Looking West

. . . at the view from a burial chamber

Friends,

This is the second part of my short series of stories about St David’s peninsula in Wales. It covers a range of intersecting themes - walking, wild landscapes, birds, sacred places and creative practice.

It’s a paid story with an audio version at the end, for those who prefer to listen to these pieces. If you’re a free subscriber you’ll be able to read a segment of the story, but for the full version and audio please consider upgrading to paid. I’ll be your friend forever . . .

Hope you enjoy this week’s story,

J

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I’m walking towards the western edge of Wales, along tiny lanes with high verges crowded with wildflowers. The sea is close. I can’t hear it yet, but I can feel its breath. I pass horses in fields of new grass looking blissful after a long winter in their stables. There are patches of hawthorns matted together, white with flowers. Shadowing the headland in front of me is the high broken pyramid of Carn Llidi , and beyond it the rock scattered strip of moor at St David’s Head. It’s years since I’ve been here and I’m noticing how my memory had tamed the place, the way memory does.

I’ve come here to wild my senses. This is necessary after the dark months. I find it so easy to slip into ruts, literally and metaphorically. The muddy woodland paths I’ve been trudging every cold, wet day have taken over my imagination. Creation feels like a trudge through ooze at the moment.

I remember reading a biography of Yeats years ago, about how he had to wrestle with his work, loud groaning noises coming from his locked room when he wrote a new poem. And reading too about Samuel Beckett, how his friends thought that he might die from the effort of writing his trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable. Maybe great art requires great effort. If it does then I’ll never make great art. I’m dedicated to effortlessness. When I create I want to follow a dream track, to open a space for words and shapes to come through by themselves. More and more I feel this comes from a stepping away from, or a walking beside the subject and getting a tail of the eye view. If you were to ask me now where this piece of writing is going I could tell you truthfully that I have no idea, it’s just appearing one word at a time. It started out as a piece about burial chambers. We may or may not get there.