For the sake of it

“Why do I write, if I can’t write any better? But what would become of me if I didn’t write what I can, however inferior it may be to what I am? In my ambitions, I am a plebeian, because I try to achieve; like someone in a dark room, I’m afraid to be silent. I’m like those who prize the medal more than the struggle to get it, and savour glory with a fur-lined cape.” (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, 152)

Pessoa writes so much better than I. Until my thoughts are focused by a certain mysterious elation, I cannot write, in the sense of expressing anything publishable. But when I enter this mystery, and let it translate itself into words, something transcends the plebeian inferiority.

I took a trip to Iver, a village in the extreme south-east corner of Buckinghamshire, drawn by some sense of affinity. Iver, Bucks: I never went there before but once lived a few miles away, if ‘lived’ is the right word, for it was little more than a postal address while I was at boarding school and university. For most of my life I’ve not really lived anywhere: not exactly a rolling stone, more an uprooted plant. So I went to Iver in search of something. It would be hard to say what, but I found it after five yards of following the public footpaths that led off the High Street. In a moment, it was as if something inside tuned to a frequency, and pretty much stayed locked on to it from there on. I became alert to things, both around and within, as if the mere sensual inputs held a significance, something apprehended yet not quite understood.

“From birth to death, man is the slave of the same external dimension that rules animals. Throughout his life he doesn’t live, he vegetatively thrives, with greater intensity and complexity than an animal. He’s guided by norms without knowing that they guide him or even that they exist, and all his ideas, feelings and acts are unconscious—not because there’s no consciousness in them but because there aren’t two consciousnesses.

“Flashes of awareness that we live an illusion—that, and no more, is what distinguishes the greatest of men.” (ibid,150)

Further on, the footpath was fenced on either side, cutting a meadow in two. There were horses on either side: curious, friendly. A mare stood guard over two resting foals, born in different seasons, so still, as they lay prone, that I thought they might be dead. But they were just relaxed. Later, the younger one became shy, and hid behind the mother.

Still further, I saw a giant hogweed in the hedgerow, about nine foot tall. I had a vague idea that handsome as they were, these weeds are undesirable in some way. I checked the Web later, and confirmed that they are very toxic. There were signs that someone had been cutting them down, but hadn’t finished the job. The sap can cause blistery burns whose scars last for years, I learned; or blindness and even death. I’m glad I didn’t get too close. I entered ‘giant hogweed Iver’ into Google and discovered that another walker had photographed the same ones a few days previously (Beeches Way, 18th June, on a site called Pete’s Walks). We are ruled by our enthusiasms. Whatever gives us a buzz, we endlessly seek to repeat it. One day I might run into Pete.

At one point, the paths forked, so I stopped to check the map. I noticed a pair of mature trees whose trunks were so close together that they touched at the base, with their barks fused together. Higher up, the same thing had happened to some major branches. Not uncommon, you may say: but one was an oak and one a horse-chestnut, both displaying their immature fruit. Did their saps combine? Had they grafted themselves together, to produce a hybrid? No, I think it is just a phenomenon of bark. It adapts. It can grow over barbed wire if necessary. Parasites like orchids and mistletoe can penetrate through bark, without any exchange of DNA. Two lovers, however close, don’t merge and become one flesh. Donne notwithstanding, every man or woman is an island.

“If I often interrupt a thought with a scenic description that in some way fits in to the real or imagined scheme of my impressions, it’s because the scenery is a door through which I flee from my awareness of my creative impotence.” (ibid,152)

Here, Fernando, take over this keyboard. Take this site for your own. You are the writer! I’m just a reader. I could happily leave the stage to you, and stay silent in my wayfaring, for I’m not sure if I have anything to say. I just “vegetatively thrive”. And part of this is to be instinctive like a bird, to stand on the highest branch and sing whatever joyful song comes out.

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The Colne Valley Trail, the Beeches Way and Route 61 of the National Cycle Network have transformed derelict farmland into a park or nature reserve, close to the M25, London’s outer ring-road motorway. Here you may see oak and chestnut in close embrace, and foals frolicking next to their mare.