So, words as holes, building into strings that soon become a net. That's it (in a nutshell) my "string theory" of language.
Three days after my encounter with Faversham creek, the Oare and the Swale I returned. A compulsion? Not yet, but I have the sense that something has started. The weather was completely different. On Sunday this weird October had continued with temperatures of 19 degrees and sunshine that could only be described as Autumnal by the angle at which it struck. Thursday was far more appropriate to my mood, to the way this whole coast seems to be shaping itself in my mind as a place of blurs and softened edges - fog rolled in off the sea and stayed most of the day.
If anything the tide was further out than before. The creek was nothing but a trickle and was boosted to what might be described as a stream only after being joined by a surging, frothing mess from the sewage works. Up shit creek indeed. Fortified by another pint of Late Red and one of Annette's Baguettes I strode along the Saxon Shore Way and into the misty marshes. It wasn't long before I found myself wondering what exactly I was up to. Was there any purpose to this walk? I decided that I was looking for the place where the creek became the sea. Or rather where the path I followed was no longer a path beside a small tributary but was a path beside the North Sea. But then where the creek, or creeks since the Oare and Faversham creeks meet just before they both become part of the Swale...As I walked and thought it seemed more and more pointless to look for a place, a line that once crossed might mean one thing had become another. Perhaps my whole sense of place, of landscape is entirely conditioned by my city life, by thinking of roads and buildings? Lines and distinct places? Here on the marsh there seemed little sense in such divisions. And then there was the mist that lifted from time to time to allow a golden glow of light into the world, or occasionally flashes of brilliant illumination that brought sudden colours crisply to the attention of the retina, but would then return to conceal what might have been briefly glimpsed behind a gossamer shroud. To make matters worse my glasses would periodically be spattered with delicate droplets as though the landscape were breathing into my face, deliberately hiding itself from my enquiries.
For what it's worth this (above) is the place where the creeks meet the Swale that will soon open into Whitstable bay that at some other point might be said to be the North Sea. And what do we see after such discussion of waterways but an expanse of flat mud.
I will now attempt what might be classed as a sort of Jazz approach to writing where I will try to articulate my sense of being at the edge of things but also somehow at the begging of something and how these feelings might be caused/inspired by the edges of England...
...and it starts with mud. We are said to have crept from the sea, brave fish, gasping for new ways of living, hauling ourselves on hardened fins from the salty oceans and into a world of brown ooze. Brown ooze full of living things. The sea itself a vast cauldron of life, tempestuous or calm, salt filled, life loaded. The sea melting the oozing muddy land, minerals mingling, chemicals reacting, new combinations and creations emerging. At low tide you see them still, those Saxons in their waist-high boots, rubber braces, buckets and spades, digging in the sludge, feeling around in the mud for bait or restaurant fodder. They call to one another like the nesting birds. They say the sea defences along here are not to be renewed. This concrete wall will fail. The flats will return to mud, fall to the rising sea. For remember the sea is hungry and vast. Do not be fooled by its gentle lapping, by the flat calm mud, the distant waters. Be sure the sea has time and will take it. These houses, little more than beach huts, some with their gardens already dipped in brine will fall. The pirates and their flag, their personal concrete wall around their garden will not last as an island of civilisation. No, they will be swept aside some stormy night. See how the shells are thrown high up the beach? See these sandy patches where they have been ground to dust by the constant waves? Regard the dilapidated groins, ramshackle, eroded. Look on my works ye mighty and despair indeed...
The other slight return was the Marsh Harrier. I saw him three times this trip. First on a post. I was so close I stopped mid stride. I ducked behind the sea wall and felt for my camera but the sudden movement spooked him and he flew off, flap, flap, through the mist. I walked more carefully then and was rewarded by another sighting, this time he perched in a tree.
The picture is crap because once again I was far away. This time as he flew off I noticed that the many small birds around began to sing once more. There is a whole other life quite apart from our rushing human progression, a life of feathers and air and small things that matter and are connected. I moved with greater care. This time I noticed the absence of bird song and looked for him - there! A little inland now, standing atop a gate-post. A sulking, hunched, executioner he flew off along the line of a hedge and I did not see him again.
And here we are, at what feels like an ending...
