Tag: power

Seeing the light

I could have died when witnessing the sight

The great cathedral floodlit in the night

My legs gave way I tumbled to the ground

Filled with joy so great it knew no bounds

I rose from my collapse on those wide stairs.

No one saw this happen,no one was there

Later I saw Blythburgh in the light

I feasted on this vision every night.

Inside the church the angels sailed above.

Inside myself I felt immense sweet love

Lying in my bed when sick and ill

I saw a green cathedral on a hill

And so I soothed myself with visions fair

The goodness of creation lingered there.

If man’s creation causes such effects

Who was it wrote the script and who directs?

Cracked shall be the golden bowl

Soul making is a phrase from Keats.{ link to article by Jeffrey C. Johnson in Paris Review]

We saw Wolf Hall on TV recently and it is so wonderful.I am just writing down a few  of my thoughts not  about that but about Anne Boleyn… I meant it to be funny but I couldn’t manage that after seeing the play.

ANNE BOLEYN

Anne Boleyn withheld to win
As Henry lusted in his sin.

Once a virgin,sweet Madonna;
Henry turned in rage on her.

She bore him but one living child,
For her quips,she was reviled.

Henry knew not the fault was his
It seems the king had syphilis.

Or Anne was rhesus negative
then just her first born child would live.

We women make our worst mistake
When power for love we wrongly take

Our strength lasts but till we submit.
We need less love and far more wit.

Whatever lusty men may say,
their “love” dies when they get their way.

And they will take their wife by force
As cannons pound on oaken doors.

As for women,we must not
Promise gold we have not got.

Conception is a game of chance;
it happens more by happy chance.

we sin in pride in promising
What only God or Nature bring.

We deceive and trick and charm
At last our hearts bang in alarm

The man who begged upon his knees
Chops off our heads when we displease.

For Emperors and Kings and Lords
Wield fearful power by the sword.

Yet when for judgement they shall stand
How will point the knowing hand?

And just like us they’ll ashen be
When true majesty they see.

Into dust and crumbled ruin
they will go by their own doings.

Each day create with grace your soul.
Cracked shall be the golden bowl.

Keats wrote this extract below [read all by clicking on soul above[ and he died when aged  only 25 years:

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!

Do we want to be equal?

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A jug by  Katherine
It seems that many  men and women loved ”  Fifty shades of grey”  which is sado-masochistic..I fear I only managed 5 pages and tossed it aside like an oldglove,as my husband used to say.But just now I was reading a little of a book whichmentions an issue close to that

The Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism

Mark Edmundson
Quote:Freud became preoccupied by tyranny.. with human beings hunger  for power…and  with the human desire to be dominated…..
Freud appeared to believe many of us like to be dominated and certainly the way many women dress nowadays and indeed in the last two hundred years at least in  Europe seems to show that they are prepared to suffer pain in order to gain male attention with shape-wear,underwired bras,high heels and also plastic surgery.
and they will do  all that to get a man and then complain when he asks them to boil a few hundred handkerchiefs or make a bed.Actually we bought our bed in a shop but you catch my drift?Do we really wissh to be equal politically or personally?

We think too much when we are powerless/feel we are powerless

This thought came to me last night.I looked  back to my adolescence and to my constantly thinking about my wishes,my needs,my sins,my guilt… and now I believe it was living in a very repressive home and school environment.I believe I was on the verge of madness.But luckily I got a full grant to go to University.That was so much better that my mind improved very much.I had my own money.. not alot,but sufficient.And people treated me with respect.No longer was I in a guilt ridden and powerless state.
 Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with us but our environment is not right.Also I was so totally lonely…no-one seemed interested in me.I had no money to go out.Thank goodness in that era the government paid for the  poorer students to go to college.

 That kind of thinking was more like brooding or ruminating…I had no obvious way out.