Clare Crombie's Diary - November, 1995

The Smell of Autumn

This month I REALLY don't know what to write about. I'm serious, I mean it. There's nothing there. Well of course there are things there, images, thoughts, little bits of experience that stay with me.

According to Gestalt psychology, human brains hold memory of unfinished events and tend to let go of completed ones.......so I could start with that and assume the unfinished ones have something still to convey to me.

Yesterday I walked on Hampstead Heath for 45 minutes before going to join my co facilitator for our second writing workshop. One or two mental ''Snapshots'' stay with me. One was of the moment when I came across a drinking fountain and enjoyed the cool water going down my throat and also splashing on my face. At the same time a large black dog was drinking from the dish at the base of the fountain, taking big lollipop slurps before trotting off again on whatever trail was occupying him. Another was a moment when a black puppy ran chaotically towards me, as if I was an old friend and launched herself at my legs, wriggling and squirming, paws and nose going everywhere in excitement, very invitational, staying near me just long enough for me to touch her soft shiny fur before she tumbled off to her next discovery Every so often while I walked, I became aware of the sound of church bells coming from somewhere in the distance. And every so often I walked through wafts of the most delicious smells.....damp, rotting leaves and wet earth.

I wrote this ''poem'' during the workshop. The theme which had emerged had been to do with polarities of implosion/explosion, violence/death, boredom/creativity. I had woken early in the morning and listened to Mark Tully on Radio 4 talking about war and peace.....some wars that have to be fought and some peaces that are ''bad'' peace, like the Treaty of Versailles.

On my way home in the car I heard a small part of a programme that seemed to be about the English countryside..........growth versus stagnation. Allowing something ''real'' to happen, or trying to preserve the countryside in a way which leads to nothing happening except tourism. One of the presenters said that for the English our countryside is always associated with loss and sadness, and has been since the Indusrial Revolution. And yet it is the one thing that which still reminds of our Englishness. So it follows that being English involves experiencing a sense of loss.

Something clicked in me when I heard that, I felt I understood something about myself. Understood maybe why I ''walk an alien, in the streets of cities'' (Kathleen Raine) , dream of living in the country and ''can't'' leave the city......why I feel like bursting into tears when a small puppy hurls itself towards me like a long lost friend?? why I feel nourished by a drink of water under the trees, shared with a big black dog??? Why my whole being feels fed by the smell damp earthy decay??? I don't know.........

I still don't know what I'm Writing about. I've done what I always do, allowed myself to freewheel and usually a theme emerges.......don't know what it is today. Maybe that's it....the theme of not knowing.

WHO'S THERE ????????