Curiosity - who knows where it will take you.

The say that curiosity killed the cat but I have always had an enquiring mind. I asked too many questions and was often referred to as a 'knowing child' or remarks would be made that I 'had been here before' or perhaps that , 'she knows things that she's not supposed to know.'  Well often I did and a public blog is not an appropriate medium with which to reveal close family secrets or how I came to discover them. All I will say is that as an avid early reader, it make assessments. In a way I was a child detective, investigating anything and everything.

My early reading, Aesops fables, Greek myths and Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales often gave me moral wisdom way beyond my years and as the confident youngest child of four, I happily dispensed the lessons that I learned whenever a situation required my knowledge. I read everything from log tables and the bible to cookery books and my elder sister's Dennis Wheatley novels. What I most enjoyed was trying to research something that interested me and I was relentless in my pursuit of a solution to a problem.

Had I not been a gifted dancer, I think I might have had a career in science or perhaps law but in recent years I am convinced that I would make a really great detective. My reading favourite reading from age nine was Enid Blyton's Mystery series. Dad would buy me a new paperback at the Post Office every Saturday and when I had a good selection of books, I painted a wooden box yellow, decorated it with butterflies and started the Butterfly Club for the village children, charging them sixpence to borrow a book.

I still love to read detective stories, especially the Scandinavian variety but also fell in love with Alexander McCall Smith's traditionally built First Lady Detective, Mme Ramwotse.  They are great human interest stories. If being a private detective in the UK didn't involve so many licences, perhaps I would enjoy the work. As things go, the cuts in Legal Aid for matrimonial cases means that many detectives are finding work thin on the ground, so perhaps it isn't such a great idea.

I have a slight disconnect in my short term memory, I often lose items when out and about and although it is quite distressing to misplace my reading glasses, car keys or gloves, I actually relish the pursuit of their retrieval.  I love retracting my steps, thinking through the logistics and am always so delighted when I get things back that it is almost worth experiencing the initial loss. When I began having immediate recall problems, I did think that I was losing my mind and actually went through all the tests for Alzheimer's.  I am relieved to say that my problem is not progressive.  I was delighted to discover that my long term retention memory is in the 95th percentile for my age and even my short term memory is well above average.  It is just a concentration deficit due to chronic pain that affects me, my neural pathways divert so that my brain is not aware that I am in pain. The human brain is such a remarkable organism.

I spent a little time this morning in a newly opened dementia café.  This is an innovation to bring suffers of dementia and their carers together in a safe environment. Carers can open up, share their experiences, obtain help and advice. My friend and former college buddy Peter Brooks who works as demetia care homes officer for Blackpool Council invited us to go along to consider whether poetry is a medium that might help sufferers of this debilitating disease to unlock long term memory and open conversations.  We are going to give it a try. As a frim believer in QED - I won't dismiss anything until I have investigated it thoroughly.  Oh and if any of you think you might like to join in as a volunteer poetry reader - just email deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk

Memory Café

You are locked in now,
a safe place,
because your forget,
your name, where you live
when to wash, to eat, to sleep.
They care for you,
keep you safe,
help you to keep you warm,
but all the memories that made you
are locked away too,
as if they could cause you harm.

Will Wordsworth's words unlock them?
Will Keats offer release?
Could a host of daffodils clear the cobwebs in the mind,
or neural pathways reconnect as 
seasons mists sweep away in rhyme?

If I just leave you there, to sit and stare,
or simply walk away
no one may hear the things you want to say.
If time told poetry and prose
reanimate emotion in your face,
then in your remembering smile,
I may find grace.


Thanks for reading.  Adele   

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Metamorphosis - it just happens.

As a dancer, I have always been fascinated by transformation. In many ballets and children's stories, beautiful creatures are really humans under evil spells, beasts are humans waiting for true love to break the spell and return them into handsome princes.

Discovering that an ugly caterpillar is the grub of the butterfly and studying its pupation and re-emergence as a beautiful winged creature is, to me, one of the wonders of nature. Metamorphosis of a tadpole to frog is not as exciting - they swim, grow legs and then still swim and hop. Not quite the big finish that a dramatic dancer appreciates but hey ho!

The word 'metamorphosis' is exciting in itself. 1. the prefix meta- comes from a Greek word meaning “beyond” or “change.” 2. the root morph comes from a Greek word meaning “shape.” 3. the suffix -osis comes from Greek as well, and means “state or process.” Don't you just love etymology? So revealing.

 

I think I first saw a print of Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus in the mid-seventies. It is a painting that is hard to ignore, filled with references to Greek mythology - another of my childhood fascinations. Aesop's Fables and an illustrated book of Myths and Legends taught me much of my formative morality.  Researching the painting itself is easier if you can find the best teacher. The text below is from the Tate Modern guide, with all appropriate referencing. The poem, written yesterday  is my own, requiring none.
 

 

This painting is Dalí's interpretation of the Greek myth of Narcissus. Narcissus was a youth of great beauty who loved only himself and broke the hearts of many lovers. The gods punished him by letting him see his own reflection in a pool. He fell in love with it, but discovered he could not embrace it and died of frustration. Relenting, the gods immortalised him as the narcissus (daffodil) flower. For this picture Dalí used a meticulous technique which he described as 'hand-painted colour photography' to depict with hallucinatory effect the transformation of Narcissus, kneeling in the pool, into the hand holding the egg and flower. Narcissus as he was before his transformation is seen posing in the background. The play with 'double images' sprang from Dalí's fascination with hallucination and delusion.
 

This was Dalí's first painting to be made entirely in accordance with the paranoiac critical method, which the artist described as a 'Spontaneous method of irrational knowledge, based on the critical-interpretative association of the phenomena of delirium' (The Conquest of the Irrational, published in The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, New York 1942). Robert Descharnes noted that this painting meant a great deal to Dalí, as it was the first Surrealist work to offer a consistent interpretation of an irrational subject.
 

The artist said to Descharnes of this picture:

A painting shown and explained to Dr. Freud.

Pedagogical presentation of the myth of narcissism, illustrated by a poem written at the same time.

In this poem and this painting, there is death and fossilization of Narcissus. The poem to which Dalí referred was published in 1937, in a small book by the artist entitled Metamorphosis of Narcissus. The book also contains two explanatory notes printed facing a colour reproduction of the painting, the first of which reads:

WAY OF VISUALLY OBSERVING THE COURSE OF THE METAMORPHOSIS OF NARCISSUS REPRESENTED IN THE PRINT ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE:
If one looks for some time, from a slight distance and with a certain 'distant fixedness', at the hypnotically immobile figure of Narcissus, it gradually disappears until at last it is completely invisible.

The metamorphosis of the myth takes place at that precise moment, for the image of Narcissus is suddenly transformed into the image of a hand which rises out of his own reflection. At the tips of its fingers the hand is holding an egg, a seed, a bulb from which will be born the new narcissus - the flower. Beside it can be seen the limestone sculpture of the hand - the fossil hand of the water holding the blown flower.

When he met Sigmund Freud in London in 1938, Dalí took this picture with him as an example of his work, as well as a magazine containing an article he had written on paranoia. Freud wrote the following day to Stefan Zweig, who had introduced them, that 'it would be very interesting to explore analytically the growth of a picture like this'. Further reading:
Tate Gallery 1978-80 Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1981, pp.85-9, reproduced p.85.
Robert Descharnes, Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, 2 volumes, Köln 1994, pp.288-9, 299, 757, reproduced pl.645 in colour

Dawn Ades, Dalí, revised edition, London 1995, pp.132-3, reproduced p.131 in colour

Terry Riggs - March 1998

 

Change

 

It has changed.

I was overwhelmed at the start,

bathed in your brightness

affected by the slightest touch,

A wave of new feelings swept me away,

made me restless,

 unfurled my wings.   

Let me fly 

Soon I had to remind you that I was there,

Soon you didn’t notice when I left.

Soon you didn’t care.

I recall now that it was like this once before,

There was a promise,

too long ago to remember,

 Change happens slowly,

barely noticed,

I was just too close to see. 

Thanks for reading.  Adele

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