Helen Jukes – A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings

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A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings, Bees, Book Review, Helen Jukes, The Natural World

And is there honey still for tea………..

Helen Jukes’ A Honeybee heart has Five Openings is a sweet, not saccharine, warm account, filled with the sense of purposeful, satisfying, meaningful feel-good which bees seem to symbolise

It fits neatly into a growing genre of writing-about-the-natural-world which not only includes much interesting scientific information, but is also full of emotional meaning, to the writer herself, as the subjects become part of her own biography, and also casts a wider, philosophical, historical, and even one could say political/environmental net. She explores bees themselves, but her book does not place the writer outside beeworld. She talks about relationship, the relationship she has with the bees, and they with her. This is a book about another species, sure, but not purely a rational, objective analysis of that species. The writer is changed by her encounters with them.

This should certainly appeal to all those who devoured Helen MacDonald’s soulful and intense H is for Hawk. And may even sit better with readers who perhaps were at stages of their own lives where the intensity of emotion which MacDonald explored in her journey, was too much. H is for Hawk certainly had this reader at times riven with connection to my own human suffering. Jukes’ book inhabits some sunnier uplands, and does not take the reader into the darkness of the soul which, surely, we all have at times.

Reading it was an unalloyed pleasure, deeply fascinating

The author felt a calling, after moving from London, where she had at one point assisted a professional who helps those wanting to beekeep, to Oxford. She was at a point in her life where the grind of office work and its stresses seemed to be disconnecting her from inhabiting, properly, her own life – the rush many of us feel trapped in, which can feel aimless and lacking a real direction.

I like the thought of a stability that comes from fine-tuned communication, and not the sayso of a single ruler. It must be a restless kind of stability , I think. The messages come constantly and from all around, and catching them is more about receptivity than reach

Bees were both a way to get physical, and out of that kind of metropolitan chatter head, and to be present. Under their influence, Jukes’ found space and time made for reflection and connection. Bee teaching! Friendships, and more are deepened, as the author found how her own connections to the bees were enabling her to open up more to human connections. Bee meditations!

Through this experience of beekeeping, of learning about and listening tot the colony, I might have called something up – might have begun to articulate and name a capacity I was missing, a connection I needed…..A particular kind of sensitivity, a quality of attention which is…almost like a substance itself……What to do with a feeling like that – which is not rational, and doesn’t fit with the usual categories – except to notice it silently and with a sideways grin as it becomes part of my day-to-day

To sum up, far more beautifully, something about bee-teaching, than I can conceptualise, is this lovely quote from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

I received this as a digital review copy, via Net Galley, and absolutely recommend it. Maybe if we all kept bees we might learn how to cooperate with each other …at times, it seems as if human beings are (at least on the world stage) more interested in taking hornets as role models!

A Honeybee heart has five openings UK
A Honeybee heart has five openings USA

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Peter Wohlleben – The Inner Life of Animals

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Book Review, Jane Billinghurst (translator), Peter Wohlleben, The Inner Life of Animals

Animals everywhere, some on two legs, but also furred, feathered, finny, and we are so like all of them….

Forester Peter Wohlleben is clearly a lovely being, and no wonder the wild animals birds and insects in his forest allow him to come close and observe

This book is subtitled Love, Grief and Compassion, Surprising Observations of a Hidden World. Its tenet is that we are not as different from other life forms as we may think. And I must say the ‘Observations’ wonderful and fascinating as they are have never really seemed ‘Surprising’ ones to me

Those of us who do take delight in the natural world and perhaps thought a bit about evolution have probably pretty much suspected that if physical structures take millennia to evolve – for example, from light sensitive simple organisms to the complex structures and variations of the eye – then ‘feelings’ ‘instincts’ and, yes ‘reason’ intelligence, self-awareness and language itself did not just arise with homo sapiens.

When those of us who ascribe quite complex emotional nuances to non-human animals, are accused of anthropomorphising, it has always seemed to me that those who make that accusation are guilty of a solipsistic, rather arrogant view of the world. Not to mention, a simplistic one, separating Homo sapiens from other species. Perhaps one could say that it is precisely that kind of disconnected attitude which leads to us thinking the planet is ours to abuse. (End of Rant)

Wohlleben is a connected-to-other-living-forms type of person. Some of them quite surprising. He even find such lowly creatures as weevils worthy of respect and consideration.

     Clearly not weevils but adorable little Wild Boar Piglets

His writing style (translated from the German) is wonderfully down to earth and engaging, but he’s doing far more than telling delightful encounters of clever, grumpy, courageous, faithful, altruistic animals he has observed and loved. He is citing a lot of scientific studies that have been made, which show evidence of the complex emotional lives of other species – 100 papers are cited and referenced.

The challenge, of course, for us is a moral one. Much of our behaviour towards other animal species is predicated on our own sense of difference and superiority. Not to mention holding similar views about other members of our own species, with all the sorry history of slavery and exploitation that led to

So many little and big snippets to enjoy in this – I was probably more delighted to find complexity of emotion in much simpler animals than mammalian and avian (I’m afraid I’m remarkably species favoured towards the feathered and the furred)

For example, that hormone oxytocin, which has been described as ‘the love hormone’ – levels of which rise in pregnancy, and also in sex, and increase when people touch each other with good intent – for example, hugging increases it – well, here’s a thing – oxytocin is also produced by fish!

What about altruism in bees? Bee colonies need to keep themselves warm over winter

If it gets really cold, the insects huddle together and form a ball. It’s warmest, and therefore safest, in the middle – and, of course, this is where the queen must be. But what about the bees on the outside? If the exterior temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius, they would die of cold in just a few hours, so bees inside the ball are kind enough to take it in turns to give the outsiders the opportunity to warm up again in the dense, seething mass

Some might scoff at that ‘kind enough’ but Wohlleben is not one who thinks that mankind alone shows complex connections, behaviour and ‘emotion’

This is a delightful, light-hearted, but intensely serious book.

When people reject acknowledging too much in the way of emotions in animals, I have the vague feeling that there’s a bit of fear that human beings could lose their special status. Even worse, it would become much more difficult to exploit animals. Every meal eaten or leather jacket worn would trigger moral considerations that would spoil their enjoyment……I am suggesting that we infuse our dealings with the living beings with which we share our world with a little more respect, as we once used to do

I received this from Amazon Vine UK

It has been ably translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst, who also translated Wohlleben’s earlier bestseller, The Hidden Life of Trees

The Inner Life of Animals UK
The Inner Life of Animals USA

Gerald Durrell – My Family and Other Animals

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Book Review, Corfu, Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals, Natural History

Gerald Durrell’s Corfu childhood Ark, with far more than two by two

I first read this, Volume 1 of Durrell’s Corfu Childhood books, when I was probably around the same age as the period of his life he is describing. The book absolutely resonated with me, with its love of landscape. Durrell rather ascribes almost a sentience, not only towards the ‘other animals’ which this book is largely about, but to the very mountains, vegetation, winds, waves, sunlight and rain. This was very much my own view of the natural world, so reading Durrell, as a child, was a kind of coming home to how I felt about ‘nature’

However……..at the time I read this, Durrell’s sensibilities gave me clear indication that I was, after all, not going to be cut out to be a naturalist myself. Although a clear lover of the wild, unconfined, natural world, and of the animal kingdom, he quickly made me realise that I was a definitely restricted speciesist – plants were wonderful, but my real love was for the warm-blooded furred and feathered creatures. Durrell delights in all of it, the slithering, the buzzing, the finny, the scaled, and anything which scuttles on somewhere between 6, 8 and a multiplicity of uncountable legs.

I had utterly forgotten (carefully buried the memory) from whence my shrieking horror of a species I have never met, in the flesh, came from:

Up on the hills among the dark cypress and the heather shoals of butterflies danced and twisted like wind-blown confetti, pausing now and then on a leaf to lay a salvo of eggs. The grasshoppers and locusts whirred like clockwork under my feet, and flew drunkenly across the heather, their leaves shining in the sun. Among the myrtles the mantids moved, lightly, carefully, swaying slightly, the quintessence of evil. They were lank and green, with chinless faces and monstrous globular eyes, frosty gold, with an expression of intense, predatory madness in them. The crooked arms, with their fringes of sharp teeth, would be raised in mock supplication to the insect world, so humble, so fervent, trembling slightly when a butterfly flew too close

It is (I hope) clear what a wonderfully observant, carefully crafting writing Durrell is, as well as, of course, ditto, a naturalist. He regarded his older brother, Laurence, as the writer of the family, and only began his own (highly successful) books about his idyllic, (in his eyes, as a young naturalist) eccentric, anarchic time on Corfu, and his later books about his zoological expeditions around the world as an adult, in order to make money to finance them, and his own zoo.

That quoted paragraph shows also a rather assured and filmic, dramatic sense. He surely knows how to craft a scene, to build narrative, climax, change of pace and mood. I was lulled into a deceptively tranquil, dreamy, Edenic scene, with those wafts of butterflies, before the scene darkens, and the reader can almost feel a tension rising mood music, ratcheted up to the insecty equivalent of that shower scene in Psycho!

Durrell is a wonderful writer. Here there is a mixture of no doubt absolutely precise observation of the natural world and a certain amount of writerly shaping to emphasise the entertaining aspect provided by his strongly defined, individual, family members: remarkably tolerant Mother, the almost comically artistic/intellectual elder brother Larry, with his equally Bohemian ‘set’ paying visits to what Larry was offering as open house artistic colony with sunshine, vino, and food on tap. Gerry’s other brother Leslie, the practical one, happily tinkering with building boats, cleaning guns, and shooting the wildlife, and sister Margo, defined as romantic and a bit of a magnet for local and visiting swains. There are various brilliantly structured set pieces around Gerry and a succession of arriving and departing tutors, vainly trying to find ways to teach the budding naturalist the basics of an academic syllabus, spicing the dull stuff, ‘If it takes x number of men x hours to dig a trench’ with inserts culled from the natural world – forget men and trenches, substitute tortoises looking to safely lay their eggs.

Best of all is an extended dramatic French farce sketch, involving snakes and renegade birds discovered in unlikely places, during a huge all day party, for family, visiting friends and locals. This had me snorting, chuckling and guffawing in an otherwise silent tube carriage. Irrepressibly joyous writing.

Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam, and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot spout

This book, and its sequels, was turned into a successful TV mini-series in the late 80s. One I felt unable to watch. The power of Durrell’s writing creating those images of mantid malevolence meant I was scared in case they featured in the natural history bits! There was also a later adaptation of the book.

There is such joy, such delight, such warmth in the writing, and, like the family, falling under the spell of the landscape, the reader falls in love with Durrell’s gloriously unclichéd, visceral evocation

Gradually the magic of the island settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness, about it, so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and with the same tinge of unreality

I also knew that Durrell’s later life had had certain struggles (as life tends to have) so I re-read this with a sense of poignancy. There is such effervescence, joy and love in this recounting of a childhood. Maybe a certain amount of rose-coloured spectacles and maybe that childhood was not always as idyllic as set out here, though there is no doubt in the solace and excitement the young Gerry found in his ‘other animals’

My Family and Other Animals Amazon UK
My Family and Other Animals Amazon USA

John Marzillier – To Hell and Back

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Book Review, John Marzillier, Psychiatry, Psychological Therapies, Psychology, Psychotherapy, PTSD, To Hell and Back, Trauma

A wise, thoughtful, compassionate and skillful book about PTSD revealed through the words of those who have experienced this.

It’s funny how synchronicity works. Because I read Noel Hawley’s highly recommended Before The Fall, which I highly recommend, and which features a small boy who suffers a profound traumatic event, and clearly would be diagnosed with PTSD, and because I have a professional interest in the subject, I was reminded that John Marzillier, a British clinical psychologist and later, psychotherapist had written a book on the subject.

I had been moved and beautifully taught much in another book by him, The Gossamer Thread, where he explored his wide journey of development as a practitioner, and the deep exploration, refining, and ambiguity in human relationships that happen throughout all our lives, within and without any kind of formal therapeutic setting, simply because human beings are complex, and so each and every encounter between self and other is fraught with – an endless possibility.

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry: Promoting the charity Heads Together to open up discussion of mental health issues

So, I started to read the in some ways, more geared towards the practitioner, slightly more left brain, slightly less poetical/metaphorical To Hell and Back: Personal Experiences of Trauma and How We Recover and Move on. And during my reading and reflecting period, mental health, particularly linked to the experience of dealing with psychological trauma, suddenly became positive news, due to Prince Harry, and also Prince William, speaking openly about the deep, hidden effects caused by their mother’s death. Public figures speaking out in such a way, honestly, – particularly public figures who are, not being rude, part of the Establishment rather than famous for flashier, sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll lifestyles, not to mention ‘reality TV’ famous only for being famous ‘stars’, will be listened to more seriously.

Expression of emotion is more common, and I would say, generally a good thing, with the exception of the artificial stimulation of emotion in reality TV shows!

But, he also cautions against those who assume it always IS the right approach to bare the suffering soul:

Is avoiding talking about feelings always wrong? I do not think that one can or should make such a categorical statement. So much depends on the context and the person, not to mention their relationships with family and close friends and on timing

Focusing on a wide range of traumatic single events – Marzillier in this book is exploring the kind of ‘out of a moderately clear blue sky’ unexpected and traumatic event, rather than, say the trauma of repeated brutal events from early childhood – the author looks both at the unpredictable horrors caused by acts of deliberate chosen malevolence, and the impersonal ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time’ of major accidents like train crashes due to mechanical failures. Marzillier was, for many years, employed by Thames Valley Police, working with those who have to deal with traumatic events, which arise out of the nature of their work – police, firefighters, army personnel, ambulance personnel. The professionals have to maintain a distance from their own natural ‘alert! Danger! I am under threat! autonomic nervous system response of flight, fight, freeze or dissociation which is our physiological survival response. The fact that they are trained to do this, and have techniques to use, cannot ever completely over-ride that ancient animal response, and this kind of ‘trauma is my 9-5, day in-day out worker’ may well find health problems which arise out of the continual overriding of the normal response to danger – get out of here!

How people feel and behave once they are out of danger and the traumatic event is over is a product of the intensity of the experience itself, the nature of the person and the context – that is, what their life is after the event

As in his previous book, what most blazes out, necessarily and importantly, is Marzillier’s artistry, his compassion, his flexibility and his open-ness to meet each individual he interviews for this book, making space for a joint exploration of their stories. Time and again he cautions against the single fix-it approach to PTSD – and, indeed, to the single, fashionable diagnosis of the condition. There may be other mental and emotional health issues experienced by someone who has been in a ‘traumatic’ situation, and other approaches, other diagnoses may need to be made. Don’t jump to a PTSD conclusion, he cautions.

It is a mistake to sweep all post-trauma psychological reactions into one simple category, or to assume that if someone shows PTSD symptoms then nothing needs to be done but treat the person’s PTSD

At the heart of this book, is the often stated central idea that whatever ‘the diagnosis’ says, that it is a unique individual with all their individual personality, history, belief systems and social networks who is receiving the diagnosis, and there CAN be no ‘one way’ of treatment. As in Gossamer Thread, Marzillier stresses it is the relationship between practitioner/clinician and patient/client which actually matters MORE than any ‘specific’ method. Sure, the practitioner must have relevant skills which can work in this field, and preferably, the flexibility and skill to acknowledge that ‘their’ skillset may not be the right one for THIS client at this point. Marzillier even acknowledges that treatment approaches which lie outside his particular belief system and training, DO work for some people, – with the right practitioner. He is extremely open-minded, whilst being at the same time, a scientist by training.

This book has a lot, highly relevant, to say to both the clinical psychologist and the ‘energy worker’ working in this field.

It is a marvellous book, serious, analytical, warm, open minded and hearted – and, always important, beautifully written, and authentic – he has allowed the individual voices of the many people he interviewed in this book – those who had experienced events, and been diagnosed with PTSD – to recount their stories, and the different treatments and outcomes. These are not, in the main, ‘his clients or former clients’ . They are people who chose to respond to a general request made ‘public’ when he was planning on writing a book on this subject.

To Hell and Back Amazon UK
To Hell and Back Amazon USA

Mandy Aftel – Fragrant – The Secret Life of Scent

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Book Review, Fragrant, Mandy Aftel, Perfumery, The Secret Life Of Scent

Synaesthetic descriptions of perfumed delight

I am filled with admiration for Mandy Aftel’s writing about perfumery. Although a beautiful book to handle and read in ‘real’ form, with its thicker than normal, creamy coloured paper, beautiful, often archaic line drawings, and shiny, alluring woodcut/embossed type red cover, this is not a coffee table book. Rather, I would say Aftel is inviting you into imaginative, creative journeys of your own, those line drawings rather stirring the senses, connecting the reader to an old, but living history, in a way which artfully arranged, sumptuous colour photos of perfume bottles and ingredients could never do.

Aftel shows herself to have style and she shows herself to have substance.

Originally, Mandy Aftel, a highly respected American Artisan perfumer, was a psychotherapist, and what really appeals to me in her fascinating books is the reverse of the pile em high, whack em out ephemeral approach to instaperfume fashion. What insinuates from her books is relationship, a kind of development and connection which comes from the fact that she works with natural materials.

Fragrant, divided into 6 chapters, 5 of which place a particular plant and the fragrant material it produces, centre stage is an invitation to journey in time and in space with the material itself, and those who have tended it, prized it, grown it, harvested it, worked with it, transported it, thought about it and worn it.

There is something very special about a perfume from natural ingredients only. Firstly, it can never be standardised, and for some of us, that is a major part of its allure. The plant an essential oil or absolute may have been extracted from will have been a living, responsive entity. A batch of essential oil bought from this supplier, this year, from this place, will be somewhat different from the batch bought from the same supplier, from the same grower, last year, as the plant will be producing subtly varying chemistry, in response to this year’s changed growing conditions.

We might expect sumptious perfumes to have some of this

Aftel’s book invites reflection. Her major star playing aromatics, each of which indicates different facets about our relationship with aromatics, are Cinnamon (the once, highly exotic, call to adventure and the spice trade) Mint (home, the familiar, the cottage garden, the everyday – home) Frankincense, (the search to transcend, to interconnect, to find spirit) Ambergris (the frankly weird, a vomited up exudate from sperm whales, acted on by wind, water wave, sun to, if the finder is lucky, turn to monetary gold) and finally, Jasmine (the gorgeous, the provocative, the sensuous delight) Around these star players are others, and, also instructions to encourage the fragrantly curious to experiment, to source, to make your own.

£7000 worth of beachcombed dried whale vomit is a bit more surprising!

A bibliography invites further fragrant journeys, too

I also recommend her Essence and Alchemy which I reviewed last year

Oh lucky Statesiders, Aftel runs courses. She also will design you a bespoke perfume, but it must be done face to face – she leads you snuffling through her treasure chest of aromatics. She does also retail her existing perfume range, at reasonable prices (unlike the bespokes, which of course are a unique creation for a single user) Alas, I would have loved to purchase small samples of her existing perfumes, but shipping costs to the UK are savage. Not to mention our Brexited weak and wibbly pound

Go explore her website

Fragrant Amazon UK
Fragrant Amazon USA

Christopher Somerville – The January Man

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Book Review, Christopher Somerville, The January Man, The Natural World, Walking

Walking the poetry of landscape, wildlife, relationship and music through the years

I  have been waiting since last summer to post a review of this wonderful book here on the blog. I had received, and reviewed it, on Amazon UK, as it was offered to me on Amazon Vine, where I was bound to review it within a month. No point in sharing it here at that point, since it is not due to be published until mid January 2017. Shame, really as I think keen walkers, keen philosophers and reflective types (which must include serious readers, surely) keen engagers with the natural world, keen yearners-for-beautiful-writing-on-the-natural-world, keen lovers of music, of history, of good conversation, and, well, those with any kind of keen-ness to appreciate life-in-real connection would Have welcomed finding this book in their Christmas stockings Enough preamble:

What can I say to justifiably praise this deep, joyous and poignant book?

Christopher Somerville is a travel writer, specialising not in exotic tales of derring-do in sub tropical or polar Lonely Planet inaccessibility, but in travelling, on foot, through the hidden and not so hidden highways and byways of these isles.

This particular book, taking as its springing-off point a folk song entitled ‘The January Man’ recounts the months of the year, and some walks undertaken in those months in different parts of the British Isles.

From March:

Frogs are at risk. There are no wallflowers in the ranine ballrooms of romance. The opening notes of spring have stung all the sleepers into a conga of love. They singlemindedly pursue their search for partners across high roads and dual carriageways. Toads are at it, too, with just as much gusto as their froggy cousins. They teem recklessly out of the ponds and ditches along the old Roman road from Bristol to Wells. Randy toads and frogs with reproduction on their minds are run down and flattened by the dozen, martyrs of love on the B3134

Somerville writes most beautifully, evoking the landscape itself, painting the vegetation, illuminating the chatter of many birds, so that the armchair reader, feverishly polishing their boots and raring to get outside, can, in imagination pour themselves into the territory the author is describing. But he writes about so much more than this. Whilst walking in place, he also walks in time. Some of these, in fact most of these, are walks he has done decades before, so he is accompanied by his younger self, and, most poignantly, by his dead father John. John was a keen walker. The relationship between John and Christopher was at times a little estranged, difficult and distant, caused by the times and the great and rapid change in cultures and generations, post war. John had a reserve to do with that war, and also due to his occupation – he worked at GCHQ Cheltenham, so discussions of what he did were off-limits.

Fathers didn’t make mistakes. They knew what to do. They showed you how to ndope the tissue wings of a model glider and paint a bedside cupboard nwith smelly green gloss. They gave you a florin if you cleaned the car properly with a chamois leather, they spoke sternly to you about your school report, and they chastised you if you hit your sister or cheeked your mother. They were upright and dutiful, the object of everyone’s respect and admiration. They set the moral bar so high it daunted you

The reserved father and the child of the 50s and 60s found the beginning of meeting places in walks they took together.

Walking in the present, often meeting people who recount their lives and the lives of their parents in the specific regions he visits, he is also meditating on history, geography, culture and deepening his connection to his own family, whether his loved, now gone, father, or appreciating his present connections to his family and friends. Celebrations, often traditional and local of the  passing of the seasons are woven through this book; folk songs, folk music and dancing connect present with the past.

Aerial view of May Hill, copyright to Peter Randall Cook. Commons

From May, walking before dawn  as a seasonal ritual on May Day morning, up May Hill in Gloucestershire

Every bird in these woods is silent. There’s only the sound of our breathing, the faint creak of boot leather and the glassy tinkle of the stones. Then ahead a dog barks, and a blackbird breaks out scolding. It turns to tentative notes, sweet and unsure. A wren whirrs briefly. A robin begins to chitter, and deeper in the wood a warbler produces some sweet, expressive phrases. By the time we leave the edge of the wood and enter the common land of May Hill top, the dawn chorus has got under way. There’s another musical sound, too, faint but growing louder, coming up behind us – the silver jingle of tiny bells, bound round the shins of three men who are walking the hill in ribbon coats and breeches

I wiped away tears, moved by descriptions of landscape and wildlife, not to mention the recounting of human connections to those landscapes as well as to each other, as I read

And, over and again, having found a most wondrous version of the song, The January Man, on YouTube, performed by Christy Moore, I played this, its plangent rendition revealing the layers in the deceptively simple lyrics about the months of the year, and the man who moves through them

The only thing I missed through being lucky enough to have this as an ARC for review, is that there will be maps and walkers notes when the book is published, not available here.

But what I did find is that Somerville has a blog, and a walking website, where he adds new walks, photos and descriptions and much more besides, each fortnight. I’m sure details of a terrific walk, somewhere near any of us, is either there already or will be, waiting to be explored……….Christopher Somerville’s website where you can gorge on links to many walks and more

Somerville is a rambler and a rover, all over this land, And, to be honest, his writing holds the benison of rambling and roving – not to lose or to fox you, but to surprise and stop you, making you draw breath and notice. This is far from a linear journey, this book. Rather it is a spiders web, suddenly sparkling, where every thread makes you notice the sure connections to every other thread, a woven whole.

I didn’t underline what I was reading – because it could and would have been everything, as almost everything I read made me glimpse words behind words, thoughts behind thoughts – or, the poignancy of the meaning of ‘June’ in that January Man song ‘the man inside the man’ – by which I loosened gender, because, what Somerville was revealing to me was something about who any of us, all of us, each of us is inside the passing external we show to the world

As is obvious, I recommend it. It will be published on January 12th

The January Man Amazon UK
The January Man Amazon USA

Mandy Aftel – Essence and Alchemy

Tags

Book Review, Essence and Alchemy, Mandy Aftel, Natural Perfumery, Perfumery

Writing on perfume so fine and evocative I could smell the accords in imagination!

Aftel’s book is a delight, to all who might be interested in perfumery, the mysteries of olfaction, and, particularly how psyche and aroma connect. Her book is far from a leaf through, light on substance pretty picture coffee table book. Instead, dense and engagingly written text, lightened and deepened by beautiful line drawings – which are actually so much more satisfying (for this reader) than the usual photographer and bottles of perfume artfully arranged number.

There is something enormously pleasing about the original slow work involved in making, for example, botanical line drawings, woodcuts and the like, which are then here reproduced.

Aftel is a fascinating writer, too. Originally a psychotherapist she brings that listening delight to teasing out the useful story of ‘the other’ the uncovering of hidden meaning, to the way she sees her present vocation – perfumer. And, her interest is in natural perfumes, rather than those of novel synthesised chemistry created in a lab.

Those of us who are pulled, for many reasons, by perfume using plants, know that this is slow, reflective perfumery. At its best we are drawn into a realisation of the complexity of growing the plants, of extractions to yield their aromatics, of a weight of history behind them

And Aftel brings all this along with her in her book, connecting ‘’Per fumem” to its original, sacred roots, and the making of perfume from extracting essential oils from plants to an original pairing with alchemy.

                   C. Gesner, The newe jewell of health

Along the way as well as philosophical, psychological and historical reflections, there is much practical information for the budding kitchen perfumer, including methods, aromatic suggestions, information about what will harmoniously marry with what, and what might connect with interesting, piquant oppositions.

This is a book to enjoyably read and re-read – not to mention, embark on given formulations and sail out on one’s own to assay others.

                          Enfleurage, in times of yore

The book concludes with a list of potential suppliers, though as this was originally published in 2001 I note some of the listed suppliers have long disembarked from their perfumed barges and vanished into the wild blue yonder,

 

There is also an extensive bibliography and reference section, to take the eager reader onwards into further aromatic journeys, be these deeper into an exploration of alchemy, or neurobiology and olfaction, or, even weighty tomes exploring the history and design of perfume bottles!

This is very much a deep, broad, wide read on the subject, but beckoning the lured reader on the further exploration

Essence and Alchemy Amazon UK
Essence and Alchemy Amazon USA

Martin Stevens – Cheats and Deceits (How animals and plants exploit and mislead)

Tags

Book Review, Cheats and Deceits, Evolution, Martin Stevens, Natural History, Natural Selection

Crooks, Double-Dealers and Dangerous Deceivers are Everywhere

THIS POST CONTAINS NO PHOTOS TO DISTRESS THOSE WHO ARE SQUEAMISH ABOUT SEEING 6 and 8 LEGGED CREATURES!

Firstly, a warning – I started this book with some disappointment, as I found Stevens’ writing a little dry. I very much like science books where the writer’s personality breaks through the often bland and perhaps deliberately neutral style of academic writing. Stevens stays closer to that neutral, factually heavy style. But, I think that if you have any interest in natural history, science and research, though his book is probably more geared to the academic, if you stick with it, I suspect you will very quickly get trapped in the sticky web which Stevens has spun, as if the reader were the innocent fly. Indeed, there is quite a lot about spiders in this book, who are indeed tricksters and deceivers. We might think that the prey blindly blunders, not seeing, into the web. In fact the web patterns mimic certain attractive (to insects) configurations in plants which act as visual guides, and might signal a pathway to nectar! And spiders also leave tempting little ‘decorations’ woven into their webs, which act as attractants so that meals choose, rather than just-by-chance-blunder, to fly at the web

Zebras are not camouflaged in the environment, but a moving herd of zigzags is much harder to visually separate one animal from another. Moving patterns are more confusing than moving blocks of a single colour

This book is an amazing treasure chest of the incredibly complex varieties of behaviours which living organisms evolve, primarily in order to find food, avoid becoming food, or to find a mate. One very successful way of doing this is through deception, which Stevens shows is magnificently complex.

                                   Hide and Seek Tiger

The book is particularly focused upon creepy crawlies, and I must admit I shuddered in a kind of disgusted fascination – particularly at the wealth of magnificent photos which will, I’m sure, haunt my nightmares. Insects and Arachnids are particularly sophisticated deceivers, and particularly prone to BE deceived by others of their kind. But there are also many many other species (including of course, our own!) who are sophisticated tricksters. Although the bulk of the trickery is directed towards (or against) other species, there are plenty of examples of deceiving your own kind (which of course homo sapiens seem to excel in, on a daily basis)

This is so much more than just a book which gives examples of trickery, as Stevens breaks down the many kinds of deception. So, for example, there are ‘aggressive mimics’ which mimic the appearance or behaviour of a harmless species, in order to be able to get closer to a prey species. The wonderfully named fangblennies are a species of fish which mimic another fish, the juveniles of cleaner fish. Cleaner fish have a symbiotic relationship with larger fish, nibbling the parasites and mucus on the surface of larger fish. The cleaner fish get a meal, their ‘clients’ get a good wash and brush up. Because the fangblennies mimic the colour pattern of cleaners, they can get close to the ‘client’ fish, and then feed – not on the parasites and mucus, but on a good old bite of the larger fish’s flesh. A bit like the Sweeney Todd of the fish barber community!

There are the converse, also, harmless creatures who mimic the appearance of more aggressive species, in order to avoid being eaten. There are common ‘warning, danger!’ signs in insects appearance – for example, the yellow/black colouration of bees and wasps. Birds will learn, after trying to eat one of these, that it can be a painful experience, and something which looks like this should be avoided in the future. Some perfectly tasty, harmless and unpainful bird dinners are other species like hoverflies, which mimic that warning! danger! banding well enough to be avoided.

Some species, whether predator or prey, mimic their environment in order to get closer to the lunch they will pounce on – the banding and colouration of some of the big cat family who live in jungles or savannahs, mimicking light/shade dappling – whilst some avoid being captured by blending into the background – insects which resemble the leaves of plants, the ridged background and colour of barky trees, and avoid being seen by birds.

                                  Leopard in the grass

What I also found fascinating was the recounting of the complexities of experiments to prove that what is going on is mimicry. And the reminder that we have to learn (or learn to structure experiments) in ways to perceive the world through the differently structured sense organs of other species, if we are to understand how, and whether, the trickery works.

For example, the larvae of a little beetle, the blister bug, has evolved a particularly devious collective trickery to deceive its intended dupe – a specific species of bee. The blister bug larvae collect together in a blobby dark cluster. To a human eye, the cluster looks nothing like a bee, but to a male Habropoda pallida, it looks – and smells, as the little beasts secrete pheromones which mimic the scent of the female bee – as if a ladylove is calling. The larval community basically are using the male bee as a form of transport, and collectively hop onto his back. When the disappointed lover bee finds the ‘female bee’ has suddenly turned out not to be no such thing, he carries on searching. The blister beetle larvae are really wanting to find the female bee too, because when the male finds her, they jump ship (or back) onto the female. They are still looking for transport – her nest, their intended destination, their restaurant. Blister beetle larvae dine on nectar, pollen – and scrumptious bees eggs!

The Fork Tailed Drongo mimics the alarm calls of several other birds, and meerkats. Drongo eats the same grubs and insects as they do. When a juicy tit-bit is found, the alarm call means lunch is dropped in the rush to safety. Leaving drongo to steal the edible treasure

Once past the first 20 pages, I have been thoroughly addicted and immersed in this, and recommend it highly. I’m sure academics in the field will rate it most of all, it is thorough, and impeccably referenced and equipped with photos, but it also proved to richly reward this lay reader for her early persistence.

I could have gone on and on and on about the many interesting varieties of deception, camouflage, mimicry and the like, but hopefully you will get this, and explore its fascinations for yourself

This really is a picture of Pink Orchids. There are Praying Mantises (YEERCH!) which successfully mimic the flower, so visiting pollinators expecting to find lunch, find they horribly BECOME lunch

The book also left me with lots to think about regarding our own tricksy deviousness. The big difference is of course we have choices, and our reasons for choosing our own more conscious duplicities are rarely as simple as avoiding becoming lunch, or dying if we don’t manage to pounce on lunch, sometime immediately

Martin Stevens’ book is available in the UK, but not published in hard copy in the States till May. It is available on Kindle there, but you would miss the wealth of detailed coloured photos. On the other hand, as these are mainly 6 and 8 legged, the black-and-white ereader down load may be the best option for the sensitive.

I received this as a review copy, from Amazon Vine UK

And here (I’m not sure whether it’s visible outside the UK) is the wonderful Sir David Attenborough narrating this account of a drongo, caught red-billed in the act of lunch thievery from a party of meerkats

Cheats and Deceits Amazon UK
Cheats and Deceits Amazon UK

Olivia Laing – The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

Tags

Alienation, Art, Attachment Theory, Book Review, Olivia Laing, The Lonely City

“Loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive”

I’ve been a keen reader of Olivia Laing, since discovering her first book, To the River, an account of a walk along the length of the River Ouse. Laing inhabits a new kind of academic writing, which to me seems to warrant the epithet ‘holistic’ It also seems somehow to be a particularly feminine approach, though not all female academics employ it, and there are also male writers in the canon.

To explain, this ‘holism’ is different from the kind of distancing, objective, detached ‘scientific’ approach which has been part of, for example, literary criticism. The ‘scientific’ view of literature divorces the writer from the writing – ‘the biographical fallacy’ and dissects text, or history, or landscape or whatever is being analysed and assessed, as if there is an 100% objective reality to what is being observed. The fact that the viewer themselves has a subjective response, a subjective viewpoint which influences what they see, that they have a relationship with the observed, is ignored. Subjective response is always in there. Sometimes we are prepared to acknowledge it, and I must admit I like a writer who owns their bias, where they come from, as Laing always does.

What writers like Laing are doing as they engage with their own particular field of interest and enquiry, is to enter into their relationship with the material. This is poles away from arm’s length. Other writers in this kind of territory include Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk, Kathleen Jamie in her nature writings.

                   Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942

Laing’s writing is deeply, sometimes laceratingly, personal and revealing. However it is much more than mere autobiography or confession. Subjective experience and objective analysis flow in and out of each other. Laing’s subject – whether her walking along the Ouse, exploring the landscape, history, geography whilst walking out a personal emotional time and place, or her second book The Trip To Echo Spring : Why Writers Drink, which looks at 6 American writers, has, for me, an extremely satisfying result. Because Laing does not distance herself from her subject matter, rather, she holds the relational space between the other, and herself observing the other, I find myself drawn close into relationship with the examined life she is observing.

Loneliness, in its quintessential form, is of a nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it. Nor, unlike other non-communicable emotional experiences, can it be shared via empathy. It may well be that the second person’s empathic abilities are obstructed by the anxiety-arousing quality of the mere emanations of the first person’s loneliness

Henry Darger

In The Lonely City, taking as a starting point her own sense of being an outsider, of loneliness, acknowledging this uncomfortable feeling, part, surely of the human condition, she explores how this sense of loneliness, isolation has been a particularly profound springboard for creativity in the work of a group of visual artists. She has particularly focussed on American artists, mainly painters – Edward Hopper, but also mixed media artists – Andy Warhol – and into the work of photographers, film makers, performance artists. She is particularly looking at work in the second half of the twentieth century.

what Hopper’s urban scenes also replicate is one of the central experiences of being lonely: the way a feeling of separation, of being walled off or penned in, combines with a sense of near unbearable exposure…………an uncertainty about being seen – looked over, maybe; but maybe also overlooked, as in ignored, unseen, unregarded, undesired

Nan Goldin – Dieter with Tulips 1984

I was struck by the prevalence of a sense of being ‘aliens from another planet’ in the artists she was exploring – some of whom were familiar to me, such us Hopper and Warhol, most of whom I was introduced to, for example Henry Darger, David Wojnarowicz. Unsurprisingly, a different sexual orientation, ethnicity, or even an outside the norm family structure, a tendency to introspection and reflectivity when society is functioning in at out-there, high achieving jockish way, can lead to this. Of particular interest to me is her exploration of how some of this sense of not belonging and alienation arises very early in childhood – and some would say can begin in the womb. She weaves in some of the work by John Bowlby on attachment theory, Melanie Klein’s work on infant psychology, and some account of the distressing scientific experiments done on infantile attachment with rhesus monkeys and other mammals.

It might sound as if leaping around from her own loneliness following a relationship breakdown, to exploring the strange world of countertenor Klaus Nomi, unfortunately having a beautiful operatic voice a decade or so before countertenors became loved mainstream opera stars, to analysis of AIDS and the attitudes towards gays in the eighties, political activism, psychoanalytical theory, not to mention the analysis of particular artworks in the framework of all this, might be a hotchpotch. Be reassured, it isn’t. Think instead, a remarkably rich and glowing tapestry, a strong, flexible web.

And, talking of webs…………..I do think a book like this could not have been enjoyed and savoured so satisfyingly more than about a decade ago. The ability to go and search for artworks, you-tube clips of interviews, performances, added immeasurably to the experience

David Wojnarowicz collage

One might think that this would be a depressing, despairing read, accounts of lonely, (even if visible and famous, like Warhol) misunderstood (though highly creative) creative lives. In fact, Laing reminds us how often creative works, perhaps born out of rage, despair or suffering, or from the riches of an interior life of the imagination, totally at odds with what the creator presents to the world (Henry Darger) can illuminate and enrich not only the creator themselves, but those of us who see, or read, or hear and receive that felt, shared, awakening sense of ‘meaning’ that the arts can give. Art itself as a kind of healing, whole-ing not just to the makers.

This is a strange story, perhaps better understood as a parable, a way of articulating what it’s like to inhabit a particular kind of being. It’s about wanting and not wanting: about needing people to pour themselves out into you and then needing them to stop, to restore the boundaries of the self, to maintain separation and control. It’s about having a personality that both longs for and fears being subsumed into another ego; being swamped or flooded, ingesting or being infected by the mess and drama of someone else’s life, as if their words were literally agents of transformation.

This is the push and pull of intimacy

(from a section examining Warhol, and examining the author’s response to Warhol’s life and Warhol’s work)

This is a book which touches on many ideas, feelings, and disciplines of study. I suspect each reader will find individual aspects of it specifically speak more or less loudly to them. It’s a very rich book indeed :

There are so many things that art can’t do. It can’t bring the dead back to life, it can’t mend arguments between friends, or cure AIDS, or halt the pace of climate change. All the same, it does have some extraordinary functions, some odd, negotiating ability between people, including people who never meet and yet who infiltrate each other’s lives. It does have a capacity to create intimacy; it does have a way of healing wounds, and better yet of making it apparent that not all wounds need healing and not all scars are ugly

And that, to my mind, is just one stunning example of gold, bread, water, diamonds. Rich, rich, needed

As you can probably guess, I was almost overwhelmed by all this book contains, and wanted to include visual after visual of every discussed artist. However, readers must, as I did, find their own immersive journey.

The Lonely City comes highly recommended by me!

I was delighted to receive this as an advance digital copy from the publishers, via Netgalley It is available, according to the Amazons, 3rd March in the UK, and 1st March in the USA

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Amazon UK
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Amazon USA

Bee Wilson – First Bite: How we Learn to Eat

Tags

Bee Wilson, Book Review, First Bite : How We Learn To Eat, Food politics

Food from cradle (and before) to grave

I first encountered social historian and food writer Bee Wilson through her brilliant book, Consider the Fork, which looks at history and much more through examining the evolution of cooking, and the implements needed for this.

Wilson is my favourite kind of writer or non-fiction – extensive in research, meticulous citing to enable the interested reader to search further, and, most important of all for me – a gifted weaver of words. However erudite a writer, I need the skills a good novelist possesses – how to tell the story. Essential that this is done in non-fiction as much as in fiction, I think. Bee Wilson knows how to tell the story.

First Bite: How We Learn to Eat is a more personal, different kind of book, though all the strengths of Wilson’s writing, as detailed above, are as impeccably in place. This book takes a long and cool look at the origins of our often disordered eating habits. It is a more personal book because Wilson herself, as she explains, was a disordered eater, tending towards weight gain, attracted to the sugary, struggling with this and that diet. Meanwhile her sibling had another kind of eating disorder.

Food, in lands of plenty, has become a huge problem for man. Fashions in advice for how to change, in the developed world, the curious mixture of obesity and malnourishment which is endemic, is endlessly written about, and the legions of diet gurus all grow fat (metaphorically, one assumes) on the proceeds of the over-fed’s obsessions.

Bee Wilson’s book is not a ‘how to eat more healthily and lose weight’ diet advice or recipe book, though, if that is what a reader is looking for, there is lots of sensible advice to be found within the pages. Rather, what she does, as in earlier books, is to look at a variety of disciplines, from the medical, through to the politics of the food industry, psychology, neurochemistry, culture, sociology, scientific studies and much, much more and blend them together into a remarkably tasty, nutritious, beautifully presented casserole which will leave the reader (well, it did so for this reader), energised, with a feeling of satiety but not over-indulgence, left pleasurably digesting ideas when away from the book, and ready to come back for another meal-read.

Roasted Brussels – Learned Bitter Taste Delight Flicr, Commons Mackenzie Kosut

The book is brimming with all sorts of fascinating facts and ideas. For example, one of the reasons that so many ‘won’t eat their sprouts’ is because we are hard-wired to be alarmed by ‘bitter’. This goes back to our days as omnivorous foragers – bitter tasting plants are more likely to be ones which may be toxic to us – and some plants have evolved ‘bitter’ to deter being eaten, too. Wilson explores, however, the fact that food tastes and fads are a mixture of genetics and nurture. We each have differences in the number of papillae on our tongues, and there is no doubt that there are tastes and smells which some people perceive with ultra-sensitivity, and some cannot perceive at all. Of course, we also learn tastes in the high chair (and earlier) Forced too quickly to eat tastes we don’t like – or, perhaps, not being exposed to a wide variety of tastes during the window of opportunity when ‘new tastes’ are not experienced as threatening, and if, perhaps, we are an individual hypersensitive to ‘bitter’, an aversion to the dark green leafies may be on its way.

                               Later learned bitter delight

I was fascinated to read how recent (and, again, how specific in many ways to the developed Western world) the idea of ‘special food for babies’ is. There are many cultures where the weaning baby eats what the adult eats. And sometimes this includes food we might consider unsuitable for a baby – garlic, for example. And yet – one of the fascinating benefits for breast-fed babies is that the taste of breast milk is never the same, feed to feed, as breast milk will taste of what mother eats. Garlic eating cultures will have garlic habituated babies from the off!

Bee Wilson is a mother of three, and the book has a lot of focus on the developing of food likes, dislikes, disorders and orders, back from not just babyhood, but in-the-womb. A neat experiment was done with a group of mothers who were due to have an amniocentesis. They were asked to take a garlic capsule 45 minutes before the procedure – and those who had taken the capsule had amniotic fluid which smelt garlicky. The baby in the womb is already ‘tasting’ the food mother eats. Other experiments have verified these findings.

       Loving my sprouts early – the other pay-off – bitter dark stuff heaven 
(For the curious William Curley Chocolates So good, so expensive, so luxurious one chocolate is enough rare treat, and satisfies, when savoured)

Wilson was also very interesting about how there are cultural perceptions of different foods being suitable fare for boy children and girl children – and how damaging this is to both boys and girls. Boys are less likely to be pressured to eat up their greens than girls. Meat (and larger portions of meat) is more often given to boys. Salads and sweet things are seen to be more suitable for girls. However – from puberty, girls and women are more likely to be anaemic than men, so actually, girls could benefit from iron rich foods – eg steak, and boys should really learn to be more like girls in their ‘eating up their greens!’

I could go on and on and on about this book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the politics of the food industry, health, children’s health, – or in the collection of fascinating facts to astound your friends with!

Highly recommended

I was lucky enough to receive this as a digital review copy from the publisher, Fourth Estate, via NetGalley

First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon UK
First Bite : How We Learn To Eat Amazon USA