Wednesday 4 May 2016

Into some kind of wild



"Christ Almighty! The wind has blown in just about every direction since I last spoke to myself and that was only to apologise. I wish I'd had more time to myself when I was young, I could have wandered freely and there would be no need for all this last minute panic, here at the ends of the earth. You see that is where I have stood; and continue to stand, on the edge of poor grammar and punctuation but not really as bothered as I should be. So there was this time when I was truly alone and in the cold, wet underfoot and overhead. I'd kidded myself that I'd spent a long time understanding, there had been analysis and reflection. That was part of staying in the wild and enjoying a poor but efficient diet of anything I could get. All I got was wet. Wet with and underlying cold and strange desire to get my hair cut on a regular basis and visit the dentist fir advice rather than treatment. It was another set of examples of nothing really working. I decided to pack that in and just look at waterfalls for a while. Enter into a state of pondering. Where does all that water go? Where does it come from and why do the flow rates appear to vary, just a little bit every now and then? The truth is I wasn't looking for answers I was just killing time and taking photographs. From time to time I also got in the way of tourists, this wasn't a really useful occupation, not like writing books, making up coffee in flasks or digging out drainage ditches in flood plains. But I was hypnotised by the crashing water and the need to tick more boxes in my journey through the stale points of life that lead to the exciting ones."


"So with that all said I can now see myself as some slowly evolving lizard, along way away from warm blood, fur and ears but on that road. The cold blood may of course kill me if the climate changes or I may remain in the wilderness under some rock. Don't forget that word wilderness contains the word wild, it may be an important clue to those venturing out or even in. My explorations are therefore slow and steady. I feel my way across the landscape and am wary of encounters. I'm also conscious that however I may see myself it is not the way that I am seen by others. That's a complication, a teaser and an exercise I could do without. I try to make my own imprint but the one I see and leave is not the one that they discover. It's as if we were all equipped with different standards of eyes that naturally fail to recognise the image pushed out and desired compared to what they simply discover. Our perceptions have shifted, the images don't quite fit and we have yet to agree some common language. I am in effect disguised from myself, in an alternative space and body, touching and exploring and knowing all too well that the levels of misunderstanding and the levels of perceived threat are just way too high."

"None of this has a cure as I get back to my meditation. I go deep and my eyes are as closed up as submarines as I plumb the depths. I was in a field now I am in the universe. Overhead the Northern Lights come, go and die of over exposure. There are thunder and rain storms and families argue about nothing. Men and women misunderstand each other and there are heavy footsteps in the distance. I'm aware of more mud and colder winds but outside of my eyelids I feel that dawn may be breaking. I'll hold off opening my eyes for a few moments and I'll be careful not to move. Time passes as it must. I open my eyes, I'm still in that field in some wild place, sure enough. All around me there are sheep, dripping wet in the dew and damp, all just staring at me as if waiting for me to say something."

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