The beauty of nature: a nightingale, perched on the hand of a man in whom he clearly trusts, sings its best repertoire.

Alexander Verbeek on Twitter: ” The beauty of nature: a …twitter.com › KatyDuke › statuses

It was my father’s scout knife, which we think he may have been passed on by an older relative. He wrote on it: “IORWERTH (?) ROBERTS, WOLF PATROL 1ST GLANOGWEN 1932” (Bethesda, NW Wales)

Jesus was crucified and died because of The Wheel of Religion. Listen to Blake in ‘To the Christians’ from ‘Jerusalem.’

I STOOD among my valleys of the south,
And saw a flame of fire, even as a Wheel
Of fire surrounding all the heavens: it went
From west to east against the current of
Creation, and devour’d all things in its loud	5
Fury and thundering course round Heaven and Earth
By it the Sun was roll’d into an orb;
By it the Moon faded into a globe,
Travelling thro’ the night; for from its dire
And restless fury Man himself shrunk up	10
Into a little root a fathom long.
And I askèd a Watcher and a Holy One
Its name. He answer’d: ‘It is the Wheel of Religion.’
I wept and said: ‘Is this the law of Jesus,
This terrible devouring sword turning every way?’	15
He answer’d: ‘Jesus died because He strove
Against the current of this Wheel: its name
Is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death,
Of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment,
Opposing Nature. It is Natural Religion.	20
But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life,
Creating Nature from this fiery Law
By self-denial and Forgiveness of Sin.
Go, therefore, cast out devils in Christ’s name,
Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease,	25
Pity the evil; for thou art not sent
To smite with terror and with punishments
Those that are sick, like to the Pharisees,
Crucifying, and encompassing sea and land,
For proselytes to tyranny and wrath.	30
But to the Publicans and Harlots go:
Teach them true happiness, but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace.
For Hell is open’d to Heaven; thine eyes beheld
The dungeons burst, and the prisoners set free.’

FOOD FOR THOUGHT FROM MARTIN CRUZ SMITH’s …

‘Nightwing.’ 1977

‘Hey, Selwyn, you never told me. Why did you give up the missionary business?’

Never did. It gave up on me. I got another germ, see?’

‘No.’

… ‘It’s my theory that religion is like a disease. A great religion’s like an epidemic. Take Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism. Just like epidemics. Start in one place, always spread along the trade routes, flourish for a few hundred years and die out. Or get overrun by a new epidemic. I was sent here like a germ, to infect you people. Instead,’ he shrugged, ‘you infected me.’

What God …?

What God is he, writes laws of peace, & clothes him in a tempest What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs What crawling villain preaches abstinence & wraps himself In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay!

---

William Blake in “America: A Prophecy” (1793). Spoken by “Boston’s Angel”.

Between 8 September 1941 and 27 January 1944, 2 million lives were lost, including about a million civilians (40% of the city’s population), during the siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg, the ancient capital of Russia) which lasted 872 days or 2 years, 4 months and 5 days – one of the longest, most brutal and destructive sieges in human history, and possibly the costliest in casualties suffered.

During the first winter the temperature dropped to -40 F.

Soviet forces managed eventually to open a narrow land corridor to the city. Around 1.4 million people were rescued by military evacuation.  

Some historians classify the siege as genocide.

The siege became ‘an internal battle’, with starvation and isolation tearing into every aspect of everyday life and ‘every recess of the mind.’

Despair permeates the diary of Berta Zlotnikova, a teenager, who wrote: “I am becoming an animal. There is no worse feeling than when all your thoughts are on food.”

Alexis Peri writes: “Leningraders were indeed heroes for all that they endured. They suffered through the unimaginable. What interests me is that, in their diaries, they did not narrate themselves in heroic terms. They did not use the narrative of heroic resistance to describe their fight for survival, but found other ways to make sense of their suffering. They looked to literature, to history, etc.

THE SCHOOLBOY (William Blake)

I love to rise in a summer morn,
   When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
   And the skylark sings with me:
   O what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,—
   O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
   The little ones spend the day
   In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,
   And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
   Nor sit in learning’s bower,
   Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
   Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
   But droop his tender wing,
   And forget his youthful spring!

O father and mother if buds are nipped,
   And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
   Of their joy in the springing day,
   By sorrow and care’s dismay,—

How shall the summer arise in joy,
   Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
   Or bless the mellowing year,
   When the blasts of winter appear?

Nietzsche …

Truth may not be as straightforward as we think, that it may be as elusive and coy as a woman pursued by a fumbling man. Through most of history we’ve only fumbled with truth, with a pathetically simplistic, straightforward and naive notion of truth.