turn turn turn

Yesterday I took my trusty steed down to the river. The sun shone and my heart pounded in case this was too much in the language of all those who care about me and know that one should definitely not do too much but only just enough. I went down to the river. The familiar exhilarating rush to be under one’s own steam, the potential to fly, to feel stronger than yesterday, as well as a little twinge of specific protest and pain. Just enough to be able to date with precision the additional yesterdays since the surgery: Just in case you’ve forgotten, there’s me to think about too. Oh, do be quiet! As if I could forget you. Be still. And don’t be afraid. Don’t fuss. I am thinking of you but are you thinking of me at all? What I need? The feel of freedom, the possibility of being strong again, of having energy, confidence in what my body can do. The joy of surprising myself by being precociously fitter than ever, able to go further, rather than sitting slumped and still. So - do we understand each other? We’ll go out. We’ll be careful. We won’t cross over into the mystical too much. We’ll stay within the balance of keeping moving, we’ll listen for the edge and we’ll tacitly allow each other to go forward. Agreed? Agreed.

I went to the river. In the bright sunshine. Yes, I remembered to bring water, and I carried it in a bag that didn’t constantly crash into the wound. I made that mistake the other day and do you know what? I’m okay. It was too much. And then it was OK. I really am listening! And I put sunscreen on, too. Just in case you were wondering about that. And. I was very careful, because I know you will want to be reassured about that. I really am not in the least bit reckless - if you could only know how I sometimes long to really be that, you’d know just how far I am from that edge. The chances of my ever doing something bold or impetuous are, I would say, almost completely nil. And they always have been. I imagine myself every now and then careening into wildness, acting with no holds barred, going for broke, speaking in the heat of the moment, playing my whole hand... My entire heart... And I know you really don’t need to worry about my not being careful. Careful is stamped all the way through me, like pale pink seaside rock. I am careful to the very core.

I went to the river. I love it down there. There’s something so touching about the broken industrial wasteland around the back of the more presentable, shiny and slick. In the interests of not doing too much, and remembering to bear in mind the return for which we must not be too tired, I stopped by the driving range. Here the crudely tarmacked path suddenly opens out, a favourite spot for skateboard practise, and the air is full of the scribbles and exclamations of 180s and crashing board rolls. Behind that, the ping and clip of hundreds of people driving through into the artificial green from their layered lanes, quietly focused and intent. Behind them is the Dome. You know you can pay money to walk on top of it, someone says as they cycle past at at a leisurely trot, taking all the time in the world to gaze around. And there is so much to see here. As they weave their unhurried way across the scuffs and circular scars of other tight turns that happen with the rudeness of engine noise and smells after dark, I take stock. I realise that my calves are printed with the patterns of my bicycle chain, circles of those turns on my legs, without which - and the definitely not unhurried or even looking cyclist who shot round the corner and skidded into me and off, into the loose scree and gravel just now - I might have gone further. That did give me a turn of a different kind.

So I sit. Slightly awkward dismount. Legs stiffening and the feeling of free flight arrested, grounded in here and now, the joy of possibility and potential paused. I leand the bike up against the rusty old post at the industrial edge. There’s the sound of water falling somewhere deep inside something, but I can’t see where that might be coming from. There’s sunshine, and gently lapping water of a murky colour. And there’s starry splintered light skittering off the lightly ridged surface as boats pound by, with blaring music and fist pumping Thames experience rookies. And there’s the smell of the river. So distinct and so evocative that I could cry out to notice it, transported instantly to those carefree summer camps spent mucking about on the river, in the muddy slip ways by the Chiswick boathouse. Where we learned what not to do with the stolid red play boats and where despite the assurance that we wouldn’t be able to capsize them, we readily tumbled into the cloudy silty opaque, grabbing for the seat piece, trying not to lose any shoes and coming up spluttering, smiling triumphant. And the river smelled just like this but more. So this tantalising waft of slimy sweetness and greeny grey brown is like a distant memory that is caught out of the corner of my eye and that can’t be surprised into full focus. I slow down and down, inwards, quietly, and try out ways to describe the heavy summer, slick silky mud that slid strangely seductive and repulsive between toes in plastic jelly shoes. Softly oily mud that somehow splashed all the way up bare legs in shorts, and left little muddy splash marks on shiny outdoorsy faces at the end of the day.... All I can come up with today, sitting opposite the shiny skyscrapers of the city, is that it smells sweet and that when I say that to myself resonance echoes with yearning through the years, and I know that even Patrick Süskind’s antihero couldn’t conjure it from that alone.

So I’m sitting feet dangling over the edge, the oily chain marksup and down my bare legs will need to be scrubbed off later, but like a butterfly, alighted and flighty and then still, I look to the lapping water.

There’s a white balloon. Tossing and turning its way along the ripples, bobbing around the corner of the ugly edges, singing for joy in the sweet murky brown sunshine. Flames flicker, reflecting off the starry surface and the ball of white air lightly turns and turns, on its way. A strange lightness, fragile and nothing like the hardy slime-striped buoys, functional on the edges of bold keels and hulls, or the giant treadless tyres lashed to the ugly industrial edges of the dock. This is whiteness lightness, a leisurely lollop round and round, little flap of the knotted end loop rolling round recurring. And its jaunty joyful progress, chuckles along the water in front of where I sit. I’m not going to lean out and draw attention to you, I’m just going to keep a sidelong eye, allow you to bounce your merry way by, and be glad that you made your way past while I was here.

And suddenly I am still. Really still. Single strands of silken thoughts come with poise into that sun-stilled space. They settle down there and I can look at them softly without rush or fear. I am alone. My thoughts are all my own, unfiltered, unblended,  uncompromised. I’m complete without you.

These thoughts came to me first 2 years ago. They came with music, a lilting hypnotic, undulating two-note pattern suspended over simple chord changes on the guitar. A song came almost fully formed to my mind, to my voice, in very low notes that made their heavy way up through the thickness of tears and a layer of shadowy selfish sorrow:

I am alone. My thoughts are all my own. I am complete without you.
You know my days. 1000 different ways. I don’t regret the past but I miss you.

You were my one for a long time, and there we might have stayed.
But that’s not how it works, is it? Things change.

You begin to wane. I know I’ll love again.
That doesn’t change a thing, for now I miss you.

Perhaps it can stand alone now. The edge fully rounded, finished and rolling along at the surface, catching the ever changing light. Turning towards and towards and towards and not looking back.