Three links to saving a nation

TWO IS NOT DEMOCRACY

 

YOU KNOW IT'S WRONG

THE PIPE DREAM THAT STOLE
66 MILLION FUTURES

 

self-proclamation

ascension MARTIN HÜBSCHER PHOTOGRAPHY © 2016

S..A..D.

It's not true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger....

contrablog (2)

"You don't call yourself a writer because you have some free time and your heart is aching....Writing is a serious activity, a profession. Not a pastime." 
Simone de Beauvoir quoted by Claudine Monteil in The Beauvoir Sisters, English translation © 2004 by Marjolijn de Jager. 
The same is true of painting, photography and acting. 
It should mean the end of this blog....

Young Woman Drawing by Marie-Denise Villers, 1801. 

Metroplitan Museum, New York. Image source: Wikipedia

Calico

Please don't ask me how I feel.
In the garden of how I feel
nothing grows
but tears and sighs and bitter aloes.
I cannot speak my sorrow:
it swells inside me, fungating tumour,
choking words and ulcerating thoughts.

In the garden of how I feel,
there is no light; sunken corner
of mind's eye
diseased, where knotted stems writhe and mould,
mandrakes scream, torn out of earth,
and the angry rustling of ivy leaves
sirens that rats are tunnelling through.

It’s their garden now; dead ones stink
where lily and rose used to be.
Memory
by violence of absence mutates,
past and present are displaced -
love severed, nothing looks nor feels the same
that once was seen and felt by her, too.

Please don’t tell me, then, to “move on”-
raw amputee crawling towards
a closed door.
Let me journey in catacombed mind
to resurrect the garden,
replant her flowers, released,
in sweet disorder, out of stone and clay,
ancient art of heartbreak colours mixed;

rare slender straight-backed gallantry,
supple as swaying summer stems;
make-believe
like her the most while having little -
her calico mystery -
I see her - quick - she’s climbed the tree again -
she stands, laughing in the dappled light.

Written after seeing a photograph of a woman in a garden

Tweets from a funeral

Someone boasts he’s taken a photo of me with my tongue hanging out.

“Be histrionic as you like at the funeral” -

display of emotion is socially approved there,

1930s crematorium purpose-built

for bourgeois ritual, convenience-grief.
(but not alone at home, in bed at night,

nor in the street, outside the shops,

nor by the river in the dark,

the places where other animals freely howl)

- No, thanks.....

We are sorry you feel that way

The modern art of the narcissistic apology

An apology is not an apology when it is qualified by "I am sorry you feel that way..." which is the formula nowadays for all organizations, whether town hall or pharmaceutical company, internet provider or hospice, to fend off criticism or legal action even in cases when there is no ambiguity about the facts. An apology should start with an acknowledgment of responsibility ("I am sorry we made a mistake"..."I am sorry for all the inconvenience/expense our stupidity/our computer glitch has caused you") not an implicit denial of wrongdoing by suggesting that subjective emotionality on the part of the complainant has warped their perception. The effect is as conciliatory as "Keep calm, dear".

If you get a reply like that, my advice is, complain again - whether they've got something to hide or are just being arsy, they need to look in the mirror. If a friend you love resorts to the phrase, you'll forgive them, because you know they don't want to hurt your feelings; if you don't love them, you'll never trust them again.

"WE ARE SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY"

Disinterested used to mean impartial

HECUBA AND THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION

part one

Every time a TV arts programme critic describes a film or performance as "visceral", I imagine piles of cocktail sausages, when I'm sure I should be seeing shining entrails. The word doesn't cut the mustard any more. I don't feel my fingers touching vile jelly, like Cornwall does when he plucks out Gloucester's eyes.

HECUBA TRANSFORMED BY GRIEF INTO A DOG

AFTER GOUGING OUT THE EYES OF POLYMESTOR IN REVENGE FOR THE DEATH OF HER YOUNGEST SON

detail of Johann Wilhelm Baur's illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses,1659 edition

"....Hecuba,

....was driven mad by sorrow

and began barking like a dog...

Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul"
Dante, Inferno 

When, in the cause of truthful citation, I put the quotation from the thirtieth Canto in Roman numerals, my blog was overrun by lascivious spybots...

World's End gentrification

                 “Mad bitch, mad bitch,

                     we hear that thing you do -

                          laughing that turns to crying -

                        mad bitch, it’s got to stop"....

THE REAVING

Detail of APOLLO REVEALING HIS DIVINITY TO THE SHEPHERDESS ISSE by Boucher, 1750. Original painting at Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours

  

THE WRONG ENDING,
when the apollonian messenger stood us up
and the unsolicited intervention of a hospice aggravated the suffering of a private death, and the reavers came for the already bereft....