Keats

Having just done a quick appraisee of Keats, a poet I had not read although I knew the titles  of some of his poetry. One is struck by the contrived way the intellectual poet has to construct his craft and produce work known as much for its metre as for its resonance. The technical term for the beat or the measure is a "spondee". The term "negative capability" in which the poet describes the things around him with an almost mystical composure lent him the title of being a "Romantic Poet" and it's this mixture of rhythmic metre and romantic compilation ( not romantic as between a man and a woman but endowing everything with an infinite meaning ) which marks him as a Romantic.

The heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk

It's not through envy of they happy lot

But being too happy in thine happiness

That thou light winged Dryad of the trees

In some melodious plot

Of Beechen green, and shadows numberless

Singest of summer in full throated ease

His short life was rich in the friends and supporters, the names mark a Parthenon of English poets and writers such as Byron and Shelly

His early career of training to become a doctor, especially when one considers the rudimentary nature of surgery seems a harsh world to walk in with the contrasting sympathy of observing and writing about the beauty of the world at the bottom of his garden.

His life would have been so different if he had known of the substantial money's bequeathed to him from within the family but he was never told and so money was always at the back of his mind.

Tuberculosis, which eventually killed him was a common enemy amongst his friends and family and the nursing of his brother Tom must have been the site of his own infection.

Poetry did not flow, it was a work in hand as he struggled to shape the poem, its words and the meaning of those words used in the difficult format of a poem. 

There are many heraldic poets like of Tennyson who's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' lead one onto the upland heroic or 'The Brook' a favourite of my Father with its synonymous link with life's journey and the unending nature of the stream which never dies.

I come from haunts of coot and hern

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out amongst the fern

To bicker down a valley

By thirty hills I hurry down

Or slip between the ridges

By twenty thorps, a little town

And half a hundred bridges

Till last by Philips farm I flow

To join the brimming river

For men may come and men may go

But I go on for ever.

 Grays, 'Elegy written in an English grave yard' is another call to the past and the present. The opening lines catch the reader straight away, there is no technical contrivance to mystify, only the simple metre of men going about their business. 

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowering herd winds slowly o'er the lea

The ploughman plods his weary way

And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight

And all the air a Solemn stillness holds

Save where the beetle wheals his drowning flight

And drowsy inklings lull the distant folds

Save from yonder Ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl to the moon does complain

Of such as wandering near her secret bower

Molest her ancient and solitary reign

              ---     ----    ----   ----

Some village hampden that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his field withstood 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest

Some Cromwell guiltless of his countries blood.

    I'm not sure how you instil the love of poetry by teaching the young person the techniques of observation using subject matter remote and far from the young mind, living in an age such as ours. His poetry is the stuff of university not the 6th form but then perhaps, as in so many things, I am wrong and underestimate youths sensitivity to form and texture ?

"Hey teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all its just another brick in the wall"

These are the rules.

Should we review our position on the need to accommodate the inflow of people, mainly from the African countries that are war torn and have forced these people to flee the conflict.

As a society we pride ourselves on our humanity. We thank our lucky stars that we have been born into a peaceful law abiding country where we take for granted the issues of safety and protection which these families have lost specifically since the start of the Arab Spring.
Remember the Arab Spring, when the dictatorships and despotic regimes which had held together the status quo in the North of Africa were defeated by popular uprising. The people were out on the streets protesting and we watched from the safety of our lounge the toing and froing across the various open spaces and city squares. It was fascinating and I'm sure the media felt it was great TV to see so much pent up emotion bubble to the surface.
The hope was that this was the birth of democracy, allowing the people to choose who they wanted to rule them through the ballot box. The dictatorships crumbled and we watched the mob executing Gaddafi in Libya, the West having already put away Saddam Hussain by trial in Iraq. Getting rid of the despots was supposed to bring in good governance but as in the case of Egypt, the result of getting rid of Mubarak and introducing the popular vote produced a result that the "play makers" didn't want and the army stepped in to throw out Morsi.
The region collapsed. It added the harsh brutality of the governance of Eritrea to the basket case which is Somalia, the civil war in Yemen to annihilation of the state of Syria and the rise of ISIS.
People in turmoil, some of which we had a hand in, are the collateral damage of the political class and as humanitarians we have a responsibility through our ethical and moral teaching to reach out and do much more than we are doing. It will, over time warp even more the sureties we once held about the culture and our identity going forward, and I'm not sure that the largely Arabic culture which this new influx of people will bring is an answer with its fiercely Muslim, Patriarchal sense of entitlement. Perhaps it is time to be more stringent and lay down the rules to live here and not assume that everyone will integrate normally. 
The Americans are much more up front in insisting that "now you are an American" and lay great stress on the formality of the flag and what the Constitution means. Individual "human rights" has trumped the continuity of form and tradition which eventually only alienates both sides.
There has to be a quid pro quo, a trade off.  If you want to come here, these are the rules !!

Who needs experience

Throughout time all our bosses have been fools and all our leaders idiots. We have railed against them incessantly but to no end. Why can't they see my point of view or listen to my advice, it's so obvious !!

Of course it's another example of the way we are disconnected from one another speaking as it were on different frequencies filtering out much of what is being said for what is wanted to be heard.
In business the items identified for consideration are sometimes reversed in priority. Perhaps the cash flow is inhibiting another course of action which seems so obvious to those not privy to the knowledge. Plans for future expansion or contraction are usually tucked away out of sight and there influence seem totally frustrating to the uninformed.
There is always the fear on the employers side that the employee is becoming overzealous, is rocking the boat by introducing ideas that take the boss out of his comfort zone.
Youth is always enthusiastic to prove their point and many's the old head which has been shaken with the audacity of a new idea but find it hard to acknowledge the benefit. 

Experience which once was a touch stone of good judgement is now, in this fast moving internet savvy world superseded by You Tube. Somewhere someone will have made a video dealing with the problem you have and so what's the use of proclaiming your expertise through experience ? This is probably the first generation where there is no active superiority having been exposed to something and being able to remember how a solution was found. Simply type in the relevant search words and the combined might of a trillions of bits of information held within the Internet servers ready to be assembled by the Search Engine to lay it all out for free !!

I wonder if the surgeon checks his You Tube before cutting you open ?

 

Living the moment

It's strange to think we will not pass this way again. We build up such a sense of self indulgence and create a world, within a world, not stopping to think that our world is so transitory.

The journey we understand is finite but somehow we see ourselves as having infinite qualities in so far as we look around and relate ourselves to the actions of others who are travelling the same route, as if our emotions and feelings are forever and important.
But the truth is that every second run is irretrievable and so we have to make a decision, should we spend each as if it were precious or should we succumb, as our bodies grow weary, to a reproshma with our limits and begin to define time differently.
Should we begin to learn that this moment is rich enough even if empty since we live it according to "our" needs and not anyone else's needs are the same as mine.
If each current moment only has intrinsic value and the past and future moments are of little or no value, why do we place so much value on the past and the future. If we live for each moment, if we live in the present and stop worrying about the immediate moments relationship to the future or the past we will close down some of the plain stupid concerns we have and which warp so much of our lives. We might even find peace !
This moment of writing could be used in so many other ways but often when we are defining how we should spend our day (other than the necessity of work) much is made on how others conceive us and how we should do our best to fit some preconceived image. Our health and fitness, our role in support, the issue of being loved and appreciated, all are a compact we are expected to make with others. But in the 'moment', we are deliciously alone, untouched unblemished and, in that pristine moment, followed by the next we can perhaps reignite the uniqueness of our own person.

Metamorphosis

How do we practice the art of metamorphosis when in nature it has an extremely limited role in evolution.
50 years ago Europe was a combination of separate nations each highly identifiable, each with clearly defined borders, each with a national agenda.
The creation of the EU and eventually a single currency broke the singularity of the nation state and with the free movement of people across boarders the dilution of national identity began.
The "people" were never considered, this was all done behind closed doors as part of an economic package to accelerate trade.
The influence felt in small towns across the 'continent' of people who knew nothing of the history of their host country and probably cared less but had to be integrated and absorbed, was a stress which seemed to be of no interest to their national government who's eyes were fixed firmly on the financial benefits.
50 years on, to question the issues of integration is heresy. One is either painted a racialist or lacking realism in facing the massive changes to all our cities. The question of the 'economic benefit' and the skill set which can't be found locally and has to be imported is expounded ad-nausea whilst the pressure on school places and housing, not to mention the health service is driven into the long grass.
As Africa has woken up to its proximity to Europe the migrant flow will expand rather than wither. Africa is (using our western norms) a basket case with the turmoil of tribalism, religious inflexibility and despotic leadership. It's people's will naturally seek a better life in Europe (?).
Perhaps as we continue to Morph into some sort of social hotchpotch with identification limited to which ever ghetto a specific strand of people find some sort of commonality with, the rise of a tribal mentality will come to the fore and we will all begin to resemble Lebanon or The Congo.  

Neuroplasticity

 It seems totally obvious that whilst we accept that the brain controls the functions of the body through the complex nerves that connect the brain to the bodies extremities, equally the brain receives information about the bodies condition from and within those self same nerve paths. The information received by the brain through these pathways has an effect on the brain as it obtains the sense of health, or otherwise from different parts of the body. If one were to stimulate a part of the body that was not functioning properly that act of stimulation would send a message to the brain and effect a response from the brain that was supportive.
Acupuncture must work in this way. The needles stimulate a sensation which is received by the brain and the brain responds by providing that specific part of the body with what ever the body needs to become once again a healthy participant in the holistic view of a healthy body.
Neuroplasticity. The Brains ability to reorganise itself though changes in neural pathways due to environment or behaviour, allow some compensation for injury and disease. In these cases the mind is being asked to influence the brain to raise, in the dormant areas of the brain the opportunity to take over the job of the damaged part of the brain.
The old expression "mind over matter" comes to 'mind' since the person who has experienced damage to some part of their cognitive process or the functioning of certain parts of the body through the brains functioning such as in a stroke. That part of the brain which has been damaged, those functions which the body needs to receive the appropriate signals, the brain can be encouraged to use another part which has not been damaged to take over the function.
The stimulation seems to require a tremendous amount of discipline and repetitive nudging by the patient through exercise but the possibility of encouraging a new part of the brain, by the mind to accept a new role is monumental in its potential.
Many of our deep seated illnesses are seated in the brain and now we begin to see the brain not as a fixture but as an agricultural project which, fields laying fallow, can be brought into production by the correct application of fertiliser.
Neuroplasticity of course asks the question. If the brain is open to being moulded and changed by intensive interaction from the mind, why do we not pursue this form of reasoning when we teach children, particularly children with learning and emotional problems.
It also has an Orwellian content in that outside influence is seen as the final arbiter and with the right social tools the brain can be manipulated, plasticised into any shape and form desirable.

Ourselves

What is it which drives us out of bed in the morning other than our commitment to work.
Is there an underlying thing that we are missing out on, something we will miss if we don't make an effort to go out and look.
There was always when young the need to put yourself about and visit the social scene, perhaps to line up a date or visit a football game to enjoy the close contact with fans and imbibe their enthusiasm.
Staying in was an anathema, something was happening elsewhere and you were missing out by not being there.
I have friends who are continually going out or if not, are entertaining people in their home and wouldn't for a moment give thought to spending time doing nothing.
I was listening to Terry Waite yesterday talking about being alone and in silence, of how that state of being, gave him the composure to find himself. Terry Waite to those of you who don't know spent over 4 years as prisoner in Lebanon, three and a half in solitary confinement. Imagine that amount of time being totally alone with only your own mind for company.
His message is that you are an individual and as such you have the composition, within your own mind to construct your own world and live satisfactorily within it.
The need to be spurred on by events around you perhaps indicates how little at home you are within yourself and as such we are denying ourselves the company of the best friend we shall ever have - ourselves.