Returning again and again
One of the things that struck me in the video of Orhan Pamuk shared by James is this very deliberate practice of repeated returns.
It made me think about places and things I return to again and again. Voluntarily. Work doesn't count, though I suppose it could, if I were a better, more mindful person.
My wife and I visit a particular woods, as near-to-weekly as possible. In nature repeated visits are rewarded by very different experiences each time. Week to week you experience the changes in season and weather. I find this helpful in autumn to acclimatise to winter and then invigorating in spring as everything starts to bud and bloom.
When I go to the Lake District, usually at least once a year, I like a particular view. I like to go to this view as early as possible in the holiday. It tells me, yes, I am here. When we go there nine times out of ten we stay in the same place. I like going to new places, don't get me wrong. But there's a lot to be said for knowing where the shops are, what bus to get, and so on - and on holiday it saves time. Getting familiar with a place.
Near where my grandparents lived is another favourite spot where we went for days out at the river. When I go there now I remember all those times, all rolled together. The river, as rivers do, has changed a lot in forty years. The beach we played on as kids has moved further along. Banks have risen and fallen. The corner is slowly eroding. Landmark rocks have shifted, submerged.
There was another outdoor space I used to know very well. I felt like the resident druid, spending hours there every day for a couple of years. Sadness can be a place though, and when things changed it was hard to go back, when things aren't the same. And I didn't, for a long time. But starting to return has been therapeutic too. And what better spot to write this blog post? So here I am, enjoying a sunny evening on the field.
Today I'm not watching a film for the seventy-third time. Because I'm going to see it at the cinema in two days. It is good to be flexible. Or so I tell myself, feeling a bit twitchy.
There are other pieces of art, books, films, and poems, I return to. I term it paying my respects. Whenever I am nearby I like to pop in to pay my respects to Shakespeare's First Folio, the Magna Carta, and friends, at the British Library.
I find so many books and poems so rewarding to keep coming back to - how they seem to change, how they can grow and mean different things at different times. One of the only two useful things my former evil stepmother ever said me was that your favourite Austen will change throughout your life and that is as it should be.
And in order to experience that I have to return again and again.