16/6/06 - 17/6/06 - Winchester & London
MY RESTLESS ANATOMY
Sitting in the cathedral grounds in Winchester, alone, just a bag of food and about £15 left to my name - a dead ringer for General Pinochet walks past me through the trees, maybe, just maybe…… I ought to shout, to denounce him before these people, mob him, and make him pay -
My head is peeling all over, slivers of dry skin coming away, irritating my scalp - yet I look healthier than ever, they say, in this singular freedom - the evening summer breeze playing about the trees and the tombs - how far have I come? To be sat here like a part-time tramp? Wondering where the next paycheck will come from. In some ways I relish the challenge, surviving on next to nothing, reducing all that I need and carry and eat down to a minimum, alive on the wits edge - in other ways I am beholden to a deep fear of age and insecurity -
- Yet -
I understand and accept I should have no knowledge, leading to learning and thereby (question) to good writing? The necessity of discovery, a cleansing of mind that could be intrinsically altered in the quest for expression; for ideas and knowledge found or learnt on the way not beforehand, in process - a story, ways of being perhaps, symbols? - this I begin to comprehend should be my approach instead of the belief that all good artists (writers particularly) know much before they set out on a creative endeavour; it ought to be the opposite - the chance to widen ones understanding of a subject, human nature, meditating on existence, on images, themes and actions; or further, on the need for love, company, gratification, temptation, desire, passion; on the good and the bad actions taken in search for these things or as a result of these things; of time and solitude; of the sun and the traveler; of the souls' wide open endeavour to maintain light -
An example: the multitude of books old and new laid out in the dim cloister at the rear of the cathedral - a quiet, timeless poetry of place and objects together; a stillness beyond the obvious, working away on a physical and metaphysical plane of course - an evening to learn of space as the best medium to carry one's faith; and between the leaves of a book -
The close blackbirds ignore me where I sit beneath a huge, aged fir tree beside another Hepworth sculpture (echoing that one at Snape); they hunt for worms, gently cantering close and are joined by an officious looking Jackdaw who walks among them disapprovingly - I am become nothing more than part of their daily environment and this pleases me no end - I can be invisible -
Two young women, late teens/early twenties are filming each other on hand-held DV cameras; one climbs the low bole of a cherry tree across the quadrant from where I sit - they are laughing gently, intimately and their laughs echo off the four medieval walls -
What is a vision and, by extension, a visionary? Is it a reactive state or a proactive one? Is its fuel exclusively without or within? I'd like to think it was always the latter, in the natural world (whether by another extension that includes the man-made or not I am not sure) - Oliver's Battery - Leonardo's Sycamore Helicopter - Oppenheimer's Basic Destroyer - all found without, external observation consistent with dreams -
- Like
am I living a lie? People have come to think of me recently as a modern day Dick Whittington (they told me so in Suffolk and here now in this deadly county) - a bag on wheels and a laptop, carried hither and thither across country - maybe I am if you put it that way, though it seems too romantic to be the case because my movements are out of economic necessity (I reply) - but didn't Whittington go to London looking for gold (they answer swiftly)? -
The camera girls come near, standing in the shadow of a dense, succulent tree over by the north wall - they are taking more intimate pictures of each other now, the lens close up to their faces, their eyes - maybe they are falling in love? First lovers each? And these images are records of this new emotional place they find themselves in? Recorded for posterity; either to be erased in time when it all goes sour, or else kept as testament to those initial days of lust and excitement when they look back years hence - still giggling, still testing the branches, still laughing in the religious shadows of a cathedral - like it was only yesterday -
The calm navigation of their souls - the meditative steps inside -
And in continuation, I wake at dawn the next day, collecting myself and my belongings in a room I've slept in for only three nights, with its small wooden puppet theatre in the corner dusty but well loved once; and trundling the bag out of the door in silence so as not to wake anyone in the house I see as I go the quiet shadow of the Japanese girl I'd been told rents a room but whom I have not met at all, now crossing the threshold at this early hour with a small china bowl before her, and a red tear of tiredness in her eye - and the bright morning, a glimpse of a fresh view through a sloping, green corn field toward hedgerows and copses with the early mist hanging low in the fold, collecting heavy - nobody else witnessing it but me on that road, this clarity of the new day with its wide open possibilities, its ready anticipation (even though mine is fairly well planned) -
Carrying on up the hill I recall the things I learnt about old friends last night - new proposals of marriage in Northern Ireland; an old flame now living with a German composer in London; recent friends returning to Aldeburgh already to watch performances given by people they know; A.F. has returned from a restorative trip to Greece where he read Proust; PC is in France for the christening of a friends baby; and my family (nieces, brothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, parents) are all well met in northern Italy - that is good - important - I have deep affection for them all -
Bruce Chatwin (a nod to him in this entry's title) reflects on the importance of the nomad in the culture of past societies (particularly those on the steppes of Russia and Mongolia) - oftentimes they were the herders of vast numbers of horses or cattle, and were connected to (or were themselves) the settlements shaman - the conjurers of space and time, of visions beyond the known, the witnesses to what was over the horizon - yet also the healers and advisors, totally practical, the watchers of the villagers flanks, and bearers of change or alarm - without the nomads the 'settlers' would not have survived - As I fell asleep last night my journey today played itself out in my mind - it ends (or begins?) with a kind of void waiting to be 'filled' - I think it was connected to this urge for discovery and learning I mentioned earlier and seems to be a result of my recent restless existence - the void is not empty however, it is full of questions, anticipation - it is not taxing or confusing, it is surprisingly quiet and restful, a musing place! Maybe, to paraphrase Marguerite Duras, it is 'the writer's unknown'? Finally, I am out on the pilgrims trail, outside my tribe (my family) trying to report back as often as possible, having to be patient, imagining myself with them - and so I slept -
And after all can we help the genetic programme? Or even dare to attempt to change it? What would be the point? If one has a genetic disposal toward restlessness can nit be fought, reconditioned? Or must it be allowed to take one where it will? Unbound. Or is that just a vision of romanticism that is totally impractical in this age? Perhaps it is now decreed that wanderlust must be kept in check in all aspects of our lives - free only to be expressed in so far as which channel we switch to or which websites we allow ourselves to visit - Yet there is so much benefit to be had; a searching quality to life that is important; a kind of open-eye form of living that moves out into the day, constantly hunting for information and inspiration, and that brings contentment, a rare commodity these days -
I have come to believe in omens on this journey; in objects found that have a great deal of power even if they are only conjurers of memory - you must still be careful with them, they are both delicate and strong - wood especially - the power of natural forces upon it (the tide, wind, movement, abrasion) allows it the opportunity to become different in character given time, it will retain traces of its past but is irrefutably altered for the better - so it is with the allowance of wanderlust -
I am reminded of my Italian grandfather's long walk home in 1944/1945 from a prison camp in Germany all the way back to Piedmont in northern Italy, over the Alps!! I never met him, he died penniless 35 or so years ago, but his story of endurance and subsequent suffering has taken on a huge importance and significance to me since I first learnt of it - outside of the evident tragedy inherent in it, I believe it set up a form of 'learnt' nomadism in my family (and in many people in the subsequent post-war generations e.g. Kerouac et al) that has been passed on - my father moving across Europe, then on into the UK and when I was growing up we move again and again, leaving my 'rootless' and therefore perpetually restless (a good thing) - perhaps tragedy, mutated and relearned, has become joy? Balancing the past in its own small, yet significant, way?
One skill I have never learnt is the ability to sleep upright, say sat in a chair in a railway station - a useful art for the traveler - You do have to love a city café for its egalitarian invitation to all (including the tramp who is sleeping upright in that chair over there at the edge of the patio) - regulars, irregulars, passengers, stay-at-homes, visitors, thinkers, lovers, and poseurs - they come and they partake in good surroundings - some never want to leave, after all, if the café is good life becomes so much easier -
MY RESTLESS ANATOMY
Sitting in the cathedral grounds in Winchester, alone, just a bag of food and about £15 left to my name - a dead ringer for General Pinochet walks past me through the trees, maybe, just maybe…… I ought to shout, to denounce him before these people, mob him, and make him pay -
My head is peeling all over, slivers of dry skin coming away, irritating my scalp - yet I look healthier than ever, they say, in this singular freedom - the evening summer breeze playing about the trees and the tombs - how far have I come? To be sat here like a part-time tramp? Wondering where the next paycheck will come from. In some ways I relish the challenge, surviving on next to nothing, reducing all that I need and carry and eat down to a minimum, alive on the wits edge - in other ways I am beholden to a deep fear of age and insecurity -
- Yet -
I understand and accept I should have no knowledge, leading to learning and thereby (question) to good writing? The necessity of discovery, a cleansing of mind that could be intrinsically altered in the quest for expression; for ideas and knowledge found or learnt on the way not beforehand, in process - a story, ways of being perhaps, symbols? - this I begin to comprehend should be my approach instead of the belief that all good artists (writers particularly) know much before they set out on a creative endeavour; it ought to be the opposite - the chance to widen ones understanding of a subject, human nature, meditating on existence, on images, themes and actions; or further, on the need for love, company, gratification, temptation, desire, passion; on the good and the bad actions taken in search for these things or as a result of these things; of time and solitude; of the sun and the traveler; of the souls' wide open endeavour to maintain light -
An example: the multitude of books old and new laid out in the dim cloister at the rear of the cathedral - a quiet, timeless poetry of place and objects together; a stillness beyond the obvious, working away on a physical and metaphysical plane of course - an evening to learn of space as the best medium to carry one's faith; and between the leaves of a book -
The close blackbirds ignore me where I sit beneath a huge, aged fir tree beside another Hepworth sculpture (echoing that one at Snape); they hunt for worms, gently cantering close and are joined by an officious looking Jackdaw who walks among them disapprovingly - I am become nothing more than part of their daily environment and this pleases me no end - I can be invisible -
Two young women, late teens/early twenties are filming each other on hand-held DV cameras; one climbs the low bole of a cherry tree across the quadrant from where I sit - they are laughing gently, intimately and their laughs echo off the four medieval walls -
What is a vision and, by extension, a visionary? Is it a reactive state or a proactive one? Is its fuel exclusively without or within? I'd like to think it was always the latter, in the natural world (whether by another extension that includes the man-made or not I am not sure) - Oliver's Battery - Leonardo's Sycamore Helicopter - Oppenheimer's Basic Destroyer - all found without, external observation consistent with dreams -
- Like
am I living a lie? People have come to think of me recently as a modern day Dick Whittington (they told me so in Suffolk and here now in this deadly county) - a bag on wheels and a laptop, carried hither and thither across country - maybe I am if you put it that way, though it seems too romantic to be the case because my movements are out of economic necessity (I reply) - but didn't Whittington go to London looking for gold (they answer swiftly)? -
The camera girls come near, standing in the shadow of a dense, succulent tree over by the north wall - they are taking more intimate pictures of each other now, the lens close up to their faces, their eyes - maybe they are falling in love? First lovers each? And these images are records of this new emotional place they find themselves in? Recorded for posterity; either to be erased in time when it all goes sour, or else kept as testament to those initial days of lust and excitement when they look back years hence - still giggling, still testing the branches, still laughing in the religious shadows of a cathedral - like it was only yesterday -
The calm navigation of their souls - the meditative steps inside -
And in continuation, I wake at dawn the next day, collecting myself and my belongings in a room I've slept in for only three nights, with its small wooden puppet theatre in the corner dusty but well loved once; and trundling the bag out of the door in silence so as not to wake anyone in the house I see as I go the quiet shadow of the Japanese girl I'd been told rents a room but whom I have not met at all, now crossing the threshold at this early hour with a small china bowl before her, and a red tear of tiredness in her eye - and the bright morning, a glimpse of a fresh view through a sloping, green corn field toward hedgerows and copses with the early mist hanging low in the fold, collecting heavy - nobody else witnessing it but me on that road, this clarity of the new day with its wide open possibilities, its ready anticipation (even though mine is fairly well planned) -
Carrying on up the hill I recall the things I learnt about old friends last night - new proposals of marriage in Northern Ireland; an old flame now living with a German composer in London; recent friends returning to Aldeburgh already to watch performances given by people they know; A.F. has returned from a restorative trip to Greece where he read Proust; PC is in France for the christening of a friends baby; and my family (nieces, brothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, parents) are all well met in northern Italy - that is good - important - I have deep affection for them all -
Bruce Chatwin (a nod to him in this entry's title) reflects on the importance of the nomad in the culture of past societies (particularly those on the steppes of Russia and Mongolia) - oftentimes they were the herders of vast numbers of horses or cattle, and were connected to (or were themselves) the settlements shaman - the conjurers of space and time, of visions beyond the known, the witnesses to what was over the horizon - yet also the healers and advisors, totally practical, the watchers of the villagers flanks, and bearers of change or alarm - without the nomads the 'settlers' would not have survived - As I fell asleep last night my journey today played itself out in my mind - it ends (or begins?) with a kind of void waiting to be 'filled' - I think it was connected to this urge for discovery and learning I mentioned earlier and seems to be a result of my recent restless existence - the void is not empty however, it is full of questions, anticipation - it is not taxing or confusing, it is surprisingly quiet and restful, a musing place! Maybe, to paraphrase Marguerite Duras, it is 'the writer's unknown'? Finally, I am out on the pilgrims trail, outside my tribe (my family) trying to report back as often as possible, having to be patient, imagining myself with them - and so I slept -
And after all can we help the genetic programme? Or even dare to attempt to change it? What would be the point? If one has a genetic disposal toward restlessness can nit be fought, reconditioned? Or must it be allowed to take one where it will? Unbound. Or is that just a vision of romanticism that is totally impractical in this age? Perhaps it is now decreed that wanderlust must be kept in check in all aspects of our lives - free only to be expressed in so far as which channel we switch to or which websites we allow ourselves to visit - Yet there is so much benefit to be had; a searching quality to life that is important; a kind of open-eye form of living that moves out into the day, constantly hunting for information and inspiration, and that brings contentment, a rare commodity these days -
I have come to believe in omens on this journey; in objects found that have a great deal of power even if they are only conjurers of memory - you must still be careful with them, they are both delicate and strong - wood especially - the power of natural forces upon it (the tide, wind, movement, abrasion) allows it the opportunity to become different in character given time, it will retain traces of its past but is irrefutably altered for the better - so it is with the allowance of wanderlust -
I am reminded of my Italian grandfather's long walk home in 1944/1945 from a prison camp in Germany all the way back to Piedmont in northern Italy, over the Alps!! I never met him, he died penniless 35 or so years ago, but his story of endurance and subsequent suffering has taken on a huge importance and significance to me since I first learnt of it - outside of the evident tragedy inherent in it, I believe it set up a form of 'learnt' nomadism in my family (and in many people in the subsequent post-war generations e.g. Kerouac et al) that has been passed on - my father moving across Europe, then on into the UK and when I was growing up we move again and again, leaving my 'rootless' and therefore perpetually restless (a good thing) - perhaps tragedy, mutated and relearned, has become joy? Balancing the past in its own small, yet significant, way?
One skill I have never learnt is the ability to sleep upright, say sat in a chair in a railway station - a useful art for the traveler - You do have to love a city café for its egalitarian invitation to all (including the tramp who is sleeping upright in that chair over there at the edge of the patio) - regulars, irregulars, passengers, stay-at-homes, visitors, thinkers, lovers, and poseurs - they come and they partake in good surroundings - some never want to leave, after all, if the café is good life becomes so much easier -
1 comment:
Irony of place:
When I returned to Winchester the first few times after escaping, I walked the streets in a balaclava so that no-one would recognise me. I was pretending I wasn't there. I wanted to rinse the city out of my hair. A don came over to me and accosted me, threatening to frogmarch back to my former penitentiary. I laughed, took the balaclava off, said he was welcome. As his foolishness dawned on him, the knowledge he no longer had any control over his former charge, the evil spell in which Winchester had held me for so many years began to fade. As the years passed I learnt how to feel an affection for the town I never held as a gently tortured adolescent. I have kept moving away from Winchester, the word which stands for a place, so far that no one could see its roots still sticking out of my shoes. I have moved so far away that it has lost all power over me, save the power of memory, nostalgia, the dreams I might once have had of the life I should have hoped to lead. And for that final power, I am grateful, as the trees that you write of, the cherry and the cloister, the voided spire and the bitter buttercross: all now guard a part of the aspiration (to live) which was concocted in the face of my antipathy towards them.
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