Written about my April First Friday Walk, after a lively conversation with other artists from the Walking the Land collective.
As I leave home, my thoughts take precedence over the sounds outside. I’ve been writing and thinking and planning – all mental activity – my head’s full to bursting. As I trip over the paving slabs on the garden path, I realise I have feet. I unhinge the gate, cross the road, hesitate.
I am assailed by insects. They are in the foreground, trumping the traffic on the road below. A wall of buzz and whirr rises from the ground, it could enclose me, but I can choose what to hear. I open my sound-radar, sift through for the interesting: hum of hoover or grass cutter, engine thrum, trills, gull-cries - a blue tit piques it. There are no words out here unless I name and identify what’s there, then I’m right back inside myself.
I stay longer and look. The sea-scape and Fife are in the background today; it’s the diagonals of leafless branches, criss-crossing closer to me that I see, a lattice of nearness which hides the island, pattern of sky mosaic. I stand, breathe, smell.
Turning right, I walk behind a man in a white jacket feeding crisps to a Scottie dog. They sit there beside each other facing the water, while loud music plays from the grass. Down the hill and across the road, I move under the arch, through the unobtrusive opening. Graffiti spreads across the wall to my right, ink has dripped from the tails of the ‘F’ and the ‘K’. Underneath, pale plaster has slipped, revealing brick in the shape of the Isle of Wight.
Dead leaves blanket the steps and I know there will be a damp place underneath them. Dandelions are yellow on the bank and in an instant I see ghosts of white clocks in their future. Early afternoon light seeps into shade, cloud shifts across the sun for a second – this light is so different from the computer glow - starker, more direct - and yet it’s the screen that makes my eyes tired, not this. As it reappears, I switch to my dark glasses and looking up, the plant-greens have changed hue slightly. Their leaves hang close to each other, moving sideways, some behind and others in front like the gels a lighting designer slides in and out of theatre spotlights: olive, teal, chartreuse, merging to create new tones.
At the bottom and round the corner, rubbish strews grass, and I wait at the lights, the pavement covered with splotches of guano. I press the crossing button. I am already pleased that I stopped rushing from work station to kitchen to front door to let the cat out, left the piled-up projects at home, though it took some strength to tear myself away.
The sea air at the top of the wee bank separates the strands of my hair and the less-pressing needs which had been buried under the immediacy, jostle with each other for attention. ‘Thanks for tea yesterday’, I tap. I text, ‘How’s the packing going? 😊’ Send. I’m just getting them out of the way so I can rest, I say to the breeze.
Taking my shoes and socks off I wander along the grass-edge. On the beach, a dog is being naughty, going where he wants and ignoring the loud and louder, 'Alfie', 'Alfie, no', 'Alfie come back'. Alfie is heading in the other direction, barking happily. What is in his head that lets him drown her out? His ears are pricked so he’s heard, but he’s choosing to obey a different call. His nose is only a smidge from the ground and clearly the smells between particles of sand which make him change direction again and again, are much more important. After watching him squat, time goes by. She’s in the water now. I sigh and reluctantly cover it up in case the kids and I step on it later.
I sit on the stone slope and feel my sitting bones. The what-I-don't-want-to-remember thoughts surface now, the uncomfortable feelings from the past. The end-game of my marriage when reasons were asked for and wrong answers given in the face of those ‘whys’. It was all so painful that our minds hadn’t even rummaged around in the piles of what happened yet. How long it takes! How many nightmares and counselling sessions in the effort to let go and move on! How many strata of compressed time have been laid! Fossilised moments – everyday ones, delightful and hurtful ones – they are still there, compressed between the years.
Is it better or worse to hide the stinky bits? Will they rot so that there’s no residue, or will they be revealed by the next tide?
Out in the Firth I see the pilot-boat-waves meeting the ferry-boat ones coming in the other direction. I watch as their churning interrupts, interweaves, then dissipates. I jump. The sea has wet me. It has met me at the bleed-edge and I stumble backwards, cold seeping through my feet-skin. My boundaries are down and the wind takes advantage of my fingertips. I stiffen my shoulders.
I’m doing this intermittent fasting. Even though I’m hungry two days of the week, it’s something I have continued all through Xmas and still do. The ones when I can’t resort to feeding, I notice that my bad temper snaps, old grumps and grouts and resentment are no longer silenced. Today is one of those, but just as I am starting to drown in my own intensity, laughter surges from the very-cold-water-swimmers, screams are released, it’s a kind of hysteria. Three women hop, the pom-poms on their hats wobbling as they submerge and shriek. Not Laughter Yoga, Laughter Swimming! Their voices skim over the water, I can hear every word and I laugh too.
The sea moves the debris higher and higher up every time the tide swells in.
I kneel and start to remove the top cover of the beach-land, to dig with my bare hands, to scrape off the uppermost layer. It is warm and fine. Underneath it’s cooler. Then older. Then wetter. It’s lumpier, the deeper I go. My nails scratch on buried stones, the sharps I meet peel the outside of me off and as I withdraw, blood drips into the hole.
I watch as it seeps through and disappears.
I hear my name and there’s the very man I had been thinking about, with a friend. We chat, pass the time of day, and separate. He sits a way off to have his meeting and I can’t hear what they’re saying. I don’t stay long.
