This falling away and return is what we are
Over the past couple of years I have been been keeping a record of walks I take in the Black Mountains, some of which have a philosophical or meditative tone to them, others not. I am unsure quite what these pieces intend to be or what purpose they serve, but following a conversation with my pal Bill Herbert on a curiously extended car trip yesterday, I have revisited them and will be posting a selection over the next few weeks: please make of them what you will!
The first is a walk I took last Midwinter’s Eve.
I read in Galen Strawson’s book Things that Bother Me that our thoughts have very little continuity or experiential flow; that is, most of us experience mental activity as a thinking ‘I’ in fits and starts, with little sense of what we might term ‘joined up thinking’. Strawson, who can always be counted on for a good quote, cites the poet Harold Brodkey, who wrote that ‘our sense of presentness usually proceeds in waves, with our minds tumbling off into wandering. Usually, we return and ride the wave and tumble and resume the ride and tumble . . . This falling away and return is what we are . . .’
And this is the way we (well, I for one) think; we are ‘nomads in time’, our sense of a ‘conscious now’ lasts only about three seconds, our thinking a meandering sequence of stops and starts, starts and stops . . . although, as Strawson reminds us, the self can still be experienced as a continuous thing over a period of time that includes a pause or hiatus. I like the idea of a self that drifts in and out of focus. As I walk today, I try for a while to track the stops and starts of consciousness, of my awareness of my self as participant observer in the ongoing drama of the day, and I find that despite my efforts at continuous, uninterrupted thought, I am forever beginning afresh, on a new train of thought, or rather the ‘I’ that constitutes my ‘self’ is always just starting up, starting out, that I am continually taking on a new iteration of the self (if that is what it is) at any given point in time.
I start up the forestry track on the west side of Cwm Grwyne Fechan. The ground is boggy after days, weeks of rain, and when the track ends, I enter the forest itself, the peaks of the tall pines forming a dome above my head like the cupola of a cathedral. Light filters through, reminding me of the way that those high, stained glass windows in such places of worship were designed to enchant the faithful, light being the trope that forms the core of ‘enlightenment’. We sit (or stand) in awe of such light, and the great Gothic cathedrals mimic nature in this way.
And when I climb to the track, the familiar well-trodden path up the hill where we sometimes go mushrooming, leading to Pen Twyn Glas, I disturb a pair of ponies grazing by a hawthorn tree, but after a few minutes they become accustomed to me and return to their nibbling of the grass, and I guess that they too have undergone a hiatus in their consciousness, or their sense of self, if they have one, and I have no reason to think that they do not, but equally I cannot be sure that it is configured in a way that resembles my own; I can only report on what I observe, or rather the moments that I notice the world in the spaces between these stops and starts, this meandering of the vagrant self that seems to be as close as I ever get to a sense of what I am. Nor do I think about the future, except in the vaguest possible way, and that, I will concede, is something that has become easy to avoid, with the years.
Perhaps I used to think about the future when I was young: I honestly cannot remember. I think I lived pretty much in the day during my twenties, without ambition, without long term aims, but with the conviction (borne out by absolutely no effort of will on my own part) that I would one day most likely want to write, if only, as Leonard Cohen sings in ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, to ‘keep some kind of record.’ What sort of record I only had the vaguest idea at the time. I realise, however, as I walk (and later, as I write this down) that the idea of keeping track of the vagrant mind, of registering the stops and starts of thoughts and ideas and memories and insights is an almost impossible task.
Night is falling, and I have no desire to return to the car. I wander and I muse and I track my musings, vaguely, though with less and less concern or even interest: it is impossible to follow the jumping bean antics of one’s train of thought, pointless to try and track the fugitive self as it careens through thought and images, smashing up against the wall of intellect, or rationality. And so, irrationally, rather than follow the rough track to join with Macnamara’s way, just above the Tal y Maes bridge, I decide to go down to the Grwyne fechan, though I know I will not be able to cross it without wading, the stream will be in full flow with all these winter rains, but never mind, I will face that obstacle when I get there: I want to hear the rush of water and see the moon through the branches of the trees at the river’s edge. It is as if I am drawn by some mysterious force to the water, that I need to cross the river there, rather than upstream, at the Tal-y-maes bridge. And it is only when I approach that I understand a little why that might be. I had almost forgotten, but we used to come here for picnics when my daughters were small; and further back, if I am not mistaken, I believe I came here myself as a child for a picnic with my parents, but I cannot be sure; it may be a case of me confusing my own childhood with the childhood of my children. In any case, once I have navigated the boggy ground near the river, I seek out a suitable place to cross. There is not one, of course, as I knew there wouldn’t be.
So I look instead for a crossing point that will soak me only to the shins, and step straight into the stream. Five or six steps and it is done. I climb onto the far bank and my boots are drenched. As the water filters through and soaks my socks and feet, I feel a curious release. I needed to cross the stream, though God knows why. The ascent on this bank is steep and covered in bracken. A fence topped with barbed wire needs traversing to reach the lower field, below Tal-y-maes farm. I clamber up to the path, disturbing a straggle of sheep on my way. They regard me with surprise, a human emerging from the wrong direction. This small gesture, crossing the stream for no reason other than because I wanted to grants me a curious and childish delight. As I walk the remaining mile back to the car I quicken my pace, as the water slops and squelches in my boots.