Orchids live on every continent except Antarctica.  Though most are tropical plants, they are found from the Arctic to the southern tip of South America.  Some could sit comfortably on your fingernail; others can reach 40 feet in height, and some vine-like forms can be 100 feet long.  Modern Western interest in orchids began in the early nineteenth century when a British naturalist found some in Brazil, shipped them to the Glasgow Botanical Gardens, and they ultimately were brought to bloom by his colleague William Cattley. The Cattleyas, named after him, have over 100 species, and have become a source of fascination around the world.

Orchids pop up in surprising ways in popular culture and literature.  I remember as a boy one of my favorite comic strips was Brenda Starr, who was in love with Basil, an eye-patched adventurer with a rare disease, held in check only by doses of the serum of the black orchid.  Mystery aficionados no doubt remember Rex Stout's reclusive, corpulent detective Nero Wolfe, whose happiest hours were spent growing orchids in his Manhattan greenhouse (www.nerowolfe.org).  In Marcel Proust's novel 'Remembrance of things past', Swann and Odette gently agree 'to do a cattleya', meaning to engage in loving activities. The name of the 2011 French action film 'Colombiana' has a double meaning, referring both to a woman from Colombia and a genus of orchids.  The heroine, Cattleya, who had witnessed the murder of her family as a child, grows up to be an assassin who leaves her victims with a flower as a calling card.  What is it about orchids that inspires the imagination in all these different ways? 

Narrative-- putting things into the form of stories-- is a basic way in which we come to understand and remember things. A good example is the Bible: One of the reasons it is the most widely read book of all time in the Western world is that much of it is composed of parables. One wonders if it would have the same universal appeal if it were made up mostly of abstract religious tracts.  Narratives can be visual or verbal, spoken or read. Among the oldest professions (and with apologies to another for which that claim has often been made) have been the storyteller and what we would now call the psychotherapist. In early societies without widespread literacy, the storyteller was the means of passing along information important to the group, making a narrative of its origins, confirming its values, and allowing listeners to share in events and feelings outside their experience. As a modern psychotherapist, my work involves a person's internal narratives, sometimes suggesting that the way a person has put together the story of what happened to him may not be the only way of looking at it, and sometimes helping to put together a more useful story.  Dreams, too, can be seen as the mind's attempt to put together a story that makes sense of often disturbing events.  In later posts I'll talk about how modern dream research suggests a healing function of dreams, how they can help one absorb and master upsetting things which have happened.  But for now, I just wanted to share with you some of the thoughts I have when reading literature, at the same time experiencing new places and events and feelings, and perhaps feeling a kind of healing process at work.  

I'm viewing this blog as a dialog, and would enjoy hearing your thoughts.