Anne Kavan is inevitably smiling in photographs.It was that smile which initially intrigued me. I was browsing through My Madness when I saw the photo that served as the frontispiece. It shows a rather smart
middle-aged woman beaming away at the camera. The contrast between the blurb which alluded to drug addiction, mental breakdown and confinement in psychiatric institutions and the photograph of a lady who obviously lunched at expensive Kensington restaurants was tooincongruous. Here, I felt, was a mystery. I brought the book and went home to found out something about the enigmatic Anna Kavan.

The question asked by the Caterpillar of Alice, surely the most fundamental question of them all, which Alicetruthfully admits that she cannot answer in any definitive manner, must have seemed especially pertinent to Anna Kavan whose wavering sense of self necessitated her to create a whole other persona .

The Birds-Alfred Hitchcock 1963

Alfred Hitchcock’s horror movie The Birds from 1963 is very loosely based on Daphne Du Maurier’s novella of the same name. Hitchcock’s first American film and international success had been an adaption of her Gothic melodrama Rebecca, and later Nicholas Roeg would adapt du Maurier’s eerie story Don’t Look Now, which became a staple on the late-night movie circuit in the 70’s.

du Maurier’s original story is more concerned with the revenge of nature, exemplified by the suddenly hostile birds working in concert to punish humanity for its hubris and arrogance. As such it can be seen as a fore-bearer of a particularly English sub-genre of ecological apocalyptic fiction, John Wyndham, J.G Ballard and Anna Kavan all produced work in this vein.

Hitchcock told the screenwriter Evan Hunter to keep the central premise of unexplained bird assaults but to develop new characters and expand upon the…

Toyen-Portrait of Andre Breton 1950

In the Second Manifesto of Surrealism from 1930, among all the excommunications and score settling, Andre Breton calls for the ‘…THE PROFOUND, THE VERITABLE OCCULTATION OF SURREALISM,’ which is suitably followed up by quotes from Cornelius Agrippa’s Third & Fourth (spuriously attributed) Books of Magic. This interest in the occult, hermeticism and alchemy can also be evidenced by the set of playing cards the surrealists designed during WWII, which features another Renaissance occultist, Paracelsus, as the Magus of Locks.

However  it wasn’t until after WWII and Breton’s return to France from exile in New York that this hermetical tendency become dominant. The realities of the Cold War political landscape meant that the Breton placed ever less hope in the achievement of a Marxist Utopia, shifting  his focus towards the idiosyncratic mystical Socialist thinker Charles Fourier.

As can be seen from the above portrait (crayon, charcoal, oil and glitter on…

During  the 1930’s Surrealism expanded outside Paris. Despite defections, internal discord and excommunications, Breton’s  genius at spotting and recruiting talent, plus major exhibitions held in London and New York meant Surrealism had become a truly global movement.

America, we love you.

list=RDQMwqXuWDA6qYQ]

If you aren’t familiar with this terrorist attack, here’s a 2-minute overview:

---

Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers, and Born in a Treacherous Time, first in the Man vs. Nature collection. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice,  a columnist for TeachHUB and NEA Today, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Survival of the Fittest, Spring 2019. You can find her tech ed books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.

“Never put off
till tomorrow
what you can
do day after
tomorrow
just as well.”
-Mark TwainI’m a pro at procrastination, no amateur stuff for me. I wish I could stop procrastinating, but I keep postponing it.I do it when blogging, postponing writing posts – I tell myself it’s a lack of energy, lack of time, lack of ideas – I wish those were truths, but like most cases of procrastination, my real issue, fear. If I delay doing something, it can’t fail.

My procrastination is getting worse, becoming a chronic condition.Is it the amount of choices? Time inconsistency? Self-censorship? Constant interruptions? Laziness? Lack of focus?We all put off doing things, but when does it move to acting against your best interests, your better judgement, when does procrastination take over your common sense?

What if I’m not even a pro procrastinator, but just an amateur stresstinator?