Lost in blindness backwards poem3/18/2023 That sense of closing one’s eyes to block out the world might seem far removed from a consideration of landscape, but it is not entirely so. It was a late summer or perhaps an early autumn day with a strong breeze and some interesting clouds. This was all running through my mind last Friday when I walked up above Cwm Banw, following the ridge from Pen Twyn Glas, up to Pen Allt Mawr, Pen Cerrig Calch and down towards Crug Hywel or the Table Mountain. And that can give rise to fear: hence the ostrich burying its head in the sand, hence the child who closes her eyes because she doesn’t want to see what’s in front of her. At least we have some say in it (when awake) whereas what is ‘out there’ is something utterly beyond our control or ability to manage. There is a comfort, or security, to the ‘inner world’, at times. Although I knew, or could sense, that I was awake and in my bed, in my own home, there was a residual fear that if I opened my eyes things would be different. When I awoke for real, I didn’t want to open my eyes. I had no idea what I was supposed to talk about, nor into what world I had awoken, nor even who I was. The stress increased, however, when the door was opened for me, and I stepped out onto a balcony, and below me, stretching far across a massive stadium, was a sea of people, a crowd of many thousands, all of them apparently gathered to hear what I had to say. I guessed, with a vague anxiety, that I would have to ‘wing it’, and that there was bound to be a clue of some kind along the way that would jog my memory. I had no idea where I was or what I was supposed to be preparing to talk about. I looked around me - two or three people standing next to me, who seemed to know me well, and were, I imagined, my ‘advisers’. I knew that I had to make a speech or presentation of some kind and someone mentioned that I would be ‘on’ in one minute. I came to consciousness the other morning from a waking dream in which I had woken (in my dream) into an unfamiliar world, surrounded by strangers in a kind of ante-room, with thick velvet curtains and a single door ahead of me. It feels almost like an aural hallucination, the disconnect between the bird and that call, as though the animal world were falling out of kilter with itself, and even the birds were forgetting their own songs, even as we humans drag the planet screaming towards catastrophe. And then, for a while, on the descent, we watch a red kite circling, and calling, as we imagine, for its mate, and although I am no ornithologist I think I know a red kite when I see one, and it strikes me as a strange and plaintive cry, more like a duck than a red kite. I make out the call of a skylark or meadow pipit and see the songster flash past, but it moves so quick I cannot tell for certain which it is. Up here, the song of birds, and the occasional bleating of sheep or the neighing of feral ponies is the most common source of sound at a perceptual level, if we discount the occasional light aircraft (or distant jet planes, whose contrails can be seen high above on a clear day). There is a kind of silence, though it is always rash to speak of silence. We pass a flock of spectral sheep and veer to the left of the abandoned quarries, following a trail just below the level of the ridge, which skirts the eastern flank of Cwm Banw. And what if this forgetting of ourselves were contagious? What if we were not the only ones to forget our function in the vast mosaic of terrestrial life? Walking, something like a refrain begins to emerge, almost a credo about the self, with which I have been struggling all this year, during various walks around these hills, mulling over my reading of certain philosophers and neuroscientists on the notion of core identity. Not that I’ve learned much.Īnd so to this: when walking in these hills I am most at my ease, no doubt because, through long familiarity, I find it impossible to tell where my self ends and the world begins or to put it slightly differently, my sense of self ebbs away, dissipates, and is replaced by a kind of harmony with the larger consciousness that we call nature, as if nature were a thing apart from ourselves.Īnd there it is, the core problem - we speak of nature as though she were a thing ‘out there’, something detached from ourselves, although, in fact, we have made her so, if only to end up craving our return to her safe embrace a safety which can no longer be taken for granted, such is the violence we have committed against her- and correspondingly against ourselves. Deep into autumn, with the rich russet or burnt sienna of the ferns, and the grass still so green, with streaks of cloud racing up the valley to our left and, as the mist thickens, an overlay of something more remote and altogether wintry.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |