I used to be a huge Pearl Jam fan. This started around age 12, I think, and their music carried me through the rockiest years of my life. This song (above) came on while I was driving the other day. I later looked up the lyrics; a habit that has stayed with me since early adolescence. I came across this, written by the bassist Jeff Ament,
It’s a little bit reflecting on where I came from…I grew up in really rural area in Northern Montana, and [“Nothing As It Seems” is] looking back at [that]. I think until two or three years ago, I looked back at my childhood as being a fairly utopian situation where I had the freedom to ride my bike around town when I was five years old, and my parents didn’t have to worry… there have been some things that have kind of allowed some darker things to come to the surface of my childhood, seeing things that I had kind of selectively forgotten for my own mental health or whatever.
https://genius.com/Pearl-jam-nothing-as-it-seems-lyrics
My own rural childhood on a small farm, in subsequent memory, felt like a vast expanse of time and space. It occurred to me recently that I was there for just over 10 years. I’ve been living in my current house for just over 10 years too and I have lived in Bristol for 17 years and I have lived in cities for nearly 30 years… if you can count Hereford as a city; it is technically. One of the smallest cities in the UK. Yet I still consider myself a country girl at heart. Time of course, feels different for a child, and the formative years are unquestionably defining. I don’t remember much of them though… who does? I don’t know what my earliest memory is. I have always had such a vivid imagination, such that whatever I’ve been told about myself, my child self – an elaborate image has been created in my head to go with the story. One of those stories was not even true, so I have a false memory. This ‘memory’ is of dropping my dummy on the ground and the chickens rushing in, surrounding me, pecking frantically at my dummy. This didn’t happen! This was what I was told happened because, I assume, my parents thought it was time for me to not have a dummy anymore (I imagine myself as one of those toddlers always with a dummy in my mouth – like Maggie Simpson). I’ve heard that these days, some young children are encouraged to post their dummy through a letterbox when they get to a certain age; three or four or whatever.
I guess all parents have different ideas about how to support their children through life’s transitions. Some parents, for example, think that ancient statues are pornography and that school Principles should be fired for teaching such iconic artwork to Sixth Graders. Or is that just ‘fake news’?
I digress. The ‘utopian’ part of my childhood, I suppose, was to do with having a lot of freedom to roam around the farm; spend time with animals, make dens in the woods, hack through undergrowth like it was a jungle, walk the perimeter of a field at sunset while the lambs performed their early evening races. Let my mind wander with my feet. This is what I try to recreate, when I get the chance. My dog keeps me company while I get lost in… or come back to? …my thoughts and sensations. Quite a different environment to the farm on the fringes of a small hamlet. I often wander along the river, and worry as I notice the subsidence beneath the new tower blocks, which are under construction on the river bank. Then I am pleasantly surprised at the street art, which has had an upgrade compared to five or so years ago – top of the list is the cheeky ‘Burglar Bill’ (one of my son’s favourite stories). I eventually wind my way back through Arnos Vale cemetery of course… sometimes with sadness, other times with curiosity, less and less with rage and once in a while, with playfulness.
Since my winter post, ‘Thank You & Goodbye’, I have felt resistant to continuing with (what has become) this seasonal blog. It is now pretty much the end of spring and I’m struggling to finish it off, although it’s been whirring away in the recesses of my mind for months, years. Breaking free and taking shape, in glimpses, in my conscious thoughts, whenever I roam with Nomar. I guess I haven’t done enough roaming this spring. Can I blame the weather? I find myself questioning what I meant by ‘thank you and goodbye’. Was I playing with the idea of stopping, I wonder. Stopping writing altogether? No, surely not. I need it, I really do. It brings me back together again. But writing for others to read… I’m not sure what my purpose is in that respect. I think I have known at times. Right now I don’t. I’m giving it a go anyway, because I like to stick to a plan – a post for every season.
Spring seemed fairly tentative this year, given the unusually cold weather. I entered this year wishing Christmas time would last a little longer; I haven’t felt that since I was a child, way before my parents’ acrimonious divorce. Then there was a lot of waiting… for spring. I struggle with the in-between times, or so I tell myself. The waiting, the limbo, is compounded moreover by the pervasive knowledge of my father’s cancer; detained yet again by yet another new treatment. And the absence. And the distance. What next? What to do with this extra ‘precious’ time, from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I don’t like the in-between times; I like the middle of the season, or so I thought. Even the relied upon constants of the seasons feel precarious this year. More so each year that passes. And the constants I came to rely on in meeting up with my father and family at certain times each year, have all but gone. We met three or four times a year, almost as reliable as the seasons, until the pandemic… and the aftermath of parched, brittle, cracking relationships.
My mind meanders back to spring last year. I took a brief trip away with Nomar, my dog. I had spent a whole weekend away with him towards the end of 2016, when I needed a break – space – time to myself; and it became so much more. The weekend was a truly transformative experience (please see ‘The Experiment’ if you want to know more). This time I was leaving more responsibilities than before: My second child; less than a year old when the pandemic started – seems to struggle when I’m not around, or so I perceive it. I think I struggle more than before with not being at home too, somewhat institutionalised by lockdowns. Nevertheless, I plucked up some courage and booked a B&B near the Quantocks; planning to find the waterfall in St Audries Bay, near Kilve. Nothing spectacular, not too far from home. It felt wise, or comforting, to temper my ambitions on this trip – only slightly resigned, and a little regretful that I had not ventured to see a breathtaking waterfall when I was in Iceland the summer before.
“Quantock country will not appeal to those who admire only the magnificent and grandiose,”
(Berta Lawrence)
Fine by me! Still somewhat in a Covid fog, much less confident, more afraid of everything and easily overwhelmed. In fact, as soon as I arrived at the B&B I nearly went straight home. I was met by multiple dogs guarding the place; the alpha was old, half blind and snarling. Not a person in sight. I had told my son (age two at the time) that he couldn’t come with me because it was a dog hotel – it turned out I wasn’t lying. I’m not usually put off by dogs, but this was too much even for me. Nomar stayed firmly within the safety of the car boot. Luckily a ruddy faced older woman appeared to welcome us in, assuring us not to mind the gnarly canine bearing it’s teeth. We edged past him, backs against the wall, and were shown to our room. An enthusiastic spaniel called Kevin also helped to put us at ease. The lady said she could tell I was a country girl and invited me to come back the following year to help with the lambing. I really thought I would return, but of course I haven’t.
Once our overnight stuff was settled in the room, Nomar and I braved the treacherous walk through the hallway, past Cerberus* and out of the farmhouse door, so we could set out to complete our (my) mission. I thought I was determined to find the waterfall, however I drove along the same road, back and forth, several times – feeling uncertain about where to leave the car. I finally parked in a large lay-by in front of an obvious public footpath entrance to the woods. Regardless, I had the feeling I was doing the wrong thing. Looking back now, I really don’t know what I was so worried about. The walk down to the beach involved passing through a holiday park, where I felt inordinately shifty as I snuck between static caravans and scurried down the steep steps to the bay. I felt like a criminal! I came to realise that I could have paid a small amount of money to leave my car in the holiday park car park, to access the beach with complete legitimacy. But I couldn’t think straight, with the fog of excessive inner conflict, even of being away from my home/family in the first place. Was this predominantly due to the bewildering effects of lockdown management? I kept thinking; am I breaking the rules? Then later, I reflected on the added impact of being in a new job for a year and still struggling to settle, plus the thrill, diffidence, turmoil, promise… associated with starting a new process with a new therapist.
Once on the beach I felt safer. I could breathe. Nomar slalomed the water’s edge, moving away and coming back to me, repeatedly. The damp pitter patter, so predictable, reliable, familiar and comforting. I gazed out at the grey sea. A hint of cloud highlighted the unexpected variety of colours, shapes and textures – a mixture of flat pebbles, sand, shingle and rock… intriguing curved cave crevices, lines of old posts, wave-cut terraces. I counted the posts, the shapes – three, four. Oranges, greys; layers upon layers of difference in the cliff, even a small patch of black sand beneath a tiny waterfall – a miniature Iceland. When I was actually in Iceland, and in the highly anxious build up to Covid travelling, I thought I needed to see a huge waterfall… to imagine the trials of the pandemic washing away, rushing away, with great force. At St Audries, I saw a tall, thin, wonderful waterfall – kind of magical. Gentle. I stood in the misty spray, smiling. I walked out to the furthest point I could into the sea, out along one of the static waves of rock. Someone was calling me, three or four times, as I stood there trying to soak it all in. Are you kidding me? I thought. Is there no peace for me? In hindsight though, why didn’t I just turn my phone off, even for an hour or two.
In recent months I have come across the term “thin places”, which refers to a place of a particular type of energy, that has a thin veil between this world and the eternal world; between life and death; between earth and heaven (depending on one’s beliefs):
They are stopping places where men and women are given pause to wonder about what lies beyond the mundane rituals, the grief, trials and boredom of our day-to-day life. They probe to the core of the human heart and open the pathway that leads to satisfying the familiar hungers and yearnings common to all people on earth, the hunger to be connected, to be a part of something greater, to be loved, to find peace.
https://thinplacestour.com/what-are-thin-places/
This was something of my experience of Iceland. And when I look at a world map at the part which shows the UK and North America, with the Atlantic Ocean in-between, and Iceland slightly north… I see a sort of triangle. My father and I met in the in-between place, north a bit, after such a long time apart.
The Quantocks did not feel like a “thin place”, which was fine. I wondered if the Quantocks might be boring and whether this was what I was craving,
“The beauty lies in the simplicity – and the variety only in changes wrought by the cycle of the seasons…” (Berta Lawrence)
A year in with my therapist and I found myself feeling bored of my own voice, going over the same old past stuff. A feeling of ‘what’s the point?’ Shouldn’t I be over all this by now? This makes me laugh at myself because I recently delivered a seminar about ‘ambiguous loss’ and ‘prolonged/disenfranchised grief’. When a feeling of boredom comes into therapy, as a client or a therapist, the thinking is that this is telling us something important, that it’s something to be curious about,
Boredom covers for all of these feelings. Because who wants to be angry at work, self-conscious at a party, or lonely at home? … I’ll provide a space to let out the anger, the frustration, the sadness, the hopelessness, the whatever, and see that it’s not going to push me away. That it’s not going to destroy them
https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/bored-with-therapy-unmasking-real-feelings-behind-boredom-0620174
My parents often got bored and changed things – house moves, holidays, pets. There were several holidays which stood out; some disastrous, others just strange and unnerving. During one holiday in Italy, when I was about 6, my mother stayed in the hotel room for the entire week. My father would take my brother and I down to the pool every day and two friendly young men (?late teens, early twenties) lifted us onto their shoulders in the pool, so we could wrestle each other in the air, each attempting to push the other into the shining water below. This may have happened on just one day, but I still remember their names. On another day my Dad decided to take us for a run. The heat of the day was stifling and I had a stitch. We came across a man doubled over at the side of the road – he was having a heart attack. I don’t remember but I assume my father summoned help. We were staying in an old villa. At the end of the corridor outside our room was a large cracked mirror. I was scared of it. I couldn’t look at it and would run past as fast as I could, heart racing. I think this holiday represents my first sense that something in my family was broken.
As I reached the halfway point on my second walk in the Quantocks, around Hawkridge reservoir, one of my walking boots broke – the sole came right off. I managed to carry on anyway and complete the walk, somehow. I met some friendly, peaceful horses in a field on the way back; they seemed to say, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, shame about the boot. Good luck!’. The evening before, Nomar and I went to a pub called ‘The Friendly Spirit’ where I had pie and chips and a pint of beer. I shared the pub with a large group of heavily tattooed and muscled men, watching rugby on a big screen. They kept apologising for being loud. They seemed puzzled by my presence. Upon leaving, whilst crossing a pleasing bridge over a brook, I overheard a teenage conversation and felt compelled to capture snippets of it; “You know the truth, what’s the point in denying it or accepting it! …why don’t you hashtag – I’ll punch you in the face” (girl carrying 3 large bags of crisps and 2 large slabs of chocolate).
Devoid of suitable footwear, I decided to drive up to Will’s Neck before heading back to Bristol – very low on fuel, it was a risky decision. Worth it though to walk along the ancient drovers’ road:
There’s something antediluvian about walking on this unmade track. If you’ve seen Lord of The Rings movies and you want to feel what it might be like to be in such a world – try taking a turn along this prehistoric trail. Ancient gnarled beeches are a feature of the wide rutted road and somehow it’s easy to imagine Somerset’s answer to a bunch of Hobbits marching along here.
https://www.martinhespfoodandtravel.com/hespfoodandtravelhome/wills-neck-highest-hill-on-the-quantocks
My Mum and Dad were big fans of the Lord of The Rings books and I remember listening to the audiotapes on long car journeys. Gollum’s voice still haunts me, in a fond way. I didn’t hang around long on the Quantock Ridge however. Not seeking an other-worldly experience this time, contrary to the qualities of my childhood rural roaming. Rather I sought to settle myself and I’m not sure that I achieved it. Apparently on a clear day, the 360 views up there offer a glimpse of the new Severn Bridge and beyond it, the Brecon Beacons; I imagine my present fading into my past with the hazy horizon. In fact I did not see any panoramic views. I hurried to re-fuel the car and rush back home.
‘…A blanket like the ozone
It’s nothing as it seems
All that he needs is home
And all that he sees
Is nothing he can believe
Saving up a sunny day, something maybe two tone
Anything of his own, a chip off the corner stone
Who’s kidding? Rainy day, a one way ticket headstone
Occupations overthrown, whisper through a megaphone…’
*In Greek mythology, Cerberus, often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. (Wikipedia)
© 2023 Psychodography Blog
REFERENCES
- Lawrence, B. (1952). Quantock Country. Westaway.
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