Writing | Walking Through a Landscape
There has been a
confusion, a disconnect of the senses and we can all feel it reverberate
through the air. Bulbs protrude their sweet knowing heads as birds sing well
into the evenings, the very ones who saw no cause to migrate. What am I harping
on about? The weather of course; the season, the skies, the lands and how
terribly British. How terribly relevant. For me at least, for it is the land
that speaks to me as I pass through it. Motion and stillness, fill me when I
stand in a field surveying the beauty, then there is the crash of sound.
Birdsong intermingles with astonishing flight, rustling in the hedgerow
thunders with anticipation and what can possibly be hiding in the tall grass
yonder? The expectancy is palpable, how can there be peace with all this
excitement and noise? But there is. One notices it as they listen to their
heartbeat, at first it’s so very quiet, you could almost not have one, but
wait, just wait a second more and you’ll hear it so loud that you think it will
crash out of your rib cage. As the clouds above morph once more, you find that
you are indeed listening to the world, you are surveying, you are being
respectful and to write well, you must be humbled by all that has been created.
This is not a religious awakening, although it may be for some. For me, when I
am in tune with nature, I am in tune with the beauty that has allowed or given
me the chance to write, and for that, I am thankful, in awe and utterly
humbled.
There is no doubt that I shall be dragging my husband (who enjoys
it really) at least three times a year to the countryside. I’m usually sitting
on the couch or staring out of the window, deflated and tired from whatever
life has thrown at me and suddenly I will announce, “Say, let’s leave London
tomorrow, lets go to Sussex,” and just like that, the husband says “sure,” and
packs a lunch the next day and two trains later, we’re
in the land of renewal.
Sussex is usually where I like to
be closest to Virginia Woolf. Woolf is what I refer to as my writer spirit
guide; Patti Smith is my other guide, it’s important to have one living and one
from the past. It’s when I’m climbing the
South Downs
or walking along the river Ouse as seen in the picture above which I took last September,
that I purge many thoughts and feeling and refill. I step away from life and
plunge into another but there is always a point of return, there must be or
we’re not participating in life, and if we are to write, me must participate
and not be mere bystanders, what fun is there in that? Connection, there must
always be a point of connection. Lock yourselves in the splendour of nostalgia
but never throw away the key for what one gains from it has to be transmuted
clearly.
The New Year had awoken many of us, alerted us to the work
ahead. Work, how reviled a word that
is, but work and love are why we are here, me must make good of ourselves, we
must produce something that we are able to share with our fellow man, and it
must be worthy. These are my preoccupations as a writer and they become more
obvious as I evolve, as my mind and heart grow in unison. Illness and life has
had a funny habit of getting in the way, but I have decided to have no more of
these rude interruptions, for I have nearly finished my second book, which has
had my attention focused on water for a good three years, as my protagonist is
dangerously in tune with the waves. It’s a time to finish work, tie up those
dangerously loose ends and make good of those hours spent in toil over the
screen and ink stained fingers and smudges on the paper. It is not only my time
which goes into my writing, but my husband’s as he knocks on my study door to
say hello and ask what I fancy for dinner and my sister’s faith which has
always propelled me along, and for my parents who worked hard for my education
and fed my soul Leonard Cohen. Writing may be a solitary act, but it is also
one in which we bring others down into that rabbit hole of wonderment. We are
detached, yet so very attached, and I always think this as I stare up at the
sky watching the parakeets make their second journey of the day back to their
trees for the night and there I am, still at my desk trying to do good work,
work that I hope to share, to transmute with others, for it is that closeness
to another being in which beauty resides, in which creativity can continue to
blossom. We must always return, to the land, to our loved ones and to the
essence of our work.
