14/6/06 - Winchester
Despondency in this dry, depressed town, this half-life of community care rejects and drug pushers - I carry a sense of loss with me through the evening, a new struggle solely connected with the change of location, this sudden move from Suffolk - and a pall of bad fortune comes with it, people chasing me for payments, friends subsuming and ignoring me in conversation, wiping out my words on the telephone - do they consider me dumb? To be bullied? I am aware of fear and silence; out of place, seeking solace in stray walks without direction or awareness (unlike my usual self) - a sense of reckoning - desperately seeking the magical, the transportive, in the riverside meadows here -
I stutter from stem to shallow brook, the reflections there are uneventful - they leave me confused even in their stray beauty; something growls beneath, a new sense of overcrowding - maybe I need to penetrate a deeper realm of solitude again? The drastic measure of breath, something closer to a meditation, an asceticism perhaps - but devoted to what? These things overwhelm me on my evening walk; I am guarded, reserving strength - I feel myself to be a shadow of the moon, yet I know I could experience a curvature of light without regret if only I could see it; my feet hold the only sound of hope tonight, crunching on the stony path or through the waterside grass - yet I am looking for the tide and the beach where I was in true hock to freedom without disparagement or judgment -
I reconnoiter the aged flint walls and medieval gateways; the hard, bleak crosses and metallic halos encroached by insects - in a cloister I read the spines of books laid out in cruciform and realize the only word that strikes me as having any importance is 'chymical' - an old spelling and means of discovery - I imagine the process of cameras then, that 'chymical' endeavour of eye and science, the quiet dark of the developing chamber, the smell of nitrates and bleach and emulsion - my grandfather long dead watching over my shoulder, smiling his approval, wishing he could have a go - looking, recording; a contemplation and reward - maybe that is my new credo and rhythm, the walk, the observer, the shutter clicking in time with history?
Despondency in this dry, depressed town, this half-life of community care rejects and drug pushers - I carry a sense of loss with me through the evening, a new struggle solely connected with the change of location, this sudden move from Suffolk - and a pall of bad fortune comes with it, people chasing me for payments, friends subsuming and ignoring me in conversation, wiping out my words on the telephone - do they consider me dumb? To be bullied? I am aware of fear and silence; out of place, seeking solace in stray walks without direction or awareness (unlike my usual self) - a sense of reckoning - desperately seeking the magical, the transportive, in the riverside meadows here -
I stutter from stem to shallow brook, the reflections there are uneventful - they leave me confused even in their stray beauty; something growls beneath, a new sense of overcrowding - maybe I need to penetrate a deeper realm of solitude again? The drastic measure of breath, something closer to a meditation, an asceticism perhaps - but devoted to what? These things overwhelm me on my evening walk; I am guarded, reserving strength - I feel myself to be a shadow of the moon, yet I know I could experience a curvature of light without regret if only I could see it; my feet hold the only sound of hope tonight, crunching on the stony path or through the waterside grass - yet I am looking for the tide and the beach where I was in true hock to freedom without disparagement or judgment -
I reconnoiter the aged flint walls and medieval gateways; the hard, bleak crosses and metallic halos encroached by insects - in a cloister I read the spines of books laid out in cruciform and realize the only word that strikes me as having any importance is 'chymical' - an old spelling and means of discovery - I imagine the process of cameras then, that 'chymical' endeavour of eye and science, the quiet dark of the developing chamber, the smell of nitrates and bleach and emulsion - my grandfather long dead watching over my shoulder, smiling his approval, wishing he could have a go - looking, recording; a contemplation and reward - maybe that is my new credo and rhythm, the walk, the observer, the shutter clicking in time with history?
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