When I return to England, I am revisiting a timeline abandoned. I feel almost betrayed that it hasn’t stayed frozen in time. I don’t know if the land should apologize to me, or I to it. The English countryside is very different from America, its pastures hypnotically repetitive. America is varied, its country folk considered crass or uneducated-whereas a country home in the uk is a staple of class. Town cars and land rovers follow narrow roads across vast manicured expanses. Each neat landscape, a panorama of vivid green, kept enclosed by dotted tree tops and church steeples. It’s fields of daffodils and buttercups briefly interrupted by looming manors. These aristocratic renderings of stature and prestige serve as a harrowing reminder of what could have been. Stately homes guarding impressively kept secrets, whilst their tongue tied inhabitants collect dust.
I was raised throwing sticks down babbling brooks, wishing on their safe passage way through unfixed streams. Walks up hod hill, collecting mud and lilac flowers. Arches in trees became secret passageways, and the wind carried symphonies of petals and leaves, trailing behind me as I catapulted through fields. I woke up to the sounds of alarmist birds, listened to cautionary tales of misbehaving children and Beatrix potter. These stories never curtailed my tantrums, nor my propensity to collect tangles and bruises. I learnt how to walk with books on my head, and how to indicate I was done with my meal using the angles of resting silverware. At times, my spine would be tied to the back of a chair to ensure I had good posture. Christian values, with an overdeveloped understanding of Shakespeare.
Perhaps there is a timeline where I stayed in England. I would garden and bark at a chorus of dogs in a stern bun, wear cashmere vests and Wellington boots. Go hunting, hike at dusk and hold court in a antique of a home. Dress long wooden tables in Cath kidson and ornate candelabras, collect floral placemats and antique China. I would cook game and dote on a man lying to himself. I could marry like my mother or her mother, trade in my hunger for truth, my conquests for adventure, over to the predictability of an entertaining tyrant. Study his ticks and temperaments til I forgot my own. Maybe never feel, only think. Have a metaphorical or spiritual lobotomy and spend my days chasing amnesia.
The Dorset countryside always acted like a magical opioid, almost powerful enough to subdue my rebellion. It’s sleepy thatched cottages, pastel painted hobbit holes, and open air traverse time. It is a toy town. I don’t tell my grandmother I have been visiting her garden in my head for years, or that I know her favorite bird is a Robin and that her parents were murdered.
These manicured pastures, trimmed and tame, don’t seem to match the geometry of my soul. I am unkempt, doing guerilla investigative journalism at my grandfathers funeral. I say the true thing. Inciting, catalyzing. Making everyone second guess inviting.
I let my grown up knowing’s leave impressions on the chilly air. Imagine sending them backwards, then forwards, and all across time. I build freeways of ultraviolet light and go into the past, casting an orb over myself, give my younger self love, peace and protection. I have been so many things. So many ages, so many moods and octaves in frequency. I imagine sending love to them all. I find snail shells and think they would make better clocks. We always seem to revisit old energy with clearer understandings.