Painful precious words

The rivers have turned into waterfalls but the springs and flowing eddies have run dry and cease to flow. There is a key to the box that remains closed. It is there, somewhere, but its keeper cannot see the way to the small hole in the escutcheon, even though there is light and the key is held firmly in their hand. I carry these contradictions with me as I venture on through the dense woodland, thick with pine and birdsong, spores and hurrying ants, blindly building something that they can barely see. The pointed hoof prints of some fallow deer have made this way before me, in search of something. If only they knew, then I do not, and I envy their purpose and innate sense of where they are going, even if they have no conscious understanding, no words or name for their destination.

Last night’s rain has left its sticky dew in the dirt and muddied pathways. It clings to the needles and leaves. Without words, it imparts to the traveller that it too has been here. A narrative left in damp imprints and the scents rising from the moistened soil. As my feet leave their own path, I steady my trail, sliding in flumes of leaf mulch and rotted things that cover the forest floor. A tide of brightest blue floats above, dashed with only the faintest wisp of cirrus, touching the top of my head it seems, washing over, leaving its wordless fable. Its time-long tales of those that have walked, run, rambled, fled, into this place.

I cease my wandering for a moment, reach out and touch the girth of the closest tree. Its bark almost senses my finger tips, a jolt of life from roots hidden deep within the earth. It does not have the lexicon, no paper or board from its pulp to capture those decades, centuries, moments of passing breath, faces, feet and claws.

Descending further into the inverted apex of the valley, a loud and pugnacious conversation between water and rocks meets my ears. Who is shouting at who? Is it the freshly swollen river, having made its journey from the far away brown and stubbled moors, to this greener place, vocalising its displeasure at the need to smash and claw its way over the rocks that lie in its path? Or do the rocks, those great stones dropped here in some other great age, is it they that protest at this aggressive surge of hydrogen and oxygen, bound together by nature, that forces its way upon them? Their argument grows to a crescendo, vibrating in my ears as I reach the valley floor. Spume and spray, spittle from their agitated mouths. They will settle their debate in later hours, when the night’s dark rain has cleared its way, to fill a greater river. When it will flow out to the ocean and strike a broader conversation, become less constricted, more informed and worldly perhaps, than here, in this narrow valley that can only look inwards at itself.

I step across the ancient stones that offer a passing place through this vicious torrent. Carefully crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s, as I place my feet on the green shining wet backs of these half sunken, petrified creatures that allow me passage to the opposite bank. The footsteps that have told their stories day after week after year, over the centuries, pressed into the stone. Memories of this millstone-grit held deep within its heart-stone. Each arched lump of granite, an infinite store of unspoken, unwritten words.

As I reach the far bank, I sit and idle a while on a small seat placed here by some venerable and philanthropic Victorian. A place to rest a while and contemplate. To place those worlds into a semblance of order. Unwritten, not transcribed, or orated, as those that surround me. Emboldened by the perceptions of my senses during my descent, I will the extremities of my subconscious, the deepest recesses of my disarray. The boxes and closets, cupboards and cases that stack upon each other in a way that renders each of them inaccessible within my mind.

I retrieve my pen and notebook from my bag, feeling the comfort of them in my hands. They seem quite alien here in this wild place, far away from desk and chair. Thoughts rise as my hand moves across the page. The roar of the river. And then something shifts, freed by this solitary moment where the air, earth and water touch an ember that lies smouldering in a darkened box, fastened shut. Tiny unseen hands turn the key and prise it open, and as the air reaches that distant place, a flame bursts forth unforeseen and unknown. My hand moves more quickly now. I have no control of the swift strokes and motions it makes as a trail of dark ink works its way across the page. Line after line. Pieces of life, of sculpted words, an articulation of something deep, something vilifying, something dangerous.

But still the words come, my hand moving back and forth across the creamy smooth paper. My ears are now closed to the rocks and the water and all I can hear is the blood in my head and ears as it thumps. A metronome, counting the seconds, counting the years back, one by one. Back to the days where words were less tools for hurt, but were each an unknown parcel of adventure and discovery. Where elves and fairies spoke with badgers, foxes and insects. Where doors hid in the foot of trees and birds sang daytime lullabies. Those prosaic offerings of innocence. And then those words fled by, so quickly and out of sight, the creatures fled and bigger more sinister beings with different vocabulary took their place. Words that punctured and bruised, cut and scraped. They flow from the nib of my pen, bleeding all over the page.

There were those who were there to protect and those who were not, but their words were no different. Not written in some glorious script by some artisan hand, but spat out, hurled, crumpled into tight little hard balls, aimed and thrown.

A child ran, across the road and down the dusty lane towards the fields. At her back, the arrows and sticks, and not from some playtime squabble or childish torment. Far closer to home than that. As she buried her head in the tall soft grass of the farmer’s field, her tears mingled with the cuckoo-spit and last remaining dew left over from the morning. She rubbed at her head, her ears, her breath so close to the ground that she could feel it on her reddened face. Here it was safe. There were no words here. None that could wound any more. Not for this day at least.

As the girl scurried to a safer place, my pen hurries over the pages, capturing the broken fragments of her memories, of her story, of the cathartic moment when the words formed and escaped from the tightly closed box.

Venomous words pertaining to my interests, my weight, stature, skin, education and vocation. The shape of my features, choice of companions, choice of husband, name of my child, the list went on. Even my feet, a target.

You’re too fat. Your skin is greasy and your nose is too big. You’ll never have any friends. Why don’t you stand up straight? Your feet are wrong. Why can’t you be like this other child here? You’ll never get a job. Why don’t you find someone who will marry you? You’ll never pass that test.

There was no fight. Only acceptance and the tending of wounds.

I force the words onto the page, each one as though something from a poisoned pen, but no, I will not allow them to define me as they spread like a malicious infection onto the paper. I feel the roar of the water, the pulse of blood as it pounds from the top of my head to my limbs and extremities. All around me is one resounding sight, sound and smell at this one moment that has been so many years in its coming. And then, the box is emptied. That box found in some other part of my world, extracted from the cluttered cupboard. It now lies, bare wood in an opened mouth that has no words left to expel.

Slowly my pen comes to a gradual stop. From its gliding motion, it gently moves away from the page, a bird with broken wings, now maybe able to fly again. Somewhere in the forest a fox and a pixie hold a pleasant conversation about how wonderfully bright and glorious the day is, and I can feel the fairies from many years ago forming a small circle in the grass around my feet. As they dance, I cast my new-found eyes over my notebook and dare to read back the words.

Some alchemy has taken place. Beautiful shapes and curves that define the alphabet’s letters had once been twisted, contorted and folded into the darkest and cruellest of words. But here, on my pages, they read with a change, with a beauty that only I could give them, a beauty of their own, as though they have shifted in shape and meaning. I have created something between these creamy white pages, once formed of trees, almost a spell of sorts, scribing the past into the present, extracted from the fastened box, and now a tangible thing, a creation, lies here on the page.

For a moment, a swell, like that of the incessantly shouting river, rises in me and tears threaten to fall, smudging the page. But I hold them back like boats on the shore of a dangerous sea, as the reality of what I am holding in my hands makes its way into my consciousness.

All life has a balance, and on each side of those weighty and ancient scales, immeasurable molecules of matter and dust shift from hour to hour, day to day. A thing changes but still the world holds in place as another shifts, maintaining the delicate balance. These words, their weight is too great. I can feel the changes, see them in the extreme edges of my mind. If they were ever to fall under the gaze of another, or another more dangerous pair of eyes that hover above the mouth that originally formed them.

I brush my fingers over the lines and shapes that I have created from the darkest parts of me. Here they are in the light of this glorious day. A catharsis to be cherished. It has freed something in me that I did not know was there. The fairies at my feet turn their faces towards me. Their eyes speak, though their mouths do not.

I turn back the pages that my hand has just swept and carefully, as curating a treasured sacrament, I tear them away from the spine. The paper resists for a fraction of a second, unwilling to part from its home, but then it sighs and gives way. The dried ink glistens in the sunlight, dark patterns woven into the creamy expanse, holding memories that have defined me for so long. How can I bear to destroy the precious thing I have just made? I do not know. I fold and tear until hundreds of pieces rest in my cupped hands, trembling slightly with my breath. I hesitate for a moment, wondering, if I hold them for long enough, will they recreate the past that I have just released? But no. I’ve created something that, in its turn, has destroyed some lurking demon following me in the closest shadows of my entire life.

A small breeze stirs and the breath of the water mingles with the torn and broken words as I scatter the pieces into the swollen, restless current of the river. The water swallows them, dragging them under, taking the words far away from here, where I will never hear, or read, or feel them again.

I tread back across the river's stones to the path that will return me to the place where I woke this morning. My bag feels lighter, the trail a little dryer and less painful to tread. One box, once hidden and locked in my mind's darkened room, is now purged and emptied. Perhaps when I next visit this place, I will retrieve and dispel the contents of another.