http://www.unicef.com/

http://freerice.com/

http://www.goodbooksnz.co.nz/

http://www.betterworld.com/ - Similar idea to GoodBooksNZ, but apparently more internationalised and possibly more savings/wider variety of charities.

Funds Raised for Global Literacy:

$4,373,335.83

Books Saved From Landfills:

11,384,918

Great stuff.

OK, no more desperate solicitation of communication.

His images are sometimes frighteningly strange, a little like Ackroyd’s other biographical topic: Blake. He begins the story of London from the very beginning, but doesn’t care too much about ordered chornology. He mixes quotes and asides from all periods of London’s history.

I am only a few pages through, but already I can see how much of a rollercoaster ride its going to be. He talks of London as being a place where neolithic druids once performed their sacrifices and rituals. He jumps quickly to London’s former florae and faunae: London’s former wildlife consisting of crocodiles, rhinoceri, hippopotami, giant beavers, lions, buffalo and mammoths.

His beautiful image of the ‘London Stock’ brick being the same brick clay that forms the foundations for London’s buildings, roads, parks, and waterways. As Ackroyd says, Blake himself believed that the ‘turning of clay and chalk into the fabric of the streets was a civilising process which knit the city with its primeval past’.

In the first chapter he compares London with a vast, confusing, stormy, frightening, sea where many souls have been lost in its depths, and many have prospered beyond their wildest dreams. Geologically speaking, London used to be underwater, you see. There are still signs of the sea-life in the rocks of the ancient buildings London is so well-known for.

I just wanted to share a Dryden quote Ackroyd uses to illustrate the prehistoric London:

‘Yet monsters from the large increase we find/Engender’d on the Slyme thou leav’st behind.’

Pretty funny I thought!

Anyway, on with the reading.

For there the babe is born in joy
that was begotten in dire woe;
Just as we reap in joy the fruit
Which we in bitter tears did sow.

And, if the babe is born a boy,
He’s given to a women old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head,
She pierces both his hands and feet,
She cuts his heart out at his side,
To make it feel both cold and heat.

Her fingers number every nerve
Just as a miser counts his gold;
She lives upon his shrieks and cries,
And she grows young as he grows old.

Till he becomes a bleeding youth,
and she becomes a virgin bright;
Then he rends up his manacles,
And binds her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves
Just as a husbandman his mould,
And she becomes his dwelling-place
And garden fruitful seventyfold.

An aged shadow soon he fades,
Wandering round an earthly cot,
Full-filled all wih gems and gold
Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul,
The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,
The countless gold of the aching heart,
The martyr’s groan and the lover’s sigh.

They are his meat,
They are his drink;
He feeds the beggar and the poor;
To the wayfaring traveller
For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy,
They make the roofs and walls to ring;
Till from the fire upon the hearth
A little fmale babe doth spring.

And she is all of solid fire
And gems and gold, that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her baby form,
Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,
If young or old or rich or poor;
They soon drive out the aged host,
A beggar at another’s door.

He wanders weeping far away,
Until some other take him in;
Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,
Until he can a maiden win.

And, to allay his freezing age,
The poor man takes her in his arms;
The cottage fades before his sight,
The garden and its lovely charms.

The guests are scattered through the land;
For the eye altering alters all;
The senses roll themselves in fear,
And the flat earth becomes a bal.

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away,
A desert vast without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,
And a dark desert all around.

The honey of her infant lips,
The bread and wine of her sweet smile,
The wild game of her roving eye,
Do him to infancy beguile.

For as he eats and drinks he grows
Younger and younger every day
And on the desert wild they both
Wander in terror and dismay.

He went not out to the field nor fold,
He went not out to the village nor town,
But he came home in a black, black cloud,
And took to his bed, and there lay down.

And an angel of Providence at his feet,
And an angel of Providence at his head,
And in the midst a black, black cloud,
And in the midst the sick man on his bed.

And on his right hand was Mary Green,
And on his left hand was his sister Jane,
And their tears fell through the black, black cloud
To drive away the sick man’s pain.

“Oh, William if thou dost another love,
Dost another love better than poor Mary,
Go and take that other to be thy wife,
And Mary Green shall her servant be.”

“Yes, Mary, I do another love,
another I love far better than thee,
and another I will have for my wife:
Then what have I to do with thee?

“For thou art melancholy pale,
And on thy head is the cold moon’s shine,
But she is ruddy and bright as day,
And the sunbeams dazzle from her eyne.”

Mary tembled, and Mary chilled,
And Mary fell down on the right-hand floor,
That William Bond and his sister Jane
Scarce could recover Mary more.

When Mary woke and found her laid
On the right hand of her William dear
On the right hand of his loved bed,
And saw her William Bond so near;

The fairies that fled from William Bond
Danced around her shining head;
They danced over the pillow white,
And the angels of Providence left the bed.

“I thought Love lived in the hot sunshine,
But, oh, he lives in the moony light!
I thought to find Love in the heat of day,
But sweet Love is the comforter of night.

The blood red ran from the Grey Monk’s side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.

His eye was dry, no tear could flow,
A hollow groan bespoke his woe;
He trembled and shuddered upon the bed;
At length with a feeble cry he said:

“When God commanded this hand to write
In the shadowy hours of deep midnight,
He told me that all I wrote should prove
The bane of all that on earth I love.

“My brother starved between two walls,
His children’s cry my soul appals–
I mocked at the rack and the grinding chain–
My bent body mocks at their torturing pain.

“Thy father drew his sword in the north,
With his thousands storng he is marched forth.
Thy brother hath armed himself in steel,
To revenge the wrongs thy children feel.

“But vain the sword, and vain the bow–
They never can work war’s overthrow;
The hermit’s prayer and the widow’s tear
Alone can free the world from fear.

“For a tear is an intellectual thing,
And a sigh is the sword of an angel king:
And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.”

The hand of vengeance found the bed
To which the purple tyrant fled;
The iron hand crushed the tyrant’s head,
And became a tyrant in his stead.

A Robin redbreasts in a case
Puts all heaven in a rage;
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state;
A game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Doth the rising sun affright;
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to Heaven for human blood.
Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from hell a human soul;
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain doth tear;
A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men;
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the Polar Bar.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider’s enmity;
He who torments the chafer’s sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
repeats to thee thy mother’s grief;
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keep the human soul from care:
The lmb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgment draweth nigh;
The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat,
Feed them and thou shalt grow fat.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
The bleat the bark, bellow and roar,
Are waves that beat on Heaven’s shore.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won’t believe;
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright.
The gnat that sings his summer’s song
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue;
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s foot;
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist’s jealousy;
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar’s laurel-crown

Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armourer’s iron brace;
The soildier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer’s sun.
When gold and gems adorn the plough,
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
The beggar’s rags fluttering in air
Do to rags the heavens tear;
The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags
Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.

One mite wrung from the labourer’s hands
Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands,
Or, if protected from on high,
Shall that whole nation sell and buy;
The poor man’s farthing is worth more
Than all the gold of Arfic’s shore.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation’s fate;
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave Old England’s winding-sheet;
The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Shall dance before dead England’s hearse.

He who mocks the infant’s faith
Shall be mocked in age and death;
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotten grave shall ne’er get out;
He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and eeath.
The babe is more than swaddling-bands
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made, and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.

The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out;
A puddle, or the cricket’s cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The c hild’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame philosopjhy to smine
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies youi can invent.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please;
If the sun and moom should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight;
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And, when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see with not through the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night:
But doth a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

In terms of cats, she is the epitome.

She actually loves music!

I didn’t think cats could love music, but she definitely does. She sits on my lap as my prog-rock guitar glammery ricochets around the room.

She sits on the floor, on my sisters jacket, sleeping in a ball of love. She is a ball of love.

Cats are so angelic, so perfect. They live a heavenly life, they have a heavenly existence.

National has been, and it seems, always will be, the party for the rich, the powerful, the greedy and the ruthless. It is NOT a party for the people, it is NOT a party for the community, it is NOT a party for sound leadership or even half-way reasonable government! Not that Labour is particularly, but the principle of the lesser of two evils comes into play as in nearly all political discussion in democratic  semi-republics. And the other reference to the demonic always flouted around this time of year: better the devil you know.

Who are the silent majority swing-voters who have swayed towards National in the current ‘poltical climate’? I won’t pretend to know; obviously people who are unhappy or bored with Labour and Helen Clark and believe National may do a better job.

We should not respect Key’s ambition, just as we should not have respected Don Brash’s. He has reached the top of the business ladder, he’s rich, he’s powerful, so he thinks he can become even more powerful. He’s a slippery bugger. Just watch out! We don’t really know him, just as we didn’t know Brash. Now, of course I’m biased towards these business guys. I’ve never liked them, probably never will, but there’s a good reason. They only look out for number one. They want power for the sake of power. Take one glance at National’s allies and its enough to make anyone from the left sick to the stomach.

National are not a centrist party, as Key is trying to make out. They are a party of the ‘centre’ right. Which means they believe in privatisation of state assets (and about everything else), an over-zealous obsession with economic growth, the under-cutting of the lower class through reduced benefits, reduced taxes to corporations and wealthy families and individuals. And so on. You know the drill.

Politics and business should mix, but don’t. Our political system allows them to mix in a most pernicious way. Ahem, corporate tax cuts! Imagine a National-led government. Does anyone remember the Bolger government? How about Muldoon? Anyone with a heart knows its a bad idea.

Ask questions. Never stop asking questions. The stupidest people are not those who ask stupid questions, but those who never ask questions. There’s a good reason this is a cliché. There’s a good reason behind almost every cliché. But familiarity grows tiresome. We yearn for the spontaneous, the ephemeral. Because brevity is more precious somehow. How to encapsulate an infinitude of emotions in one sentence, in one word. Or should I say ‘Word’?

Love me tender

Love me true

Never let me go

Oh my darling, I love you

And I always will

So simple. So beautiful it’s sublime.