Smiling to myself.
I am struggling to make any progress on my book. Instead I am taking delight in reading and re-reading other works. The latest diversion is going back to Turtles All The Way Down. But it’s always slightly tainted by the thought that I am both avoiding writing and muddying my mind and making writing more difficult.
I also notice that I have these delightful moments of insight when I am reading something. And I guess that seasoned writers stop everything and capture those insights, because they are the things that really sing. I kid myself that I can come back to them but, no, they are gone and that moment of clarity is impossible to reach again.
But anyway, that’s not the reason I am smiling to myself. I smile because I really question what it is I really want. I sit here in front of the window of my shepherd’s hut. A glass of Black Sheep Ale on the placemat beside me. For the last half hour I have watched the movements and impossible to detect changes in the white cumulus clouds coming over me. They rise from behind the ridge of dark trees the other side of the green pasture that my hut sits at the bottom of. The continual rumble of the weir in the brown stream in flood in the woods behind me is the backdrop, strangely occupying the same sonic space as the extractor fan in the Chinese restaurant in my Lewes house.
Just watching the clouds, the brightness of the blue between them, the strength and warmth of the sun when the clouds allow it to shine through, the sound of the Great Tits in the woods behind, the caw of Crows from every side. This moment is exquisite and I can wish for nothing more. I am completely immersed in the slow pageant of earth and sky present in my senses. I breathe gently, I sip my beer, I feel the chill of the air on my hands, I want for nothing.
Why do I want to write anything – what does it do for me?
I reflect on DH Lawrence’s description of a character in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native. This guy felt he understood the world, in his thoughts and reasoning. He felt it was his responsibility to return to Edgon Moor to instruct others in the right way. But in doing so he was making two great mistakes. One, that this wisdom could be taught by rational education. Lawrence remarks that the character finds the woman who is the perfect embodiment of the wild moor. Then he feels like he understands her and can explain her, and in doing so completely fails to experience the reality of her (and the moor). In understanding her, he cuts himself off from her. And secondly, that by seeking to teach others he was avoiding confronting his own being and way of living. I confess to feeling a pang of identification with this character!
So back to the exquisite passage and constantly shifting shapes of the massed white clouds above me. Why is it not enough just to live in the moment of clouds, sunlight, beer, cool wind, hut, and deeply imbibe them, open every sense to them, flex every filter to them (physiological and psychological, sorry Turtles book creeping in here!)? Why is it even on my mind to try to capture the moment in words, or to abduct some sort of lesson, metaphor, or insight from the experience?
I remember a moment years ago when I diverted my route home from Phoenix, Arixona, via Houston. I wanted to visit the Rothko Chapel and sit for a while amongst those amazing (for me) panels of dark colour. I sat there for a couple of hours. Near the end of the time, the attendant came out to check I was ok. Often people come trying to have some transcendent, spiritual experience in front of the paintings and get quite disturbed when they don’t. She was just wanting to be sure I wasn’t one of those! Maybe, in a way, I was. I was sat there, straining my whole being to have a relaxed, spontaneous experience of what was before me!
And I have done the same elsewhere. The Matisse Chapel at Vence, just outside Nice. The monastery with the Fra Bartholemew paintings in Florence. Cave paintings in southern France (can’t quite remember where!)
For a long time now, my attention has shifted from art to the natural world. But maybe the intention remains the same, to access or create a gateway experience to something more foundational, more essential than the level of experience our everyday filters create for us. Something that is more essential.
But why bother?
The clouds are the air clouding. The sensation of that creates ripples across my neurology. And that is it.
And to be present to that moment … that is everything … and then it is gone.
And the next exquisite moment has arrived now.
Image mine.
