Red rose - Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' with Rosa 'Bathsheba' 25 July 2023

Stream of Consciousness

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in First Lines of Physiology: Designed for the Use of Students of Medicine, when he wrote,

If we separate from this mingled and moving stream of consciousness, our sensations and volitions, which are constantly giving it a new direction, and suffer it to pursue its own spontaneous course, it will appear, upon examination, that this, instead of being wholly fortuitous and uncertain, is determined by certain fixed laws of thought, which are collectively termed the association of ideas.

Wikipedia

The above term is used a lot in literary criticism but I must apply it to my present state of affairs re the death of my Rosemary on December 9 2020.

Every moment of the day, before I go to sleep, when I wake up and some of my dreams, are associated with thoughts and moments I shared with Rosemary. I am unable to escape it. Friends and relatives say I must find activities that distract me from those thoughts and to spend time in face to face communication with friends.

I have found this to be of no avail. Before Rosemary died I used to tell her about my existential thought that we were WTD (waiting to die).Looking back at that I understand that then that was a sharing that had its comforting moments. Now alone I find no comfort.

With few people calling, with no chance of getting a portraiture job, my life is one of waking up, feeding the cats and myself and dealing with the day’s menialities until the day, very quickly becomes night and Sisyphus (me) rolls the rock up the slope yet again.

Today I noticed the bright red colour of one of Rosemary’s favourite roses, the English Rose, Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’. Not far is one of my favourites, the most dependable and ever remontant  English Rose, Rosa ‘Bathsheba’. I snipped them and here is the scan.

Of the scan I would have shown it to Rosemary. Cutting Princess Alexandra and knowing that Rosemary wanted the rose as it has Alexandra in its name like in our eldest daughter, Alexandra, I could not stop from thinking of Rosemary and imagining her smiling at seeing it with its water droplets from the night’s rain.

The scan will add to the over 3000 I already have. It was an activity that began in the summer of 2001. Sometimes I think that this activity is a futile one. I think it might be an obsession. But I must accept that I have fun doing it. When I show these to friends and new friends they comment on how nice the photographs are. I correct them and tell them that they are scanographs and that I am a scanographer. This instantly turns them off.  I believe that the scanner is a wonderful instrument of technology that has been forgotten and replaced by walking at a crosswalk with  phone in hand.

But for all those that tell me that I should find distractions that take me away from thoughts about my grief for not having Rosemary with me, I can ascertain that it does not work and I know that I am waiting.