Sample chapter from A Waterside Year
Water, it is said, has the power to heal. It can quench a thirst, cleanse a wound and soothe a burn. But its healing properties extend beyond these obvious medical benefits. You see, water is magical.
If you’ve ever spent time gazing into a stream, river, pond or ocean, you’ll know that water can calm your thoughts and relax your body. It helps you to unwind. It can lull you into a peaceful state, or it can perk you up. It’s the wonderment of water that makes it so appealing: thoughts of what’s beneath the surface, or out there beyond a watery horizon. Maybe these thoughts are primeval, the dreams of our ancestors echoing in our subconscious? The urge we feel to ‘set sail’, to explore beyond the bend of a river, or across an estuary, or out to sea; it could be the distant hopes of our forefathers sounding in our minds. Because they knew, and we know, that water is intrinsically linked to the mystery and excitement of discovering new worlds. Of dreams. And hopes. And thoughts of what ‘could be’. But as I said earlier, water is magical. You don’t need a boat to explore its mystery. All you need is the ability to dream.
Imagine yourself paddling a boat across a calm sea. Water swirls from the movement of the oars, and you feel compelled to know what lives beneath its surface. You stand up and dive into the water, to swim among the hoped-for fishes. You see them, but wonder what lurks deeper still. You open your mouth and gulp down the salty water, drinking the ocean dry so you may see the lobsters and crabs scuttling across its muddy floor. In the dream world, anything is possible. It only requires a fertile imagination, and a desire to explore the half-light between the known and the unknown. (As with writing by candlelight, one’s greatest ideas come from ‘the flickering’ between darkness and light.)
Dreams free us from normality. Daydreams, especially, take us somewhere between the real world and the dream world. I was once in great need of such a place. I’d survived an ordeal and needed somewhere quiet in which to recover. The Priory became this dream place, and as the daydreams grew longer, the distinction between what was real and what was imaginary grew less. Soon I existed in a blissful world of my own creation; somewhere I could choose my emotional state based upon the strength of the Priory lens and my desire to escape or conform.
You might think that craving escapism is dangerous, that it is too removed from normality. I assure you that it is not, as being distanced from normality is the entire point of what I seek to achieve. (At least the normality of normal folk leading normal lives and being boringly normal.) I want to view the world in a way that means something ‘more’. A different and more interesting view. Whether this is achieved through escapism or reality is not my call to make. Because what I’ve learned is that reality is just a matter of perception.
The degree to which we notice the obvious or the subtle, and the angle of light that we see falling upon it, depends upon how closely we look and the time we spend studying. For example, do you know, to the nearest hundred, how many species of wild flowers live on a mile of motorway embankment? I’d guess there are more than grow alongside a country lane. But we rarely have time to make time for such things, not that it would be especially safe to do so on a motorway.
Many people fear the unknown. They busy themselves at motorway speed so to excuse their lack of understanding of the world around them. “I don’t have time for all that nonsense; it’s just not important to me,” they say. While they might know about politics, commerce and current affairs, they are feeding their knowledge on spoon-fed drivel downloaded from a news channel. It is not based on real and meaningful first-hand experience. Something we call living.
Knowledge gained via third parties is already filtered by their sense of what is real and what is important. Touching, smelling, hearing, tasting and feeling something creates greater understanding. It’s this understanding that fascinates me. Why people interpret the same experience in different ways. Take these journals for example. They are first written in burgundy-brown ink using an antique fountain pen. I write into an old book that smells of dust and whose pages are floppy with damp. Sometimes the ink splodges onto the paper, other times it will barely leave the nib of my pen. Rarely will I write indoors, even if it means getting wet during rain, or my hands numb in winter. I could write the journals quicker and more comfortably using the computer in my study. But I don’t. It’s important to me that they are authentic, that they properly capture the moment, and that I understand – first hand – the events and emotions about which I’m writing. I’m sure that someone else would write, or type, in another way; that they’d describe the events differently, or identify things that I’ve either not seen or have chosen to omit. This illustrates how choice and perception are closely linked. They are unique, personal and emotional. I perceive the Priory and these journals. They are my view of a life that is very real.
Life, as I see it, wraps around us, even when we think we are firmly embracing it. Reality is in the ether, a blend of present-day experiences infused with one’s memories and dreams. A life that is real to one is surreal to another.
Have you ever shuffled a deck of cards by bending them at the corners and merging them together? Think of the satisfying ‘brrrrp’ they make and the flicker of images beneath your thumbs. Modern life is a bit like this – a blur and a ‘brrrrp’. Sooner or later we are compelled to stop shuffling, to extract a card and hold it, calmly, for a while. Doing so gives us a break from life’s fast-paced obligations. It provides us with a sense of pride; that we are in control, especially if it is the King of Hearts.
I stopped the shuffle recently, when I was confronted by a blur of flickering and conflicting ‘priorities’. Each was apparently urgent and important. “Drop everything,” I was told by a so-called superior, “and focus on this task, right now!” I did drop everything. I quit my job, returned home and decided with Mrs H-to-Be that the time was right for a change. A relocation and new career, to be specific. But these were just the first and obvious conclusions. The card I extracted from the chaos did not carry the image of a house particular or a job advert, but rather an image of a lake. A lake of my childhood, where once I was free to be me, when I enjoyed a slow-paced life and was completely happy. The healing power of water had returned.
I knew what I had to do. I would seek out a lake, spend time by water, and wash away the anxieties and frustrations of working in a corporate world where I didn’t belong. I’d return to my roots, where I could rediscover all that I once loved. This would be a valuable ‘time out’ of the rat race, where the dream of what is normal, right and beautiful would be properly savoured. First though, I had to find the lake: one so remote that it was ageless; so overgrown that it was forgotten, and so quiet that it was deafeningly serene. It would need to be a very special lake. A lake with a purpose.