Mother, writer, whisky
Source: An irreverent release of stricture, only to reveal something deeper. Belief and celebration. The collaboration of Shelley and Robin is always diverting…
Category: Uncategorized
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LITTLE SPELLS
A Halloween celebration of the greatest witch craft- motherhood, fear, glory, terror and celebration. Whew!
From LITTLE SPELLS
By Jennifer K. Sweeney:
LITTLE SPELLS
We are not witches as fable stoops us
hunchback over caldrons, not women
hobbled sinister by absence though we know
there are tides in our blood that lean us
toward some ancient clock. Still
if ox marrow soup is suggested, the pot readies
and if we return from the Chinese market
with a rough bag of earth tea, our house steep
in the dank reduction of bark and root,
cold air cut heavy with mist.
We may have eaten goose eggs, raw
garlic and sweetbreads, charged our bathwater
with carnelian and held our noses as we threw
back shots of chlorophyll and kombucha.
We may have made closet altars,
placed bowls of royal pollen beneath our beds
and because someone swore it worked,
our underwear may have all gone orange, pockets
filled with quartz turtles, a moonstone at the throat.
If…
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Genius- The Saviour?
Source: Genius- The Saviour? The significance of genius and what it might point to. I urge you to make time to follow the links and watch a waif in bare feet orchestrate a performance of her opera Cinderella.
When Baghdad was the Centre of the Scientific World!
Margo’s Blog has provided a rich seam this week. THis seems to need widespread dissemination. As much to the Islamic world outside Iraq as to the Western powers, and especially to Tony Blair! We in the UK have brought the World not to a standstill, but a backward slide into bestiality, by failing to look at checks and balances, unleashed the dogs of war. A counter image to John Cleese’s legitimate satire but well beyond a joke. How will any of us recover?
In 2011, I published my book ‘Once Upon a Time in Baghdad’ a creative non fiction book about my two decades life in Baghdad, where I was born. What prompted me to write my book at the time, were the many questions from my European and American friends. Was I a Moslem, did we also walk around covered from head to foot, were we also poor, and more such ignorant questions. Many were surprised to hear that Baghdad during the time I grew up there, was a cosmopolitan multi cultural buzzing town, that Christians Moslems and Jews and others lived and worked side by side, that I drove a car at the age of 16, that I attended a French Convent and learned 3 languages, that we watched the latest Hollywood movies, with Arabic subtitles, bought Vogue magazines for our fashion, etc. I decided to put down on paper what…
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Alerts to Threats in 2015 Europe from John Cleese!
While I lingered over at Margo’s blog I found this too. 430BC and counting!
Remember John Cleese? he’s funny! Here’s a foto of him to remind you. I have to admit he still looks good! No puffed lips job, no eyes lift and jaws lifts, that give him that permanent surprise look! Of course he looks older, but still handsome and above all natural. And what more he still has a sense of humor! 
I am sharing this article posted on my private Facebook versus my professional Facebook page. Posted by Raja Choudry who shared Bernadette Bunge’s photo. So now that I have given the credit to where its due I shall copy the article here below for you to read. It’s brilliant.
Quote
ALERTS TO THREATS IN 2015 EUROPE From JOHN CLEESE
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be…
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When Will We Have Had Enough?
Needs shouting. Is legitimately shouted. The insanity of preserving the gun toting is beyond belief!
Another school shooting today. 294 mass shootings in 274 days.
My kids learned in kindergarten how to hide under their desks and wait for death.
I’ve spent an hour waiting in the school parking lot after the final bell for lock-down to be lifted so I could take my terrified babies home. Third graders and kindergartners are babies. My babies.
I was in high school for the Columbine Shooting.
The year before someone called in a bomb threat at my school.
I was studying at community college for the Virginia Tech shooting. My physics study group was camped out at the table in the math and physics office wing when we got the news. We went right back to our homework. Our prof chewed the class out that we didn’t stop to grieve for those kids. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS?!” he raved. But he still collected our homework…
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The 12 Best New Yorker Cartoons on Writing and Literature
Couldn’t resist sharing these, especially the Jean Paul Sartre Cookbook!
12 of the Best Cartoons from the Best Literary Magazine Ever
The New Yorker Magazine has been publishing reportage, fiction, satire, poetry and current events since 1925, and over the past 90 years has become an American icon and beacon for new writing, ground-breaking editorial and reporting, and timely satire. The magazine has launched the careers of countless writers and published contributions from the likes of Roald Dahl, Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, E. L. Doctorow, Chang-Rae Lee, Phillip Roth, Dorothy Parker, Ogden Nash, and Sylvia Plath.
Based in New York, the magazine’s reviews and event listings usually focus on the cultural life of its home city, but The New Yorker has a broad audience outside of New York. Over its nearly 100 year history it has become perhaps best known for its illustrated and often humorous covers, its commentaries on American pop culture, and the single-panel cartoons that are included in each issue. Reading the New Yorker cartoons and sometimes trying to…
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All the World’s a Therapist
In the mood for semi-satire? Put it down to…whatever you think!
All the World’s a Therapist! ( and men and women good cash cows…)
My last post drew attention to the Kogi- walkers, planters, weavers in and of the spiritual. Devoid of evangelism, without ego-bound ‘creativity’ or seemingly free will, they live to nearly a hundred and leave no footprints. They are saving our world. They live to do that, by showing how it can and should be done. An embryo Eden, still extant.
Here is ‘our’ Westernised version ( but only as I have encountered it!)
Hijacking the Bandwagon.
As I have spent much of life thinking on ‘Things Spiritual/ Ways of Redemption’, should I be taking a lance to the windmill? Certainly unwise, but suddenly irresistible. I am fed up with claimants to virtue by virtue of what it is they do for a (sometimes rather good) living .
Saving the Planet?
Don’t get me wrong. Nobody is more concerned…
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Author Feature: Philippa Rees
I am overwhelmed to be featured on Nicholas Rossis’s incredibly generous site. He has given me more than house room, but there is space for any visitor!
Instead of an interview, I have decided to introduce my friend Philippa Rees through her work. Set in South Africa, ‘Looking for Lucas‘ is a fictionalised true story based on her experiences at University circa 1957. It was a finalist in the Rubery Short Story Award.
Philippa has interviewed me for her fascinating blog, Careless Talk– the blog of things related to her book, Involution-An Odyssey. Unusually enough, she was interested not in my writing, but in the life behind it. You can read that interview on Careless Talk.
Although she is remarkably humble and understated, her award-winning work is well-worth reading. Personally, I find it haunting, with an authenticity that can only come from personal experience. You can find much of it available for free on her website.
Looking for Lucas
The problem of Sou’Thefrica has always been black and white. I’m not talking about skin…
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Can Literature Heal?
Well worth reading, particularly about the unique ‘interiority’ of good fiction as a re-education.
“If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.”
Ezra Pound
Signs of atrophy and decay are inescapable these days. The coarseness of mass entertainment, the malignancy of political discourse, the creeping alienation affecting young and old alike which swells up and all too often releases itself in violence — all point to the realization that we have lost our way.
Before we can propose a way back, we have to figure out how we got lost.
I’m reminded of a flash of insight from one of my favorite nature writers, Charlene Spretnak. In The Resurgence of the Real, she noted that in our frenzy to reconstruct the world to cater to endless consumption and personal gratification, we have become our own Frankenstein monsters:
Ten years ago, I attended an all-day presentation by two of our finest writers on the natural world, Barry Lopez and Richard Nelson. A…
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PHI lippa. Letters of Love 