why hello 〠
lets begin
I forgot that I had this newsletter which I made how ever many months ago in the middle of an inspirational moment. It was another one of those things I soon forgot about until this morning when I received a newsletter from someone else that I thought was very nice.
This particular newsletter was about how the author felt when she immersed herself in water. If you know anything about me then you’ll obviously know this struck a chord. I am a water baby. This has been apparent since I first threw myself into the ocean at a very young age and always refused, to my mothers embarrassment, to return to dry land. Whilst this stubbornness is harder to enact today, I still feel best when near/in/on water. Swimming, surfing, bathing, washing up, showering…it’s all the same. I particularly feel it now whilst I’m at my parents house in Somerset, where the sea is a 45 minute drive away and I don’t have a car. It feels quite distant and I want it even more.
My parents have lived in this house for all 29 years of my life, which seems quite wild to someone who struggles to stay in one place for more than 2. But why I’m telling you this is because there is a mixed relationship to water here. Floods occur annually, with the lane outside regularly filling with brown murky water when there’s been some heavy rainfall. The house is in a small dip geographically. Not enough to make it a valley but enough to collect any water thats fallen on the surrounding land. The floods used to be worse, water crept up to the front door on one occasion but fortunately it never made it over the doorstep. It did, however, make leaving our house impossible for several days. The nearest village suffers a similar predicament. The main road is flooded almost every winter, making it inaccessible. As I’m writing this, that road is currently underwater. In the past the flooding has caused emergency evacuations, ruined houses and created chaos for this quiet area of the country. Derelict houses and barns still stand across the flatlands that won’t be inhabited anytime soon. The council have added flood defences, dredged rivers and expanded pumping stations which have alleviated the problem somewhat, but they still come back every year.
But the floods are hardly acknowledged by my family anymore. It has become so commonplace as to be expected. This change in attitude towards the watery invasion meant that they got rid of their 4x4 car, sandbags weren’t stockpiled in the garage in the winter and instead of living in fear of the torrential rains, they’ve begun to live amongst them. Somehow this attitude gives me solace.
This last year has been difficult and I’ve found it hard to understand the feelings I’ve been having and why I am feeling them. Waking up to unknown anxieties and misdirected frustration has been a challenge. But I’ve also spent the first year of my life feeling independent from jobs, high rents, demanding clients, frustrating institutions and anything else that might bring a caged feeling to my life as I began working for myself and with my friends. Whilst it is not ideal that this moment in my life has coincided with this hellscape of a year, I have looked back on things that came to pass that have made me very different to who I was last January. I’ve come off lightly compared to those who have been effected by any of the indignities that went on around the world. I feel simultaneously blessed and cursed which I guess is contributing to the mixed up feelings. But ultimately I feel good now and thats nice to recognise. I’ve also made being in water a larger part of my life.
I’ve been in England for almost a week. We’ve gone for walks across the countryside most days. And whichever route I take, whether it’s across the church fields and into the village or down the road and across the bottom of the levels, there is water all around. I don’t particularly know what I’m trying to say with this, but I’m glad that I’ve found a place to rest at the end of this year and I’m thankful its in a place I feel at home. And I’m happy to be surrounded by water, even when its immobilising…maybe even because its immobilising. And I hope that theres more water next year and I hope that I can be in it.
this newsletter will be produced a few times a year, possibly more possibly less. I recommend listening to this after reading: Having a Bath by h hunt.
thanks and goodbye,
ben
ps you were added because i wanted to send this to you but i understand that email inboxes are a private, sacred space and if you wish not to receive any further writing then i will not take much offence.