learn to look at the world differently.At that time I .I had not got a computer.Later I could not get to the class but did more here at home
Two cats
I bought my laptop and after some time I discovered digital art.I had no books about it so I just played.I found Microsoft Paint inviting and simple.Later I found Artweaver and Paint.net which I used to manipulate my photographs
Lily pond
I only took photos because by error I bought a phone with a camera on it.Next time I’ll tell you how I wrote my first poems
I have received several books now written by or about Levinas.As you guess,they are quite hard so my time is taken up reading.The most hopeful one,The Cambridge Guide,is not here yet.but I think it will be more understandable than the others to an ignorant person like myself. I am unsure what I’ve done but this is coming out very much to one side so I shall just say.Hello and continue with my studies.I like this shy lion picture.
PS.Just got the Cambridge Guide and it looks quite approachable.
It was on this day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement, is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and igniting a more than year long bus boycott.
As African Americans previously made up 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The boycott ended December 21, 1956 – Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.
The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory. As we know, there would be many…
Protest against the Israeli attack on the Palestinians of Gaza held at the State Library 4 January 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: Photos of empty poison gas canisters and the hair of Jews, taken inside the memorial museum in the Auschwitz camp. z Taken by User:Palthrow. A picture (left) of Zyklon B canisters which produce a deadly gas. (Right) human hair from the people sent to these camps (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel) publicly pronouncing the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14 1948, Tel Aviv, Israel, beneath a large portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, in the old Tel Aviv Museum of Art building on Rothshild St. The exhibit hall and the scroll, which was not yet finished, were prepared by Otte Wallish. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Essentially powerless for some two thousand years, the Jew in exile, in his ghettos, amid the equivocal tolerance of gentile societies, was in no position to persecute other human beings. He could not, whatever his just cause, torture, humiliate, or deport other men and women. This was the Jew’s singular nobility, a nobility that seems to me far greater than any other. I hold it as axiomatic that anyone who tortures another human being, be it under compelling political, military necessity, that anyone who systematically humiliates or makes homeless another man, woman, or child, forfeits the core of their own humanity. The imperative of survival, the ethical ambiguities of its settlement in what was Palestine (by what sophistry does a non believing, – non-practising Israeli invoke God’s promise to Abraham?), have forced Israel to torture, to humiliate, to expropriate — though often to a lesser degree than its Arab and Islamic enemies. The State lives behind walls. It is armed to the teeth. It knows racism. In short: it has made of Jews ordinary men.”
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
― Jim Jarmusch
Wilson Van Dusen was a very interesting man.Some of his views I am unsure of but his book,The Natural Depth in Man,shows how much we don’t see normally when we look at others.
He was a mystic in a sense.And he worked with people with severe disturbances.His definition of madness that it renders the person useless.Also introspection is bad when one is in a vulnerable state.. better to do useful,practical tasks like sweeping the floor.And always be polite.In other words,stay in touch with others and this world.
An old lady may love who she pleases;
And get up to some very grey wheezes.
For nobody looks
Not even the spooks..
As with a feather she tickles and teases.
But whips are considered low class.
Ladies,please let that thought pass.
A hug and a kiss
Is what lone persons miss.
So why can’t we do it en masse?
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” — George Bernard Shaw
I do not agree that having thoughts,ideas or words in your head means that you are thinking.You may be obsessing or tormenting yourself….
Some quotes:
“Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
― Thomas A. Edison
I wonder who this stranger is,
Who read my poem and walked away,
But never weeping
On a nuclear power station in Japan
His eyes were on Libya
But he stopped here,and read and then passed
On across what was once a green English metaphor,
Garlanded with daisies.My hero,my Odysseus.
The metaphors were made for you.
The web was woven and unwoven,so
Wherefore art thou,Antonio?
Do not go gentle into that dark night
Send me an email
I’ll wash you with the grit of shells from Dover Beach,
Where the world collapsed into an arch
Across nothingness into zero itself,the sun,the moon.
All shrank into this diamond.
I give it to you,stranger.
These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago… I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.
Ansel Adams
How my heart sings 