The Fens

 

Our landscape is formed by the Fens, where Graham Swift crafted his masterpiece Waterland. The winter reeds quieten the horizon. The sky in the river ices into a cube of blue jade. Walking along a path in the woods, I thought I would never be able to detect a trail as deserted as this, but there are always canals, meandering towards the unknown. Then the boats, houseboats in various colours, and traces of peoples’ lives, strenuously or effortlessly, engraved in the setting sun. The frost sparks the grass, time feasts on its dinner; the abundant little lights.

 

 

The Absolute Quietness 

 

Not far from our village there lies a reservoir, where trees, birds and flowers co-author passages reflected on the water. It’s said that to read through these sentences one needs to be absorbed in absolute quietness. 

 

As soon as I walk into the natural world, I realise there is no such thing as absolute quietness. The dictate of nature is often deceitful. Noises send out an invitation, without prejudice, to anyone passing through. The songs of blackbirds, woodpeckers and the cawing of ravens, movements of young squirrels, sparks of old streams, the distant traffic sounds. But amongst all the clamor my thoughts are the loudest, as if I walk in tandem with a ghostly soliloquist, the shadow of my voice. 

 

Absoluteness is only a pattern of thunder, when senses are seeking drama. A pattern that is never present and discernible.

 

 

The Paths

 

It feels like we have been spending most of the year walking, to and fro, on a small patch stretching less than five miles. We strike out fervently in a similar fashion, time after time, on the same paths, like 17th century’s still-life Dutch painters scratching their own familiar pallet. If there is a reward for our faithful routine, I hope it’s a new, secretive path, or a new egress.

 

As husband and wife, we cling to one another like a pair of scissors. We trim our plants neatly as well as our conversations. We sit serenely together, perching on the edge of dead logs and eating cold picnics. We sing quietly above crow’s rattles all the way down the deserted alley behind an orchard. In warmer days, when nature kindly lays a pad of cotton wool over the sky, fireflies sparkle the memory of my far away tropical hometown. We would pass the ruin of an old chimney, walk towards a dark wood among the rustle of falling leaves. If it starts to rain, straight and heavy, the naked drops would draw long lines on a narrow lane like strings of blazing fishes. Then in a mute trance, the fireflies are gone. We seem to have left all the circular, arduous treks only to our lonely selves.

 

But we are still here. Our lives are still here, no matter how lonely or small. Against my palm, warmth diffused from your body. Here will be another year surrounded by the same paths as we walk along together. 

 

Paths never die in an old marriage, even in winter. They grow beyond the family trees, bypassing courtyards and cemeteries, sliding down the abrupt slopes, now lying under my feet, still meandering and splitting like grass snakes, smelling the fermented fallen apples, damp leaves and fresh earthworms. 

 

 

 

The Past

 

I have grown to love this wetland beneath the wildflower meadows surrounding me. The Fens, that’s what people call it. The Fens are vast and dark, remnants of the immemorial roots of a sea spirit, smelling of lavender, poppies and cow parsley. On sunny days, all life is illuminated by the silvery sunlight glimmering on the wavelets of the canals, wavering like the shimmering tarmac. 

 

The chickens are happy and the crops swell in the fields. I too, perch on the eternal summer breeze, trying not to think too hard about life, though its fragility lays high on the thin wings of sweet air. 

 

Whenever I sit under a willow tree looking to the skies, I see sparrows in their constant struggle to cover the unfathomable vastness of this wetland. Men may have forgotten, but birds always remember the past, when there was only saltwater, when the whole of this land was inside a massive glass jar of saltwater, and when the devil was holding the jar.

 

 

The Love 

 

The last Sunday of this year was a fine day, cold and clear. We walked along the river in Great Shelford, a beautiful place where we first courted. The sun leaked its gold into the crystal water. There came a swan, dazzling white, elegantly blurring in the joyful reflection of floating clouds.  Other creatures live to fly. 

 

Not far from the river there is a tiny wood which forever haunted my hours of solitude, we used to call it ‘our little forest’, where, in the distant thunder, we could lay our backs together in great comfort and oneness.

 

I do love you. My experience of loving you, in its inwardness, begins here, in this unchanged scenery, the pink sky of English summer nights, the leaves fluttering off our first balcony in the autumn wind, the chill of winter dew and its sharp scent.  

 

I have learnt to memorise all, and I can pace through years of memories and endless snapshots, of places we have lived, of our laughter and silence, of the last Sunday afternoon of the year. Your hand was in my hand, and you had given my skin just the right amount of warmth, the memory of my blood vessels blushed.

 

 

The Allotment 

 

My allotment is a tiny square, just a gray dot if filmed from the sky, but it is the kingdom of so many species, including me. There are hundreds of earthworms working through the hard earth brought on by the warm weather, diligently turning the soil upside down like living ploughs.

 

Whilst earthworms chow down on the microbes, microbes feast on all the decay throughout the entire autumn. The process of decomposition becomes magical. Soil is warmed up and more carbon released. Then comes winter. Snow seals up the entrance of unpleasant memories, potato blights, cabbage flies or the frustrating, long-lasting drought. When the snow melts everything will be reborn again. 

 

May. Birds come to the fertilised land to look for their special delicacy, my loving luscious earthworms. I cannot be bothered to play the scarecrow this time, it’s better to keep all the natural predators intact as long as I get my worm cast which is full of bacteria and nutrients for the surrounding organisms. 

 

I have turned the soil inside out to aerate and to create a better drainage for the rainy season. I have sowed seeds in my greenhouse and prayed. I have turned myself into a dervish with saffron frock. If I could get on a horse cart, I would be standing behind and holding on to sacks of wood chippings, keeping an elegant balance like a real farm girl from the past. 

 

Thanks to our village swap group I have got my wood chippings from a kind neighbour. I just need to wait until spring comes, then everything will be fine again.

 

I love my allotment although I am only a newbie. I started growing four years ago. Horticulture to me is a misty labyrinth. Whilst I expect all the seeds to grow the same time and the same size, some botanists have pointed out that it is advantageous for plants not to shoot up all at the same time. Sprouts never sprout simultaneously anyway and their new limbs vary in small ways. I don’t know what determines these visible differences. I too am a totally non-identical being and a discrete alien species from my mother, despite how controlled her pregnancy was by her own culture and the reproduction methodology that she acquired from her medical school. The differences, that’s what makes the germination far more interesting than duplication.

 

I love my allotment. I could almost bury my ashes there and join the decomposition when my time comes, experience the beauty of nature from a lower angle. For this aspiration I am willing to live in a tiny, insignificant sweet life