Translations of home
21st February 2015
Translation of home.
“Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, Those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.” Wind in the Willows
I recently headed back South to my hometown. The place where most of my friends and family live. The place that I know like the back of my hand and the place where all the familiarity and activity of my friends and family provide the narrative of my life that defines me and anchors the perspectives from where I view my world. It is simply home.
'The channels of my dreams determined largely
By random chemistry of soil and air;
Memories I had shelved peer at me from the shelf’
MacNeice
There is an inescapability, an ease, a natural sense of rhythm that derives from the familiarity and the tacitly understood sense of place. Everything seems where it should be, everything behaves in a way recognisable. It is as if during my formative years a water mark of Home was imprinted onto my DNA. Edward Thomas' poem The Old Ash Grove captures this feeling:
"The song of the Ash Grove soft as love uncrossed,
And then in a crowd or in distance it were lost,
But the moment unveiled something unwilling to die
And I had what most I desired, without search or desert or cost"
Despite this I am attempting to make a new home in the North West of England. In an area that is both dramatic as it is beautiful. There is a wildness here, a wildness reflected in the rough and ragged rocks that are strewn across the mountainsides. A wildness that is felt and heard in the crashing waters that fall over crags and buttresses. It is a wildness that is beguiling as it taps into a deep sense of being closer to the land and away from the synthetic values of modern life.
Though it is a domesticated wildness, as the evidence of man's influence on the landscape, though subtle, is detectable and its effects often profound. However, despite mans (light) touch the landscape still harbours an elemental force, that can so easily be detected when you are cold, uncomfortable and far from any warm comfort. It is a 'self willed' landscape that exists and behaves not because of, but despite of you.
In this type of place, unless already 'hardened' by familiarity the area can feel alien and pushing back at you. You can find it hard to understand or get in step with the pace of the land as it knocks you ajar as it throws a wind at you, pulls and gravitates you towards a plunging precipice, or blocks your path with deep, fast flowing streams that were not there just hours before.
Like the Wild Wood, that sat next to the village of Buckland in the Lord Of The Rings, there is a sense of will and menace that will try to trip and disorientate the unwary. The landscape has a consciousness and like visiting a foreign land, it can seem odd, incomprehensible and difficult to translate. Therefore, like visiting another country I need to start to learn the language, but will doubtless always be interpreting via my mother tongue.
"Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house - a house of my own
Out of the wind's and the rain's way".
“Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, Those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.” Wind in the Willows
I recently headed back South to my hometown. The place where most of my friends and family live. The place that I know like the back of my hand and the place where all the familiarity and activity of my friends and family provide the narrative of my life that defines me and anchors the perspectives from where I view my world. It is simply home.
'The channels of my dreams determined largely
By random chemistry of soil and air;
Memories I had shelved peer at me from the shelf’
MacNeice
There is an inescapability, an ease, a natural sense of rhythm that derives from the familiarity and the tacitly understood sense of place. Everything seems where it should be, everything behaves in a way recognisable. It is as if during my formative years a water mark of Home was imprinted onto my DNA. Edward Thomas' poem The Old Ash Grove captures this feeling:
"The song of the Ash Grove soft as love uncrossed,
And then in a crowd or in distance it were lost,
But the moment unveiled something unwilling to die
And I had what most I desired, without search or desert or cost"
Despite this I am attempting to make a new home in the North West of England. In an area that is both dramatic as it is beautiful. There is a wildness here, a wildness reflected in the rough and ragged rocks that are strewn across the mountainsides. A wildness that is felt and heard in the crashing waters that fall over crags and buttresses. It is a wildness that is beguiling as it taps into a deep sense of being closer to the land and away from the synthetic values of modern life.
Though it is a domesticated wildness, as the evidence of man's influence on the landscape, though subtle, is detectable and its effects often profound. However, despite mans (light) touch the landscape still harbours an elemental force, that can so easily be detected when you are cold, uncomfortable and far from any warm comfort. It is a 'self willed' landscape that exists and behaves not because of, but despite of you.
In this type of place, unless already 'hardened' by familiarity the area can feel alien and pushing back at you. You can find it hard to understand or get in step with the pace of the land as it knocks you ajar as it throws a wind at you, pulls and gravitates you towards a plunging precipice, or blocks your path with deep, fast flowing streams that were not there just hours before.
Like the Wild Wood, that sat next to the village of Buckland in the Lord Of The Rings, there is a sense of will and menace that will try to trip and disorientate the unwary. The landscape has a consciousness and like visiting a foreign land, it can seem odd, incomprehensible and difficult to translate. Therefore, like visiting another country I need to start to learn the language, but will doubtless always be interpreting via my mother tongue.
"Och! but I'm weary of mist and dark,
And roads where there's never a house nor bush,
And tired I am of bog and road,
And the crying wind and the lonesome hush!
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house - a house of my own
Out of the wind's and the rain's way".