Exploration.
Of the mind. Of the world. Of space. Because where does it begin and
where does it stop. What is exploration and what is it not.
Does
a psychiatrist not explore? Does an anatomist not investigate the
human body? Does an artist – a writer or painter – not explore
unseen worlds or, if concerned with the present, expose the detail
that most of us miss in this reality?
Does
exploration have to involve travel? To, and within, foreign countries
with equipment? With teams of people, a team being led, or following
on behind, as back-up, in case the expedition should not go well?
But,
can it not mean also being still? Doing, but not, for example,
climbing a mountain or covering a vast distance, but examining
something at close-range, like a plant or a body part, or a people?
And
are these feats more heroic if they are the accomplishment, or the
conviction, of one man or woman, rather than a team effort? Though
women explorers seemed to be more easily forgotten about; consigned
to a dusty record of history while the men are canonised, even if
what these women did at that time was all the more remarkable because
women's capabilities were questioned.
Even
now, we're so predictable with our short-list of icons, across
diverse fields, because still it's the men, and the most notable of
these, that come out on top.
My
questions, though, are too big for me to attempt any answers, so I
won't.
All
I will say in regards to exploration, if you expand the term as I've
done above, is that it can mean and encompass many different things
to many people. Whereas if you just consider it in the 'old' way it's
rather limited, because it does then, in my view, have to include
movement. And possibly a conquering, too, of, for example, unmapped
terrain or a fear. And to do that you need to be a special sort of
person.
F.
Scott Fitzgerald, in Tender
is the Night
(Book Two), has Dick Diver make an observation about a woman-artist,
a patient at his clinic in Switzerland presenting with nervous eczema
(it later turns out to be neuro-syphilis):
Exploration
was for those with a measure of peasant blood. Those with big thighs
and thick ankles who could take punishment as they took salt and
bread, on every inch of flesh and spirit.
-Not
for you, he almost said. It's too tough a game.
His
phrasing is of its time (1934), but is he right? Do you need to have
come from a certain stock, be of a certain temperament?
I
think Fitzgerald has something there: that to be an explorer you need
to have a toughness about you. Even if it's not always felt but for
show. Very few of us have that, or can put it on convincingly, and
with it also demonstrate the resilience and determination that these
feats often call for.
And
those that do manage to put on a tough exterior, tougher in manner
than their natural character, and sustain it with each subsequent
attempt, to, for example, break a record, be it of speed or distance
on land or water, or something that's never be done or since
replicated, whether they succeed or fail, do so at a great personal
cost. A psychological cost. It's not unknown, nor unheard of, for
such types to crack up.
But
maybe exploration didn't always come with that strain. Maybe only
those born to it made these voyages, across seas to be warmed by
other suns or nourished by other soils, while those who weren't (and
knew they weren't) were content to dream, to read of them – of
these adventurers and their exploits, which often seemed incredible,
even dangerous and ridiculous, according to the judgements of the era
and how they later came to be regarded - as their own tidy or messy
lives passed by.
Picture credit: Daydreaming Bookkeeper, 1924, Norman Rockwell (source: WikiArt)
This post was penned during 2019.
