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Witness Notes 8

Witness Notes 8

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 (After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Cercal, Portugal. July 2020.Time, at some points and places, stretches. Days seem longer, the mind translates the passage of the sun in ways which are not, perhaps, normal. When I was eight, my family moved to Stromness, Orkney. The month was March, so the daylight was practically the same across the single face of our globe yet, as the months passed and I ventured out to play and explore, to search for lost gold in the burns, plan raft voyages to the Amazon, and torment the bull in the field below Brinkie’s Brae, the evenings grew beyond anything I had ever witnessed.Time stretched. The sun would be high in the sky, long before I woke, and would still be there when I went to bed. It was as though our relocation had gifted me with unlimited playtime, unlimited potential adventure. This was, of course, before that first, dark, and long winter and subsequent SADness.For me, as for many of you, I suspect, the last few months have also stretched. Think about this time last year, where you were, what you were doing—it seems half a lifetime away (and yet, strangely, also near enough to touch). I am fortunate, in that I live in the northern hemisphere and, even as I was locked down, the daylight extended. Not by Orkney standards, nowhere near, but each evening was brighter longer, each morning the sun higher in the sky than the previous. Now that the solstice has passed, the days already feel shorter, the screaming of the swifts more frantic, as their insect-snatching hours condense, the moment of departure for Africa ever closer. For this year’s young, they will not land for nearly three years.Imagine that—sleeping on the wing, never landing, never stopping, constant movement. Nature is ridiculous and wonderful and inspiring.I try to maintain a healthy balance of positivity in this place, to resist my natural tendency to raise uncomfortable, urgent and, I’d argue, essential questions. At least on balance—asking these questions is important. In the earlier drafts of this paragraph I moved from the joy of nature being so inspiring to the bigger issue, to the damage we wreak and sow. I have edited this out, it is a long section, all about our place on this planet, living in a tiny strip of breathable gas, on a floating and equally narrow section of rock. I shall think about how best to use this but, for now, I’d just like to reiterate—nature is ridiculous and wonderful and inspiring.FinallyIf you can afford to, there are currently two direct ways to support ...
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