Another Page From The Diary Of A Well Lived Life

My stony heart is gone. I feel a great wish to help the poor people round about, especially the children and the old.

There is plenty to do. There are my lunatic friends at the asylum. I go and see them on days when I am in Cork for organ lessons.

Last week I had a picnic lunch for forty women women lunatics. I arrived with Con and there the poor things were, ready. Two or three nurses were of the party and we all shuffled off as far as we were allowed to go and sat on a bank under trees in the asylum grounds, out of sight of any buildings that reminded them of their sad lot.

The lunatics had made themselves very smart for the occasion; their hats were wonderful in colour and shape; each wore a clean pinafore or apron with an assortment of coloured bows. and a large bunch of purple phlox pinned in the middle. They were very good and Oh! so happy. 

Thompson had sent up a wonderful tea. sugar cakes with mice on them, and plum cakes and barmbrack and bread and butter. They all had one idea which was that I should not be allowed to get sunstroke. One or another mounted guard over me with an open parasol, even when I sat in the shade. If I protested they all patted their heads, signed first to me and then to themselves. Do they think that they are in the asylum because of sunstroke? 

Mrs Leary, from Castle Freke, was there. She calls herself Lady Carberry as a rule, but when others are there she tells the others t call her Lady Glandore. 

Jane Tyner came too. the girl with whom I play duets. She was engaged to marry a curate. When he heard that her mother had died in an asylum he broke off the engagement Jane, heartbroken, went off her head. 

Here is the old dear who jabs one with a knitting needle, if one does not look out, and then is so sorry.! Her beliefs are complicated, she believes a picture of her is being made in Heaven. If she on earth she is cross and jabs people with knitting needles, then the picture will be ugly; if she is good and patient and, doesn't jab it will be lovely. When she dies she will go to Heaven and she and her picture will be one.

There is a priest's sister, a very beloved woman, dark, beautiful, who knows she is "queer" and takes it as her cross and tries to show love to rest.

One woman, the nurse told me, they dared not bring, tho' she cried and promised to be good, because on my last visit on my last visit she had followed me about (I didn't know it) threatening to "send that lady west". Two nurses shadowed me all the time that day.

We talked at the picnic exactly as if it was a garden party at Castle Freke, and if one of us gave a sudden shriek or laughed at nothing. or even rolled over on the grass, no one took any notice. It was a lovely day, and no one enjoyed it more than I did; except for the kissing at the end. Lunatics, like nuns, are fond of kissing people they fancy, whether they know them well enough or not. And with lunatics one can never be sure they won't bite.

Dr Woods gave leave for them to be photographed and Herr Kraft, the photographer, arrived looking quite pale. The nurse had to pose us, for when Herr Kraft approached the patients shrieked or else wanted to kiss him. So he entrenched himself behind the camera, but it was ages before they would all sit still, several of them wanting to know why he had put his head in a black bag, before they consented to settle down.

Thirty Kilogrammes

is quite a small but significant weight,
physically it is quite a small volume.
Nowadays it is what passengers carry,
as hand luggage on international flights.

But eighty five years ago that same weight
was what European Jews, and other 'undesirables'*
in up to eight different categories were allowed to pack
in small brown suitcases, as the sum total of their lives.
When their homes were stolen and they were sent
to they-knew-not-where, but their captors did.

Imagine that-all you carry for a holiday
being all you have for your future life,
and that your future life is so uncertain
that the last thing you were allowed to know
was how small were your chances of a return, after your exit.

*The yellow triangle was for the Jews,
the pink triangle was for homosexuals,
the brown triangle was for the Roma,
the Jehovah's Witnesses got purple,
the politicos, including Freemasons, red,
ordinary criminals got a green triangle,
emigrants were given a blue triangle,
and anti-socials, including drug addicts,
the homeless, and lesbians, got a black triangle.
Finally. it was quite possible to be
in more than one category and to wear
one triangle, inverted, over another. 

The European Carve Up Of Africa

In this date in 1885 an agreement was signed in Berlin
 then in newly unified Germany, now an imperial power
where fourteen countries agreed with each other 
 how to divide up an entire continent between themselves,
and remove from the natives of these former trade outposts
all sense of autonomy and self rule.
These countries were The USA, Austria/Hungary,
The UK, France, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden/Norway,
and Russia, who between them agreed that their greed
should surpass all historic human expectation.
Such that nearly 140 years after the agreement was signed
the continent of Africa remains maimed and blamed
for it's poor self government when how it has recovered
is nothing short of miraculous.       

 

Which Way Does The Wind Blow?

Chernobyl is now under direct Russian control 

after thirty years of Western waste management

The world is holding it's breath, as not just
a democracy gets squashed and a nations hopes
are tested yet again, but dare Putin use Chernobyl
to blackmail the world with a dirty bomb
so powerful it would destroy all anyone
might hope to gain? 

 

This Blog Is Taking A Brief Break

 To adjust to jitters in the media as President Putin's troops show no sign of retreating from the front line with Ukraine and Putin makes false claims about 'Nazis in the Dombass' region, which he knows the west will never get near confirming or denying. 

  Sometimes when we feel things they are real; we have to decide.  

Pity The Modern Satirist

Pity the humorist who takes aim
at the grandeur of their government,
seeking to reduce it's pomp,
when the scale the pronouncements
they seek to reduce is that vast
that gov't have permanent poker faces
to  help sell the most absurd arguments
and even more, be shameless as liars.

It is not just that the comic writers
have to be better in their reasons
than the governments they criticise,
but to make mirth so consistently
with their reasoning is quite some trick.

It must be depressing at some level,
to have harvested this weeks laughter
only to find that the government
you moulded it from does not care
as long as it's permanence is assured.

It believes it will outlast not just you,
today's satirist who will be gone tomorrow,
but it will outlive all the humour in the world
and to live so long without humour
is to live well beyond depression.

Charles de Gaulle On Good Writing

Of the authors mentioned here I have read
Roth, Zweig, Junger and Schnitzler
and 'The Master and Margarita',
but I have not read Bley's 'Petersburg',
which out of curiosity I shall be looking up.   
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