This text was written as I learn to live with Long Covid and attempt to regain my creativity. All the posts and some more info can be found here.
I walk along station road with my bag strung across my shoulders one way, and my camera strung the other way. The weight of both feels familiar yet somehow new.
I stop at the old stone bridge that was designed in era where cars didn't dominate the roads. It is so narrow that the council had to install traffic lights to let cars from either direction through at separate time. The pavement is more of a squirt of tarmac at the edge of the wall than a pavement. I struggle to walk on it with my walking stick but I make do. The river Frome below is in full flow. It has been for a while. The trolley that made the water froth is gone and I notice that the flow is subtly quieter than it used to be. The patch of land next to it is still flooded, the water dark and brown under the low morning light. I consider creating an image but the tangle of fallen trees and crisscrossed branches defy composition.
I walk away from this too narrow pavement to rejoin the main one. I dodge as far from the road as I can, knowing all too well that cars like to speed up here, right where the rain water gathers and pools. To my left, a familiar path both open and overgrown, both used and uncared for, attracts my eyes. I have seen it hundreds of time by now but today I see it differently. I turn my camera on and create an image.
I walk on, cross the road where there is no crossing, shove myself into the bramble to avoid a car that is not giving me any room where the pavement does not exist. I should be on the other side, only this is the side with the opening to the mud trail that parallels the warehouses of the estate in which I work. My shoes squelch and I smile as I picture the mud pile that will gradually develop under my desk as the heating dries my shoes. A violent cascade of glass from the nearby recycling centre deafens me for a moment and absorbs the voice of the blackbird I was spying on.
A few moments later, I slither through the gap between two trees I have yet to name and emerge into the world of concrete, metal, and glass of the industrial estate. It has only been twenty minutes since I emerged from the train but I feel like I have gone through a gateway. I was spewed from the human world only to find my kins alive and still chattering to all that would listen. I push the front door of my workplace and smile. For the first time in months, I have enjoyed my commute.
My partner and I drive to the supermarket after she returns from work. We have a new laptop for her to pick-up and maybe an easy meal for the evening. We browse the shelf, select some food. We stop by the collection point, collect the laptop. We make out way out with our loot and are stopped in our track as the automatic sliding door spew us out. At the far end of the parking lot, the sky is at once vivid fuchsia and pastel blue. Folks walk around us, nose to their phone, steps intent on returning to their car fast. For a second or two, we do nothing. We stand and watch the spectacle of light.
Eventually we too move, eyes fixed upwards, feet slow and uncertain as our eyes pay no attention to anything but the setting sun. We put our small shop in the backseat of the car and drive away. It occurs to me that the sunset will be at our back once we make the turn for home. I beg my partner to take the long way home, the one that will undoubtedly see us stuck in traffic for a little bit. She argues, her day long and already filled with driving. I beg some more. I am transformed by the spectacle of the sky. She agrees and we turn towards the fading light.
It's only been a minute or so but the vividness of the pink is already fading. I watch the spread of light play hide and seek with building outlines, the wash of fuchsia turn to baby pink. The sky above still carries hint of baby blue before it is tinged with deep navy blue.
We drive past the old airfield overrun by heavy machinery to transform this once green space into a heaven of consumerism. We go past the cavernous Royal Mail processing centre and the row of red lorries park in silence. It is here we turn the car away from the light and head into the blackness ahead. Street lights glow, illuminates the black tubing ready to be buried underground at the very edge of the nature reserve.
'Thank you.'
I am thanking my partner, the sky, and my returned ability to get excited at such simple things as a sunset.