THAT cultural centre

Twin Towers Tribute (link)

I heard the legal reasons given by an honest man why THAT new centre of the Muslim faith could be allowed to occupy a plot so near Ground Zero. The Law is worse than an ass, but it has some powerful friends.


In fact my feelings go much deeper.  If Law can grind the insult of religion, disguised as Culture, in the face of thinking people, it does the work of the bombers for them. 


The rich man's puppet is thankfully gone, but when will poor Americans get the strong leader it needs to throw all religious 'leaders' out of office and back into church where they belong?  And when they set up 'office' in their churches and mosques; use their 'charisma' and money to manipulate their followers to a political agenda, why cannot the elected government just shut them up!   


Controlling these perverted sociopaths, these priests and imams, is not suppressing religious belief, it is controlling dictatorship by 'faith'.  It is not suppressing freedom of speech; they have no freedom to break the law, and speech which can incite 'believers' to violence is against the law. 


Some people need their faith and their gods, and can have special houses to worship them in. Why not, they do no harm and most of them want peace for their families and give respect to their leaders.  It is the big leaders of warring religions who want to fight each other to the death (not THEIR death of course), and have learnt over centuries how to co-operate with dictators looking to acquire land and power'  Don't believe me, just read history.

Rhyming matters

Upon Westminster Bridge

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air,
For taxies have a century to appear.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Bill Wordsworth      Composed September 3, 1802     Borrowed from Poets Corner

Over the years I have read couplets with the regularity of clockwork in their rhymes, but with all rhythm lost in the effort to ‘fit in’ the rhyme. Perhaps this is the saddest of all amateur errors, and so often too, the chosen word sticks out like a sore thumb – it’s there because it rhymes.

I came across the Wordsworth above at ‘Poets Corner’, and found I could not find the rhyme-scheme (although it may have one).  However, the metre is near perfect ‘iambic pentametre’, 10 10 10 10. (Blank verse?)  Look Willow, I can’t find my ‘how to do poetry’ book OK?

The point I am making is that the best poets in the world deliberately let their rhymes misfire to avoid boring predictability, and also let the metre go adrift a (very) little in the cause of  meaning and avoiding cliché.

Natural rhyming – where the second word could hardly have been different, makes pleasant reading still, and will survive in poetry like Bach in music – i.e. for ever.

Do you agree?

Picture show - retro.

Hello friends -  just a little retrospective of images, many too deep in the mire of Dr.A to have been seen by recent explorers. My thinking is that when an image can be cropped and shopped to a reasonable composition it becomes a picture instead of a picture of. Then I use filters to simulate brushwork which must also serve to unify the image, that is, suggest a deliberate approach (like paintings and poetry)

As much as it would be nice to be an artist - to bury layers of meaning in images, and have a gallery or publisher hoping to make money out of them, the craft is demanding enough by itself,  but ultimately boring without a little something to spark the imagination. Composition smooths the path of your eyes around the image, your belief allows my little thoughts to come through.   Believe, and enjoy.

Like it on my wall do you Bunny?  That's alright then...

Molly.

Sky painting. Towards old Kerkyra.

I wish my skills extended to painting. The composition here was very largely natural, but even if a cloud is not in quite the right place it soon gets to know about it. I did not fix the white 'mountains' on the right as it 'appens, but a little sharpening would have occurred if thought beneficial.

Geranium and bud

Smokey on the Wall.  Very little work needed here - cropping, sharpening, a few flaws removed, but Smokey's eyes have it, do they not?   Normally with both whiskers and eyes I remove all or most of the effect of any filter.  

Passion flower and buds.  Juliana know what passion flowers are. Drop in on this super lady Later! dammit, finish your first course to get the sweet.     OK OK thats enough for now, all this high-powered stiff is tiring I know.  See you back here?

Jacdaw, sorry Magpie No 29

The journey through long decades and grim doubts

has brought the love-torn poet to this door.

And at the bell a trembling finger waits

and wonders. Will obedience to her call

reap the reward of welcome to this house

of symmetry and light?

Αγιοσ(Head in a bag) Σπυριδον, Corfu 2010

Our Minds are Many

Our minds are many

and they live and die

like clouds that chase

their shadows in the sky.

Or like a hive

of loyal bees that weave

their pathways

through a cold grey dawn;

return and dance

a royal turn to sign

their findings at the throne

with sure but innocent design.

Our minds are many

not a single vault

of vintage wines

maturing by default.

More like a cave

with one eye to the light

and creatures happy

to be out of sight.

Our minds are many,

like a driven storm

of swallows,

free within their given form.

Our minds are many,

and we are not wise

to heed alone
the one behind our eyes.

The Brighton Belles

Now, shall I file this in 'Calloutcats' or 'portraits' Not that I took the picture of course. 

And not that I am in the mood to post, having lost one of the senior cats - probably to poison.  Porgy and Bess were inseperable, and now Bess is no more. She had all the injections and a glucose drip, and it was a peaceful passing, but the hole will be felt for years to come by me.  When she was ill but still sitting up, Piggy saw her from across the room, stared for half a minute and ran away. Socs, also family, came across her outside - spat and also ran away. She was no longer Aunt Bess. 

They feel, but they do not know.  Our relationship with these loving creatures is distorted by 'knowing' things.  I trust my emotions, and let them be what they are,even if they are criticized for being 'too strong'.  Perhaps love expands to fill a vacuum.  I have been fussing around the remaining six of the cat family, and will have to confine them to house and small garden, building perches and hideaways as required. To be continued