Alone in the early morning on a cold train station floor I am waiting to go home. When suddenly a twitch, a thought, not exactly spontaneity but impulse urges me to my feet and ferrets me faster than my still groggy brain can defend to an electronic ticket terminal. Normandy, Ancourteville-sur-Héricourt, Bennetot, Cailleville, Bordeaux-Saint-Clair, La Havre. Next train. La Havre. Forty euros. Can't be that far? What time do the trains return? Two PM. Four PM. Six PM. No worries. No worries. All day. Card, pin, purchase – laugh.
Twenty minutes to wait, looking at a map I find where I am going. The west cost, province of Normandy, going to the beach. The cold Atlantic beach. And while this still doesn't seem to be getting any easier, the promise is that it might just get better. . . .
We depart with a sigh.
Shhhhhhhhhh....... Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
I've always assumed that if you can work past the fear of making a decision you have conquered it. While usually taking action is enough to alleviate a fear there is also another type fear, one that persists past initiative and into being. One that tears away at your senses, dulling and diluting experience into pinhole visions of the back of the seat in front of you. A heightened anxiety that cages perception into a routine of check, check, double check, check. Waves of fear that something or someone will attack at any moment unless you are constantly aware of all the things that there are out there to be afraid of.
I came out here, thinking I would find a piece of the puzzle. I found more gaps. More holes looking for pieces to fill them and a big sign that says LET IT GO. You want it all and you want it now. You want to understand and to be understood. You want to have lived through, what you are living through to feel good for having lived through it already. Impetuous child. Little girl with dreams seen out of a corner of the rear view window. A sliver of blur; rocks, trees, mountains, melted crayons and a plastic snake you got at the Zoo. Driving head long, laying down, trying to touch it all without your seat-belt on.
Click-click. Click-click. Click-click.
We arrive with an inhale.
Le Havre is the end of the line, industrial and unfamiliar. Not particularly quaint. Not like Toulouse. Not like Nice. Not like the Loire valley or the Effiel Tower. Its is utility, created in grace. I sit in a park, large chestnut trees dropping woody rounds all around me and wonder what roasted chestnuts taste like and if you can buy them in the streets of Paris in the winter. I like this park. It looks fun, without being fun at all. Concave and enclosed, it feels particular and established.
My wondering takes me diagonally straight through the centre of town
- shop, store, bakery, empty mall, empty parking spots, dogs walking owners, owners walking children, grey skies, opening up, lazy fountain, three signs L'Hotel Ville, more parks, empty allies, stretched dirty awnings, buttered dough, sweets, rainswept gravel, horns of quite a distance, strange looks, green coat, garbage bins always in the way, small sidewalks, smaller cars, salty air, ocean brine, humid, dank, huddled, open streets, closed houses, construction down main street, port city, large cranes, running trains, barge, bilge, a city begging, respect me -
and finally the coast. On the way, fruit and a bottle of water, washing them in the bag. Quite ingenious if not abnormal. I've sat at two coasts now on two different oceans in the past two weeks and just like before something unbelievably soothing takes over me in the knowledge that I have reached the end. There is no going further.
Across the foreground kites start stutter and double over in the maritime wind and though I feel full in the company of strangers, I am still alone. Deliciously, deservedly alone. Beautiful arcane isolation. I love you and the thoughts you bring and the moments we share together. A deep leafy tree, looking up and under at great growing oaks of wood and fibre stretching strength over top of me. Mythical creatures, dining in the dirt with their heads in the heavens; too earthy too live to glorious to die. Ritual like tombstone stumps mark where all the good creatures have gone down.
Companionship alleviates the guilt associated with being alone. But I am not afraid to be alone. I am afraid when I am alone.
I don't have much more time. But I don't want to to go back. Want to press on. Goodlessons. Cooldays. Lightrain. Blurry skies marching slowly in the breeze. Pen bleeds in the droplets. I feel something refreshing, almost OK, though still sick like too many cigarettes or unwashed grapes, but happy to be here. Proud. . .
Now its not just time but my pen that is running its course. These words and thoughts and memories continue to click away unyielding to the outside world. I feel stronger somehow in the darkroom convalescences of this pen and novelty of it all. A small work of not much consequence, but mine all the same; and now yours.
