First Movement: Awakening of pleasant feelings upon arriving in the country

Back at my parents' house in Leicestershire. I seem to have reached a point where I'm having to look seriously at my life. I won't go into details, but after a couple years now of questioning and confusion I realise I'm going to have to work on myself before I can reach out to someone else.

Hmmf. Its okay, really. In fact its good, because to look at myself, I must also look after myself, I need to connect with others, to work on my health, to undertake healthy pursuits, take rest; to practice being 'happy', which is really more tricky than it sounds, but profoundly necessary. So yeah, if the tone of this here blog becomes a bit more circumspect and less 'jaunty', its only because the emotional depths of its author are being sounded for perhaps the first time.

Walking yesterday across fields along the footpath that leads from my house to the village churchyard, a route I've taken innumerable times from back since I was at primary school and used it as a shortcut home. Memory-saturated. The village itself is small enough that I pretty much know all of it, from the time I did a paper round and was made to lug enormous bags of Leicester Mercurys for the local newsagent, for which I got the princely sum of £4 a month and all the Yorkie bars I could eat. Obviously, every time I come back something has changed, new houses appearing where there used to be green space, posher cars in driveways, new faces behind the co-op counter. And I notice things differently, too. Like how silent the place is in the evenings, as residents vacuum seal themselves inside double-glazed bungalows. And how small the place is. I'm different, too.

The Geographer Doreen Massey writes of places not just as 'meaningful spaces', but as collected assemblages of trajectories, of the lives of their inhabitants as they interact with the wider world. Returning home, then, especially after a long time away, is always unsettling; the familiar is rendered poignant by the presence of the new, forcing one to measure the progress of our own lives in the changes.

Anyway, in terms of changing landscapes, my own is about to open up a bit more: I've got my mum to insure me to use her car. My first solo drive is therefore imminent. Wish me luck.

Aklo Letters

'... I am going to write here many of the old secrets and some new ones;
but there are some I shall not put down at all. I must not write down
the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor
the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great
beautiful Circles, nor the Mao games, nor the chief songs. I may write
something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar
reasons.'

Arthur Machen, The White People

Sitting on the sofa at my friend's house on Southover Street, enjoying the luxury of a free morning. All is quiet - I suspect the others have all gone to their various workplaces (two, Jude and Vicky, are carers, the third, Nick, works at the Uni in IT services). Occasional traffic noise from the street outside, a passing chatter of voices. Silence. This is England.

Awoke early before my alarm. After lying in bed a few moments I remembered that the Zen group were having their early morning sit around 8ish - if I went NOW I could make it. I continued to stare at the ceiling for a few moments anyway; my mind still partly in another dimension. Then, something clicked on - up, on with clothes, down stairs, face wash, banana, bike, bag with cushion, cycle cycle cycle... I arrive at ship street gardens, the wee alleyway where lies the Meditation centre, to find the door locked, and me a half-hour late.

Such is life sometimes. Came back and spent the rest of the morning reading 'the White People' by Arthur Machen. I came across Arthur Machen referenced in a collection of stories by HP Lovecraft, the American Horror writer. Machen is one of his primary influences, and is similarly interested in hidden spheres and realms beyond the everyday that sometimes impinge on our consciousness; the uncanny, the darkly suggestive, the subtly, insidiously creepy. 'The White People' is about the diary of a little girl living in the Welsh hills who is taught mysterious secrets by her nurse, which may or may not be connected to Witchcraft. (OK, they are connected to Witchcraft).

The best thing is the way which she relates in unselfconscious, childish language things which she is only partly permitted to describe. The way she suggests things without going in to detail really sparks the readers imagination, as in the above quotation. I love this kind of playing-with-the-reader deliberate coyness. If I ever write a novel, thats how it'll be. Mischievous.

Anyway, so I'm having a wee breaky. Spoke to my supervisor yesterday who basically encouraged me to do the same. So I'm gonna hang out, read, talk to my friends and enjoy Brighton a bit while I have the chance.