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[ 4 minute read ]
Silence
Of ghosts and lamp posts
My cultural background is something I have never mentioned in real life to real people, or in writing for imaginary people to read or not. It is from this opening sentence that I can perceive a bifurcation in my upbringing, in England, that, to me, has provided twin parallel viewpoints for me today.
In my primary school years, I lived in a bungalow, down a dark lane with only two lamp posts lighting it. The first one lit the turn from the main road, and the second one was some way from my home. Between them they lit only the first tenth of the lane. The second one was much overgrown by a large bush which much shielded the whole lamp. It was like this because if anyone got too close to trim the undergrowth they invariably fell into the ditch. In those days, no-one ever got out of the ditch and they lived under the road but they always tried to use the bush by the lamp post to drag themselves out. The road was mostly dark shadow there, so in Winter, my sister and I would have to run past the impenetrable depths of blackness; but only because we perceived the contrast. We weren't scared of pitch darkness, because we played in an unlit huge garden at home with our own spinney at the bottom of it. This fear, or lack of it, is in contrast to kids in cities who were or are afraid of people in dark alleys, coughing. I think, back then, I had to go through the equivalent of a damp Autumn cemetery to get home in the dark.
Village life was largely unlit with big breathing animals lurking peacefully and those sounds were not at all scary. So, I grew up close to nature, like North American Indians, I suppose, which later allowed me to easily accept a nomadic life filled with harsh weather and hardship; only surviving by my wits and daily toil to survive; finding and collecting food and water and buying loaves of bread in different languages; and then moving on, as I walked across Europe. I slept in cemeteries and heated churches that I found in near-perfect darkness. One morning, in a village in Austria, I walked into a young woman and she into me, so dark was it. I never saw her even when our faces bumped. I only heard her calmly apologise. She dropped her bread rolls and I helped her pick them up. I knew she had dropped some things because they bumped my thighs on the way down.
Something that helped me to accept how people on the continent did things differently, was the influence my German mother had on me. We had real Christmas trees with real candles and very expensive glass antique baubles. Her mum sent us Christmas hampers with German Christmas treats in them; so Lebkuchen, Pretzels, and Pfeffernuss chocolate bakes was not at all new to me. Of course, hearing people kindly speaking English to me with their national accents was nothing to me, so I had no culture shock to inhibit my foraging and escapades in Europe, and no fear of the dark if I couldn't see a bush or tree-shrouded lamppost by a ditch. Having never been scared of looming figures coughing in the park or in alleys I slept in bushes and hedges and on benches, but never near a lamppost.
What this means is that when I later lived in a three bedroom house and there was a power-cut, I could hear the silence just as I used to hear it. I was instantly back in my childhood with my ears pricked, when I was used to the dark; so even though it was fully daytime, relying on my ears and any possible echoes of footsteps and breathing. I was more alive then than I was when the power was on. In my house, there was no telly, radio or stereo playing; the immersion heater was not on; and the cooker was off. I had no fridge to make a noise. When the power came on again, I heard the shrouded silence again. There were no extra decibels but I was deafened. Suddenly, I felt as though I had buried my head beneath a pillow and all sound was dulled; except there was no measurable sound. I went under the staircase and manually switched off the power at the mains, but it made no difference. I have, since that day only heard the same silence in Eire (Ireland) with leprechauns scuffling along in hedges as they followed me along the lanes in the early, fully dark evenings. In that village, the diesel train jumped off its rails a mile away, and its labouring volume increased as it charged towards me on the same lane I was on. Only a huge bonfire in a field saved me from being lost to the spirit world or from being run over. I was not drunk and had taken no drugs.
It will be no surprise then if I say I write with a knowledge that there is something else there, but it isn't bad if you respect it and sometimes give way. Across the modern world we find disparities in people that are as odd as, when I could hear and then I couldn't; only a lamp post that casts a shadow by a ditch is scary and total darkness is safe; and strange food isn't strange at all, except it is if it is chocolate-covered ants.
I write with 'Saudade' (Portuguese) which when I first came across it, I understood it to be a longing for something that isn't there. I think it is the same as what a young woman, Erica, said to a 'No Doubt' song, called 'Don't Speak', 'This song reminds me of a boyfriend I never had!'