I used to be terrified of spiders. I think it's the speed at which they move. Or I might have caught the fear from my sister, who remains terrified. Many years ago, my sister was at home from college, and Sleeping In. My younger brother decided it would be a wizard wheeze to creep into her room and place his huge black plastic spider on her knees as she slept, so that it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. I can still hear her screams. Younger brother went into hiding for some days. Shortly after the Tate Modern opened, I went with Sister and there was a large (and I mean massive) Louise Bourgeois sculpture of a spider.
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| Spider! |
Sister was prepared - we knew it was going to be there. We could not refer to it as a spider, only a spiderous thing, and she managed to get past it without screaming. I'm not sure how.
Spider song number one - from the great and glorious Who - here
I stayed terrified of spiders until I did NLP training, when I chose that as my phobia when we did the phobia cure. I wouldn't say I grew to love arachnids, but I'm not running-around-the-room-screaming-when-I-see-one-scared and I've even managed to catch a few with a card and glass, in order to free them outside.
Some cats that I've had have enjoyed catching and eating spiders. That's an unpleasant sight - a cat with spider's legs waving around in its mouth as it chomps happily. At least the cat didn't emulate the Old Woman and then swallow a bird. Oh wait...
And spider song the second, from the ineffable Bowie - here. I went to see Bowie on his Ziggy tour in the early 70s (gosh, we're back there again). I was 14 or 15 and sitting right in the front stalls of the Colston Hall as Bowie gyrated his way through thrilling music in brief and glamorous costumes, I began to suspect that there was indeed more to life than the nuns were telling us...
Thanks for popping in - and watch out for the ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties. Not to mention things that go bump in the night...
It's the fact that they've been here for so long, unchangingly... primaeval creatures still in existence (like sharks!), who were here before us and will probably be here long after us - ancient and unknowable and, yes, fast-moving!
ReplyDeleteAlison x
Oh, and thanks for the shout out!
Cripes - I hadn't thought of them like THAT. Feel I am returning to pre-phobia days...
DeleteI find other people's fear of spiders entirely delightful and supportive, as it enables me to feel brave and heroic in situations when spider-wrangling is required and therefore less ridiculous about my mouse-fear. I have been face-tapped and various things else to some avail about my mouse phobia, but as with you and spiders ma chère, I far from love them, but am less inclined to become actively, noisily and kinetically hysterical.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a poem about the Louise Borgeois sculpture.
Yesterday I performed a work feat for which there will be no celebration, because the amount of tedious explanation required to contextualise it would have people dozing before we got anywhere near the soggy pay-off. Nonetheless, I will shamelessly avail myself of your lovely blogspace to announce that yesterday, in a single meeting I completed 3 different people's 7-page probationary year Learning Agreements. Thierry Henry cannot honestly have worked harder on any hat-trick.
Hats off to you, skilful lady professional! And I think it behoves us to be supportive of each other's (one another's? I always get confused on that one) foibles. I'm all right with dead mice, whole or eviscerated, and have captured live ones in the past, but I'm not overfond. Puts me in mind of my latest late cat, who once so surprised himself by catching a live mouse, he dropped it on the floor and ran and hid behind the settee leaving me to spend a delightful evening hunting and repatriating the wretched creature. That's the mouse I'm talking about...
DeleteThat is a fantastic image - the astonished and astartled cat, and you having to - literally - pick up after it. In a house I shared once in York, with my friend Sue who had two cats, I had the following experience, which I'm not sure shows me up in an heroic light. I came down one morning to find a dead bird, with its innards, including an identifiable heart and liver, spread across the living room carpet. I was appalled and horrified and had no desire whatsoever to deal with the mess. I scuttled back to bed for a while and when I re-emerged, the cat had done its own, thorough removal job.
ReplyDeleteOoh, I've just invented a word; "astartled". I was much astartled. I may take to using it.
DeleteI think it shows you in an entirely sensible light. I imagine you were well and truly astartled...
ReplyDeleteSpiders, no problem; mice fine, vine weevil grubs - hmmm. Dead birds however cannot be faced at all other than to fling a flower pot over them and wait for son to call round.....
ReplyDeleteSongs were listened to with great appreciation and unerring identification by visiting van drivers...
I'm not entirely au fait with inter-replier etiquette, but might one be permitted to wonder why musically intelligent van drivers were visiting?
ReplyDeleteI feel it is entirely appropriate to make such an enquiry. You can read all about it here: http://www.czechdollshouses.blogspot.cz/2012/11/were-in.html
DeleteAndrea and Paul and I trained together.....
Good heavens why has it spread out like that?
DeleteWell that is just marvellously interesting and exciting! Good luck with your Museum! And into the bargain, I have come across Andrea's Dancing School Tale...which is quite wonderful.
ReplyDeleteIt is isn't? Trouble is, she's not the one who will be rendering it into miniature form....
DeleteI do have a couple of volunteers though....
I very much liked her idea (are we allowed to talk about her like this on her own blog??) of the house being empty- apart from a few, random items, and fragments of fabric - because everyone is elsewhere. You could have a miniature book of the story close at hand, so people could read,populate the house with complicated people and their complex shenanigans, via the power of their imaginations and fully understand why, in this moment, the hosue is empty and the drama is elsewhere (or a number of elsewheres. Actually, it starts to sound a bit more like conceptual art than miniature houses doesn't it?
DeleteI don't know about the etiquette around such a discussion but I know Andrea well enough to be sure if she wants us not to, she will say so! We could transfer it to my blog I guess?
DeleteNo reason why dolls houses should not be conceptual art I think. In fact I have a whole book of such houses somewhere, buried deep in one of the boxes that arrived in the Czech Republic two days ago.
I have been absent from my blog for a few days so have only just encountered this delightful discussion. I like the idea of commenters intermingling, as it were - it's a sort of blog salon, where people can pop in and refresh themselves. Lovely!
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