from some sort of field in the psycho-realm..........

Earlier this week I walked alongside a stretch of the River Roding from a bridge at Snakes Lane East (Chigwell) to some sort of field near Royston Gardens and the Redbridge Roundabout. I write, 'some sort of field' because, by the time I reached that place, having attempted to keep to the way-markers of the Roding Valley Way, I was partially lost. The footpath petered out into a field of bramble briars, blackthorn spinneys and stumbling tussocks of couch grass. I moved awkwardly through them. The prickling scrambling shrubbery teased and pestered me, as if to punish me for my trespass and my foolish straying from the path. I was determined not to turn back and leave by the way I had entered. Initially, despite my loss of the Roding Valley Way, I was confident I would find a path across the field and reconnect with the River Roding and Wanstead Park. The A406 maintained a rushing and (temporarily) reassuring presence to my left, the east. There was, I thought, time and light enough to find my way out of the field before I'd get completely lost. A branch whipped my face and reminded me of my place, and the naivety of any comfortable notions of safety. 

The brambles clawed around me as I ventured deeper into the field, along circular paths increasingly only of my making. The place was growing around me. The reassurance of the A406 diminished into noise; it's rhythm and din shredded my ability to hear others clearly, or rather the possibility of hearing others in the distance. Others are here, I thought, as the soft layers of leaves, on which I trod, cackled and whispered menacingly. Dense dead ends returned me to my tracks and the discovery of sites which confirmed the presence or traces of others.

Of course I got out of there. Here I am, later in the week, writing about being temporarily lost and finding my way back to the familiarity of home territory. But what did I leave there? What did I leave of myself in that field, that spray canned psycho-realm? What if I didn't leave fully intact? What if there is a ghost of a field student left in the field? How could that ghost have taken place in the field? When did my ghost and I separate? How? Did I rip myself apart from him, leaving him entangled and entwined in a conspiracy of malevolent undergrowth - yet more fly-tipped rubbish? If I left a ghost there do I really want to find it, to reunite with it? Is the ghost better off forgotten? After all, it (or he?) was only a walk, a way of passing some time, albeit with some pretensions which littered that passage of time and place. I can imagine the ghost as rags, dripping from the thorny branches of a spinney, eviscerated, gone, submerged in the toxic effluvium, the spills and run offs, of the North Circular meeting the A12, meeting the M11. 

It occurred to me that the passage into the field, the abandonment of the ghost and my escape, all made for a dreary and failed initiation rite - all that scratching and whipping! If there was something of substance in my being there, then I did not endure nor surrender sufficiently in order to find it. I flinched, cussed, grumbled and indulged my weaknesses. Although the situation, that place, became little more than a spent afternoon I was not able to leave without paying something more - the ghost would be held hostage until such time as I would return. It is in imaginary real time that I am now returning. I doubt my imagination will be up to the task of retrieving the ghost and even if it were, the paucity of ideas and skills in language and writing probably make for a lost cause.

I have created a dream machine to transport me back into the 'psycho 

                                                                                                    realm' - here it is (again):

to

Ah well, I suspected I might come back here; to  the sinister pools of arterial sullage in that paludal slobland. The others will emerge uliginously from their daytime place of hiding, and bring my ghost with them. What I have to do is, either stand over and stare into the watery portal to their dark and dank sylvan nether world - or wait until night time. You might be witnessing me standing here and there between the dank and the dark. What I cannot do, at the time of your reading this, is dare to place my reflection in that dingy water. What is it that makes me shy away from that? My reflection! My reflection is fearful, and would you hang around 'alone' in the dark of night in an 'edgeland' white zone waiting for unknown others to turn up? I have abandoned the ghost yet again.