Not long ago – days ago even – my imagination had me many leagues below an ancient ocean.
I dreamt I had returned to my long estranged hometown and, to recover long ignored memories, had ventured onto the sandstone hill I had played on as a child. I knew, as I had not then, that I was walking on stone that had once been a seabed. So, walking this same stone – this one-time seabed now turned sun-heated baking tray for every unlucky mollusc that lost its way. So walking this same stone that trilobites would have scuttled over – and now lie buried within – I wished wholeheartedly to take my time and engage with this feeling and the easy sustenance I found from it. This effortless meal of fantasy and immensity stretching out before me, that made me at once feel small and insignificant and then, in the same moment, made me feel integral to the world.
All this felt as if I were bringing all this life back, what had once been teeming and had laid for so long, that it might perhaps crawl up and out of the rock and start again the toil of existing.
Whilst standing there it became clear that, though I longed to join in with this aqua sutra – though I wanted to move back in time and occupy the same space as now, feel the cool water around me. Though I wanted a fantasy, for the pressure would have crushed me and I could not bring myself to accept that. Though I wanted so desperately to be a part of that world I know that if I were transported back I would not join, as a drop of water would, that ocean. Instead I would join it as a slick of oil.
Always wholly separate, that is how I am. That I would not fit in with prehistoric creatures is little surprise, that I could never fit in back in my hometown had the same ring of sadness to it – even now.
It is at this point that I find myself outside my childhood home, a shed on that same hill. The rusting roof, the doormat, the seats and that table made from a tire and a stop sign. I walk in and everything is upended. I walk out and find my old tools, a spade and some sheers, broken and rusting.
The day carried on, the sun pressed down on my skin, filling each pore with a rock pool of its own and glittering on the stone as its rays met the occasional polished grain – just as it glistened when the rays hit my moist skin. It had been like this all day, hardly a breeze to stir the stale air. Up in the endlessly blue sky unknown birds circled; too small to be vultures, not to mention unlikely for England, but still my imagination ran away with itself and I prayed swift deliverance from their greedy gaze. The song of crickets in the dry grasses sounded like the sizzling of eggs in a frying pan. The only other noise was the far off sound of engines on the duel carriageway, about two miles off in the distance, their survival ensured by our reliance on them.
Coming back to my hometown is like looking at fossils. There is no way to resurrect those old memories, or travel back to meet them. I must clarify that I wish to rewrite, rather than repeat those memories. They are now just fossilized, unearthed with careful thought. I can remember quite a bit about that old world I used to be a part of. Can see myself, undeveloped, like our ancient ancestors that would then have simply been curious looking fish.
Purpose seems to be the theme of these thoughts. That I have no purpose is an ever-present concern. My tools, rusting, are no longer able to do what they were meant. I have my wishes, aspirations, and targets. The trouble is that there is no impression in the stone for these things. I cannot trace the outline of a body. Cannot work out how they will move and come about. The ancestor cannot trace the family tree forward.
Realising that I have been standing on this almost lifeless mound for the last few hours breaks the spell. I walk down, first through brush – shoulder high and thorny – then down through greener ferns. Eventually I reach pavement as I leave the hillside and venture down through the winding streets and some time after that I arrive at the train station to board a train for my home, some 300 miles from this world.
As I look out of the carriage window there is a great rumbling – straining to see further down along the train – my face is pressed flat against the glass as I see uncountable tons of seawater fall onto that hill and rush down to greet me.
Filed under: Reality, childhood, hopes, mount, nightmare, sleep , baking, carriage, escape, fantasy, glass, greet, heated, hill, meal, miles, rumbling, scuttled, seabed, sheers, spade, station, sustenance, tray, trilobites
