“Curiosity killed the cat.” I have never put much stock in this saying, but it gets quoted to me with great frequency. I am a worshiper in the cult of curiosity. I have always felt that if the cat was clever enough, unfavorable consequences and death could be avoided. Perhaps that is the origin of the other cat myth, that they have nine lives. Maybe they need them because they are curious, and the ramifications of avid curiosity are sometimes unavoidable…
One of my favorite fairy tales is “Blue Beard”. I have a very old, musty, and well-loved copy of “The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book”, a version printed in Great Britain, and picked up by my mother at a flea market when I was a little girl. The illustrations are lush, atmospheric and scary, just as they should be in a fairy tale, and from a very young age, I was influenced as much by the pictures as by the stories. In “Blue Beard”, a young bride is given access to all of her husband’s riches, but cautioned that there is a small room that she is forbidden to open. He then embarks on an extended journey, leaving her the keys to all rooms in the palace, including the forbidden closet. There was some justification for her curiosity, as Blue Beard had several previous wives who had disappeared without a trace. So of course, she heads directly to the closet, opens it, and finds the bodies of the prior wives hanging in a row, and the floor covered with dried and clotted blood. Gruesome stuff.
The key is magic, and in a fright she drops it on the floor. After retreating, she tries in vain to clean the key, but to no avail. When the husband returns, the bloodstained key is proof enough that she disobeyed his edict, and he sets about to behead her and hang her up with her predecessors. While I prefer a fairy tale in which the heroine evades calamity through wits and cleverness, in this fairy tale, it is just drawn out whining and pleading that buys her enough time for a rescue.
So, what is to be taken from this tale? Maybe that when a line is drawn in the sand, it is a rare person that can keep from crossing it. That maybe once you stick a toe far enough over the line, it can be impossible to erase your steps. That maybe some things are better left unexplored…but then crimes would go unsolved, and mysteries would remain mysteries. In my thinking, the curious ones are the heroes. The scientists, doctors, explorers, artists, map makers, the sailors of tall ships that head straight for the edge of the map, knowing that there is a chance they will sail off the edge, but they head straight for it anyway.
Show me a locked door, a closed gate, tell me about a secret road or off-limits place, and I am dying to get in. I will wheedle, press, complain, apply for permits, whatever I can think of to gain access to the inaccessible. I have spent a lot of time trying to claw my way up chains of command, write letters appealing to the greater good, searching for unmarked entrances. I have joined groups and clubs, talked my way in, sneaked in and pretended I belonged where I actually had no business being. I have succeeded some of the time, and am always thrilled when I learn something new in the process. I love James Bond movies, in which confidence, daring, and a good outfit win the spy access and knowledge. Awesome fighting skills are also usually engaged in the movies…maybe I should take a few classes, just in case.
My curiosity is not limited to places. I am curious about all things, all people, how things and people work, the who-what-why-how of everything. If you tell me a story, you better be ready to supply details, because I will not be satisfied with just a little taste. I want to know why a person does something, what brought them to the point of action, what they were thinking, how they feel about it, what happened because of it.
There is a Quileute tribal cemetery in La Push, Washington, that has a beautiful entrance, complete with carved figures and a message in the native language, which I have not yet been able to obtain a translation for. Beyond the entrance, there is a view of old growth forest, and it seems mysterious, peaceful, and very much off limits. There are signs posted that state it is a sacred site, closed to the public, and only authorized personnel and community members may enter. Out of deep respect, I would never attempt to trespass there, but that did not stop me from inquiring with some local residents about whether the cemetery was still in use (yes) and whether guests were ever permitted to attend services (maybe, but you better have a good reason for asking). It’s not that I would want to intrude on a private moment, but American Indian Studies is a field I have thought of pursuing, and I have always been intrigued by ancient customs. Before the cemetery came to be, the tribe used to place the bodies of their chiefs in the trees on James Island, a 160 foot sea stack just off the mouth of the harbor, that is both lovely and isolated. There was a village on the island, and it was used as a lookout for whales. I am fascinated by that island…how did they get the bodies up the steep face, much less up in the trees? What was the ceremony like? When did they stop using the island for a burial site, and what was the transition to the current cemetery? I would want to know how ancient burial customs blend with modern customs. It would help me know more about their past, their present, and everything in between. I want to know them better, as I want to know and understand everyone better. Of course, the island, too, is off limits to everyone outside the Quileute tribe. I interrupted a fisherman who was tending his nets and eating his lunch in the harbor one day, and chatted with him for a while, then asked him about the burials on the island. I asked how they got the bodies up there. He just shrugged, and said “I guess they carried them up.” Not enough detail for me, but I thanked him and left him to finish his lunch in peace.
My curiosity drives my husband nuts. I pick and poke and collect dead animals and any natural artifact I find, ask rapid fire successions of questions when there are no available answers, have a reputation for being an interrogator with all of our friends, want to stop and investigate accidents, read everything I can find about something that piques my interest, and am generally a nuisance to people who are happy leaving well enough alone. I always want to help, to know more, to dig deeper, to solve the mysteries. When something is on a “need to know” basis, I need to know. I have books on subjects that most people would find morbid and strange, books about freak accidents in Alaska, about park ranger reports of every death in the national parks, about what actually happens to bodies that are shot, left to rot, or fall out of airplanes at 30,000 feet. Gruesome stuff.
My dad tells a story about a day when he was out exploring logging roads in the foothills in Eastern Washington, a favorite pastime of his for as long as I can remember. He chanced upon a group of hunters, all armed with rifles, and their collection of hunting dogs. He could see that the dogs were snarling and barking ferociously at something in their midst. Being the curious sort himself, he stopped to see what the ruckus was. He was horrified to discover that the hunters had a tiny kitten in a cage, and it was being used to “prime” the hunting dogs into a frenzy. My dad likes dogs, but he is a true-blue cat lover. Without much forethought, he walked into the group and demanded that they hand over the kitten, who was nearly frightened to death. The hunters did not take kindly to this request, and all raised their rifles, pointed them at my father, and suggested he leave immediately. He did, and without the kitten. If asked about it still, he will nearly cry, not over the possibility that he could have lost his life that day, and we would probably have never located his body, but over the probable outcome for the kitten. Gruesome stuff. His curiosity could have killed him, but that did not stop him. To me, that was heroic.
I have tried to instill a love of learning in my kids, and impress upon them that it is good to be curious and inquisitive. I love the quote by Dorothy Parker, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” I may be a nuisance to some people, but I can guarantee you, I will never be bored, I will never want to stop learning and exploring, and if that makes me a cat, then I will take the nine lives, because I will probably need them.
“Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.” (Arnold Edinborough)
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