Failure is never an option

The last time I wrote a non post it was during the research stage of my first essay. And here I am again writing something before the second. It's as if I need to pause, and take a deep breath before diving in again.

As I was walking up to Mile End this morning I was mulling things over. I got that essay back yesterday and the mark both did and didn't astonish me. I was superficially pleased to get a merit because the nagging little voices had told me I'd failed. They've always told me that I'm not good enough to even pass comment on any matters of depth and complexity.

Temptation of St Anthony (1510)

Essays for me are not just sitting down and writing. Recently they have taken on an increasing malevolence and are oddly enough my new extreme sport. Essay v Clare. Like the essay is the demon to be articulated, structured and beaten into an acceptable readable form.

Deep down I know I'm capable of writing anything about anything. My choice of topic last time with a more than adequate result proves that, but the essay-devil in my head has thrown down another gauntlet from his endless poisonous supply. Despite the result and further evidence of my academic abilities, the irrational side of me suggested that this is just setting me up to fail at the next one.

This is one crazy non post with which to pause, but perhaps I need the terror of failure to keep trying. Failure is not an option, therefore, neither is giving up.

The Door

A door thought closed in my mind
Opens when news of death hits home.
A door holding back memories of life
Before now, before knowledge, before.

A door of new friendship thrown open
In response to a confused lonely girl;
A door never shut to us at that strange
Never time between child and now.

A door into a world of laughter and
Light, easy times of warm delight.
A door to happiness, newness, with
Parties to raise roofs, glasses and spirits

A door mirrors her time, her beauty,
Living on because people like her just do.
A door to that 'other' links us with them
In rushing images untethered unbidden.

The door that takes the dead away
Will always remain open to remembrance.
The door that closes on those most loved
Will in truth be the one refusing to shut.

This door of losspain opens once more to
Remind me of people love, loved, gone
The door they emerge from to enwrap me
When I peer round, calling their name.



For my good friend's mother who passed away suddenly. Feb 2013.

Anatomies; or looking inside ourselves

How much of an expert do you have to be to write a book about something? Recently we’ve had physicists writing about biology; chemists writing about history of science, suggesting that if you’re a scientist, you’re qualified to write about something which isn’t your usual field. Is this because scientists are inherently curious? Or is it because a history or personal exploration of a ‘new to them’ area is perceived to be lighter, softer and more popular than their usual specialism? Or are we so consumed by interdisciplinarity that no subject is beyond reach if you have contacts in the right places, access to an excellent library and the confidence to carry it off? I’d still like to know where all the excellent history of science specialists are though.

Anyway I’m going to suspend cynicism in this case and take this new book at face value. Hugh Aldersley-Williams’s engaging and very personal book ‘Anatomies: The human body, its parts and the stories they tell’ is a brief history of the body as seen through various lenses of art history, culture, literature, anecdote and historic scientific obsessions and developments. His interest in the body arose through a gap in his knowledge – like many of us at school, if you wanted to do physics and chemistry, then biology fell by the wayside. Thanks to people like Adam Rutherford, we are aware of the technological advances in biology, genetics, the genome project and so forth, however, as Aldersley-Williams’s points out ‘it doesn't tell us about ourselves in the round’ (p xix). His interest is in looking at the way the body interacts with the world has a whole, the raft of meanings, and taking a wider view of the parts.

Ramblings about the Grotto Grande

Interior of first chamber

This piece of work has been sat in my MA file for years. However the subject matter has recently become quite popular and if the gossip is anything to go by, it's shortly to get the Dan Brown treatment. So before this happens, I thought I'd get this essay into an abridged form (ha!) on here.

The Grotto Grande, or Buontalenti's Grotto sits in a quiet corner of the Pitti Palace/Boboli Gardens in Florence and has been subject to many interpretations. It is very much a patchwork reflecting the personalities of the three Grand Dukes under which is was built. The ostentatious façade (1556-1560) built for Cosimo I began as Vasari's fish pond and decorated with Bandinelli's Ceres and Apollo. It was the partnership of Francesco I and Bernardo Buontalenti who designed and constructed the façade’s second storey and the three unusually decorated chambers. The completion of the third chamber and the finishing touches were provided by Ferdinand I (1587-92) after the death of his brother, Francesco.

The surface of the upper storey has been covered with material from nature. Stalactites soften the classical edges of the facade and there are mosaics of coloured shells and stones which picture the insignia of the various Medici dukes. Though they are now poor specimens and you have to really look for them, there are plants in terracotta pots behind the stalactite edges of the gable. There is an anonymous eighteenth century watercolour of the grotto showing large healthy plants; this was a considerable time after Buontalenti but there is no reason to doubt that this was his idea.