Dream and Memory Flood

I'm in one of those funny phases at the moment, when all of the channels are open, and all of the pipes are connected, and memories and vivid dream images are able to flood through into my consciousness and my subconscious.

Last night, for example, I had two extremely vivid dreams. The first one involved me standing on a football terrace with my little brother, in a time that was a mixture of the 1980s and a future time, and a stadium that was a mixture of various London grounds and more northerly constructions but, at the same time, was absolutely Griffin Park, the home of the mighty Brentford. We seemed to spend most of our time moving around in the early evening light (my favourite time for standing in a football stadium, preferably at a pre-season game in August, with the smell of roll ups and beer in the air), trying to find a place to stand where we could get a clear view of the pitch. Secondly, I was dancing with Nigella at a school end-of-term disco, the last, slow dance. She was beautiful and warm. It was very exciting. The main component of this dream was the warmth that was passing between her and me, and that warmth carried over into my waking state, when I was semi-conscious, and seeing that imagery in my mind, with that warm feeling echoing powerfully through me, and feeling that poignant feeling you get when you want that imagined/dreamed thing to persist, to be real.

Thinking about the poignant beauty of that dream later in the day, I found myself smiling at the warmth and desirability of that dream state.

I also found some other bits and pieces of memory creeping in unbidden: the subtle, splendid mouldings of a plastic model kit that I bought in - what? - 1977? - the Airfix B-26 Marauder (a WW2 US light bomber): I remembered how I'd been excited by the excellent moulding of the wheel bay interiors, and the subtlety of the control surface mouldings - I just knew that these would all look superb once they had been painted, complementing the aesthetically pleasing curves of the aircraft structure itself. I could unwind a whole other set of associations from this, so tactile and real are the memories that are living in my fingertips and in my nostrils - but I won't bore you with them (not yet...). I guess what I'm getting at here is that the things that really hit you, and the things that make an impression and spring easily to consciousness are not necessarily the things that you would choose if you had any conscious choice about it; the grand narratives that you create for yourself are undercut by the minutiae and randomness of your actual experience, creating a gap (and tension) between the imagined self and the reality of the living physical organism with a definite timeline and set of contingencies.

What you are, and what you want to be. The essence of being alive, and human, and fallible.

Transformations

[Calendar note - this refers to Saturday 23rd December]
Travelling in to London on the train yesterday, I noticed that there were patches of foggy countryside where the trackside trees were all liberally sprinkled with a Christmassy frosting of - well, of frost. These trees looked clean and crusty white - like the thick white icing on a home-made Christmas cake against the duller grey and off-white of the surrounding fog and mist, and where the sun broke through (only very occasionally) they were lit up bright and dazzling.

Our village has - like most of the rest of the country - been covered by near-freezing fog for days: a heavy, dull blanket that's been damp and unremitting, making moisture that's dripped off the trees and reducing the daylight to dusk-like levels throughout the day. Today, when I went out on my bike for the first time in ages, the fog ceiling had lifted a little, and you could see the roofs of houses and trees in their entirety. It was still chilly and damp.

Cycling up the long slope to Eydon, mist still clung to the top-most branches of the tall trees and, as I climbed, I saw that the trees up here were showing the same whitened effect as the ones I'd seen from the train. All of the lane-side hedges and bushes Strangely, though, the whiteness seemed to fade away as I got level with each tree. I slowed down a bit and tried to look a bit more closely, but the residual ground-level mist was collecting in tiny drops on my glasses, so I stopped to wipe them dry, pulling up at the side of the lane and putting my foot up on the verge while I fished my hankie out of my jogging trousers' pocket. Thus unencumbered of obfuscating moisture, I could see that the 'white' frosting was actually clear ice: each branch, twig, berry and dead leaf had, courtesy of the fog's condensed moisture, collected an extra layer on its windward side/underside - a partial sheath of ice that refracted the flat winter light so that the ice looked like a white covering; the closer you got, the more easily you could see that this uniform whiteness was composed of frozen rivulets of ice and, increasingly, of individual droplets as the daytime temperature rose and the ice began to melt.

As I cycled further around the route, the drip, drip, drip of falling water increased in intensity as the ice melted, sometimes quickening to a rain shower-like sound under the bigger trees. This drip and fall of water was interspersed with sudden scratchy flurries of melted ice tinkling onto the road surface as - seemingly - some kind of critical mass is reached and large quantities of ice crystals melt and fall in slithering sequence. My bike's tyres scrunch over the ice.

Denis again: starting putting words in a line again at last

Further along, the shopping streets give way for a while to some more open areas, flanked by grass- and tree-planted green spaces with benches and flower beds, and sometimes a small bandstand or an over scale chess set.

Then you came to the part of town where all the [Jews] lived: the poorer [Jews], that is – the men with their beards and their funny hats, and the women with their proud faces and their bold way of looking at everybody, as if they didn’t have anything to be ashamed of, living here in this poverty and squalor.

There were Jews in his story books. Richer Jews, not like the ones who lived close by in his city. They weren’t always called Jews, as far as he can remember, even though there were sometimes references to the ‘the rich Jew’, or ‘the Jewish shopkeeper’, or the ‘miserly old Jew’, but the parental readings of the books, and the accompanying commentary and the answers to his ‘What’s that? Why? Why? Why?’ questions made it clear that these characters were Jews.

These characters usually lived alone, in the last cottage in the village, or in a large, dark, looming house in the city, with bare tree branches in front of the windows and the moon rising above the chimney pots. The front doors of the town houses were always black, with a door knocker in the shape of a monster’s head – all scales and teeth and blank eyes beneath venomous lids.

Open/Shut

I took a lovely drive this morning: cross country from Woodford Halse (Northants) to Long Stratton (Norfolk) via the A14/A11/A140, to pick up my 70-year-old mother, newly-returned from her latest late-flowered holiday trip - Prague, this time.

I had intended to drive over on Friday night straight after work, but a sleepy head and the prospect of crawling round the M25 and along the A12 made me change my mind. As it happens (guys and gals, uhuh huh huh huh huh uhuh) this turned out to be a good call.

I left the house at 0405, closing the door as quietly as I could, with chilly air at my back and the night's rain reflecting the cold white light of the sparse streetlamps. It was marvellous to be on the roads at this early hour - the first time I'd been out this early for 18 months or so. I'd forgotten how much I like the feeling of 'owning' the road, that sense of solitude and independence that creeps over you when you put your headlights on full beam and head off into the darkness, knowing that you've got a 3 hour drive in front of you: there's something of a sense of mission that seizes you (me), the feeling that your mundane journey assumes a deeper meaning because it's being undertaken under a rain-scattered night sky, with the vague, soft orange glow of distant towns staining the horizon. It's true that the mood is momentarily shattered by a stupid grouse (?) sitting in the road for too long and eventually taking lazy wing and bouncing off your windscreen, leaving behind a wet, feathery stain on the glass. But a swift flick of the wipers sweeps away the bird residue, and you carry on.

On the radio, England take an early wicket against Australia. In the voices of the commentators - even the earthy, bitter tones of Geoffrey Boycott - you can hear the Australian heat, sun and dust and, despite the early wicket of Hayden, you can hear England starting to fall into the darkness of defeat, somehow more poignant for being on echoey, scratchy long wave. At the lunch break (some time between 0430 and 0500, when I've negotiated all of the twisty country roads and have reached the A14) I switch over to FM and search for something else to listen to. I fall into a hypnotic regime of channel-hopping, trying to find music that's either (a) familiar, (b) nocturnal or (c) somehow appropriate for night driving. In this state, I find that I'm really keen to buy records (CDs, that is) by The Feeling ("I love it when you call"), Snow Patrol ("Chasing Cars") and Keane ("These songs all sound the same, but they've got something about them"). Weirdly, in the rain and the dark, alone and unspeaking, passing a lorry in a haze of spray, I start to feel as if I'm back in touch in life.

Something by Joss Stone comes on - "Super duper love", I think. It feels horribly bogus and manufactured - a strong, interesting voice that can't quite carry off the material: it just feels too mature for a woman of her age, and it rankles. I switch channels. James Morrison (I think that's his name...) - he's another one with a voice that sounds older than his years, but somehow it feels more believable than Joss's, as if it's easier to think that he will grow into his voice through his experience.

I have to pull over to blow my nose (the ridiculously long-lived remnants of a cold). The parking spot is on a bit of heathland I know well from daylight stops: scrubby grass and yellow-flowered broom (?) bushes, Scots pines in the distance, and a lichen- and grass-covered pillbox from World War II (this area was heavily airfielded until recently, when the US Air Force withhdrew their fighters and bombers). I get out of the car and feel the cold wind and the swirling mist of the passing lorries. I feel very vulnerable all of a sudden, and move around to the front of the car to stand in the headlights' light so that (a) the lorry drivers can see me, and (b) any potential killers are confused by my silhouette, and might think twice about attacking because their maniacal features would be revealed to my (non-existent) passenger. I quickly get back in and carry on.

This all makes me think about being an editor...(of which more tomorrow).

P l a c e h o l d e r

Well, here we are...my cold starting to fade, and my new job starting to lose its grip on me, freeing me up gradually so that I can give my attention to other things apart from work. It's always all-encompassing and knackering at first, innit?

Anyway. Having access to a broadband connection, I had a bit of a play at 'Second Life'. After registering and setting up my avatar, I logged in. It was weird: as soon as I emerged into the light of the 'arrival island' and saw the other avatars around me, just starting to find their way along the paths amongst the grass, I did exactly what I do in real life when I pitch up in a strange place with lots of people in it: I headed off, away from the crowd, and tried to find somewhere where I could stand on my own, unobserved, and get my bearings while I built up some confidence to engage more fully with the environment. I thought it was telling that my personality was projected unconsciously and instantaneously through the keyboard and into that virtual environment. I guess one of the interesting things about such an environment is that you can train yourself to behave differently from your usual modes, more safely. Hm.

S t i l l o n p a u s e, s o m e w h a t

A bit quiet around here, I know: I'm a bit preoccupied with my new job and living arrangements, plus I have a reet manky cold (bah humbug). I've pledged to myself that I'll start to get back on track on...Wednesday this week.

Thank you for your patience.

H i a t u s

Just started a new job in a new location - hope to return to prolificness next week...