I wrote this piece some years ago, when trying to understand my focus and how to look at things.  I was captivated by Annie Dillard's writing at the time and the rather vertiginous swirling discussion is evidence of that influence, but follow it through.  There is useful stuff in there.

 

My commute via bike and train is rarely without incident or something worth reflecting upon: some things are clearly noteworthy but others need teasing out as if hiding behind a cupboard.  

A couple of months ago I stood on the platform but the train was delayed – the display said there was a problem with animals on the line.  Around the bend where the train belonged, trundled a cow; stepping quite lightly over the sleepers.  As she approached the platform people laughed, phoned other people up, and someone filmed it on their phone to be broadcast on the local news.  The train inched along behind her, being very aware of the potential for causing a panic-led flight.  The transport police finally caught up with the cow and guided her into a field; we all embarked and got to work without too much delay, pleased to have an entertaining story to share.

This particular day I rode through the dark to arrive at Backwell station; gliding into the railway station and to the ticket machine.  Ahead of me was a man I had seen once or twice before at the station, dressed in army camouflage that stood out rather inappropriately against the grey and black formal work clothes of his fellow travellers.  What caught my attention was the overly powerful smell of his after-shave and a seemingly inappropriate fluorescent yellow elastic snake belt bisecting his uniform.  I wondered what the regulations for after-shave were in the army, or whether he was exercising an oddly non-conformist streak.  And the belt?  Possibly a touch of frivolity against a backdrop of staid responsibility.

The sky was grey like wadding as I cycled along the road from the station to work; the air rich with moisture.  Cars were speeding in both directions and preventing me from thinking, and at one point two barely missed a woman who had decided to cross the road without bothering to wait for a gap in the traffic.  The ground glinted with rain, although despite this winter marker the wind blew a warmth that made me regret wearing a merino top under my jacket.  Suddenly I was hit by the smell of my mother’s washing powder – a man on the pavement was damp enough for the familiar perfume to be driven out of his clothing.  Neither flower nor food; the smell offered a tiny aperture into a different olfactory world, but failed to feel genuine.  However, the scent transported me to my mum’s house: the orange sweater of my dad’s that lives in a variety of cupboards upstairs in our house: the car she gave us.  My mother in law suggested once that our washing powder is equally evocative, but we maintained it has no scent at all – familiarity has begotten invisibility.

 Annie Dillard suggested we look to celebrate the small, the invisible, the hidden in a place.  What can trees and flowers be without soil?  Look at a sunset, then turn around and look at the dark – can there be a sunset without the deep blue behind?  Each force must have an equal and opposite force pushing back, yin and yang, black and white.  The tiny things (look at the world through an inverter) the big things are often far less powerful than the invisible. A lichen in all its innocent camouflage sitting without growing for centuries has the power of existence and a quiet discourse with its surroundings, but it would be a foolish man to start telling people about this observation.  Not big enough.

I have spent a long time thinking about and sharing the significant; standout experiences that translate well to other people’s lives, car-crash sights.  What I have often missed is the chip of grit on the edge of a puddle, the smell of emptiness after a cool night.  These things are hard to share as well as hard to see and so become subsumed into the backdrop – too many microscopic details living out their own existence.  Is it possible to describe a beach by poring over each grain of sand?  Every tiny stone has its own beauty and colour but we ignore these for the big sweep.

Dillard describes with great beauty the origin of a mangrove island – one seed attached to a smear of soil bobbing on the surface of the sea.  As time goes on the little habitat accretes material and builds up mass; this in turn attracts small creatures and other living things and before long we have a substantial pontoon no longer bobbing but resisting the waves.  From small things do giant islands form.

So what is it – looking away from the obvious to spot the significant?  Celebrating the miniscule?  Recognising the value of all things?  Knowing that small things can grow to be big ones?

If we look for the significant in the smallest of objects will we not get overwhelmed by the innumerable possibilities?  If everything is significant then we dare to discard nothing.  Or perhaps, equally and conversely perhaps nothing is significant.

Grampy's fork and Auntie Brenda's tea set

 

My Grampy was a keen gardener.  He had a large garden in which he grew fruit and vegetables that defied standards of size and production; I remember him entering the local flower show just once, and he came away with 26 first prizes.  Having made his point he never entered again, never needed to.

The house was built by him as the family home for the rest of their lives, and he set the garden up accordingly - lorry loads of imported soil as a counter to the flinty and unpromising ground in the area, and annual dumps of well rotted manure (cow, not horse of course).  Apparently turkey manure was also better than chicken, although I have no idea whether this is true.  He seemed to be thinking along the lines of the principles of Biodynamics, whereupon the land is cultivated in sympathy with the flow of energy and resources, although where a builder with little education or training would have found out about this I don't know. Potatoes were always planted on Good Friday though; apparently this supported their growth and his resulting crop seemed to bear out the success of his thinking.

Grampy's tools were cherished to the point of being washed and brushed down after each use, like his bikes and even the car after a drive.  The spade and fork were pressed into service virtually every day, and the years and years of sandy soil slowly wore the tines of the fork away until each one was half its starting length.  The points were sharper than they should be, creating a lethal weapon that actually couldn't do its original job very well any more. When my grandparents died and the house was emptied, the fork came to me after my dad had put a new handle on and painted the metal black.  This artefact of bucolic self-sufficiency now sits in my cellar: I'm rather scared to use it as the the points are so sharp, and it doesn't actually work very well due to the shortness of each spike - it is all out of balance now.

I was recently chatting to my Auntie Brenda; a gentle old lady and the last surviving member of her generation in our family.  The subject of clearing out years of junk came up, and she offered the thought that the tea set in the display cabinet should go as she never has visitors, plus everyone drinks out of mugs nowadays.  She has fond memories of when it was bought, but the reality is that it never sees the light of day.  On the other hand, those memories still linger, and the set isn't doing any harm sitting there other than becoming an obstacle to dust around.  And I could see all the objects that surround her, none moving until after she has gone; those memories holding her in a warm nest of comfort.

I just don't know what to do with these things and the many others; objects that have slowly drifted down through the generations and landed in my house - each item holds in its fabric an echo of the experiences and values of the past, not to mention the character of its previous owner. Do they remind me of the person?  Well, yes to the spade, no to the tea set Isuppose. Are they intrinsically interesting in their own right as artefacts of a previous time, or are they just beautiful items?  I'm not sure, and of course beauty is culturally relative anyway - I may love them now and hate them in the future, which would change what they offer as objects. Do they hold some value or narrative?  Of course objects are composed of neutral material - it is just the shaping of them by a human that carries the message, not to mention the interpretation of the person holding them. This makes sense now. Grampy's fork has a form that I can then interpret and pull in other memories to add to the story - hard honest toil in the garden; the love of plants; the sheer strength and work capacity of the man.  My imagination fills in the gaps, painting a picture of myriad flowers, copious potatoes and other vegetables.  And, the values.  Self-sufficiency, the value of physical labour.

So, what would happen if I threw these things away?  Away would go physical representations of these values, and the values themselves would be consciously rejected.  No wonder it is hard to get rid of things!  It isn't just the object; it isn't just the memory of the person; it is also the discourse of which the object is the key to unlock.

Dare I throw away the fork, and in doing so throw away the key to unlock these values?  Or, are the values sufficiently ingrained in me that the object is no longer needed? How about my keeping the fork in the cellar, deep in the heart of the house so that the values are sitting symbolically right where they need to be?  Maybe one day I won't need it there as everything is in my head.  Maybe one day those values will have shifted and evolved, and the fork no longer represents what I need in the world.  Not just me of course, but everyone in the family.  Will my children need those values?

In the meantime the tea set sits in the display cabinet awaiting its fate.  Awaiting me as the arbiter of what is to be kept for future generations, or what is no longer needed.   Tea sets - the ceremony of old formality, of showing your finest to other people, or of the care needed to prevent drips of tea landing on the easily spoiled polished wood furniture. And I take time to pick over my grandparents' possessions, my parents' possessions, my own too, looking for things to keep and things to get rid of.  Stories to tell my children, or stories to give up to time and let new ones come in. Rules for behaving and being; writ large.