Beginnings, Middles & Endings

Q: You walk out of your door. You do not know how far you will go, how long it will take, if or when, you will return? How do you feel?

Q: You pick up a book, read the first line. You cannot turn the pages to discern the length of the story, or genre – is it a thousand pages, two pages? A novel, a poem, fact or fiction? How do you feel?

Time lives in your bones, in your blood, in aortic beats; shifts of light, shadows lengthening, waxing and waning; flexing, stalking your steps, a rhythm, a prelude, rarely linear but in swerving paths, swoops and dives, edited, archived, forwards and backwards.

Do you begin a book begin by intent or accident? Does a walk live in your head or in a map?

Does the spirit stir you sudden, curious, impatient, propelling you through granite streets; salty breeze; diesel blue fumes; yellow ragged Hawkbit shooting through mud? How hard the heart pumps, ancient, limbic, each step a hymn (each page) a gift: insight, wisdom, perspective, escape, an altered glimpse of yourself, a deer’s prance in the corner of your eye.

Which leads you to the middle (Who remembers the middle?)

It’s vague paths, muddy tracks, broken stiles, crowded by bramble, hidden in fields of corn, (or buried in a plot with too many characters).

The beginning is far behind. The end too far to imagine. Uncertainty nags and claws: Is this the right path? (the right page)

Time still to turn back (throw the book down) retrace your step to

the point of variance; between disintegration and reintegration;

the gap in the hedge, the unmarked path.

Nothing happens in the middle.

The middle is a matter of faith.

But endings are something else, aren’t they?

Slow burning, molecules rumbling minutely to a conclusion; (atom and leaf). Or previewed from high on a hill cars cluttering villages. A dark body of water. A dead green line on the page.

Or, they arrive abruptly – ad-libbing across empty fields, cresting a hill, forking a corner, (an unsatisfactory conclusion).

Instinctively, the body knows; aches and burns, the mind’s chatter starts anew:

What a relief?

Cup of tea?

(is there a sequel?)

Did you take pictures?

(make notes in the margins?)

We give prizes at the end. And, return you to routine, yarrow and dirt, a miner’s lamp

shining between your steps (words), remade, made again

(In your end is your beginning:

In the beginning is your end)

Again. And again. And Again.

We walk.

We read.

We walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time lives in your bones, a pulse and tap to the brain; to the ear and eye, in shifts of light, the locus waxing and waning. Time is never invisible. It flexes, stalking your steps, a rhythm of beginnings, middles and endings. The line is rarely straight; vectors, curves, parabolas, scientific.

 

An invitation to walk creatively…

 

We walk for many reasons – utility, leisure, relaxation. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others. Walking is an act of connecting, with ourselves, our thoughts, with the world around us. We may be attentive to our surroundings or lost in thought, playful or serious.

The following is an invitation to walk consciously, to walk with awareness, with our imaginations, with our bodies, taking in the sights, smells, sounds and textures around us, beneath our feet. To be aware of memories and associations that arise with each step.

A walk does not have to take long. It can be a matter of minutes as much as hours. Step into your comfortable shoes, head out of the door – even if only into your garden, or street – or, beyond into an unfamiliar place. Catch a bus or train, drive, stopping at an unknown destination and begin to walk whichever way you fancy.

Walk with a question

Think of a question/statement– e.g., ‘What is my relationship to walking?’  ‘Places Remember Events….’ Walk with this question/statement in mind, noticing your surroundings, the immediate and distant, memories, associations and feelings.

Walking the rim of a glass

Spread your map on the table, place a glass down on the map, and draw a circle around it, then go out and walk around the line (the size of glass will reflect the distance to travel). Note what happens when you have to deviate from the line – points of dissention or triumph –  What is the area like around you? How does it make you feel? What gets in the way of the line? What are your physical and emotional reactions when this happens?

 Drift

Use a Smartphone App like Drift or Trespass. Follow its instructions as precisely as you can. Note where it takes you – do you discover unfamiliar places?

What are they like? How do you feel following instructions?

Instinct

Just go, get out there, in whichever direction you want. Follow your own curiosity, or your mood or your feet. Do you want to be alone/ in a crowd/climb high/see water/woods/fields/buildings? Note what happens as you walk, your physical and emotional reactions to place, the feelings, associations and memories evoked, especially at points where you change direction.

The map precedes the territory

Plot your route on a map first, then walk it exactly.  How does the map compare to the actual walk? What assumptions do you have? It is easy to follow? How does the map change the way you walk? What do you discover? What information does the map provide? What information is missing?

Random – roll the dice

Create your own algorithm. One for forward, two for back, three left, four right, five roll again, six, wild card.

Mindful Walking – Using the senses

 Walk methodically, noting: 5 things you see/ 5 things you hear/5 things you smell. 5 things you can feel/touch. Note how they change as you walk. Which of your senses is least/most dominant?

When you have completed three or four cycles, add:

• What associations/memories does this place hold for me?
• How do I feel about it? (e.g., anxious/lighthearted)

 Macro to Micro

Find a path away from a road – it could be in the middle of a field or wood – anywhere, where you can walk for 10-20 paces (or 5 mins on your phone timer), and walk very, very slowly – so slowly you can feel your feet rise and fall, sense your muscles moving. Take note of your body, your breathing.  Narrow your vision to what is immediately around you, as if you are drawing a small circle. What can you hear/smell/touch? Stop at a point which particularly interests you and zoom in even closer (this could be down to a lump of soil or blade of grass) and focus on it. Can you name it or describe it? What associations/imaginings does it conjure?

CHECK-IN (some general thoughts)

As you walk, you may want to consider:

• The relationship between your mind and body: how your pace changes and why.
• What does the ground feel like under your feet?
• Where does your mind drift? What triggers memories and associations.
• What would you do if you no-one was looking/or if you were a child?
• What do you feel?

You may want to capture your walks by taking pictures, keeping notes, sketches, picking up found objects on your way, using voice memos on your phone, (but do not let the walk capture you).

If you walk with others, observe a period of silence. Make time post-walk to discuss your experiences: the similarities and differences.

Writing the Map is funded by The Arts Council.

For further information, contact:

Email: createlearnconnect@gmail. Com

Facebook #writingthemap

Twitter @writingthemap

 

Hefted

by Josie Melia

If I’d been a sheep in the North, I could have been hefted. Traditionally, ewes heft their lambs from an early age, teaching them which patch of upland pasture is their ‘heaf’, passing on a sense of belonging there. And once lambs have that, they don’t need fences – they just don’t stray.

Well, I’m not a sheep, and I have strayed from where I was reared. But there’s something about that idea of being hefted that feels right. When I’m back in the landscape of my childhood there’s a sort of gravitational tug, like I recognise the place at a gut, cellular level.

I’ve lived near the South Downs for more of my life than I’ve lived anywhere else, and I love it here. But I was hefted in the north – actually in the middle of a town full of factories and choked in soot – but next door to the moors that run into the Pennines. Oldham now markets itself as ‘Gateway to the Pennines’.

This story takes place on the morning of Sunday November 14^th 2010. I’m in Oldham to help move my mum, who’ll be 94 two days later, into a home for people with severe dementia. The home is in an area of Oldham called Moorside and it is exactly that, by the side of the moors.

It’s Remembrance Sunday, which is ironic. My mum was born in the middle of the first world war and married in the middle of the second but now her 90-odd year old memory hoard is spilt and scattered like disassembled lego across a child’s bedroom floor.

One month earlier her first great-grandchild, my grand daughter, Eleanor Rose, was born in Brighton and I’ve brought a photo to show my mum. I can see she knows it should be significant – and I’m touched by her effort – but her main focus is on trying to walk through a plate glass window to reach her sister, May, who she thinks she sees on the other side. May has been dead for nearly twenty years.

Shortly before 11 o’clock, I leave my mum briefly to head into town and pick up some bits and pieces for her. But soon I have to stop the car on a deserted moorside road. It’s all been too much, and this familiar Oldham edge landscape is getting to me.  I plug right in to its grey-tinted melancholy. There’s a scrubby hill to my left and a solitary white horse grazing a field to my right. Beyond that, dark dry-stone walls scratch a tattoo across broad-shouldered hills into the distance.

I’m back to my own beginnings here, while, hundreds of miles South, little Eleanor Rose, right at the start of life, blinks out of the window at a blurry view across the South Downs, and my mother, nearby, conjures visions way beyond Oldham as she nears her end.

Then around the bend in front of me, comes the most wondrous, life-sized radiant white figure, floating smoothly towards me, like a visitation from some miraculous being – Our Lady of Lourdes come down to Moorside to cure my mum?

And I’m just awestruck. I wind down my window. I raise my hand to wave. I don’t know what for.

And he floats on, (it’s a he) past the white horse (that by rights he should be riding) past my car, not noticing me (that’s only right for a supernatural being). And I’m left there, in awe – the way he owned this road, this time, his place in this landscape – it’s had an astonishing effect.

As rationality trickles back to me, I piece things together and realise that my vision was a very tall, elderly, white-bearded Asian man wearing a white tunic jacket and elegant white turban, riding a white mobility scooter – hence the smooth, slow, floating effect. Perhaps because of the day and the time of day, and his purposeful upright bearing, I make a guess that he could be a former Indian soldier on his way to a remembrance service.

And that brings to mind another place: the Chattri on the Downs, the memorial to Indian soldiers from the first world war.  I look across at the white horse in the empty field; I think of the white-domed Chattri, and for a moment the two landscapes blur together like a double exposure film: the moorlands on the edge of Oldham, where I was hefted, and the beautiful South Downs where I hefted my own family that is now busy hefting a new generation.

Josie Melia (October 2017) for Spoken Word event 20^th October, Brighton

 

What Does Walking Mean To Me?

 

Maggie Peake describes her relationship with walking as ambiguous. One wet September morning, walking the South Downs, Maggie decided to ponder on the reasons for this, and to attempt to find an answer to her question: What does walking mean to me? 

The answers took her back to childhood, to holidays and memories of her parents who are no longer alive.

In Maggie’s words:

• Instinct: climb up the Downs for view. Joy of being at the top of the world. Space and freedom.
• Walked slowly around a tree. Enjoyed being in nature, no map or purpose. Just the quiet presence of a beautiful tree.

Meaning

• My parents gave me the gift of walking
• I didn’t always want it!
• Routine of a walk after Sunday lunch “Good for you”
• Baby of family following behind, never catching up. Tired and moany. Want to be dreamy and left alone.
• No control, route decided.
• Since my parents died I’ve found it hard to re-visit happy times with them. The Walkshop has allowed me to explore this.

Walking stick

• Since the Walkshop I got my walking stick down from the loft.
• My Parents loved walking in the Alps.
• We had many family holidays going up mountains in chairlifts and cable cars. Looking at amazing views. Walking down through forests and alpine meadows.
• It was fun for me and my sister having walking sticks and collecting plaques of destinations, trophies of how high we went.
• A map of interesting destinations down the stick. I re-visited the places and found photographs.

 

Walking, Writing, Connecting

Walking, Connecting and Creating Writing the Map has been exploring the dynamic relationship between place, walking and identity through a series of events and walkshops, focusing on the senses to inspire personal narratives. Unlike traditional pscyhogeography, our approach has used the senses to illuminate personal narratives to create new understandings and contexts with the landscape, merging old and new.

Intellectual or artistic? Solitary or connected? Performative or indiscernible? Neutral or gendered? This interactive event is an opportunity for walkers, artists, writers, community practitioners to hear work created by Walkshoppers, and discuss issues arising from our walks: How do we connect with the landscape? How does our changing relationship to place shape our personal narratives? How do we capture our walks? What role does technology play? Friday December 8th, 10am-12.30pm at The Pound Arts Centre, Corsham. For more info or to book a free place, contact: Christina at createlearnconnect@gmail.com or book via Facebook #writingthemap. https://writethemap.wordpress.com/ 1