The turbulence hits again. I’ve been warned of it in this particular area. Renowned for scaring the shit out of people. Who told me that? I can’t remember. Or is it just that I don’t want to remember? I can no longer distinguish. A bout of turbulence hits and then we glide downwards. It’s rather an elegant dive. There’s something about the movement that reminds me of being on a roller-coaster. Something deep inside your stomach loses a sense of gravity. It reminds me of a particular hill back home I used to speed up over to achieve a similar feeling. Home. I need to stop calling it that. I’m stuck by a vision of green fields, the white specks of pollen floating past the upstairs window at the back of the house where I use to sit and write. All floating in the same direction, riding the breeze. I felt a connection with them at the time. It was about that time I made this decision. I’ll never sit in that house and watch the pollen again, or the way the different shades of green from the ominous trees mingle with the smaller siblings, sharing their history. The spring 136
lambs proudly leaping from hill to hill before succumbing to a lifetime of eating grass and swarming to the metal gate every time a landrover passes in anticipation of their favourite farmer an then running away again on spotting the pricked up ears of the young collie in the passenger seat. The frogs hopping up the lane, the housemartins nesting in the eaves. I’ll miss the very nature of the place. Miss it so very much. Take away the idiots that take the place for granted. Take away the small-mindedness of people who believe themselves superior. Take everything away apart from mother nature and I’d stay. I’m lucky. Once I decided to leave, I began to see again. I’d nearly become assimilated. I forgot what beauty was, I forgot what choice was. So although I may be sad I feel so much more alive in the World and aware that my place in it has never been a given. I am a free person. I just had to figure that out.
Writing is truly bizarre. I often don’t know how I feel about something until I write it down. And sometimes I think I feel one way but when I start writing I come to the conclusion that isn’t the case at all. As you can tell, I don’t plan what I write. I just sit and do it. Re-reading things I written, I’m surprised that it is me who has written such things. Maybe it’s because I have a low opinion of myself, I don’t know. I was surprised when I wrote the above paragraph. I realized that when I was writing at my desk, I very rarely looked out of the window and admired life on the outside unless something unusual was going on, like an escaped sheep pottering up the lane taking its pick of all the lovely long grass which had previously been unattainable for it. Until I sat and wrote about it I had no idea how much I would miss even the smallest of details. I started to remember all the things I saw out of that small window and all that time I thought I 137
wasn’t really looking. All those times I stared into what I called nothingness. I couldn’t have been more wrong. What I was staring out at was infact everything, everything I admired. I wish sometimes you could live in such a small window but of course, in practical terms, it doesn’t exist at all.