Knees Together

What I didn't have, like J. in Three Men in a Boat, was housemaid's knee, nor was I like him sure what it was, but then nor did I have all the ailments he thought he had. No; what I had didn't have a name but came to be known by me as knees together. For that was the advice given: to keep them together when transitioning from one position into another, anything, in other words, that involves twisting the lower half of the body. By keeping the knees together the movement will not be pain-free but more comfortable. It became in certain situations, getting, no, crawling into bed, to be more accurate, being one, my mantra: knees together, knees together, keep knees together; yes, that's the way to go from all fours to the side, and from the side lain on to all fours then a backwards crawl to get out and onto feet placed gingerly on carpeted floor.
Knees together when sitting too; no gaps. Knees together when getting into and out of a car. Oh, but it was hard, because with a car the leg and foot had to be lifted first, first one then the other, just a little ways off the ground, but that little way was challenging, to bring knees together, turn. Keep the knees as close together when putting on trousers too, from a seated position, with the trouser legs gathered up like tights so the foot can be wiggled, toes, then heel, through the hole. The same with socks and shoes, seated, knees together, and bending over them. The difficulty, as with getting into and out of a car, is how to lift the leg and get the foot into the sock, into the shoe. The answer: the leg has to be helped with hands – yours or the loan of another's.
And obviously knees together when preparing to get into and then into a kneeling position, before going onto all fours or into a slightly modified Child's Pose: sat back on heels, chest lowered, arms stretched out or down by sides, palms up. Ah, relief, some. But how to get out and get back up? Knees together? Well, yes, but still how? Will my pelvis allow the toes of my feet to take my weight? Yes, it will. Sit back, lift and pull yourself up at the same time. Each side equally in use, no dominance here. This is exhausting...
And yet sleep is had, if it's had at all at the end of an interminable and exhausting day, in fits and starts in-between repositioning of the body and the pillow. Pillow, eh? Yes, but not the one beneath the head (and it is just the one) but the one that is essential to sleep on your side with it between your thighs. It cushions the pressure that otherwise would have been applied had you remained on your side without it, and I personally have no chance of sleep in any other position even in more mobile times. Generally I start out as a starfish (in yoga I believe it might be termed Corpse Pose, which is somehow though more appropriate much less dignifying) – it helps the body to relax – and then turn onto my side – one or the other, and curl into what is known by the professional and non-professional circle as the foetal position, but knees together (with pillow) needs to be established straight away so as to lose as little sleep, and to cause the least discomfort moving again so soon after getting into bed, as possible. But always, of course, even throughout the turnings of the night, alert to pain.
Pain is a funny thing, as those of us with a clumsy or accidental nature or of a certain age, will have by now come to acknowledge. When it's there, as I've aforementioned, you're alert to it and the danger of causing it, but once gone it's hard to recapture, by mind alone, exactly how it was or how you bore it. And it changes too, with the occurrence (or recurrence) and over the course of your complaint. What worked one day to mitigate it may not be so successful the next, and the pain, particularly if it's relative to bearing weight, your own, might have moved, and so a new remedy to it which allows for some mobility, if not flexibility, may have to again be found. What's also peculiar to it, as I was to discover with knees together, is that I was although alert dumb: I failed to take much else in, around and in front of me.
All routine had broken down. There were limits now. Had I been a drinker, I might have thought like J. 'a little whisky with a slice of lemon would do it good', or perk me up at any rate, but no, it had to be knees together and (mostly) stoicism.

Picture credit: Kneeling Nude, c.1888, Edgar Degas (source: WikiArt). 

Written June 2020. 

The Artist Thief

'All artists are thieves anyway', the radio voice said.
Are they? News to me. Is it really? said my mind.
No; perhaps not. But the expression is. I'd not heard it voiced like this before, quite flippantly as if it was a well-established fact. Perhaps it was, or became so, and I'd somehow missed it.
Actually, the missing bit is less surprising. Bubbles in my world – living in one – are not a new phenomenon. Often I'm not really listening to the radio if it's on, until a few words like those above break me out of a philosopher's reverie and put me into another.
But does a thief know he or she is a thief? They may not.
There are only so many ideas in the world, I forget how many, and instead lots of variations on, especially when we're as far along in history as we are. Nothing is really new, just a new take on it. And so it's inevitable a similar storyline, the same sequence of notes will occur. In my book that doesn't make a thief, unless it can be proven, and then it's a homage to isn't it? Although if the latter the artist thief should have long ago acknowledged it and have got in first, before a story of their stealing could be made.
Ideas thought to be original can bear traces of the past, a past unknown, a past unresearched. The idea thought to be your own turns out not to be. But should you then acknowledge something that isn't true? No, because it seemed to come to you, from nowhere, from somewhere, but not from there.
The original can also be had at the same time by different people. Two people work on a similar book and race each other to the finish line. Thief! One will say, it was my idea. They battle it out, use the same sources (and possibly ask those same sources to withhold information from the other), and then wait to see what the critics say, who they declare the better. Critics always weigh; there will always be a winner. And that winner may not be the reader's choice. Both books may throw different light on the same subject, may actually complement each other, but still there will be an outright winner, if not won by review then won in sales.
Another:
The bones of a story are contested. Was it mine? Or was it yours? Both deny all knowledge of the other. So who is the thief and liar? And how should it (if one is indeed a thief) be determined? Seeds are sown. Some promotional material might have semi-consciously been taken in, in a publication it is known one regularly looks at, wherein the bones were contained. These bones, it is supposed, sank into the thief's conscience. The story they began sometime after therefore a lie, for it would not have occurred (the other claims) without this influence. The thief's story then is also theirs. And the similarities don't have to be strong for a case to be made. Doubt casts doubt and advertises doubt and promotes the need for an investigation, though it will, where it occurs, not conclude to the satisfaction of both concerned. One will lose and one will win, and there the matter will rest. Except it won't because it will from time to time be brought up, be remembered even after the writers themselves have gone to writer heaven.
Such a lot of fuss. When the assumed thief was likely innocent. When they had no knowledge of taking anything, especially not from anybody they confessed to know or to have read. And so instead their unconsciousness is accused of theft. Can you be a thief without knowledge, any knowledge of your crime?
Perhaps you can if you've grown so accustomed to your thieving nature that you don't recognise when theft is being committed. If it's become all part of the process, the writing process. What you read you think on, what you hear and what you see in the course of the day you also think on. Who can say how any of it influences? Will the artist always know when it does? To tell apart which the theft and which the art?
The declared artist thief might see it instead as weaving; weaving from or into another's story their own story. As more of a tribute than an act to be punished.

Picture credit: Portrait of a man writing in his study, 1885, Gustave Caillebotte (source:WikiArt)

Written June 2020.

How Does That...?

Would my authentic self have done that I wondered? Was I my authentic self now, or was I that self then? Do you always think the self you are is authentic, therefore the one past either must have been too or can't have been?
If I think the latter then who I was then and who I am now? In psychoanalyst babble: how does that make me feel?
I don't know I don't know I don't know. And I don't much care. There is no answer to that pathetic question. To the ones before it there might be but I don't know it.
What makes me the genuine article and what makes me fake? Er, it's er, like this...yes?..Er, well, you see...yes? Said with kind sympathetic (and a little bit curious) eyes and bent head. No, sorry, I can't explain it. Let that be your homework then.
I won't be coming again. Goodbye.
A scenario, imagined. Though I know what it feels like to be in a room sitting across from one person, squirming in my chair and trying to be earnest. I know I said I prefer one-on-one but not this type of one-on-one. I don't want to be the one talking; I want to be the one listening and making notes. Or do I? No. I don't. It's intrusive and unhelpful. Why should I have to explain how my mind thinks to a stranger? It makes me sound cuckoo. And I know I'm not.
No one can't understand your mind like you do, and if you're not good with the spoken word you'll never be able to make yourself heard. The words you say won't be right. The words you say will be construed differently; a different emphasis put on them. You will leave each time frustrated, without any insight, and with your mind nettled rather than settled.
How does that make you feel? In turmoil. I wasn't before.
The cooperative self is not my authentic self. That much I do know. The cooperative self has to, well, you know, cooperate, against its will, but still, it does.
The authentic self wants what it always wants: to be left alone. To be left to its pondering without answers. There just aren't enough classic thinkers.
What do you have to say about that? Nothing. Silence is employed so that you fill in it. Silence will be met with silence then.
How does that...? Oh God!
Perhaps I should have a meltdown....? A breakthrough (they'll think) for them; an embarrassment for me. I try not to do PDE (Public Displays of Emotion). No, I couldn't engineer one. I struggle to control myself as it is. Empty supermarket shelves tipped me over the edge last time; I actually had to be consoled. And I did have an outburst over my temperature once, for it being too low: what was I doing to make it so? How should I know?!
The hackles raised. I will come out and fight if pushed. And when I do it takes everyone by surprise so then I apologise, profusely, as if I'm not entitled to rage.
Yes, so no PDE if it can be helped; it very often can't. I'm so damn sensitive. I take the little things personally, not the big, and will think about something that's been said, or that I've said for days. Years? Well, I might return to it.
But I know this about myself. I don't need to analyse it, talk it over, with a well-meaning stranger, assigned to me, not chosen by me.
I know exactly what I need, just not always how to go about it. I'm not, as you probably by now appreciate, the run-of-the-mill client. Is anyone?
Talking to paper for me is a positive thing. It doesn't reply. It doesn't always make sense, when I read over it. But then it doesn't desire further clarification. It just accepts. Sense will come. If it needs to, maybe it doesn't. That's not really the point of it. Whereas a person you speak to has expectations. Your journey is being plotted, week by week. They say you have time, yet each week there needs to be progress as otherwise they'll ask: why?
So the cooperative self appears, only for the authentic self to leap out at unexpected moments and leave you all a-flutter and them agog at your reaction. And when you've both calmed: how did that make you...? Aargh!!!

Picture credit: Chair near the stove, 1890, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

Written June 2020.

Mil and Daisy

Once upon a time in my life there was a Mil, there was a Daisy. Mil and Daisy. Two 1920s babes in arms. Two 1920s sisters. The two youngest of a large family, residing in South West London.
You will say this is too like Angela Carter's Wise Children but it's true. It's also true to say, though, my re-acquaintance with her last novel reacquainted me with them, in memory, because one I know has gone and has been gone for some time, and the other I can only presume followed suit some time after. Of course, if she is still with us (even if in the land of the fairies, somewhat aged) I profusely apologize for casting aspersions that she wasn't.
I'd like to report they danced and sang through their childhood but of that I can't be sure. It seems unlikely; they were orphaned young, sometime before the outbreak of the second world war and were left to the care of their elder brothers and sisters. To hard times and hand-me-downs.
I knew very little of all that and found it out piecemeal, a snippet here, a snippet there; none of which ever fitted together, seamlessly. Those times weren't talked of, nothing like how it is in books, chapter and prose. It should be verse, shouldn't it?
Forgive me, I'm ageing. The mind has never been what it should have been, and the hair that crowns it is fading, as if I've dusted it with talcum powder.
So, their lives up until the 1980s is a haze (the Blitz walked home in and the war survived), and even after that it's only a little clearer because they were both (again) living in the same area, a ten, fifteen minute drive from each other.
Mil's daughter flown (the first grandchild, a girl, born), one son living at home, and husband retired. Daisy, alone, widowed; a daughter, a son and two grandsons, but still chipper.
Alike and unlike, not two peas in a pod. Both small in height, maybe just or just under 5ft, both bundles of inventive fun, both with sharp flashes of humour. But could you have told they were sisters? It's debatable, that's the point.
It won't be debated here however, for I'm too close to it. They were a pair. Though I knew them separate and together. Am I confusing you? Get used to it, this is how I roll (how modern!)
Perhaps it's time for some more confusion...Mil was not Mil and Daisy was not Daisy. Mil was an M, a different M, and Daisy was an F. Though I know not how either nickname came about (I suspect it had something to do with the cousins of whom you'll hear a little of later). Mil didn't care for Mil, and Daisy, I don't know whether she cared for it or not. Both answered to them; Mil grudgingly, and Daisy, it appeared, willingly. Mil was not Mil to me personally, she was Nan. Daisy was Daisy, or her real name, shortened to end in ie.
Daisy's grandsons were possessive of Daisy; I was possessive of their Mil. We were content to occasionally share, but one was more mine, one was more theirs.
The cousins. Tom and Chad. Or was it Chad and Tom? I can't recall now which was the younger and which the older. I think perhaps there might have been an even younger one too, another grandson, a son from the son whom I'll call...another apple of Daisy's eye, but him I didn't know at all. Of the other two, well, naturally I had a crush on...was it Tom or was it Chad? Ah, be-still my beating heart. There is no place for you in this narrative.
The cousins could tease. Mil let them and joked in return too, playing whatever role came to mind, with whatever prop came to hand, on whatever day, all in good fun; though often when I was there as witness, I did wonder...I don't know how Daisy tamed them; perhaps she didn't have to. I never treated Daisy that way. Daisy was super cool! (That phrase was modern then.) She once took me into town – just me and her - in her Mini Cooper (or was it a VW? No, I'm sure it was a Cooper), the windows wound down on a summer's day as the sound system played 'My Boy Lollipop', laughing and singing all the way. Daisy was as daisy was, a little wild.
Mil and Daisy, alike and unlike, not two peas in a pod.

Picture credit: Twins Grace and Kate Hoare, 1876, John Everett Millias (source: WikiArt).

Written June 2020.