Soft Shell

 

(Abandoned home near Española, New Mexico)

 

A time of soft-shelledness, spongelike and tender, that’s the research and first draft stage. I gather images, fragments, from the apocalypses the world has really seen. Psychogeographies of the most painful sort. I peer from under my stone, pulling threads from dark water.

 

 

(Nuclear Warning quilt, Santa Fe, New Mexico)

 

I’m thinking of the materials of disaster – that which causes it, solid real harmful hazardous do not ingest – and that which is created by disaster. Either intentionally, in the image above, or unintentionally, as in every city lost to radiation, to disease, to poverty, to social injustices, to nature itself.

 

(Graveyard in the abandoned Doodletown, NY)

 

Pompeii, Herculanium, Doodletown, The Highland Clearances, the Fukushima district, Pripyat. There are hundreds of examples of lost settlements, things that could be read as apocalyptic, depending on your view of apocalypse. Every war zone, for example. Look at photographs of Syrian cities and see how much they resemble depictions on film of a world decaying, a world almost without us. Though, nothing is through, nothing is neat. With apocalypses the true thing is that there is no clean end.

 

This is hard research to do. Hence the soft shell. Like the crumbling shells of buildings, the writer looks out on the world, half open. Unlike a building, the writer has to take breaks. Find more careful, more kind things to do with herself. I read fiction and I look at non-hazardous art. But of course contentment is limited when you are in the soft-shell state. When you deliberately try to understand and thread disparate things together from these raw, disastrous materials.

 

I look once again to that famous Louis MacNeice poem, ‘Snow’ as a kind of confounding guide, to the present situation, the present state of overwhelm. And I leave you with it, having nowhere to guide either you or myself at the moment:

 

Snow

 

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands–
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses. 

 

 

Down where the stories lie buried in the grass

 

 

This wild, rangy graveyard is a few minutes walk from where we now live, and long-term readers of this blog will know that graveyards are some of my favourite places to visit. In particular, those older fields where no new occupants can be interred, so that in my wanderings I don’t disturb any mourners. It’s more than that of course. Old graveyards have a certain quality to them. Hard to define in a single word – still, perhaps? sad, softly fumy with greenness overgrowing, with old trees reaching above well-settled grass. They are places to walk and think slow, graveyard thoughts.

 

 

 

Dalry is a wonderful spot for exploring. According to this history student’s Yelp review, the only reason the cemetery exists is because of a Cholera outbreak in the 1830s which filled the other extant graveyards in the city. Now closed, but with twenty-four hour access for the curious, Dalry cemetery displays signs of both benign neglect and selective management, which adds to its charm. The main paths and the edges around some stones have been mowed, but off the beaten track the nettles have sprung up high like a protective cloak or sea around unreachable graves.

 

 

 

The council have knocked down many of the stones, which I think they do in order to protect walkers from injury when they fall. But this does add to the feeling that the dead who lie here are somewhat forgotten. Which draws me nearer to those whose markers still stand.

 

 

 

This white stone was for a young man, I think. It draws the eye from all the way down on the path to the exit.

 

 

 

I love when professions are recorded on the graves – there was also a ‘master plumber’. But this goes far and above the others, telling where Ms Rea, governess, died. It says below the cut-off, she died in 1861, along with the line ‘I have longed for thy salvation’.

 

My mind ran wild with the idea that this woman died in strange circumstances, which led those left behind to write the line with something like doubt for her soul. Once home, I typed her name into google, and there she was, on a census twenty years before her death, twenty years old, a governess at a farmhouse in the parish of Yarrow, Selkirkshire. Irish in origin. It took the help of David Greig to fill in other clues: Kilgraston was or is a Catholic school for girls. So Elizabeth Rea died at forty or so, probably unmarried, still a governess. Though there is room for ambiguity: why a governess and not a teacher? And why so young (or was that a good age for 1861?).

 

 

Another Elizabeth has a stone which gives an entirely different impression. I haven’t researched Elizabeth Purdie (mother) and Davina Welsh Christie (mother and grandmother),  who were buried together in this plot, but I feel like I should, given the eerie feelings I got standing over them. In the above picture you can see the grave at a distance. Here it is up close:

 

 

 

Now, I’m not generally a superstitious person. As much as I believe in the afterlife, ghosts and haunted spaces are another matter entirely. I love the idea of them, the way certain places seem to hold on to their past – usually unpleasant, usually bloody – in a near visible way. I am generally affected, as I walk around an old battleground or castle, by the atmosphere lent by mossy stone or my own knowledge of the history. I will think of those who died and wonder at their lives, at the cruelty which took them in such violent ways.

 

But here it was hard not to pause. Not to shudder just a little at the dark barren ground around the grave. All of the plants had died back. They had not been cut – it was simply that nothing grew. Now, maybe (given the signs of mourning here, which were on no other grave that I could see), the family or someone else sprayed the area around about with weed killer. That would be a good, rational explanation, wouldn’t it? I’d like to be rational. But something made me hesitate after taking the picture, and pick a sprig of what was either hemlock or queen anne’s lace and leave it in the flower holder. To pacify or show respect to the spirits or Purdie and Christie, yes.

 

 

The  problems of an over-active imagination. Or we can say it was a point of overlap, a thin place. If we like. All I can say is that old graveyards are a great place for research into fiction, because they are broken chains of meaning, which nature is attempting to erase, and writers tend to grub about for meaning, letting their minds fill the gaps. I’m not sure if I’ll go to google for the two companions, because I rather like not knowing. If you do go looking, feel free to leave a comment here.

 

By the way, in that picture above I was not crouching. The stalk of that plant (hemlock or queen anne’s lace?) is about seven feet tall. I reached for the smaller stuff to leave behind in courtesy.  And now, back to planning this third novel, with my mind all teeming with overgrown weeds.

 

 

Looking for Dr Livingstone + interview news

 

Today D and I made our way back to the National Museum of Scotland with the aim of walking through the exhibit on Dr David Livingstone, explorer, missionary and abolitionist. True to his reputation, he was a little hard to find. The exhibit was tucked away on the third floor of the new part of the museum. It was interesting, if a bit piecemeal.

 

Livingstone was born into a cotton mill worker family, and worked at the mill from the age of 10. An exceedingly bright boy, he was taught to read and write, then taught himself Latin. He saved up enough money to go to University in Glasgow, but to save a penny on the cart fare, had to make his way on foot up the river clyde from Blantyre every morning. Good training for his later rambles around Malawi and southern Africa. There was a video, filmed in Malawi, talking to residents there in the Malawian town of Blantyre – they seemed happy with his legacy there, of his pacts with local tribe leaders to end the East African-Indian Ocean slave trade.

 

But I am suspicious of heroes, particularly of strong men of the British Empire who, regardless of whether they were doing good themselves, went into ‘the dark continent’ with the aim of opening it up to Europe.  There wasn’t a lot of analysis, and only one dissenting voice was lightly mentioned, that of John Kirk, the botanist who traveled on one of Livingstone’s expeditions. Livingstone was, it seemed, a hard leader. And then there was that famous meeting with Stanley, where the presumed Dr Livingstone refused to come back to Britain, and later died in a village in Malawi of a nasty combination of Malaria and Dysentery.

 

Well, whoever he was (D wants to read his journals now), we saw his little navy cap and his nice sketch of a fish from Lake Malawai.

 

I enjoy visiting the museum, which has free entry, and it’s a good thing too. Coming in the new year, after I’ve finished this second ms (May at the latest, I hope), I will be going there a lot. And to the grand Central Library on George IV bridge. Research for novel number 3. It is going to be about a strong, egotistic leader and her followers, and set in the wastes of Edinburgh. I’ll not reveal too much more before I have an outline in place. As you can see from the picture above, there’s a certain atmosphere to the city in winter – a soft harshness – which I want to learn and replicate for my postapocalyptic version.  Anyway, that’s enough for now.

 

The other piece of news I have is that Smokelong Quarterly is coming out next week. In it will be my Edinburgh-based flash, ‘Boy Cyclops’, and an interview with me (first ever interview!), facilitated by the excellent writer Casey Hannan. (Casey’s book, Mother Ghost, is available on pre-order from Tiny Hardcore Press. His writing is really beautiful and weird and compelling, and I’ll be picking it up when I can).  When Smokelong goes live I’ll link to it here, and you will have lots to read, should you wish.

 

Finally! Don’t forget to submit your photograph for my competition! The deadline is the 31st of this month.

 

Booklet/Hoolet

In Scots, a hoolet is an owl:

A friendly owl of Plymouth

A booklet is what I’ve just made online for some ridiculous introductory discount, cheaper than printing them off on my home computer.  A 20 page collection of some of my photos, with some 6×4 prints thrown in free. No hoolet, this time.

One copy of Here and There in a Hazy World, for now, to see how it turns out. I was hopeless with the software, and would like to share it here when it arrives, to ask those who know more (or just have opinions) on what I should be doing with it.

In other, more exciting news: an extract from Kilea is going to be featured on the webjournal, Necessary Fiction. I am very excited about this, but a little shy, hence the hootlet and the booklet to lead me in. The editor contacted me through twitter, which was surprising and wonderful. I’ll talk more about that later, and point signs in the direction of NF when Kilea goes up, but I can highly recommend going over there now for a read, particularly at this funny research notes piece on conducting research by watching fishing on TV and the non-existence of whales.

Quick Shot

This will have to be a shorter post than anticipated (internet costs are mounting by the minute

St Mawes across the bay

Today we revisited St Mawes, where I bought a pamphlet on the local history of the town, which cheerfully records who fell off the quay and drowned, the local troubles with alcohol following the beer laws – which led to any small house aside from those occupied by officers of the sheriff being able to hold a pub licence  – and his best guesses at where the local pubs could have been located. Slight bias there, but it is a charming and useful insight into the area.

Attempts to reach this intriguing, building, opposite St Mawes on the edge of a secondary promontory, proved fruitless – involving some driving that led us into a farmer’s field and later got us stuck, very slightly, on another mud track – something to do with D’s knee accidentally nudging the parking break button on our hired car, locking the back wheels (and not, thank goodness, because we had mangled the back axle).

So, for now, I will now dramatically sign off to resume this thread either on Christmas Eve or after if time hurries on too swiftly –

 

Seaward, the high cliffs and the low coves

a field near Falmouth

Today was all about seeking out a good setting for the Heligan-esq home of Aida Helyer (Hellyer with the extra L derived from the Cornish language for either a slater, as in one who puts slates on a roof, or a hunter). I think I may have found it. But! I have to return tomorrow for better pictures to post, since we flew through the village.

I am tired, windburnt, tucked in at a convenient travelodge in St Austell – but most of all glad of another productive day, having determined that the battered Atlantic coast around Land’s End is not exactly the right place for Aida. She has more in kind with the more sheltered, greener, channel-facing coast, the rural villages and estates around the creek-cut peninsulas around Falmouth to St Austell.

Here are some of the inspiring sights of that sort of area that kept us going throughout a long day (yesterday and today) in the saddle.

Surfers staring out at the waves, Porthluney bay

Down in Porthcurnoe Village...

...and high above (the mysterious couple of the first picture would be looking out over the harbour, with that gorgeous beach - actually one of two - to their left)

The tidal island of St Michaels Mount, near Penzance, enjoying some luxury lighting effects

Some views swept all stresses away by their beauty, while others, hidden in the nooks and coves, were little joys in their own way.

The Lamorna Wink pub, in Lamorna.

That’s a picture of a Cornish fisherman, not a pirate – although it can be hard to tell the difference as the stereotypical accent is more or less the same.

Mousehole, pronounced 'Mowzel'. Other Cornish name highlights included Bugle, Goonhilly, Grampound, Probus, and Paul (a village)

The Merry Maidens, near Land's End.

Throughout Cornwall, there are ancient Celtic Crosses (Cornwall being a part of the Celtic nations which includes Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and sometimes Galicia and Asturias in Northern Spain) positioned along the ancient roads. Here was something a little more unusual – a full, Neolithic standing stone circle.

Handily, a local, possessing local insights, was out walking his slightly angry dog. He told me of the legend behind the name, that a group of women caught dancing and making merry on the Sabbath were turned to stone as punishment. Further along, two 10 feet high stones are called the Pipers – similarly afflicted because of their lack of respect of the day of rest. There was also a barrow, a burial mound covered in stones, right by the side of the road, though we couldn’t stop as the point at which we were at was on one of the (unfortunately common) single-track roads with hedgerows on either side, and blind turns not too far off.  I will have to try to get a picture of one of the crosses too, all lichened and worn from age, though only if we can find a place where neither the car nor ourselves are in any danger.

St Mawes Castle, guarding the setting of the sun over the sea

And this last picture was taken above the village of St Mawes, the village I hope to place Aida, more or less.  A taster, hopefully, of what tomorrow’s catch will be.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

Today, the weather favoured us, and D and I were able to go for a visit to the gardens of Heligan, for me a revisiting of an affecting, beautiful place I’d last been to as a teenager.

An apple-tree walk. A new picture made old, to reflect the quality of the gardens themselves...

Heligan’s gardens, east of Truro, south of St Austell, really were once lost.  The gardeners were called away by World War One — most never to return — and the gardens fell into decline, only to be rediscovered just over twenty years ago. Restoration has been an immense act of reclaiming, wrestling, the old walls, beds, greenhouses and layouts from the overgrown mess of itself. Archival layout plans that remained, consulted. Old tree labels have been uncovered with metal detectors, telling of heritage species; worcesterberry, quince, medlar.

The walled garden calling you in

Throughout the park, there are lengthy signs explaining what what done, what lost, what choices had to be made. How much the restorers thought of the adventurer who went to a remote part of Tibet to bring back cuttings of rhododendrons never seen in Europe before. Or the young men — names recorded in ledgers and on the walls of the ‘thunder box’ toilet — who went on to the trenches, to have their names carved in the war memorial of the villages they left.

water in a pool in the walled gardens

The vinery, the original vines struggling on among the shards of broken glass when they were rediscovered

The variety of horticulture, the inventiveness of the old workers and owners, is amazing – in the Victorian and Edwardian era, they were constructing boilers to heat the fig-house, using an underfloor manure system to maintain a pit where pineapples grew (and grow now again, under foggy glass), and hauling rock to set up a ‘ravine’, meant to echo the climate and flora of an alpine gully.

The birdbath and Sundial garden - with pet graveyard dating to at least the 1870s.

I took a ludicrous number of photographs. But as lovely and sad as Heligan is, as much as I love how it has been recovered, and continues to be in a state of faded elegance, why did I go and search it out on my research trip? It is because I hope to create a believable home for Aida, the daughter of an aristocratic family whose fortunes declined, and rose again with the new money brought in by her mother’s art.

Dovecote full of sleepy, cautious residents

Interior of an old tool shed, full of rakes and lawn-flattening instruments and other mysterious implements

I think of her wandering the flowerbeds in a walled garden where the bricks are heavily lichened, tumbling in on themselves. I think of her picking over interesting pieces of coloured glass in the Victorian bottle-midden that Heligan also has. Of feeding geese, working in the greenhouses, clipping off fruit, speaking to no one for days.

The privately-owned Heligan house, inaccessible, glimpsed over a collapsed wall and a stream that ran down an old entrance way

I try to think of the politics, ideals, conflicts of a rich, ancient family gone to seed. The grass, camellia, manure, standing-water scent of their estate. All background, and I don’t know how much will make it in to The Millennial, since Aida has so thoroughly rejected it. Since the modern world has left these sorts of places mostly as verdant monuments to their  irrelevance.

But I am glad to have seen Heligan again, and know that it will affect the novel in one way or another, like fig roots anchoring themselves over cracked flagstones, or just the wisp of plant-breath under glass.

 

*updated to add more photographs, I couldn’t help myself*

Notes from a Greyhound Part 2

More scribbles from the uncovered notebook:

Columbus, Ohio – Busy station, 11.30pm. 2 x calls for security. 1 hobo. Next – a couple who were on our bus since Pittsburgh called up by police -escorted away – police carrying gingerly their HUGE gun – from luggage? [this was very unnerving, for all the passengers who witnessed the frogmarch. The two were youngish, quiet, bit emo/gothy looking. At Pittsburgh I should add, there had been an NRA conference going on, see photo. ]

NRA conference in Pittsburgh, the town where the goth kid gunslingers got on...

Payphone rings, echoing, unanswered. [cop scanning the tired crowd, eyeing that phone, letting it ring out]

 

The Gateway to the West, St Louis

St Louis – Harassing beggar woman [who cornered me in the toilets – I gave her $5 and she looked ticked off and asked for more. I said I was low on funds too, and would ask my husband. Anything to get by her. A cop came out of one of the locked toilets and didn’t blink]

[there were a few other incidents, mostly at night from St Louis to Amarillo, Amarillo to Albuquerque. A hungry stray dog at a truck stop, the psychotic quality the driving took on after midnight, which one had to accept, and believe in having had a happy and full life so far, if it might be ended soon]

Albuquerque – Pink dust, pink sandstone. Clarity of air – huge turquoise sky reflecting the touches of blue decorating the city.

Santa Fe [later the same day] –  Driving there across rolling scrub hills – seeing the treeline (treevein) of the Rio Grande (can’t actually see the river)

– well spaced, smooth lines, art because of the light – instant dryness.

Fall out from bus journey – stiff shoulders, swollen ankles the size of sprains.

Ticking of seeds or blossoms from spring trees [under the door of our motel room, I think I was near delirious at this point]

deep, exhausted sleep – almost paralysed.

The Lovely Pueblo Bonito, Santa Fe. Great owners, lovely rooms - a shame D and I stayed only long enough to recover from our journey, see a bit off the town, and leave for the north.