Archive for Fall

Fear of Falling

Posted in Biographical, Brighton, Mental Health with tags , , , on July 28, 2024 by telescoper

The other day I slipped in the garden and fell into a flowerbed. It wasn’t serious as it was a raised bed so I didn’t fall far, though I did get a bit of a gash on my leg where I hit the little wall around it. It had been raining so everything was wet and I needed to clean myself up as well as clean my wound. I think it’s fair to say, though, that only my dignity really suffered (and a few plants got a bit squashed).

When I was safely back inside the house I got thinking about the difference between “to fall” and “to have a fall”. It seems to me that when someone is young you would say that they fell, but for an older person it would be that they “had a fall”. I’m not sure at what age the transition occurs, but I insist that I fell. I didn’t have a fall.

Thinking a bit more about it, perhaps it’s not the age of the person falling per se but the seriousness of the event. The likelihood of injury  of course increases with age. If you fall you get up reasonably quickly afterwards. If you have a fall then you would probably be injured, possibly seriously, and might need assistance.  If you have a great fall, of course, not even all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could help you.

All of which nonsense leads me to reflect on one of my phobias. I often say that I’m scared of heights, but it’s really not as simple as that. I have a fear of edges, i.e. sudden drops, even if they’re not particularly high. It gets worse with height – I had problems on my terrace in Barcelona, for example. This fear is irrational because I know I’m at no risk of falling, but there you go. Curiously, I don’t think I ever had this when I was a child.

Years ago when I was having therapy, this subject came up. The therapist guessed that it started when I got beaten up in Brighton back in the 1980s. During that event, I fell and, I think, hit my head on the edge of the pavement which knocked me out and scrambled my wits for some time afterwards. It’s possible being near a visible edge triggers some sort of flashback to this event.

I hope my more recent tumble doesn’t leave me with a fear of flower beds.

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Fall – Bridget Riley

Posted in Art with tags , , on September 2, 2023 by telescoper
Fall 1963 Bridget Riley born 1931 Purchased 1963 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T00616

by Bridget Riley (1963, 1410 × 1403 mm, polyvinyl acetate paint on hardboard, Tate Britain, London, UK)

The gallery label reads:

‘I try to organise a field of visual energy which accumulates until it reaches maximum tension’, Riley said of this work. From 1961 to 1964 she worked with the contrast of black and white, occasionally introducing tonal scales of grey. In Fall, a single perpendicular curve is repeated to create a field of varying optical frequencies. Though in the upper part a gentle relaxed swing prevails, the curve is rapidly compressed towards the bottom of the painting. The composition verges on the edge of disintegration without the structure ever breaking.

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