Between a loch and a forest

Only this morning I was getting lost in the depths of the Scottish forest... Between a hazy sea of green pastures, tall pines reaching for the foggy skies, and the brown smudge of rolling hills in the distance slithered away the mighty Loch Ness - but I never got a glimpse of the monster (except in my head).

I walked for miles under the glaring cover of clouds and rejoiced every time the gloom was stretched open for a moment to let the sunshine out into the valley, illuminating the sky and the swift-running streams cascading down below into the lazy meanders of a giant lake. With every step I took, it felt as though I was reaching out deeper into a whole other world... a fantasy, a dream...

At some point I reached a forest that looked dead in the clutches of a thick mist, with all the trees stretching towards the sky, their branches akin to naked, twisted arms painfully thrown upwards.

The moaning, screeching and cracking of their limbs in the gusty wind added to the air of gloom that weighed on the forest and I found myself hurrying away, throwing frightened glances around just in case some mischievous creature were to jump at me from the cover of these scarily naked trees.



Nothing happened.

Soon enough, I had reached the Shores of Nowhere where white pebbles shimmer even under the weight of thundery skies. I sat down on a rock by the lazy water that came in waves to caress my feet and stared at the procession of thick clouds gathering further into the horizon.


And then I got back on my feet, climbed a mountain, skipping for a while like a small child along a winding little path that snaked its way between thick bushes speckled with wild flowers and towering pines... gazed at the world down below from so far above, got soaked by a bout of torrential rain, jumped over puddles and streaks of mud, climbed atop small rocky hills on the way, whistled at the birds hiding high in the mighty trees, sung to myself nursery rhymes and various other songs that came to mind... and all the while there was no other around but me, as though I had truly entered another realm... that of ancient myths and legends... and as I walked, and walked, I felt free.

I think I'm getting addicted to long, strenuous walks. They have so far proved the only thing that helps soothe what some choose to call the 'restlessness' of the soul.

Ruminations

I'd almost forgotten one of the rare good scenes in the 'modern' StarWars trilogy telling the ill-fated story of Anakin Skywalker before he turned into Darth Vader. The scene above, along with the music, manages to capture superbly the fateful moment that leads the hero to his own downfall while at the same time showing how everything that unfolds next hinges on one single decision.

We seem to take decisions everyday, from what time we should get up or what we should have for lunch to what school we should send our kids to or if we should even settle down and have kids at all.
But most decisions are influenced by an array of factors already at play that are likely to push us into one particular choice whether we're aware of those factors or not.

In more ways than one, Life is like a narrowing road winding its way into the distance. The moment we get born is arguably when the person's life choices (or 'realm of possibilities') are at their largest, but as the person grows older and an increasing number of internal and external factors are added on along the way, that road narrows down to a thinner and thinner path with less and less room for options to make any turn at all. And as this Life road becomes thinner over time, leaving the person increasingly stuck walking on a thin thread leaving next to no room for anything except walking on ahead, the variety of choices and the dreams or aspirations the person once had dwindle down to obscurity.

I personally like to keep my realm of possibilities as wide as possible, meaning that to this day my Life's road remains much wider than a lot of people out there. One of the biggest downsides in this is that walking along a wider road leaves you prone to getting stuck wandering blindly in circles without even noticing it. I should know for I seem to have got stuck in those circles several times already. And maybe every time I think I've emerged from one it's only to fall straight back into another one.

But what's worse? Walking down a thinning path with blinkers on, or leaving the path wide enough to take the risk of getting lost?

For what it's worth, I don't think I'm getting it. I'm not getting the point... Again, it's like having something right in front of you and not being able to see it. Like searching for a watch everywhere for days only to realise it was sitting in plain sight on your desk all along.

Writer's Block Part II

I feel like a puppet whose strings have been severed, leaving my body slumping to the ground deep below like a broken rag doll... floating away into a netherworld stretching between two realms - society's version of Reality and Reality itself.

I have been made to question whether there is such a thing as too much realism. I went from being intrinsically abstract, idealistic, dreamy and introspective to this person I am now and who I do not know what to make of. I have actually changed so much in the space of 3 years that I can no longer relate to what I wrote in the past, be it in thoughts or in fictional writing. I can't lie to myself, nor can I hide from the fact that I have changed because the writer's block stems from that.

I stare at all my past writings, endlessly wondering: "So that's it, then? All of this never meant anything...It was never me..." Does this mean I might as well burn it all? If I can no longer relate to my writings then it was never really me, or rather it never tapped into the core of I - because if it had, then it would feel more constant and I would still be able to relate no matter how much I changes around the periphery of that core.

Travelling down the river Styx, hopeless shadow of what I once was,

I remember a little girl who would have been good.

I remember the one that should have been and stare at the fraud that took her place,

Reflected in the dark waters of Nowhere.

(Pre-Dive into the Void, Aug. 2006)

If life is about completing 'circles' then this time I may be found leaning over the little boat as I reach out with my hand towards the reflection staring back at me. Whether this move makes the little boat capsize remains to be seen, but even if it does and I find myself drowning, so what?

We cannot 'find' ourselves for there never was anything lost and needing to be found in the first place - everything was always there, but we may not always have been able to see it. If I cannot see then I must train my eyes, inside and out.

I really am pulling a Santiago...

Writer's Block

These days I feel like picking up a bag, throw that bag over my shoulders and walk out the door. Where to? nowhere, everywhere... Just walking. Walking, walking, walking... into the distance, from sunrise to sunset. What a sublime vanishing act this would be.

Words are stuck inside my head like an old chewing gum stuck under a seat. How much more vivid can you get?

So many young people travelling the world these days... but I can never quite shake the feeling that the only reason I want to travel is this search for that all-elusive clarity within, and sometimes just so I could escape my own self. And it doesn't work. It could never work. How could it? You can't 'find' yourself no matter where you go. If you couldn't 'find' yourself right where you are now, you won't 'find' yourself even on top of the highest mountain in the world. Everything, every answer, every solution, every meaning that is ever created, it's all already there and there is nothing to be found because it was always there.

So why can't we see it? Why can't I see it? What is this 'everything that was always there' that I keep searching for as though it needs to be found?

When words are stuck, there's always the use of colours. I've just sort of finished my copy of a Van Gogh but I messed up the patterns on the church's windows. Oh well.

Looking around in my bedroom, what do I see? There is a scattering of old paintings I copied as a teenager - a clumsy rendition of Monet's La Liseuse, a more successful attempt at reproducing one of his winter landscapes (The Magpie), a pencil drawing of Paris' Sacré Coeur next to a sketch of Manet's Venice painting, all of this surrounded by postcards stuck on the wall with blue tack; George Stubbs' Whistlejacket, a few of Turner's fiery seas, Renoir's Lakeside Landscape, and even a still life by Courbet. On the other side and right above the first of two bookshelves stands a copy of Van Gogh's Sunflowers I painted over a decade ago. Further on a copy of Monet's Impression, Sunrise next to a calendar depicting the Lake District and a poster of an old fashioned red double decker bus with the Houses of Parliament in the background. Turn around from there and you will find the writer's desk, full of junk, crunched-up paper, a small stereo, not one but two printers, a messy pile of books, candles, a phone, some hand cream, a few empty cups of tea or coffee, a notepad, a laptop on which I am typing, a scattering of pocket-size flashdrives, and then in one tiny corner right beside the window... three photographs. One of a crystal blue lake nestled between snowy mounts, one of my cat lying across piles of papers scribbled all over, and a tiny picture of my old black cat.

You do not want to look down at the floor where canvas, paints and brushes sit together in a tangle right now. The bed is a knot of sheets, really, and on one of the pillows rests a copy of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov which I started reading yesterday.

I cannot find myself anywhere but wherever I'm at. What is it that I am not seeing? This urge or longing for far away reaches, the need to walk, and walk, and walk... it is an illusion. Or perhaps I do need to go on a long walking pilgrimage of sorts where I would walk, and walk, and I would not stop until complete physical exhaustion to get rid of the surplus of inner energy. 

If there is nothing to be found, and if everything was always there then why, oh why can I not see it?