How does taking a walk around the periiphery of the village admiring bouncy spring lambs playing in gangs connect with making discoveries about the nature of identity? Quite right, absolutely nothing. I think it was the old subconscious working away again. A bit like my Internet Security system does on the computer. If I leave my machine on for a while and go away to a displacement activity, the programme gets busy and tells me its working on background tasks.
I was advised to include a little information on my website about the authors I like to read and something about my favourite books. I was taking my daily amble, absorbed in the landscape and the lambs and absently considering these subjects. Whilst I have a very catholic taste in literature and authors, I realised I actually spend a lot of my time imbibing any historical texts I can get my sticky mitts on, the more ancient and medieval, the better. I wondered why this was and a couple of miles and several flocks of sheep later, realisation dawned on me. I am connecting with my roots, however tenuous a connection this may be. I will not be alone in being born in one place, (in my case in the south of England), uprooted and plonked down aged eight and a half, in the north of England - with hindsight, never to truly put down roots again. So, maybe I am searching amongst my ancestors for a place for myself - harking back to ancient memory to give myself a sense of inherited identity and a sense of place. Interestingly, the three serious novels I have plotted all involve issues of identity in one way or another - a deliberate change of identity, an imposed change of identity and loss of identity due to age-related illness. And so I arrived home a little more muddy and rain sodden than I set out, but happy with my historical perpectives on life. I am fine with Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Medieval Knights and Ladies, but marauding Vikings, Eric Bloodaxe and all that ... mmm, maybe I need to investigate that ancestry a bit now.
1 Comment
10/14/2013 10:23:32 am
Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.
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