Curiosity

It might have killed the cat but curiosity has greatly enriched my life. There's a fine line between curiosity and nosiness, and I think I straddle that line rather precariously. I'm hugely curious (aka nosy), I always have been. Ever since I was tiny I wanted to know who, what, where, when and why.  Ad infinitum.

Young children have a natural curiosity. They need to make sense of this strange world in which they find themselves.  A newborn baby's first sensation is through his mouth, via nipple or teat. It's no wonder that their mouths continue to be receptacles for every lump of earth, piece of fluff, coin or small toy as they roll and crawl their way around. This is fine when your baby is grabbing a handful of shepherds pie and sending it in the vague direction of his face, but not quite so clever when you're washing out a mouth filled with soil and worms.

Curiosity is the catalyst for exploration.  If humankind had not been curious we would never have split the atom or got chicken nuggets. A mixed blessing some would say.

I realise now that my curiosity is the push I need to sort out problems of any kind.  If it's the Hoover that's bust I'm quite happy to take it to pieces to discover where (this bit goes), why (it does what it does), how (it does it) and what (the hell I am doing, wasting time like this when I've got a husband who should be capable).  Emotional problems often follow a similar course (why is he doing that? How can he be so selfish? What can I do about it?)  The questions – and potential answers – are endless.

For some unknown reason I share a trait with my mum. We both believe that we can solve all problems with just a little determined delving. Copious amounts of tea, a shoulder to cry on and a large roll of sellotape can all come in very handy but the starting point is curiosity.

My mum tells me that ever since I could go off on my own at about the age of eleven I would come home with a story. The overheard conversation on the bus, the group of kids who were misbehaving, the family making a meal of eating out.  Everywhere I went there was a tale unfolding. My life was spent watching a series of real life sitcoms.

I'm sure curiosity was the basis for my burgeoning interest in street photography, the photographic equivalent of earwigging.  When we go out together these days my long suffering husband now has to put up with me not only shushing him so I can hear neighbouring conversations but also shifting him out of the way so I can shoot some unsuspecting soul with an interesting face.

Thinking about my husband's lack of practical skills and the fact that he rarely joins in a communal conversation, I was hit by the sudden realisation that he simply lacks curiosity.

He has no desire to listen in to a conversation if it doesn’t mention music, football, films or beer.  There’s possibly one other category but I won’t go there.  If he’s on the phone, I’m desperate to quiz him when he finishes (and sometimes before),  “Who was it? What did he want? How’s his wife? What was he saying for you to say……..” and so on and on and on.  However, when I come off the phone, he doesn’t so much as ask who it was.  He simply has no interest.  If the toaster blows out black smoke Dave doesn’t question it – he has no desire to know why, and certainly no desire to take it to pieces.

I’m thinking this could be a problem to delve into a little more deeply.  Put the kettle on Dave, it’s time to investigate.

Curiosity (by Alastair Reid)
Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely

the cat was just unlucky, or else curious

to see what death was like, having no cause

to go on licking paws, or fathering

litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious

is dangerous enough. To distrust

what is always said, what seems,

to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,

leave home, smell rats, have hunches

do not endear cats to those doggy circles

where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches

are the order of things, and where prevails

much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity

will not cause us to die–

only lack of it will.

Never to want to see

the other side of the hill

or that improbable country

where living is an idyll

(although a probable hell)

would kill us all.

Only the curious

have, if they live, a tale

worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,

are changeable, marry too many wives,

desert their children, chill all dinner tables

with tales of their nine lives.

Well, they are lucky. Let them be

nine-lived and contradictory,

curious enough to change, prepared to pay

the cat price, which is to die

and die again and again,

each time with no less pain.

A cat minority of one

is all that can be counted on

to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell

on each return from hell

is this: that dying is what the living do,

that dying is what the loving do,

and that dead dogs are those who do not know

that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

 

Thanks for reading,     Jill

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Curiosities

Your Saturday Blogger is back from dusty Crete sporting a suntan and a broken finger, the hallmarks of a good holiday. It was a much-needed respite from the topsy-turvy house on the strand, work on which is still in progress. (I may treat you to fables of the reconstruction next week.)

There was a time, forty years ago on my first visit to dusty Crete, when everything was in Greek alone - road signs, public notices, menus, advertisements, shop signs. Nowadays, to reflect the pervasion of the international tourist, English is pretty much everywhere as well - which is a shame in many ways, for it detracts from the 'Greekness' of the experience and makes the tourist lazy.

There is a silver lining to this cloud of globalisation. Occasionally, a well-intentioned attempt to sign in English can yield some amusing curiosities. These errors in usage can also be strangely poetic, something gained in translation. Two of my favourites from the recent holiday were a  hand-painted sign on a roadside orchard wall that read "Kindly do not tough the fruits" and a notice inside the entrance to a restaurant in Heraklion that requested patrons to "Please wait to be sated".

Then there was this sign-board on a beach-front shop, pictured below....

It took me a while before I clocked that, in addition to fruit, bread, milk, batteries (all bursting with freshness of course), it was also possible to purchase Sea Gods:

Fantastic! Clearly the owner intended to advertise his stock of sea goods (lilos, inflatable crocodiles, rubber rings, foam tubes, fishing nets etc) but I loved the idea of a trade in mythological Hellenic deities of the sea being fronted through this beach-side store in 21st century Crete.

Greece is a nation of hundreds of islands, of which dusty Crete is the largest, followed by Euboea, Lesbos and Rhodes and then another 200 habitable islands of decreasing size. It's no surprise then that the role of the sea has been central to the development of Greek civilisation and culture and no surprise again that Greek mythology is littered with a pantheon of over 100 sea deities. Google Greek sea gods if you have the curiosity, an evening to spare and a good bottle of retsina to hand.

These sea gods between them embodied, epitomised or represented every aspect of the sea (storms, tides, waves, whirlpools), its contents (dolphins, krakens, whales) and the dangers it posed to mere mortals. The deities were propitiated (kept sweet, basically) through rituals performed at shrines in their honour. At their head was Poseidon, brother of Zeus. Poseidon, with his trident, ruled over seas and oceans.

Verdigris
With our junk culture,
we swarm, we litter
in thoughtless droves,
each act of hubris
a heedless desecration
of the green of Greece.

It seems to me
sea god,
as you rise majestic through emerald swell
dripping brine from verdigris
like the spray-bedecked tamarisk trees
lining this rocky shore,
that it's just as well
your bronze-age eye
has grown for evermore blind.

Otherwise
what horrors
would you find
to inflict on us
with a swift flash of trident
in retribution for our pollution
of your beautiful seaways
and sandy coves?
I imagine waves of anger
coming to engulf us all.

*Verdigris is from the Old French Verd de Grece, green of Greece.

Thanks for reading. Here's hoping for one last late summer sun-drenched week, S ;-)

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My Curiosity Thing

My curiosity thing, it all started with a name I didn’t recognise.

Following the death of a close relative, I came into possession of her belongings, including a large, torn, worn and overly stuffed envelope bearing the words Important Papers printed neatly on the front. When I got round to examining the contents, there were all sorts of things and none of it in any order. Certificates of births, marriages and deaths, mainly concerning my grandparents, were folded up amongst old photographs of family members I struggled to recognise. I smiled at the black and white image of my beloved maternal grandmother, young, slim and fashionable with a dashing young man by her side. I didn’t realise it was my grandfather, white scarf, white gloves, tilted Trilby hat. How handsome he was and what a shame about the tea or coffee stain, a perfect brown circle across the lower half of his pin-striped trousers.  Black-edged funeral cards dating back to long before I was born, one from just before the twentieth century were squashed together in a small, white envelope. A collection of very old Prudential insurance certificates were particularly delicate with tears appearing along the fold lines.

As I glanced through the items and attempted to put them in some sort of order, the same surname kept cropping up and I grew increasingly curious. I knew the maternal side of my family very well, at least I thought I did. No one had this surname and there was nothing to indicate what the contact was. There was nobody left to ask and at that time, I didn’t expect to find out.

Years later, during a lengthy recovery from illness, I decided to see how far I could track my family tree online. I had been fascinated by the television programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ and public records were easily accessed on a couple of reliable websites. I wondered if it was really an ok thing to do and I was full of ‘what ifs’. Curiosity got the better of me and I subscribed to one of the better known genealogy sites and spent hours studying electoral rolls and census details. I discovered that the recurring name in my aunt’s papers was the maiden name of my great-grandmother. She had many siblings which accounted for the frequency of the name showing up.

My late father never knew his heritage from his mother’s side. I wish he could have lived long enough to have had access to the information which is so easily available nowadays. He knew she was orphaned as a baby and taken in by another family and maybe not formally adopted, nothing more. She might not have known anything herself. Recently, I was having another look at my paternal side and after discovering a possible link, I found her on the 1901 census. I was able to trace her back to her parents and after obtaining death certificates, I learnt that her mother died days after giving birth as a result of what we now know to be pre-eclampsia and her father died a few months later of TB.

Curiosity killed the cat, so it’s said and satisfaction brought it back. I’ve found the answers to most of my genealogy curiosities and I haven’t discovered anything bad. No one has been thrown in jail, or worse. It seems like we’ve always been the ordinary folk that we are today. I’ll let you know if I uncover anything shocking.

Thanks for reading, Pam.

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