My 'What the hell!?' series is going along quickly

I am surprised by how many thoughts I have are exactly right for setting down in some way in my small book. It is also surprisingly upsetting. One leads on to another one. I didn't expect so many variations of shock, horror, sadness, anger, and plain fury. Will I burst into tears in the street? I have in the far and distant past, so I know it is entirely possible.

Last year I considered doing what I am doing now. It is turning out differently though and I am not tackling the topics I referred to in that post. They need to stay in their box for now. I don't even dream about them. I know they are in the past and can stay there for as long as necessary.

Go for it if you are considering writing some poems. Store (hide) them where only a fellow writer would look for them...

This has taken ages to work out

Someone on the ModPo facebook group asked me 'what is your religion?' I have written my reply taking from the 23rd until today. I'm quite surprised that I was able to do it, I thought I'd give up and rely on a one word answer. This is the sort of thing which comes up in our poetry discussions.

To come back to my religion...I was brought up Catholic in London, but went to a Church of England secondary school. I think this was a deliberate choice by my mother. I moved to the Church of England while at university and living abroad, a common thing. Then quickly decided the evangelical approach didn't respect individuals, just regarded them as targets for conversion. Eventually moved to the Quakers and hold on to my disagreements with the word God, and all other dogma. Silence and speaking from people's actual views is all I can tolerate now! So I'm probably not Christian any more, but it's the only religion I have reactions to and a familiarity with. I love the music, hymns, psalms and chants, Christmas carols and Handel's Messiah etc, so can't get away from it. When I visit my parents I sit with them and say all the words, get covered with incense, take communion and do a good impression of being a believer! And I get to hold onto my mother's arm which is lovely 

Feeling adored

The cat next door lies her lovely head on my right arm, purrs and tucks her left paw next to me. Every time she interacts with me it is different, yet it is always the same set of endless variations on being physically with me. Her nose is nearly inside my small book of "What the hell!?" poems, but not so close that her sleeping breaths shift the pages. I am typing left handed so I don't disturb her.

I must have been thinking too loudly because she just flicked her right ear at me.

I should be asleep

After 2 parties in one day, here is a first episode of a series about home education.

Raised by Wolves

Watch it quickly before the week is up.

I don't feel like a wolf, but maybe home ed mothers have pretty sharp teeth after all.

All dimensions of angry

Since my great aunt died at 98 earlier this month I have been experiencing surprising versions of anger.

At one point I was incensed by the English Language. Why did I have to know it, live my life via this medium, be defined by it and by my accent when uttering it? What choice did I have about it and how could I get it out of my head?

That sort of complaint is a bit like the ant shaking its tiny fist at the mountain it is standing on.

My mind surprised me again this afternoon by revealing that I am envious of and implacably opposed to the Earth and the Sun. How dare they have so much longer lives than me? I may be a physical product of them and be entirely dependent upon their thought-free, neutral, literally heartless selves, but I am appalled at the fragility of living creatures' minds and destinies compared to these vast chemical lumps which we are part of.

..stranger stars by far than ever shone in our night sky..

Do you recognise this?

It is from the intro to the first episode of the Clangers. I was at a party tonight. One of the topics which brought squeals of joy and delight from everyone was reminiscing about this.

Try it!

First Poetry Series

I have decided to use the phrase 'What the hell?!' as a starting point for a series of poems. Each one will have that as its title. I am not planning to share them, but I want to share the process as this is quite unexpected.

It is a phrase one of T's friends used a lot several years ago, so I have fond memories of that time in being a mother of teenagers when nothing they said bothered me much. Or is that my amnesia kicking in?

Since having this idea I have done over half a dozen. It is surprisingly liberating and the title applies to all manner of thoughts. I did several while spending time with Moore and Bacon this morning and a few just now sitting here.

To ployon - autonomous education again

Ancient Greek anyone? I found myself offering to teach H the first line in my Ancient Greek book when we were last out and about in our garden under the huge moon in the late evening. Since the answer was 'No', I quickly told him those first words and that they meant 'The boat'.

It all started when we were talking about the planets, stars, the sun and photons. Qi had told him about the great length of time the photons take to get to the surface of the sun. We mused over the inscrutable nature of light and I tried to point out a planet. Saying it was at 1 o'clock in relation to the moon didn't help. Pointing out Orion without a laser beam was difficult too.

Would you like it if I told you that I have started both my paragraphs with quotes from ModPo texts. I just got another one in there. This is where common texts turn into in-jokes and get irritating to outsiders.

Caroline Bergvall's VIA

Tracie Morris Africa(n) and with Val Jeanty

Gertrude Stein's Portrait of Picasso - video in French about her writing, art collection

Silent night

I found myself on a dark road singing along to Silent Night on the way to the station to pick up T after another welcome back from university pub night. It is strange to be looking at the non-existent conductor's eyes as I am driving along. Choir singing is so exact, the breath held right over the lines if there is no comma, the endings all made together and the words held right up and ahead of me, so I barely move my eyes from the lines to looking at the others.

My Christmas present to readers:

1. Take a walk around Kettles Yard in Cambridge and around the beautiful words:

http://usefulorbeautiful.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/way-of-life-kettles-yard.html

2. Take some inspirations from my 'New Things I Love 2013' Christmas card sheet:

New Things I Love - 2013

..Under Albany - Ron Silliman

..Setting up my grandfather's chair and my current reading to make a quiet corner 

..Day of Prayer at East Hagbourne Church - in spite of my questioning ways

..J and S's wedding

..Listening to the Proms all summer, reading and surfing at the same time, realising which orchestra I prefer - BBC National Orchestra of Wales

..Going to the OxArch open sessions run at the Ashmolean - old axe heads and flints

..Holding our own 2500? year old flint hand tool from the garden flower bed

..Joining in Ks writing group

..Saying hallo to the Gandhi Summer School group at the Abbey Sutton Courtenay

..Visiting B's community weekend at Brazier's Park

..C's architectural bonfire at Brazier's Park

..Having D and P plus family to stay - fun full house

..Getting to Wallingford Bunk Fest for the first time ever - I love being outdoors

.."Get Out" from the film score of "Leaving Las Vegas", sung by Maggie Nichols, search for "Mike Figgis - Get Out" on Google

.."Falile Se Kastelanke" song, last heard when I was 7, by Ansambl Dalmacija, ignore the corny video on YouTube though!

..Reading my own blog posts for fun!

...Writing 3 A4 pages each day as part of the Artist's Way

..Gertrude Stein - Would He Like It If I Told Him - live recording

..Being in the chorus for the village production of  'Joseph'

..Staying in a hotel round the corner from A and I's - then breakfast with them

..Trying out the new 24 buses in London - going down the back stairs like old times

..Getting back into the village pub singing group - I never knew I'd love belting out Paranoid by Black Sabbath! The 6 guitarists enjoy playing with each other so much.

..Visiting the London Library again after a very long time - walking inside the stacks

..Darting into MOMA Oxford before my Arabic class - all that space and whiteness

..Getting my Certificate of Completion for the ModPo class - I worked so hard for it

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Christmas Project: pick an older relative and do a written portrait of them on an A4 sheet of paper. 

Send to me for an exhibition here if you wish to share. I have done mine already, a series of questions addressed to my grandfather's grandmother. They say more about me than about her, but that's ok. It's a sort of conversation.

******************************************************************************************

Open Invitation to everyone: please consider joining ModPo this coming September 2014. 

It is a 10 week online course on Modern and Contemporary American Poetry run by Prof Al Filreis of the Kelly Writers House, part of the University of Pennsylvania. It had 37,000 people taking part at various intensities this year. Roughly half come from outside the USA and many have English as a second language. It is inspiring.

https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry

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I wish you a Joyful Christmas and a Wonderful New Year

Срећан Божић = Strechan Bosich = Happy Christmas in Serbian

Next batch of 5 blogs

http://sloopie72.wordpress.com/

http://talkingleavesblog.wordpress.com/

http://solsticemama-nell.blogspot.co.uk/

http://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.co.uk/

http://houseofaimless.wordpress.com/

ModPo classmates...home education....more classmates...

'..the insouciant armadillo..'

by Denise Levertov

Come into animal presence
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track and into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.

"Come into animal presence" by Denise Levertov, from Poems: 1960-1967. © New Directions, 1983. Reprinted by permission.

I stood and watched 2 reindeer breathing today. Their big sides went up and down. It is odd to be able to stand for as long as I wanted, watching them trapped in a fenced area in the centre of the town.

On the way back from London a few days ago I caught a brief glimpse of a huge pale brown owl on a branch on the other side of the road. It was free and immobile. I was rushing past, yet there it was.

I have read something useful at last

First my brother told me to look at a shop sign in Earl's Court. I was able to confirm that the English did indeed match the Arabic, though I hadn't expected the plural of shops to be mini-mart, but I guess that is pretty realistic.

Then, more revealingly, I discovered that Arab Spring is totally different, it is Arab Uprisings = al intifadat arabiya. No wonder people don't like the almost party atmosphere of the term Arab Spring. I actually read the words and got it, before clicking on translate to double check.

Born on the road to exile

I found out that my great aunt Milica (Militza) was born while the family was escaping from Belgrade to Salonika in Greece in 1915, in the middle of WW1. They had to stop so my great grand mother could have her 2nd child, the first was my grandmother, who was a toddler at that point. What a story! It makes Christmas look tame.

Our crib has a disco ball

H has been the one who is asking for me to get the decorations out at midnight or later, so it has taken a few days to have the discussion during the day. We took box after box of stuff down from the attic. We plopped it all down in the middle of the drawing room floor.

I feel totally unChristmassy this year, most unlike me. So I sat in a chair and watched H choose and decide. It's amazing to see someone else do the fossicking around to pick the right coloured baubles and have that intent look as they carefully hang the things around the tree.

Finally H gave me the crib and asked me to do that, so I perked up. It is the bit I like the best, romantic version of a pretty awkward situation. I'd be in divorce mode at travelling for a stupid census. I sorted out my kings, incorporated some totally unmatching animal life into the scene too, and finished it off with adding a green sparkly disco ball inside the stable. If I were Mary, I'd be entranced/marginally less angry at seeing that personal touch!

Breathtaking

I hope it is ok for me to transcribe and type out this snippet from a video I have been watching.

Pierre Joris was talking about the poetry of Paul Celan. The talk was given on 3rd December 2013, last Tuesday.

"...you do not learn to use the language. Language uses you. You enter language. Language was there before. When you die, language goes on. So you are only in there for a given moment. Language is always there up and beyond you."

Wow. When he said that the room went all quiet. That was the most breathtaking moment of the whole talk.

Did I really do that?

We are looking at Tender Buttons, A Frightful Release, by Gertrude Stein.

A FRIGHTFUL RELEASE. A bag which was left and not only taken but turned away was not found. The place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged..

My comment is:

"For some reason A Frightful Release makes me think of left luggage offices at railway stations. I had a huge row in public at one once, not something I am known for. I wanted to leave a bag full of my text books from university for my mother to collect soon and the man refused, due to security concerns. I dumped the bag on the ground and simply left it there in a total strop! My mother arrived later and collected it."

Can you see what I see?

This bright painting instantly made me think of a reversed 'لا' ie 'la'. Comment if you see it too.

https://twitter.com/Eva_Seb/status/408973023891693568/photo/1

I'm doing this instead of homework...

Early Dec 2013 new blog finds

http://threecuriousboys.wordpress.com/ Home ed, of course

http://scribblerbean.com/ ModPo, of course!

http://screamofconsciousnessetc.blogspot.in/ Also ModPo

Chanelling Silliman's Albany and Lyn Hejinian's My Life

I am in the middle of trying to create my Christmas A4 sheet to go in all my Christmas cards. I decided to just type out statement after statement on a text edit file, to print off, cut into lines and arrange artistically as in previous years.

I have just realised that it is just right as it is, so I shall cherish the unexpected result of my frustrations and use it like that. Thanks ModPo. You are great.

At the same time Anthony Risser's link to someone reading John Donne poems out loud on the Empty Plinth is playing in my ears. As T says: "Good times."

If you get one of my sheets remember it is just the good bits and was a tool I made up to deal with bad stuff. Do not be fooled by the wonderfulness. Just saying.

Listening to my heart

Last Sunday I sat for my hour at the Quaker Meeting, thinking, looking around etc.

Eventually I started feeling not just the beating of my heart, but the continual whooshing of the blood up and down and around the whole of my inner body.

How have I waiting all my life to hear what has been there all along? It was so peaceful and real. I feel like saying 'Hallo after all these years!' so I'm doing it now, here.

All new blogs added in November 2013

http://wovember.com/2013/10/27/the-wovember-wal/ Wool

http://notstrictlyhomeed.blogspot.co.uk Silent sheepdog training

http://prufrocksdilemma.wordpress.com/ Also doing ModPo class

http://faithmummy.wordpress.com/ Stuff

http://theinvisiblestrings.com/ More helpful stuff

http://mumblingsontheverge.wordpress.com/ To home ed or not to home ed

http://cadee.blogspot.co.uk/ Close reading poetry

http://djennedjenno.blogspot.co.uk/ Helping to preserve manuscripts in Djenne

http://www.asifyourlife.blogspot.co.uk/ Poetry in UK

http://peculiaritiesandreticences.wordpress.com/ Community TA from ModPo class

ModPo - Doing the work

4 types of work are listed in this piece I found in a book. The 4th one is applicable to ModPo I think:

http://shinynewcomputer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/four-types-of-work.html

So while we have focused on interacting with each piece done by the poets in the syllabus, 'doing the work' of analysis, personal response and reflection, the team running the course has been doing a greater work.

Who has been sleeping on my laptop?

Judging by the fact that it was set to dark, and then when I got the light back, all sorts of windows were open....it must have been the cat from next door.

Beautiful home ed Ted talk

11 minutes discussing home education

http://unschoolery.com/hackschooling

Have a look at the comments too, don't get stuck on the first couple of comments though.

Fruit and vegetables

I am fed up with my cold. I have decided to go on a health kick and cut out all the baddies. This is partly to end my cold and partly vanity, because a friend once said I looked wonderful and the only thing which had changed was a healthy diet for a few days!

Counting heads

I mentally think of where my parents are: Dumfriesshire; T: Cambridgeshire; the rest of us: right here.

Sometimes I think of a relative and wonder for a moment whether they are still alive. That is a version of counting heads too.

Sir Nigel Rodley, UN Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez, His Majesty King Hamad of Bahrain

Careful words in this assessment of the progress made in Bahrain since the publication of the BICI report. So many people worked hard on this, risked sharing information, gave so much time and nervous energy to it.

Assessment: http://bahrainjdm.hopto.org/2013/11/22/bici-commissioner-view-on-implementation-2-years-after/

The BICI report itself is detailed and is a hard read if you did what I did and read it from beginning to end. It is split into many different sections, so just go to the section you want to look at.

BICI report: http://www.bici.org.bh/

Sir Nigel Rodley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_S._Rodley

Juan Mendez: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_E._M%C3%A9ndez

His Majesty King Hamad of Bahrain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamad_bin_Isa_Al_Khalifa

Jennifer Scappettone

I'm going through the forums on ModPo to read and comment about Scappettone.

Then I went to the rest of the internet and found some great lines from an interview she did:

"LH: When you review, do you focus on a particular text (poem, story), the book at hand, the author’s body of work? Do you think this choice of focus influences criticism, or your own criticism, and if so, how?

JS: I zoom in and out.  My best thoughts arise in states of unfocus, or focus on something utterly unlike (running, chopping, riding a subway), then migrate to unexpected contexts.  It would be interesting to do a publication that “reviewed” single lines or sentences."

My bolding!

"LH: What do you hope to achieve by writing about writing? Do you believe that reviews can actually bring new readers to texts?

JS: I hope to honor marginalized or invisible intellectual and aesthetic labor, attract stranger to stranger, & burn through prior horizons of the possible.  Yes."

More of my bolding.

http://lemonhound.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/on-reviewing-jennifer-scappettone.html

I never thought I'd hear this song again... but here it is "FALILE SE KASTELANKE" :

When I was little we had a record of Serbian folk songs. All I have ever remembered is the phonetic 'falile se kastilanke' sound. I decided to search on YouTube and up it popped. It is the exact same recording. I recognise the men's voices, the guitars, every note :) I am so happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsPAB_e_fIk

Welcome to a bit of my childhood.

Oh my God...here is the actual cover:

http://www.discogs.com/Ansambl-Dalmacija-Falile-Se-Ka%C5%A1telanke/release/1945501

Bowie night on the radio show, now until 8.30pm roughly:

http://www.centovav3.shoutstream.co.uk/start/leighton/

T and O are busy upstairs doing this.

Take a poetry trip inside the White House

I'm so enjoying this long video from the White House. Kenneth Goldsmith and Alison Knowles, both so very radical. So much laughter in the room, such great funny challenging answers.

Beautiful, shocking poems from the students later on in the film.

I haven't gone to the beginning, bit I assume it's great there too.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/05/11/poetry-student-workshop-white-house

Ongoing conversations about birth and everything

Every Monday morning my gardener comes over to put 3 hours into chopping and neatening up our garden. What really happens is 2.5 hours of gardening and 30 minutes of coffee and chatting about life. Over time we talk about all sorts of things and can build on previous conversations. Since he has daughters and I have sons we share info about that. The younger generation is growing up and giving us food for thought in our little parenting group of 2.

Home education - article by home ed person

http://www.utne.com/politics/democratic-education-of-unschoolers

Written by Astra Taylor of the USA.

PennSound Radio

Intense, but available online.

http://tunein.com/radio/PennSound-Radio-s151308/

Poetry channel.

An old draft post, still worth reading

I'm so cross, the FT has a big article with statistics blaring out about the % of babies born to 'foreign born mothers' presumably as if that is a bad thing. I want to wear a big t shirt saying 'born to a foreign born mother and father = double points!!' Most of their journalists will come from such a lovely situation too. It's not a thing, as my son would say.

.....

Maybe this was in the run up to the Immigration Bill debate. When that happened I wrote a protest letter to my MP and was sent a lovely copy of Hansard by return giving the transcripts of the debate. It was good to read, lots of forthright and supportive comments from various MPs.

I am an art gallery

This is what I woke up thinking last Sunday, just like that, a complete statement. The essay we were asked to do the next day was based on a poem called 'Why I Am Not A Painter', which includes the phrase 'I am a poet'. So I have been pondering this and then acting on it. Now I have several A4 print outs of photo portraits of my near family on the wall next to my desk.

That just gets me to 'I am a curator', so I have a little way to go before I become the Tate with its huge halls, marble floors and my memories of that clanking piano which was suspended from the ceiling and crashed open every few minutes. Though inside my mind I have the Rothko room. To me it never moved away from the old Tate. I have enough vast buildings in my brain to last me a lifetime...

...try Derek Jarman's garden:

http://wellywoman.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/garden-tour-derek-jarmans-garden/

Up until the end of Oct - New Blogs List

Magma Blog

13-ways-of-making-poetry-a-spiritual-practice

http://clarepollard.wordpress.com/2011/12/

http://pvmaro.blogspot.co.uk/ Home educating father

http://www.webofstories.com/play/richard.wilbur/64 Poetry site, this page is of Richard Wilbur reading out, then discussing 'Cottage Street, 1953'

http://neuropsychological.blogspot.co.uk/ Written by Anthony Risser, one of the ModPo students. He goes to the live broadcasts sometimes too.

What a relief, I have submitted my assignment

I have been working on this ever since Monday. I could have written reams. The more I wrote and then had to cut dramatically, the more individual words started dancing around in front of me saying 'look at me, explore all my meanings'. The shortest words started to need long paragraphs.

Even the title was a hurdle. First I had a really creative one. Then I decided that anyone given my title to review would give up on the spot. It didn't have words, just symbols. Oh well, I enjoyed typing it out, even if I then deleted it.

The poem was by Frank O'Hara

Why I Am Not a Painter 

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Now I'd like to look at the actual painting and the actual series of 12 poems.

60 Songs of Awesome - Radio Show on now

http://www.centova3.shoutstream.co.uk:2199/start/leighton/

Apparently they have 60 songs so will have a longer show than usual.

2010 - 2013 I think.

For reference: Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

Tender Buttons

Ongoing close readings are here at The Steiny Road

I'm going to suggest to myself that I write out each one by hand as I get to it, starting from the current one, Mildred's Umbrella, and catching up as and when.

ModPo....join if you dare...putting the link again would be overkill, so I won't.

---

I now see there are three parts to Tender Buttons: Objects, Food and Rooms.

Live now: The Noughties on the Radio Show

Radio Tom and Oli

The Noughties

Now until 7.30 or 8pm

http://www.centovav3.shoutstream.co.uk/start/leighton/

ModPo - I am wondering how it will change

The class finishes on 18th November. I wonder how the discussions will continue on the forums. Will we continue to focus on each poet and be able to add new threads to widen those discussions?

Last year the built up volume of discussion was deleted the day before this year's ModPo started, so I assume the same thing might happen again.

I have read that the videos and sound links will stay live right until ModPo starts again next year too. If I go to Breakfast 2.2, the second timers' conversation, I might find out a bit more.

By the way, to anyone reading this, do consider joining the course while it's still possible to do so, then you'll have free access to the syllabus and discussion forums for a good few months of study in your own time. How good is that?

ModPo2013

90's Night - Radio Show from now until 8pm

The link is: Thomas and Oli

The kitchen has loads of pizza, I have put the link on the local home ed facebook list. Now to read some more poetry with loud music in my ears. No wonder I am rather deaf.

School's out - sense of freedom - Work begins

Even though I went to school and left at 18 I don't remember this incredible sense of freedom that I'm getting as a parent.

I am out of The System which I have feared and had to deal with without showing my fear for so many years. Even when the system is as good and thoughtful and well-meaning as possible, it is still a place of control and fear. Maybe it's just me, but even so, what a difference!

I feel as if we are a family again. I am a parent again. I hadn't been aware of how much I'd lost since 2000.

The home education of H continues in its highly autonomous way. That's just our household and goes on through the seasons.

T starts work tomorrow morning, so is not making the move to uni for a year. That makes it feel like Christmas, all of us still here under one roof, putting beds together, doing things to the MG. Which has just given off pretty noxious exhaust, I even smelt it at my desk at the far side of the kitchen... so much for lyrical moments!

'This evening, the ponds and lakes will be jumping, but I will be elsewhere.'

'I prefer to set off for a night stroll at dusk. Not only can the eyes adjust more effectively than if I stepped directly into full darkness from a lit room, I like the way my familiar surroundings are differently transformed as I walk through them. Somethings melt into their background, others remain solidly fixed yet reveal surprising new identities. Also there is sometimes an interesting meeting between diurnal and nocturnal nature, like when early bats and late swallows swoop together or a hare is startled by a badger.'

From Nightwalk by Chris Yates
Published 2012 by Collins

I am reading this a page at a time when I sit in my paternal grandfather's prayer chair each day. I have no idea where it will take me. I hope on a good mysterious walk! It comes from the library, so I may get a used copy online to be able to read it as slowly as I am planning. An early Christmas present to myself.

Listen Up

Radio show from our upstairs right now:

http://www.centovav3.shoutstream.co.uk/start/leighton/

I'm writing one of many, many Amnesty letters for Bahrain. Killing 3 birds with one stone.

Ezra Pound and the hundreds of essays submitted last weekend on ModPo

I have been working on these 20 words for over a day. I didn't really want to move beyond the title! It is 'In a Station of the Metro' by Ezra Pound. Actually, let's add in the 4 spaces and the 3 pieces of punctuation.

In a Station of the Metro

BY EZRA POUND

The apparition       of these faces       in the crowd   :

Petals      on a wet, black    bough   .

The essay assignment on 'I taste a liquor never brewed' by Emily Dickinson was due last weekend. I did one! The number of assignments listed per page, 25, multiplied by the current number of pages listing individual assignments, 78, = 1950. Can you even imagine that number of 500 word essays? Each of the assignments are allotted to 4 other people to peer assess. I did my 4 peer assessments. That was a very hard thing to do. I agonised and fussed and deleted and altered mine.

I deliberately decided to do mine raw. So I didn't look at any other reviews, just worked it out for myself. Since then I have done maybe 3 more. From just reading 7 or so essays I am amazed at the sheer variety in thought processes between different people. My thing is the vocabulary the writers' use. It shows so clearly the qualities they value. Based on the same short poem we were asked to do a close reading on, out came an endless stream of different takes on the world. Does English have enough words to cover the variety of views? Clearly, yes.

The main lesson of this course so far is "focus". It is absolutely impossible to do all the work. Dealing with this impossibility is crucial. I still feel like a horse which went out for a canter and found itself on TV doing the Grand National. Pleased to have finished standing! That was week 3 and there are 10 in all :)

Middle of Sept new blog list

http://johnwreford.wordpress.com/ Damascus and now Istanbul

http://robinheyden.wordpress.com/ Education ideas, see if you can find the island on Second Life which a study group took over and renovated.

http://poetrymap.wordpress.com/ Poetry project based in Sheffield

http://www.laughingmaus.com/ Germany

http://tomcollins2013.wordpress.com/ Met Seamus Heaney

http://woodbloodink.blogspot.co.uk/ From London

http://leidenhomelearners.wordpress.com/about/ Home ed in the Netherlands

Home Education in the Netherlands

I have just heard that the Netherlands is considering banning home education. Please have a look at this English language website and sign the petition designed for us in the international community.

leidenhomelearners

It is so important for people in different countries to support each other. During year or so following the Badman report here I was so encouraged to read posts online from other countries far away. They gave tips on how to handle the situation and understanding words.

Midnight surprises

Listen to this with headphones on and eyes tightly shut. Think of all those irrevocable moments and decisions.

I heard this on Radio 3's Late Junction last night and found it via iplayer.

"Get Out" from the film score of "Leaving Las Vegas". Sung by Maggie Nichols.

One of my jobs as a parent is done

This very evening T and friend O have been eating delicious looking steamed prawn dumplings and sticky spare ribs. I have just had the 2 left over prawns!

I have completely bypassed the recommended method of introducing middle class accepted foodstuffs to the younger generation. No offering foods 7 or 27 times to ensure eventual acceptance.

Just continue with the pizzas with a happy heart until the great day when you hear that they have been out to a restaurant in a bigger town and have discovered much more sophisticated items for themselves. You may get the classic insult that your home cooking is horrendously boring, but that's ok.

I have to say that this method has taken 17 years to bear fruit, from the petit filou stage to steamed prawns.

My ethos has been that food is meant to be familiar, tasty, reassuring, enjoyable. If coco pops ticks those boxes, then choose coco pops and enjoy them.

ps I have tried the cross, grumpy, horrible approach at times. It is a total waste of emotion and negates lots of good mother points which had previously been earned with carrying, being patient etc.

Attention switch

This feels odd. Because I am taking part in ModPo my focus is on writing comments over there on their 2013 site. So any reading I'm doing is linked to that and I have no time left over!

The other thing is that the Arabic course for this autumn, my second academic year, has been cancelled and we are yet to make concrete plans for classes with our teacher in Oxford. So my focus on writing out the alphabet each day of I can and going through previous chapters of vocab has gone.

Just writing this reminds me of how far I have come and how a lack of current classes is not a dead end, just a detour.

I'll remind the world of the numbers now, 1 to 5:

واحد  اثنان  ثالثة  اربعة  خمسة

Totally engrossed in ModPo

I can't believe it, I am part of a project linked to the University of Pennsylvania. It is an online course on Modern American Poetry. You should see the titles of the discussion threads! Emily Dickinson was the last few days, now we are in Walt Whitman land.

Someone suggested writing poems ourselves in the style of each poet. I couldn't believe I was simply taking blank bamboo paper out of my printer and just writing. I have done 2 in Dickinson's style and 1 in Whitman's style so far. I found myself going out for a nighttime walk in order to prepare for the Whitman one. Very appropriate, all that nature and rain outside our door.

The enthusiasm and openness of the contributors to the threads is so encouraging. I am a very happy person. Please give it a go. The less you know about American literature, history or poetry the better, the more there is to interact with as a fresh mind, taking it all in for the first time.

https://www.coursera.org/

Start of Sept (new blogs since last time)

http://renieddolodge.co.uk/ Feminist blog, because this is still a problem. I can't believe it is still a problem, but maybe it is a problem the way lots of things need to be worked on every day. You don't just polish a window once and it never needs doing again.

http://chitrasudhanagarajan.wordpress.com/ Activism, again, I can't believe I'm reading about the same old crap, some of which I have experienced.

http://midlifebatmitzvah.wordpress.com/ American, empty nester, Jewish, reflective, personal.

http://syriancrisis.wordpress.com/ Syria.

http://www.imtidadblog.com/ I'm sure I used to follow this one, anyway here it is again. Libya.

Festival

It has taken me the full 15 minutes I gave myself to upload this photo. It is of the warm colours of the woollen poncho I bought from the Wallingford Bunk Fest music festival today.

Next year I shall be there for as much as I can be of the 3 day festival. Being outdoors is so good for my face, I can feel it glowing from the sun and fresh air.

The Irish dancing was amazing, so dramatic, loud and boistrous.

---

I read some Arabic upside down, and even spotted a typographic error. The words were the answers to an exercise involving first names and I didn't want to turn the book upside down!

Village road

I drove really slowly behind a tractor and trailer laden with huge straw bales. We ambled along with bits of yellow straw flying around, particularly as the tall wobbly load brushed past trees. Then we were slowed down even more: there was a horse and rider ambling along! I tried to look at the expressions on the faces of the drivers coming past the other way. Surely they'd be smiling in a sympathetic way.

It was a lovely moment. That phrase 'trailing clouds of glory' came to mind as that was exactly what was happening. No one hooted or got cross.

Book ruffles peaceful afternoon

I'm reading A Casual Vacancy after my mother in law enthused about it and lent me her copy. I had a few moments thinking about the books I really wanted to be reading: suburban life of Harry Potter jumped over in first book, home life of the Weasleys, the parents of Harry Potter. It is an odd feeling being convinced that if she wished to, J K Rowling could just bring these out from the ether where the stories are waiting. I can't be the only one.

My mother in law and I have already had some heated discussions about the book. I was appalled by a character slapping her mother in the face. That is a total no-no to me. She hadn't noticed it as such. It is amazing how different people have such different sensitive points.

When she had given me a rough outline of the story I was convinced that a pregnant 16 year old girl being taken in by a middle aged couple would require the wife stopping work immediately. I would want to ensure a caring environment for the 16 year old and lots of practical and emotional care. She saw it completely differently and regarded the young character as grown up. We come from entirely opposite view points. I would imagine a middle aged woman wanting to ensure it was a safe household, ensuring more childhood and maturing time for a young woman.

Anyway, it is interesting chatting about it as I read through it. We had a peaceful time on the front lawn in the sunshine chewing it over. I might ask to be a guest visitor to her book group when they discuss it next Monday night.

Full house and lots of parenting articles

We have said good bye to the family who came to stay with us from Sunday afternoon. The house is so empty and silent now. We played most of the time and the rest of the time was eating and sleeping.

They went to Oxford and learnt how to punt; played croquet; went on a zip wire; threw boules and bounced on our trampoline.

The pool table I haven't been able to get rid of was a favourite. The 3 children chatted and played, played and chatted. The cue splits in two so the separate pieces were short enough not to accidentally break a window or a picture.

We played squeaky chairs at the table and I passed round little squares of paper and the biro so we could collectively create fantasy beasts starting with a trunk portion and adding all sorts of legs as it went round the table.

The last good game was a simplified I-spy.....I-spy with my little eye, something yellow/round/eckig (lots of corners). I wonder whether that has taken them over the Channel, across France and down the Autobahn?

Today I have found a number of articles on parenting in different countries, seen by outsiders:

Mexico

Norway

Northern Ireland 

Japan

France

Denmark

Congo

August new blog finds (fins!)

http://m.vice.com/read/it-dont-gitmo-better-than-this-0001000-v20n8?Contentpage=-1 Molly Crabapple writes here, I know of her from Twitter.

http://cleycontemporaryart.blogspot.co.uk/ This church in Norfolk holds art exhibitions while carrying on as a parish church with weddings, funerals etc. Our house could do with an artist in residence and an pianist in residence as a monthly festival every so often.

http://harryfergusonk17.wordpress.com/ He is fasting for a week in support for Shaker Aamer and the other prisoners at Guantanamo, cleared for release but still held. It is a rolling hunger strike, different people taking over as one striker finishes.

http://www.gsheller.com/page/2 Also titled "Small Things".

http://bluegateanthology2013.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/kathy-greethurst.html Well, I know the poet and was part of the group she read this poem to. I keep on encouraging her to do some YouTube films of each poem because seeing and hearing the writer present their work is such a favourite thing of mine!

Just listening to someone's voice

I am preparing for the online poetry course by coursera which starts in September. It is called ModPo and not surprisingly is all about Modern American Poetry.

My ears are very unattune to American accents. I thought I had lived my whole life with all the different varieties of American language, Nixon on the radio to Obama and Jay Carney.

I find I really need to see the words in front of me, but they are not there. All I can do is shut my eyes so that all of my brain is trying to follow the words. When it is unfamiliar poetry the result is that I'm simply experiencing the sound of the poet's voice as he or she speaks her soul to a room in a live performance. I miss so many words that I can't get the meaning at all!

John Ashbery audio clips on PennSound

Firm enemies

As man and wife they were rarely troubled
by the surge of raging scattergun hormones
and, in time, they became firm enemies,
probing each other's weaknesses on a daily basis,
like two animals not of the same species:
her deep growls, his nervous inopportune
laughter. He was her jumpy, half-starved hyena
and she was his ill-tempered lioness,
roaring for the children they could never have.
They lived and died in their council flat.
But they had their moments. He kept goldfish
and she gave food to the neighbours' cats.

Poem called "Coupled"
By Jim Alderson
In issue no 62 of Obsessed with Pipework

Day without Twitter & Shaker Aamer

I found out about #TwitterSilence last night after midnight because people were tweeting about it and linking to blog posts. So I read them and then joined in.

That's wierd because I haven't been back yet to see what is going on with the Great Silence. I do feel as if I can't go into one of the rooms in my house. There's a tussle between my wish to retweet useful things to support Bahrain etc, and the knowledge that acting with many others is a one off chance.

The best thing about this was that the most important tweet from yesterday kept on ringing around in my mind. I told several people about it today at coffee after Meeting and it was surprisingly powerful and encouraging:

Clive Stafford-Smith had written that Shaker Aamer in Guantanamo has been turning to singing as part of his repertoire of actions as a prisoner. The best part of this is that he has been singing "Get Up, Stand Up" by Bob Marley and "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics. What great songs!

When I told the other people they got that worried, serious look as they brought Shaker Aamer to mind. Then as I mentioned the song titles they just smiled and relaxed. It was a big gift of happiness from Guantanamo.

Really the situation is very grave, but any glimmer of cheerfulness is a bonus. Molly Crabapple did a written piece with drawings on Guantanamo Bay a few days ago.

More July Blog Finds

http://haroldthing.blogspot.co.uk/ I like the short written pieces from a while ago. No current work, but who knows when he may restart? The writer publishes a poetry magazine I enjoy, 'Obsessed with Pipework'. Where did that name come from?

takemetoafrica I don't know how I stumbled across this one. The writer is on a trip returning to her birth country. A brave step.

shiningegg Lots of links in the text. I like the photos and the art. I look forward to reading back through the archives. Linking to a blog is like buying a book which keeps on getting extra chapters in it.

ambientehotel Try it and see. I got there via a book review

markneary1dotcom1 This blog's real name is 'Love, Belief and Balls'! I signed something on Twitter or somewhere else to back up this family a while ago, so it's very good to see them reunited. Similar to seeing an Amnesty person being released from a hideous jail and popping up on Twitter again on my timeline.

http://zisforzen.com/2012/02/ I added this one because I like the way the writer reflects on her own reactions to things and because she's experimenting with unschooling. She's also into RDI, which I never got beyond the first page on, though it looks very helpful.

http://ethicalfeminism.wordpress.com/ It's time for me to learn more about current feminism. I'm so glad it has come back to the fore after all these years.

http://www.karlremarks.com/ Sending up Middle East politics.

http://thescallopshell.wordpress.com/ Another poetry blog, direct writing, linked to current events, eg The Baby and the Hot Weather.

A 12 year old's view of going to Meeting in the Shetlands

"One thing I like about going to meeting in Shetland is that you go to lots of different people's houses. Sometimes we go to this peerie (small) chapel beside Helen and Tom's but that's not very often.

Best of all is Jenni's house. She lives in a croft house with one room. She has a spinning wheel and a box bed, a braaly (excellent) old cooking stove with lots of doors in it. She has a long wooden seat with sheepskins and her window sills are full of flower pots. You can see the sea very near and you can hear it and hear the wind and sea gulls and goats.

Next best is Whalsay where the Dallys live because we get to go there on two long ferry crossings and you can watch sea-birds and islands and cliffs. You can see all the houses in Symbister from their house and the new Leisure Centre is being built next door. In 1992 we might be able to go swimming because that's when the pool is supposed to be finished."

From 'Quakers in Scotland, an anthology of the thoughts and activities of the religious Society of Friends past and present"
Published by The Religious Society of Friends, Scotland in 1989

I have a small role in the Wallingford Meeting, to rearrange the book display in our little library once a month, to encourage people to take books to borrow. I bet you can see where this is leading. I now find that I borrow some of the books each time I alter the display. Scottish independence was in the news when I changed them around last time.

Finding your own style

This woman decided to do something after the Riots in August 2011. She started to do random acts of kindness for strangers each day, often involving £1 coins or £5 notes. If you start from the beginning you will see that it takes her a while to find her own style! Once she does she has a range of things to do and is able to have the items to hand whatever is going on in her life. Amazing and inspiring.

http://www.366daysofkindness.com/day-197/

I have been staying up far too late, yet again, so I am linking to the page I have got to, number 197. It is a bit obsessive to literally read each page, but that's what I do if I am taken by something.

Do you want to join in with me, starting from Monday 29th, tomorrow, or rather technically today? Why not?

Burials, fresh flowers and leaves

A long silence lies between us and our distant relatives, the Neanderthals, but one discovery surely speaks: a grave lined with pine boughs and flowers. These few bright blossoms and scented branches blow down the millenia and bring a breath of common humanity. No louder message may come: one may interpret as one will. This non-utilitarian act may say that here are creatures feeling loss, knowing respect and choosing a way of response. Liking flowers too! We recognise them not by the shape of their skulls or by their technology, but by their values and sensibilities. Freed from total expediency they were moved by other forces: by impulses we know in ourselves. No clods these Neanderthals, but beings already leavened, insprited.

From the start of chapter 1 of In and Out the Silence
By Elizabeth Brimelow
Published by Quaker Home Service in 1989

Flying Ants Day

There are 2 elements of summer going on in our village today: it is flying ants day and spread manure on the fields day.

Wow, they have some strong manure this time. For the past few days it has been over by the next town, Wallingford, and I'd been feeling smug that we didn't have it round here, then I realised what had happened when I woke up today.

My mother in law saw the flying ants by our back door this morning and decided to kill them all for us. I can't see what the problem is as all they want to do is fly off and mate mid air or something. That really doesn't upset my housekeeping plans. So I have been pouring water over my back door fern and parsley to make sure they don't die after their big dose of pesticide.

I am feeling particularly saintly as I have not caused an argument over this and far worse things are happening in Egypt... Shall I write some letters for Amnesty Egypt?

In other news, we had a lot of rain, which created puddles I haven't seen before, flowing across a road in Wallingford and also filling some pot holes left over from the winter. It's a good thing I know where they all are and it wasn't dark either.

The South of France - Le Midi

My writing group always gives me ideas. This time a door was opened into a chunk of my childhood which smells of Ambre Solaire and the very hot, dry sand at the private beach of St Tropez in the 70's. Wow, the sand was so hot. I'd have to almost dance across it, then it was just as hot on the wooden walkways, also partly covered with sand.

The house of my great aunt and uncle had a 'cave', ie a wine cellar. I was taken down there once. This blog post reminded me of that. It was damp and cool. What a great place to have as a back up if it all got too hot. Somehow the house always had cool places though. It must have been designed for the summers. The floors were tiled and the corridors were always shady and slightly dusty and cobwebby.

There was a garage down the slope which didn't have a car in it, but was for playing ping pong. I didn't fancy that, but it was cool there too.

My great uncle, Oncle Pierre, used to go out with the hose and water the base of the big shrubs all around the house each morning. I wonder whether he did it in the evening too, or am I getting mixed up and he only did it in the evening.

There was a path with trees and more shade down to the pool area. beside the pool there was a modern, stone built guest house with a kitchen/bar for drinks and having lunch with a built in barbeque oven in the wall. Behind there were loos and showers. How amazingly luxurious and civilised this all sounds. Rather James Bond. I stayed in the little guest room once I was 16, old enough not to drown in the night. When I was younger I knew that my grandmother, Raymonde, my great aunt's sister, stayed in that building and it sounded very mysterious. The window was made of thick pieces of glass, all different colours. So being in there was peaceful and beautiful, particularly during the sleeping time after lunch each day, when the day light came through.

The glasses used at table were quite different from in Paris. They were thick and of different colours. The glass was uneven and had bubbles in it. What a thrill! When I was older and spent time with my great aunt in Paris she explained how you wear different clothes in the 'Midi', ie the South of France and couldn't wear them back in Paris. I guess that went for cutlery, glasses etc. The whole life style was a break from the precise requirements of the capital. Village life here is not the same as London...

There was a whole wall of book cases in the main open plan reception room, filled with art books and magazines. For some reason I didn't look at them, maybe they were for adults and too good for children to handle and 'abimer', spoil or ruin. Running up between the bookcases and the wall was a staircase with hard steps, going up to the corridor for the bedrooms.

It is amazing how I can remember all these details. It feels so close, as if I could just walk into these scenes. I have no wish for travel at the moment, nothing could compare to these glimpses of the past anyway. Village life has its own sensations I don't have to travel for, just breathe in as they happen.

Don't be fooled by the light heartedness of this extract

Sarsara mourned for her son quietly, as if a sparrow had died at the sunset hour. We buried her only son in the village cemetery and went back to our daily concerns. Sarsara looked after her son's sheep and started to live in seclusion, protected by an aura of respect. One day Sarsara went out to graze her animals in the direction of the southern pastures on the way to the desert. She loaded her tent and some provisions on her donkey and set off with twenty sheep and three dogs. This trip to the pastures would normally last three days. But Sarsara didn't come back to the village for five years.

From the story 'Sarsara's Tree'
In the collection 'The Iraqi Christ'
By Hassan Blasim
Published in English translation from the Arabic by Comma Press 2013
Translator is Jonathan Wright

There are loads of other sections I could have picked, but as the blurb says on the back: 'At first, you receive Blasim's work with the kind of shocked applause you'd award a fairly transgressive stand-up. You're quite elated. Then you stop reading it at bedtime.' This turns out to be a quote from a blog by M John Harrison, which I have found here.

There are many glimpses of his life in reading and writing strewn about in the stories. I got the earlier collection of his work from the library, but need to buy it for myself now. It is called 'The Madman of Freedom Square', also from Comma Press.

Peering over the cliff edge

'what could one do but watch?
The sea heaved; fulmars
slid by on static wings;
the shark - not ready yet
to re-enter the ocean
travel there, peaceable and dumb -

waited, and was watched;
till it all became
unbearable, whereupon the wind
in its mercy breathed again
and far below the surface
glittered, and broke up.'

From the poem 'Basking Shark'
In the collection 'The Tree House'
By Kathleen Jamie
Published by Picador Poetry in 2004

Pre-war Syria

'Have any of you ever heard an owl at night? Every year we used to go somewhere near the coast, an isolated house where orange trees bordered us on three sides while the sea occupied the fourth. I would take pleasure in the stillness there. Stillness doesn't mean the absence of sounds, not at all, but rather the tranquillity that allows one to perceive quiet, soft and distant sounds. In addition to the sound of the waves crashing a the rocks on the distant shore and the crowing of the rooster before dawn in the outlying village, there are other sounds that leave a perpetual yearning for that tranquil place in the soul, including the sound of water babbling in a small brook or the lowing of a cow or a dog barking in a remote village and, last but not least, the hooting of the owl that feels sated after catching a mouse and ravenously devouring it.

The most beautiful sound in the world is the voice of the muezzin making his calls to prayer from the minaret three kilometres away from my building as the city slumbers in a deep sleep, as all modes of transportation stop moving, as the streets are emptied of people and cars, and as the TV stops broadcasting the Leader's speeches.

But the most beautiful thing is the entire universe is the silence that allows us to hear soft and distant sounds.'

From 'The Silence and The Roar'
By Nihad Sirees
Published first in Arabic in 2004
Now published by Pushkin Press 2013

The Afterword makes the point that the situation in the book now seems like a lucky golden age, hardly the author's intention when he was writing it:

'There is another kind of roar that this author never thought the leader would ever be capable of using; the roar of artillery, tanks and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities. The leader is levelling cities and using lethal force against his own people in order to hold on to power. We must ask, alongside the characters in this novel: what kind of Surrealism is this?'

'I always love the moment you appear,
sudden and entire, where just a second
ago was air. There is a charge. Eyes, hair.
Something moves around you. So
it was last night, in the Festival Hall bar:
I looked straight from a woman who sees the world
blue, to you. Where was, where just had been,
no you at all. Then a momentary mirage
and colouration turning to solid; you smile,
most real person in the hall.'

From 'The Best Scarf in London: a Picaresque'
By Katy Evans-Bush
In the collection 'Egg Printing Explained'
Published by Salt in 2011

I also loved

'Thibault's Ribbon' ' His tail fans out along the speckled pebbles, smoothing them as it goes: does it feel the pebbles, or do they feel it?'

and

'Portrait of Ida' 'watching her husband, the painter, paint her.'

Trying to work out what went wrong

And slowly he starts to seem more far
away, he seems to waft, drift
at a distance, once-husband in his grey suit
with the shimmer to its weave - his hands at his sides,
as if on damselfly wings he seems
to be borne through the air past my window. And a breeze
takes him, up and about, he is like
a Chagall bridegroom, without the faith-
fulness, or with a faithfulness which can
change brides once, he is carried, on a current,
like a creature of a slightly other species,
speech unwoken, in him, as yet,
and without the weight to hold him to
the ground. ...

From a poem 'Slowly He Starts'
In the collection 'Stag's Leap'
By Sharon Olds
Published by Cape Poetry in 2012

I have found it incredibly hard to pick a section to write here. Just read the whole collection.

That looks odd

I was surprised by seeing some rain and water on TV. It seemed like something I used to know about in another life. It seemed very liquid and on the ground-ish. Is it just me, or do other people get this weather amnesia?

Musical evening

I was trying to listen to the Prom from my spot on the sofa.

Then I was needed to do things to pizza in the kitchen. I cut a deal which was that I'd do those things in return for a chess game with H in the drawing room. This led to me putting T's Daft Punk record on. There are new big wonderful speakers standing there in the middle of the rug in front of the fireplace. So that meant the Proms plus Feeling Lucky all at once.

Then the church bells started because the ringers practice every Tuesday evening. The icing on the cake was the beeper from the oven in the kitchen.

So there is a snippet from the heatwave of 2013.

Latest blog finds

Poetry

http://www.shakethedust.co.uk/shaker/poetry-changed-me-claire-trevien/

http://carolpeters2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Arctic Sea Ice

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/

Faiths

http://coffeeshoprabbi.com/page/2/

http://stephencherry.wordpress.com/ 

Misc

http://benhewitt.net/

http://alanna-somuchlove.blogspot.co.uk/ 

http://www.full-stop.net/category/blog/

Have fun.

***

I bought some seeds and there's some Arabic on the packet!:

Chard = ساقية = salqiya

I'm now confused by my dictionary which states salq (shorter word) as the one for chard. Given that I took a few moments to remember what 'yes' was earlier, problems like this are off my radar. Just finding words in my huge dictionary is a triumph.

Wish List

I have 3 education wishes.

More books from the Writers Studio Craft Class reading list for me; access to the Tates in London for T; and access to good films for H.

***

The weather is hot today.

. يكون الطقس حار

The temperature is 28 degrees.

. درجة الحرارة ثمانية و عثرين

Artist's Way Collage

The 12 week course I'm on has a midpoint exercise, to collect photos and to create a collage. I have done this twice before.

The 1997 and 2012 versions were very different. The first was an explosion of colours and people, overlapping eachother. The second was a vertical scroll. Each separate picture in that one had one or two smaller pictures hidden underneath them. They were visible if you lifted up each top picture. This was a way of including more images, but also a way of creating groups of images. It was more organised and spaced out, there was some bright colour, but more plainer references to writings and activism.

Now I am starting to do my 3rd one I am sorry I threw away the previous 2. I felt they were cluttering up my house, I didn't feel happy about displaying them on a wall here, they were too personal. Then I didn't feel happy about keeping them stuck in a corner either.

What on earth is this valuing of old stuff by other people or bought in a shop, over the handmade personal creations?

....

We are well beyond the midway point in the course now! My collage this time was in fact simply 4 separate A4 pictures from magazines. They were bold and simple, but stark. This time I will keep them. I found them easy to explain to the others in my group.

***

Today my son and his girlfriend cooked curry.

. اليوم ابني و صديقه طبخوا كاريًا

I'm just guessing at the endings! I looked up the words in my dictionaries and stuck some endings on.

Getting home education into the conversation

I don't have to try, because when a person asks me "Do you work?" I say, "No, I'm home educating my younger son." It's nice that it is such an easy thing to say and that now I can chat a little bit about it before moving on to other topics.

***

I am reading a book.

. أنا أقرأ كتاب

The book is called 'The Silence and The Roar' (written) by Nihad Sirees.

 . ويسمى كتاب الصخب  و الصمت من نهاد سيرس

Hmm, I sense a change

Here is a stunning song, it's hard to drive while listening to this! Why does my heart feel so bad?

When people use the phrase 'the wheel of life' I have an inkling of what that means now. Language is full of meanings which only become clear to me as events happen and I perceive the usefulness of a ready made phrase.

School is no longer part of my life as a mother.

Hooray....I have just learnt the whole Arabic alphabet in order

This has taken me some weeks! I have just learnt the last 5 letters to finish it off. Now all I need to do is keep on writing them all out in order to keep them in my brain. I am so pleased....!!!

Alif, ba, ta, tha, jim, ha, kha, dal, thal, ra, zain, sin, shin, sad, dad, ta, za, ain, ghrain, fa, qaf, kaf, lam, mim, nun, ha, waw, yah. It looks odd going from left to right.

Personal Libraries

I love the books in this house.

I love the spontaneous creation of libraries at Occupy events and at Gezi Park in Istanbul.

I loved the library at the end of our block beside Pimlico Tube Station in London where I grew up.

So...what I'd love to do would be to invite friends over to explore our library one Sunday afternoon. Imagine people sitting in various chairs, all seriously trying out different books and writing down lists of authors to try. After that I'd like to visit other people's book collections to learn from them.

Normally it is considered bad manners to look at the bookshelves rather than chat on a visit, so I'd love to deliberately change that. At my grandparents' homes and my parents' house I have always been able to spend time looking at their stuff, but as an adult it is not welcomed.

The other thing I want to do is rearrange our books now that T has done his last AS exam and is apart from the library at his school. I need to ask him what he will miss about his school and how we can find replacements.

Nothing can truly replace the beautiful library or entire building of St Paul's Girls' School or the college and university libraries at Durham, but everywhere I have lived has had libraries of one sort or another.

Why I have a bad reaction to the concept of 'consent'

People get planning consent from a distant official planning department or give consent to a medical procedure they would rather avoid.

There is a world of difference between consenting to something and saying 'Ooh, yes, that is exactly what I want!!!' with a big grin and happy body language.

So that is what freaks me out when the word 'consent' is used in relation to anything to do with relationships. It rings big, clanging alarm bells.

Silent flames and smoke - The people are ok

I am shocked by how there was no sound as the house on the corner went up in flames. I saw the plumes of white smoke and little tiny firework sounds. Even when the fire engines arrived they didn't have their sirens on. The head fireman must have been using a loud hailer to give instructions, but that was muted somehow. The engines had their motors running, but again this was just a low noise. The flames themselves went right up from the whole roof. They were not the yellow of a candle flame, but the orange, big colour of sheets of flame.

The people were ok. That was the 2nd piece of information each time we exchanged the news, first we'd explain which house it was that was on fire, then ask "What about the people?"

Without a fire brigade it would have spread from house to house downwind. There were lumps of thatch flying over the other houses, carried by the wind. There was a Great Fire in this village in Charles II's time, so our village has form.

It is totally beyond my understanding or imagination to take in the concept of being without a home, or rather with a burnt out one. It is shocking to see how an event deeply affects one household, but the rest of us are left with intact ones. How unequal can life be? I suppose other sudden events strike less visibly, so the differences between our households are less visible, so less known about.

Even now there is a smoky smell near the house, but it is simply the smell of an everyday bonfire. It doesn't smell alarming, not plasticky or frightening. I find that very disturbing. I remember that there was a terrible smell in the Victoria Line platforms at King's Cross underground station in London after that escalator fire all those years ago. It seemed right that it was a different smell, thinking back. It matched the terrible events there.

The sweetest sight

...is seeing people lying and chatting on the bouncy castle in the garden. My parents will be along later to see this too.

Special Animals

I had a bear, no name, but with velvet paws. It went to live on a shelf above my parents' bed. It is still there! You can imagine how dusty he is by now.

I now have a shelf of special little creatures, most of whom do have names. They haven't been needed for a very long time, but they are carefully stored and displayed near my bed.

Is there a name for this tradition of the parent winding up with all the soft toys in the end? They probably mean more to me than to anyone else now.

Reflections on the events in Turkey

Humour http://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/14/here-we-are-the-imagination-of-public-space-in-gezi-park/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweet&utm_content=gezipark&utm_campaign=CTRsocial

Mothers http://twitpic.com/cx114p

Standing Man http://www.duranadam.com/

Standing Man on livestream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/duran-adamlar

Playing chess

We are back to board games again. Mr and Mrs has been fun. Monopoly is never dull. Now it's scrabble with help from a laptop! and chess.

I think it is to do with the colder weather.

I try to lose quickly in order to get it over with as soon as possible, but get involved and then lengthen it out in order to win or lose as well as I can. This last game involved me spotting towards the end that both my bishops were on white squares. How did that happen? Was it set up wrongly, or did H move a piece while I had my back turned? Did I somehow move it there? Did the cat kick it?

An explanation of how I look up an Arabic word I don't recognise, but should know...

It's Google Translate, but using the Arabic keyboard onscreen which works really well. It even did the 'Do you mean ...(correct version)?' thing, which puts me in my place each time I make a spelling mistake!

I did have the link on here, but I now see that it gives my YouTube name and direct link to my now unused Google+ account.

Try it and see how easy it is to use. Just to make things more complex, the letters are arranged in a version of Qwerty, not in the alphabetic order which I am learning so I can use my new shiny dictionary. And, yes, the letters are very tiny, I'm sure English is written with bigger letters. The numbers are across the top in order though.

Turkey - getting the news out

People have started to create blogs to carry information about the current frightening situation in Turkey. They are putting several paragraphs in Turkish, then adding translations in other languages.

7 different languages - lgbthayat.blogspot

LOTS of different languages - fakfukfon.wordpress

Twitter hashtag mainly being used by people in Turkey is #direngeziparki

YouTube videos being used - noises and switching on and off of lights in Istanbul right now & includes some amazing car horns

Lost books

I am still hankering after some books I have lost, lent or given away over the years:

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Autobiography of Chad Varah
3 birth books, by Michel Odent and 2 other writers
An anthology of parenting pieces by La Leche League
A book by Anais Nin

Even though I could look online and get 2nd hand copies, I won't because I am not that bothered by their losses, just niggled by them. I have plenty of newer books sitting waiting on the shelves while I read online!

Unnerving familiarity, archaeology and an experiment

I get a shock when I click on a blog and find that it is using exactly the same template as mine. I tend to forget that the design I'm using is ready made.

Today I went to an archaeology session at the Ashmolean in Oxford. We were able to handle flint tools made during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times in this country. One fitted my hand so exactly. Others were warm from being handled by the others as we passed them carefully around the big table to each other. I nearly dropped one flint at the beginning! The table had layers of soft plastic over it, but even so...

How timeless things are - the archaeologists can tell if a piece was chipped into shape by a left or right handed person. Most people doing the chipping were right-handed back then. They can also spot small pieces which were mistakes. They were chipped in not quite the right way and so a differently shaped piece popped off and was left on the ground.

The last part of my day was dealing with 2 eggs which were past the eat-by date. T and I have done things like burning a whole pack of matches in the garden to see what would happen. H and I haven't done this sort of thing yet. So, we went and egged the old stable wall in our back garden. H had such a good time. He flung the eggs with such force and we were both so happy at being vandals!

3am phone call

Yes, exactly! That's what I thought. Is my father dead? Has my mother died? Has S's plane fallen out of the sky on the way back from Beijing to Heathrow.

I got there in time to hear the message, a contact in Beijing was calling S's home phone here, instead of his local contact number there. Nothing unusual at all. Phew. Back to my duvet and back to sleep.

Saving a life

A bee was in a bad way on our drawing room floor. It moved a bit when I touched it. I opened the door to the garden, so I could carry it straight out there. I picked a leaf to be its stretcher. I shunted it onto the leaf, which it promptly crawled around. I thought it might fall straight off again, but I twirled the leaf to keep it on the top side. Then I put the leaf, plus furry patient, onto the bluebell leaves. It moved surprisingly fast into the undergrowth.

I wonder whether it was aware of being saved? I only did my bit, I couldn't move any of its legs for it or know where to go. It was doing all the work of being a bee, apart from my moving it from the human drawing room it had got lost in. If I hadn't seen it and tried to pick it up, it would have just died there later on.

Life is so dependent on others' actions and on pure chance.

"All the feels"

It's a new phrase T told me about just now. It means that all emotions are happening all at once. Overload. Confusion. Multi-channelled brain events. Multi-tasking, but not in a good way!

A few days ago I did a piece of writing which I might or might not share at the writing group I am trying. I entitled it: 'My Nameless/Formless Feelings'. I was happier once I had written that title. The writing is rather waffly, but the title is great.

Anyway, I have cancelled my planned one day trip tomorrow to see my parents because of my sore throat and huge sleepiness, 6 hours under the duvet on the sofa today. There was a rib pain whenever I breathed in, but that has gone now.

Identifying people in a village

Well, this is even more simple, you describe and or name their dog or cat, then it's perfectly clear who you are talking about!

On a walk I will notice and recognise the dog first, then I'll look carefully to see which human they have with them.

On the road it's a case of spot the car/recognise part of the registration number, then peer into the semi darkness to see who's driving it and wave. Or, brake and pull over because there is a huge tractor coming, then wave on the basis that it might be so-and-so inside, but it's too high up to actually see for certain.

The other trick is to stop in the middle of the road, open the window and you both have a catch up chat as the driver's seats are conveniently placed so you can do this. I do this one when someone has moved and it's the first time I have seen them for a while.

Village house names

This will come as no surprise to anyone who lives in a village.

Houses here have their postal address, but that isn't the real identifier. Our house is 'The Old Vicarage', but really it's 'the B...'s old house, before that it was a Dr Reid who lived there and before that it was the Rev Smith-Masters' house'. Various people have told us how they had to go and have an interview with him in his study before he would agree to marry them.

The house next to us used to be a shop. The big one across the junction is known as 'Talkie's House' because an old gentleman called Talkie Taylor used to be there and if you look carefully you can see all the letters for Happy Birthday covered up with white paint on the ancient side of the barn opposite. That must have been some birthday celebration for him.

Sometimes I explain where we live by saying that we are right opposite the P...'s, who run a local taxi company.

We are used to the pattern of lights being on or off at night and watch out for these in our neighbours' houses at the back. The car head lights shine briefly as they pass over a distant hill.

Finally some good news in my Arabic class

There are only 2 tenses in Arabic, the past and the present. What a piece of luck! I thought our teacher was joking at first, but he doesn't joke about important things like that.

This is like going on a journey and finding out where we are going as we turn each bend. Up a slippery mountain or across a shady meadow. Mostly it's up mountain passes.

I could google all about it, but I like the surprises in a wierd way. It is rare in life to encounter a new language, so I'm appreciating the unexpected nature of all this.

The right moment

It's funny how telling someone something at the wrong moment can make them nearly froth at the mouth. If you catch the right moment they are glad to have something simple pointed out to them.

So a reminder about internet food shopping was just the thing for my father today. And I was glad to be reminded that I like washing up and that it was time for this job after the shared lunch at the Wallingford Quaker Meeting. We worked and chatted in the kitchen and had a lovely time.

H likes to be told that it is time to get up and earn his early waking money. T told us just now that he was on the train back to Didcot, so that set in motion all the arrangements to meet him at the station and go for a pizza.

4 stunning knitted blankets

I handed over 3 bold and simply designed knitted blankets yesterday. I found a 4th afterwards so that one will go too.

Our knitting group meets once a week to sew together squares other kind strangers have knitted and donated. The leader of our group sends the blankets to Oxfam to be sold at festivals in the UK or directly to St Anne's Hospital in Liuli in Tanzania (our village and theirs have a link, don't know why, there must be some personal history behind this.)

From the random colours given to us we piece together whatever we fancy. I make up my own design and have stuck to it for a whole year. I loved the blankets I made so much I couldn't bear to hand them over for a few months! I have taken them to church on freezing days and shared them over our knees. I spread them out at a craft show on the most boiling July day last summer. H has spent time on the sofa under them and so have I.

I am in a bit of a quandry. The leader asked if I had a preference as to them being sent to the Hospital or sold by Oxfam. In my heart I would like them to travel the world and liven up someone else's home, accompanying them home from hospital. But another bit of me says that the squares were freely given with no word as to their final use, so I must hand my part of the work over freely too. So that was my decision, let others make the decision, it is a free gift.

Also, a person here in the UK is exactly as deserving of a beautiful blanket and who am I to say that one particular person here should not buy one of the blankets I stitched together?

Finances come into it as some designs fetch more I assume. So that's an odd feeling, that designs which are not so appealing to the UK eye would be given abroad and we would keep the more attractive ones.

Suddenly allergic to wood

Well, not literally. I did some clearing of my desk. Got to the point of just having 3 piles of paper on there. Decided I hated the sight of untidy papers, then decided that I hated the sight of the wood of the desk, and the table next to it, and the big kitchen table...

When I told 2 friends in the afternoon I got some knowing glances. Apparently sudden and irrational rages and irritation are appropriate to my age, 49. So we had a good laugh about that.

The papers and the wood of the desk seem more reasonable and less irritating this evening.

Dandelions mean spring

As I was driving along I could see all these bright open flowers. My dark glasses intensify colours so they looked stunning against the intense green of the grass verges.

At a traffic lights I could smell cut grass or something, so I put my nose out of the window and made little sniffs to get the full sense of it. Delicious!