What is thought, if not meditation? What is meditation, if not imagination?
What is imagination? If not discovery, what is it to fish, if not to meditate…?
The pool has slumbered in this deepening hollow since the very beginning of our epoch, quietly consuming, its appetite voracious and as yet still unsated. All that has passed, immemorially preserved beneath the pallium of calm tranquillity. The latest settlers on the high land above only add to the air of quiet contemplation in their monastic seclusion. Yet perhaps this is fitting for a cache such as this, a continuing accumulation of knowledge unmatched by any paltry human endeavour.
Part 1
The sodden path felt springy underfoot, water-filled imprints left by my boots disappearing without trace as the underlying peat is slowly reconstituted. At first sight, the hallowed waters of the pool appeared almost as a holo scene, shimmering hypnoticallybetween the tall fronds of gently swaying reed. In this wooded basin there is always somewhere to find a sheltered spot from prevailing winds, or a shady spot free from encroachment of sunlight. But on this afternoon it was calm and overcast and very soon I settled into a green enclosure, with just a view of sky and water, endlessly meeting and repeating.
Faintly, on the still air, the monastery bell chimed the fourth hour. Soon, the occupants would be preparing for their evening vespers, the remembrance of all creation. And, as I sat quietly, the bright top of my float almost an intrusion amongst the profusion of life, I too began to consider my place in things.
As a fisherman, my mind is programmed to probe the unseen, visualising the undulations and contours of the sub-surface world. But here, in this place, these thoughts felt superficial. I needed to go deeper, past the glittering shoals, the shadowed lairs of watchful eyes, past those who make their living amongst the roots and weeds. To go deeper yet, into a memorial of laminated millennia.
What it is to wander . . .
Part 2
As my thoughts detached from the physical, they focused into a new consciousness that probed the turbated upper layers of silt, explored the channels and tubeways of the benthic creatures that inhabit this zone. And as this consciousness delved deeper, itbecame more aware of antecedent events. At first, some of these were recognisable to both parts of me, familiar smells and sounds stored in the upper striations; hints of wood smoke and gunshots, echoes of excited dogs, laughter and shouts of men from across the years; faint vibrations of falling trees and the creak of oars, vague recollections of the scuttering splashes of ancestral moorhens and theperfumed scent of fresh cut hay; infinitesimal details,randomly plucked from a bewildering myriad of interwoven filaments.
These upper levels were also studded with human-made treasures. A ring of unrequited love, consigned to oblivion in a moment of passion, now filled with a finger of decay. Ancient artefacts of marvellously fashioned wood and metal, lost or discarded, preserved in the anoxic deposits.
Abruptly, darker sensations; violence, steel, the shattered bones of vanquished enemies. Crimes thought hidden but, as all else, recorded for eternity in the mire. Pressing deeper, the pollution of human kind begins to lessen as a more simple way of life is revealed. No living things inhabit the archive now, save perhaps the most rudimentary of bacteria, those survivors and seeders of new worlds; the creeping sounds of the benthos in their tubes and subways, fading whispers far above. Then all at once, the metamorphosis is complete, my chrysalis shell left behind above the surface. There is only the consciousness.
Deconstruction of time brings enlightenment…
Part 3
The probe is now fully honed to pierce the dark, to travel back through this vast library of knowledge. Wood-smoke is still ever present and the pollens of cultivation lie preserved alongside the wastes of domestication. Seasons pass in ever changing cycles of unpredictable survival. Plunging deeper still, humans become more transient as the realm of trees is ushered in; their majesty towering above all else as the dominant memory. Fauna too, of all kinds,proliferate, their presence forever overlaid by the countless cellophane wings of dragonflies. And all the while, the breeze brings messengers of far lands and waters to this hungry repository.
These rich and abundant layers are not uniform, they contain a multitude of extremes. Harsh seasons of huddled life, sparse and unfruitful, streaks of pale in the strata. But the overriding narrative of this middle span of centuries is of warm Arcadian plenty. Even set against the continuous ebb and flow of the tide of species, it remains in crystalline contrast to the accelerating extinction unfolding in the upper layers.Perhaps inside all of us we hold reminiscences of these times, passed on through genes and legends that have survived the ages and still fuel our increasingly desperate desire for a utopian world of peace and harmony. But in truth, all just a shallow fiction of our own creation.
The levels compress . . .
Part 4
At this depth it is cooling rapidly, the layers thin and become hard to penetrate as they near the bedrock. There is very little wood-smoke now, humans are few, impossible to guess at the super predator they will become. Some isolated giants still stalk the land but these are heirlooms of older days, fleeting cameos, their closing performance. Breaking through these final brittle veneers, there is memory of very little, nothing but the distant murmur of swirling bitter winds and fragmented remains of wintry,lichened birches clinging to life at the barren edge of endurance.
11,000 years of history come to an end in a bleak moraine of rock and split, scoured chalk. Prior to this, the pool did not exist and the story of life in those extinct landscapes that preceded it, is a tale for another to relate. It is cold here, alien and unwelcoming, with ominous creakings and shrieks of a creeping, claustrophobic menace, slow but inexorable. Unnoticed until now, a gentle snow of suffusing microscopic particles is also present. These have no place this far back in history; the index is disturbed.
The consciousness does not wish to tarry; breaking free from a glacial horror of foreboding, it speeds skyward through the planes, overtaking the past, the need for light and more familiar surroundings becoming more urgent as it withdraws. Quicker and quicker, coruscating flashbacks of past, present and future, blaze by in a mesmerising tumult of sensory cacophony until, finally, the rhapsody of ascension complete, it bursts forth from the ooze, in a rupturing fountain of billowing matter.
Within time, all things coagulate…
Part 5
With the waning of the day came an uneasy, fitful breeze that started me from a reverie the extent of which cannot adequately be described by words alone. After that timeless moment of confusion when one is temporarily between realities, I snapped back into focus. My float was dancing and swaying amongst a swathe of escaping silver bubbles that fizzed audibly on the surface, as they rode black, thunder-cloud plumes of erupting detritus.
A carp was in the swim…
It was not one of those fattened beasts, enslaved in a circus of monoculture and ignorance, reduced to mere sideshow exhibits by a parade of clowns. No, a wild thing, few in number, mythical uncatchable denizens: the stuff of childhood fantasies. Here in this ancient pool, a king with a burnished crown, the keeper of knowledge, his lineage intact and unbroken. Before the frame rate of my eyes could compute, the float had simply vanished. I struck.
Into thin air….
Prologue
Perhaps I was a witness to my own returning shadow, but as the maelstrom calmed and the tumult of bubbles drifted, slowly disintegrating, I could not help thinking this was as it should be. Not all mysteries need to be solved; whilst we have mysteries we have hope, we have a reason to feel alive. The unknown is the very foundation of our existence. After all, the most powerful memories are the ones that get away. As damp tendrils of dusk began creeping around me, the experience also brought with it a stark reminder, of the uncertain future for all things. But encompassed by the enduring beauty of this place, I instinctively understood that this would be just another tiny piece of the tale…
Chronicled in the sediments of this pallen’d pool.
Writing, Images & Illustrations Knight Heron (Langmere, Norfolk. August 2024)
Afterword: dedicated to Mum, as she continues the struggle to make sense of her own memories.
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