Staring Back Along the Tube

What feels like a chronic failing is not taking in or living in the moment fully when traveling and visiting amazing places. Maybe this is partly a ‘western disease’ in general? We spend a lot of time planning and looking forward, and then later, looking back, reminiscing, reliving, but sometimes it’s difficult to actually absorb all and appreciate the present while there. (Maybe that’s because the present doesn’t actually exist, ala Johnny from Naked: “but you’re not in it now. you’re not in it now. you’re not in it now….”) Perhaps living as much as one can in the present is what most approaches contentment? Isn’t that what ye olde Zen Buddhist meditation partly relates to? Clearing the mind just in order to be. Not that modern life encourages living for the moment much – “think of the future!”; “you must get organised”; “what did you do this weekend?”; “what are we doing tonight”; “you remember that time when we tarred and feathered a pig on the Yorkshire Dales?”; “what were you doing in that kennel in the dead of last night wearing extra-thick, non-slip oven mitts and carrying a 4-gallon tub of lard?”; etc. etc. But, I digress.

Revisiting sounds and images from the summer jaunt to the Highlands & Islands brought this thought home again. I spend time recording ambient sound, shooting photos, and more rarely, jotting notes whenever I travel & visit new locations. One does these things for artistic reasons of course (and do get absorbed in the recording moment, in fact), but also to make sure the memory is augmented later. And because of the latter (which definitely works (and also feeds future artistic projects)), sometimes appreciating place is reduced while actually there. What I end up doing, what I’ve just done, is stimulating an itch to return to these places once again to get more out of them. Happened also with walking the Southwest Coast Path a couple of years back. Is this illusion? Or is it being drawn back to somewhere you feel you didn’t get enough from; didn’t fully understand or absorb? Bit of both, no doubt. Or just greed? Basically, we never have enough time to do all that we want to do and then we procrastinate and don’t fully utilise the time we do have. Bitch, innit. The flip side is that having a visual and audio record of snippets of the more interesting aspects of life is rewarding, and being transported back in time & space during cold, dank, dark winter evenings is entertaining. But, to quote Martin Phillips of the Chills: “You cannot drive and stare rearview.”