Mady Schutzman

I Once Was Lost

May 20, 2007Walking the moors is going to be less traumatic than

thinking about walking the moors. She wakes up and her

father has given away her inheritance. The airport is

reproducing itself, off-springing ad infinitum terminals and

gates, a row of 787s mere flecks on the far horizon. She

treks, she toils, she arrives wrecked from windburn and

reeking from bog sludge, and is refused entry into the hall,

some big hall, because her passport bares someone else’s

name.

I was pleased when Joe in Ian McEwan’s book, Enduring

Love, refused to pray. How convincingly he refused to

compromise in the name of “you never know.” He knew and I

do too, no one is listening. My spiritual boss, my

imaginary witness, if I have one at all, is a droll straight

man who lets me fumble and humiliate myself, but still

remains in the act with me. He needs me, just like I need

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him. He’s someone I wouldn’t pray to but might be humbled

by. I’m not sure why he’s a he, but he is.

Is there a stand-up comedian in me who doesn’t fuss

over the wardrobe as I do? Doesn’t cry in sympathy with

every underdog? Doesn’t yowl to drown out his own dumb

thoughts but keeps calm, turns every gaff into a gander, has

a good time even if it’s at another’s expense? Perhaps

because it’s at another’s expense?

While packing, I wonder what would happen if I

subjected a particular subject to a hundred miles of thought

on foot? Like humor. Or clowns, those brilliant brunts,

hard to take but harder yet to dismiss. I try on names:

Pilgrim Clown; Ha Ha, the Pilgrim; Joker Goes a Walking;

Clown Walks Where Hounds Once Killed; The Clown Who Was

Afraid of England.

May 24Today I dub myself Zero, the Clown. For the morning at

least. By afternoon, I am Perry Ferry, that is periphery as

pronounced by my anthropology professor, Jean Claude Dumont.

Perry Ferry. After his third elocution, I finally got what

he meant to say and split my side laughing, uncontrollably

in front of him, in front of the entire class. He had no

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idea what was happening; he stood in shock and humiliation.

And as his humiliation turned to disgust, my hilarity turned

to shame. Funny, dangerous really, the deal between joker

and brunt, the delicate trade of affront.

I’ve been suffering a discomfitting quiver beneath my

left eye for weeks. A chronic flap of sight.

May 30Pay attention to who shows up.

This morning un pero perdido followed me home. I am

certain he comes to me as a prophet. At 5 am the shuttle

hasn’t shown and I’m standing on my stoop in a panic, my

damn eye twitching. Your inner comedian is not standing up

today. He’s a low-down crackpot, sleeping in as you move

the show overseas. He’ll wake up high and mighty at 32,000

feet jabbering about some self-important crap. It won’t be

funny unless I do my part and appear beside him as the

innocent foil. I don’t know why I keep showing up, I get no

gratitude.

May 31

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On the plane to Heathrow I’m sitting beside two women, one a

Canadian Air Force steward and the other a Brit from Devon.

The latter lived in Chagford and before that in Okehampton.

She tells me she would never walk the moors alone, how the

mist sets in like a white wall and disorients you, how the

bogs are quicksand and ponies get sucked up, scorching heat

and unmarked trails crossed with sheep tracks and cow paths,

the comings and goings all the same. And when she started

up with the vipers, the Canadian went into a full-bodied

phobic convulsion, this tough military gal slapping her ears

with her hands and scrunching her face in horror. Her

writhing was accompanied by short choppy screams, symptoms

of terror but also an effort to drown out the words: ZIG ZAG

ADDER, POISONOUS, BITING, SNAKE. As if the words were

indeed the thing.

28C on a big new 777, flying over the Atlantic, I sink

into the vivid, smelly bog trying and failing to defy the

steady pull of gravity, slowly as if to provide all the time

in the world to remember everything I’ll miss when I’m gone,

even the creamed corn and the lies. Who knew dying would

bring on such poppycock? Refusing to wrestle my fate any

longer, my head begins its descent under. How did Houdini

reverse his fate over and again, slipping the chains of

death just in time? I replay the scene untold times on the

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plane and I’m exhausted, beside myself, coming back to life

only to die a miserable death again and again. I stand

unsteadily on line at customs for over two hrs, 7 am London

time, much of myself, my soul, in Los Angeles which is still

in yesterday. “I live in Bristol now,” says the scary lady

of the moors, as she waves goodbye, “but my soul is in

Dartmoor.” Her past is my future. Her soul, my soul,

crossing and passing, dislocated and elsewhere without end.

This whiff of perpetuity is nauseating, maybe a little

enticing.

I race to the Heathrow Central Bus Station just in time to

catch the train heading to Newquay. I’m grateful for ground

transport. A pace that accommodates a halting anticipation.

Reading, North Taunton, Exeter. A sheep is climbing a tree.

“Throw rocks into wet ground and see if they sink. If they

do, back off.” Will her admonitions ever back off?

Tedburn, St. Mary, Pathfinder Village, Drewsteignton. “Watch

out for the rabbit holes, you can turn your ankle. You’ve

got a compass, don’t you?” Suddenly to the left, a

monstrous bald warning emerges. Whiddon Down, the moors,

only a few kilometers from Okehampton.

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Light at 9:30 pm and I’m lying on a lousy mattress impatient

for nightfall.

June 2This was not the kind of lost I bargained for. I’m looking

for the trailhead today so I’ll be ready to get started on

my trek tomorrow. But I’m meandering in circles for hours

and locals never heard of the Dartmoor Way. In a state of

terror, tempered only by self-amused disbelief, I give up

and head for a bookstore. Skylark, wheat ear, meadow pipit,

curlew, lapwing, red grouse, winchat, snipe.

I identify stinging nettle and its antidote dock,

growing within reach of the poison. I ponder how kind

nature can be, providing within its inexplicable blueprint a

solution to the very puzzle that it tries to kill you with.

If naturalist and photographer Keith Critchlow is right, the

layout of a lotus flower mimics the path of Venus in the sky

and the human mind, in turn, creates a near perfect replica

of this same pattern in the Chartres windows. It only makes

sense then that we give a little waggle to sacred geometry

and consider how this nettle and dock phenomenon might

manifest within the human community. If the antidote is in

reach of the poison, then somewhere near my Uncle Irv is an

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antidote to passive aggression. Hovering near the church

gate is a remedy for missionary zeal. Within reach of my

wanderlust is home.

Couple from Australia this morning heading to Lands

End, tip of SW England. Traveling alone is to be reminded

that people feel sorry for the unmarried and childless.

They grow awkward and silent as if I were to blame for their

sudden lack of curiosity. I wonder why I envy them all the

same. I project myself into their lives and suddenly grab

my throat as if to loosen the knot of a tie, my Coney Island

giving way to their Freemantle; liberal urbanites, cheek-

pinchers, and screamers turning country stern and muscular,

them working the land like my clan works an idea — spinning

it every which way, bludgeoning it before letting it alone

to produce something worthwhile. Here I sit, choking on my

own imagination, so I let go, I float it between us, between

these Aussies planning their holiday and eating their jam,

and me in my REI retractable walking pants thinking about

clowns. Hanging there just below the dining room chandelier

is a collision of fantastic proportions, one of which they

are likely oblivious. It’s my personal horror flick

conjured from my own quick-mix of fear and shame. Alas,

I’ve deprived them of curiosity, but they’ve deprived me of

courage.

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I feel so Jewish at moments like this.

Every year for forty years now, my dad sends me a

Valentine’s card. In spite of his Zionism and gross

simplification of complex issues, his condescension and

miserable jokes, I can’t tell you how much I’ll miss those

Hallmarks when he’s gone.

Here is a photo of Okehampton Castle and there, on the

opposite page, The Man on the Moor who hangs off the outside

wall of the hardware store in gradual relief. Speaking of

relief, I don’t know how to read the Dartmoor Ordnance

Survey topographical map. When exactly do I cross the river

and switch back? At which malodorous cow patty do I start

searching for the stile? This morning I thought I was on

the path to Sticklepath but it was the Tarka Trail heading

not west enough of south to nail the precise southwest

calibration that my destination calls for. How to read

nuances of direction. How to detect the shadow between the

three dimensions I inhabit and the two dimensions, this map,

that guide me. What to do when the navigator takes to

riddles: What does the fish say when he runs into a concrete

wall? Damn.

It’s all my fault for trusting a company with a name

like Let’s Go Walking.

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June 3Ludicrous twelve miles, discovering exactly what a bog is

and what a map is not, sliding down a steep slag heap of a

long defunct copper mine, blisters on both feet, mud, a maze

of hedged lanes. A little calculus, a little clairvoyance,

rage, some luck, right psoas sending a radiating pain into

the pelvic girdle and hips, too restless to eat, too wired

to rest, too tired to walk. No luxury of fantasy or

reflection until I stop seeing myself dead in one of the

neon green gullies. Until I know that I have a future,

neither past nor present interest me at all, adrenals neuro-

transmitting as if there is no tomorrow and the imagination

zapped numb, a living fossil.

Getting lost is more interesting as a concept than as

reality. All those beloved blurs and approximations be

damned. Give me a sign, a promise, give me an intuition, a

tweak of wisdom amidst the sweat and panic, give me a dumb

cluck to yell at, to make fun of, a mask to rip off and

stomp on, a Cassandra, a closet to come out of. Give me a

joke that isn’t pun and paradox, a straightforward joke that

leads the way. Is there such a thing as a straightforward

joke? And if there is, is it still funny?

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I am two feet spiraling reluctantly into inflamed legs,

dissolving into an indecipherable mass of bitter,

blustering bone and muscle from hip joint onward into ashy

white dreamspace. Birds in the canopies, shapes caught in

the corner of my eye. Ibuprofen for dinner.

June 4Breakfast with three elderly travelers from Kent at

Chagford’s Linden Spinney, B&B. Castle Drogo looming on

yonder hill. They were eating dinner beside me last night

at the Globe. The man, Raymond, had lamb shank. He loves

lamb shank. He asked me if I ran into any bears just yet.

I’m beginning to smell the wit others are taking with me.

Fingle Bridge along River Teign resting the shins caught in

a tug of war between ankles and knees. I’ve taped the

blisters and begun using the liner socks and wools that work

way better than the synthetics.

Now that I have conquered one day’s worth of fear and

anxiety, I am altogether sad. A sadness that waits with

endless patience and élan, cozies up beside me like syrup

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oozing a primordial bank, filling every space not occupied

with survival.

June 5Leaving Linden Spinney I’m an idiot. Nigel, my host, offers

me a sparrow feather which I decline. Some combination of

my eagerness to set off and his British affect. I’m busy

recalibrating the pack on my back, the map in my head, the

sadness in my chest, just as he displays his downy finding

from the high grass. For miles en route to Postbridge, I

pick up sparrow feathers and wear them in the pockets and

bungees of my gear, compensating for my earlier lapse and

hoping to appease my holy witness, my internal straight man,

who is already berating me, spewing sarcasm as if he were

not implicated. As if his tank isn’t down a few quarts.

Where the hell does this comedian come from if not my flesh?

Is he not as eager and sad and navigationally challenged as

me?

To top it off, Bruce Chatwin is rebuking me from his

grave. Well, I’m sure Bruce is understanding, but he gave

me Songlines, I was reading it just last night, how every bit

of the landscape is marked by totem and song. I should have

known better, should have accepted that sparrow without

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pause, chirpy melodies guiding my way, turning steps to

lyrics and moor to saga. But there it is, that blind spot

between idea and flesh, concept and impulse, feather and the

line it was singing.

I can’t tell how far I’ve gone, how long I’ve walked, what

dimension moves me onward. I can’t remember my thoughts,

everything inside is as displaced and vacant and exhaustive

as the landscape. Crispin, his accent all around me;

Grisha, a girl running toward the tors; Brent: in my head,

off to the right; Julie: what words will I use to explain?

My first cream tea at Warren’s Pub. Entirely

unmemorable.

What I do remember is the sound of my own foot steps coming

upon me suddenly from nowhere, frightening me, and I would

turn to see who was at my heel only to find vast sky,

seamless horizons, rugged tufts of clumped earth and dried

heather stretching in a purple grey wash. I remember the

shapes out of the corner of my eyes that would grab my

attention, force a gasp, emerging from where a moment ago

there was nothing but the firmament. The sound of the wind

taking shape.

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I arrive Postbridge 3:30 pm with sudden confidence. Why

don’t they stand up and cheer? Don’t they know what I’ve

been through?

June 6Soon after beginning to read Hound of the Baskervilles, my left

ear begins to bleed. At Lydgate House, five-star hotel, the

sign reads, “Winner of WHICH ? HOTEL of the Year.” A

strikingly unappealing, if not cryptic, form of appraisal.

I see only WITCH HOTEL. Beneath the white lacey comforters,

brocade spreads and matching curtains too heavy to pull shut

with two hands, sunken tubs, lotions and creams, a darkness

lurks. Drops of blood on the pillow. I almost long for the

fog, the weather from which many have perished, the

mythological gloom that delivers divine immanence if not

madness. Without this shadowy miasma I might never be close

enough to gone to perceive the invisible lines, Critchlow’s

lines, that neither compass nor vision can translate.

You’ve got to get stung by the nettle to spot the dock.

Not a cloud walking over Hameldown Tor to Hookney Tor

into Grimspound, its name some reference, I think, to the

devil and grim reaper, and a fitting follow up to the Hound.

Some say the site was a Druid Temple. The sun bright and

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hot, the wind high and cool, the moors translucent.

Grimspound appears over the crest of Hookney Tor, a near

perfect circle of standing stones more than a football field

in diameter. A long steep flagstone pathway drops from

Hookney and takes you to the ruins. Within the center are

the remnants of about twenty Bronze Age huts currently

populated by a herd of wild horses, grazing as if they know

the essence of the place, adhering to its ancestral gravity

like deferential progeny. Not one horse grazes outside the

Grimspound stones.

For miles into the distance I can track my route by the

tors, Widecombe indiscernible but tucked into a valley just

east of the furthest visible hill. I am moving — muscle

firm and strong, blood pulsing, gravity securely underfoot —

but movement is not directional so much as inspirational. A

function of density. To move here is to be undone: one step

undoing the previous step, each breath like the first, the

only breath, even muscle and blood giving way to gravity’s

counterforce, something buoyant, making momentum

insubstantial, a momentum without matter.

Reached Widecombe at 3 pm and had to wait for the proprietor

of The Old Rectory to get back from some business. She

arrives at 6. Rachel, retired Londoner running the place

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with another woman. The B&B is indeed the church rectory

where the monks and priests lived, a rambling old house with

vegetable and flower garden, donkey, horse, cats, sheep and

eight baby lambs — less than two weeks old — that frolic

like puppies especially at dusk. For the sake of the choir,

I croon. The proprietors are artists, their paintings and

sculptures up and down the halls and stairwell.

Had breakfast with the two Germans, a couple — UPS and DHS —

he (UPS) a bit neurotic and embarrassed over his car alarm

going off last night, here in the middle of Widecombe in the

Moor, a quiet village of less than 150 inhabitants. She

(DHS) biting her tongue so as to not whack UPS for

apologizing too much, trying (and failing) to have self-

mockery offset the humiliation. I far preferred the car

alarm to his incessant acts of contrition.

UPS and DHS tell me that Wilhelm Busch influenced Walt

Disney.

Sitting up at Bonehill Rocks. A rest day, but I’m restless.

Getting on with it seems to be what I do, why I’m here.

Being sedentary without the usual accoutrements of a

sedentary life makes no sense. And it brings on the

melancholy. I seem to be taking up others’ time rather than

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engaging it. I catch my reflection, and I’m old. The right

side of my mouth droops as if trapped in a frown. When I

see it I become it. No sun today. I wonder if I’m about to

see the less clement side of the moor. I even entertain the

thought that my dismal mood is bringing the inclemency on.

And then the conceit snaps me out of it.

If I could talk to someone today, if there were a soul

around interested in listening, what would I say anyway?

What would be worth saying? Jeff: how judgemental you are;

Bill, it’s the way it’s meant to be; Niki: the kind of

family I would adopt; Nora, don’t make me laugh, not that

hard; Dad, I’m not like you, I’m sorry; Michael, say

something, anything; Cyndy, faith in what?; Amanda, what a

mess!

Innocence is a necessary mistake. I’d never really say

that.

How do we mirror that which isn’t there?

How will I ever find my family at such a late date?

My boots are the closest thing to home. I put them on

and belong. Somewhere. And then a wave of claustrophobia.

June 7

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Took a wrong turn at Primm’s cottage and had to cross back

over a field with tall grasses thigh high, tips of purple

grain, a pleasure to stride through, I imagine, if I had the

least bit of extra strength. Two hours later the exquisite

gift of dangling my feet into the cold waters of River Dart,

Dartmoor’s namesake.

Arrived Church House Inn in Holne about 3, lucky to run

into one of the owners as it turns out no one is usually

around mid-day. Dinner at 7, and I wish I got the green

chicken chili with pappadum but I got fish soup and Greek

salad, homemade bread. I need to eat food, quit the

crackers and nuts.

A shame I’m not walking for some cause. But if I was,

I would never find out why I’m walking without one.

June 8I’d like to go home now and pretend to repossess my life.

Ugly dog.

Fish delivery to Church House.

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Bruce Chatwin ran from the art scene of London to study

Aboriginal’s songlines.

Don’t remedy yourself.

I like that the path today has history. I walk several

miles along Conchie Road built by conscientious objectors

(thus Conchies) of WWI, doing time in Dartmoor Prison in

Princetown, about nine miles away. Fortunately, the trail

presented two walkers and two mountain bikers going my way,

a long arduous route across the open moor to P-town, highest

town in Dartmoor at about 1,300 feet. The bikers pass and

disappear over a ridge and into the sun. When my mind

buckles from heat, I follow the tiny bodies of the walkers,

about half a mile ahead of me, almost all the way to the

Prince of Wales.

The prison is an awesome gray sight looming large as I

enter P-town from the east. Gloomy stone for acres on end

and row housing all over, you’d think you were in

Pittsburgh. Can’t help but think of poor Selden, escaped

convict of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s very same Princetown

prison, killed by the hound under false pretenses, dressed

in the hand-me-downs of Sir Henry Baskerville, intended

prey. Also passed Foxtor Mires which was inspiration for

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Doyle’s Grimpen Mire where the hound resided, howled, and

received his phosphorous treatments. If I remember

correctly, Doyle’s the writer who refused Houdini’s

denouncement of metaphysics as explanation of purported

contacts with the dead or magic. He even tried to convince

Harry that his own magic was more than sleight of hand and

that he was refusing to accept his own powers as

inexplicable.

Plume and Feather for dinner. Jail beer, pretty disgusting.

“You’re in Britain now,” says the bartender, “the beer is

warm.” Tonight I get my Madras chicken curry with pappadum.

Eating alone is a drag, still. I try to perform an air of

self-contentment, as if I dine out alone all the time and

wouldn’t have it otherwise. I sit by the window and stare

out, painting a dreamy picture, one that ignites in everyone

who stares — and of course they all do — a desire for

autonomy, my radiant and seductive autonomy! They want to

join me, but this portrait of aplomb just puts people off.

I long for someone to see through the wistful delusion, pull

up a chair and end the endless act. Or do I?

Wouldn’t a clown find a long walk redundant? I mean

isn’t the clown the sort of character who knows better than

anyone that life itself is nothing if not a long amble

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through time? I look at my khaki’s and outdoor greens with

all the pockets and compartments, zippers and Velcro, snaps

and flaps, perfect for pulling out yards of elastic ace

bandages, fold-out chairs, beach umbrellas, maybe even one’s

own rescue station should things get dire. Why don’t they

make these pants in shocking pink or rainbow stripes,

fitting for a jester?

Do clowns go on holidays?

June 9No sleep at Prince of Wales, over a pub and it was Tracey’s

birthday, miserable music all Saturday night.

Hot. Walking on the disused railway road and lolling along

not looking at map, thinking the route apparent. First, I

miss the turn off to see the engraved corbells intended for

the 1903 London Bridge. I should’ve taken the uphill leg of

the fork. I follow the loops of the RR path around the base

of several hillsides until I realize I’m heading southwest

rather than northwest. I retrace about a mile but can’t

figure my mistake. I could walk back another mile but I’m

weary at the thought. Perhaps I was on the threshold of

discovery when I about-faced. So I turn again and begin

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walking the mile I’ve now walked twice already. I consult

the map with every step but cannot get it to comport with my

sight. Where is Ingra Tor? It should be west but my west

coordinate is a measly and utterly tor-less mound, a

miserable excuse for a landmark. Do granite outcroppings

disappear suddenly; could Ingra Tor have become, in the last

several months, just Ingra? Some extraordinary devolution

or implosion of igneous rock? I think not. I’m lost.

Again. And this time with a profound sense of oblivion. I

stand dumbfounded, turning tentatively in every direction,

disoriented in physical space, a thing revolving erratically

in slow motion, someone suddenly struck with amnesia, the

proverbial gone peculiar abruptly, rudely. I take the

malfunctioning of the landscape as a personal betrayal, the

moor itself making a fool of me, and without warning comes a

rage born of suspicion and disgust. And fear. Up and down,

increments along the horizon, I try to catch the terrain

from every angle, to will it to me like a pitched ball, my

eyes, my entire body, the waiting glove. But there is no

pitch and no capture.

It is joy to be hidden, said Winnicott, but disaster to

not be found.

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Hours later when I get my bearings I am three miles south of

my turn-off to Tavistock. I chart a path northwest along

lanes, bridle and foot paths.

An interminable two hours more and I arrive smelly and

sweaty, my right hip a bundle of raw gears trying their best

to function as a joint. The host at Mount Tavy Cottage asks

if I’d like tea and the absurdity of sitting in her clean

kitchen sipping Earl Grey like a civilized person takes me

off guard and I bark an unnaturally loud “NO” and flash an

unintentionally evil look of disbelief. She recoils,

understandably. This offer of tea greeted me at every B&B.

I tried to forewarn my face and mouth to behave, I gave them

instructions to be poised and polite, but there was not a

time I successfully banished the incredulity in my eyes.

Is tea the answer to everything?

So I shower and wash out clothes. I’ve got a sweet A-frame

cottage, hardwood floors and outside deck, big cushy brown

leather love seat, bed fluffed with triple feather spread,

darling kitchenette and out the windows acres of lush green

speckled with itinerant pheasants and foals. And then a

knock, my Mt. Tavy host, “Are you decent? Hello?” And in

strides friends on holiday in Cornwall. Friends!? Do aliens

have friends? They had tried to intercept me but I was long

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astray on my unplanned detour. I imagine them gliding over

the moor finding me twirling in my earlier stupor. I

wonder, would the shock of seeing them have knocked some

sense into me or removed the remainder out of me? Either

way, I imagine the meeting that didn’t happen with delight,

the ole clown jumping tor high and clinking her hiking

heels.

June 10Today was Tavistock to Lydford and I’ve hurt my left leg —

it seems like a tendon is strained, Achilles, and I probably

should not walk tomorrow but tomorrow is my last day and I

want to walk back to Okehampton where this all began. I’m

testing right now if Vicodin helps. And drinking wine.

Lydford House Hotel is exquisite. Four poster bed,

Boticelli playing in a lovely dining room facing into the

garden, twelve foot high glass windows, tall back thick

braided wicker chairs. Quiet.

It rained today, my first rain. And as I descended off

the moor I stopped to check the map and a woman appears out

of nowhere behind me with a puppy. Tall, dark, blond,

lanky, ruddy, athletic, vital. Invites me in for coffee.

Her house is a two-story wonder, cozy miniature of my dream

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house. Wood and handmade quilts and tile and old gas stove,

art work and books and unpretentious. She’s a grandmother

at sixty whose daughter is a performer, recently finished

studies with Antonio Fava, protégé of Dario Fo, consorts

with the Rude Mechanicals and is a Laban Institute grad to

boot. Grandma herself is a performer, dancer, choreographer.

Occasionally, she jumps out of her seat to demonstrate her

point, a lithe specimen of middle age. She’s a stranger and

she’s my people.

She walked me back to the moor to set me on the path to

Lydford, warning me to stay clear of the house I will pass

on ahead. The dogs are vicious, she says; something shady

goes on there. I wonder if it is Daphne DuMaurier’s Jamaica

Inn. She’s off to do a class with elementary kids, going to

get them to dance WWII. I laugh and tell her I did youth

theatre on the Los Angeles riots. “Kids are dark,” she

says. Our parting words.

I’m eating this most delicious green lasagna with my Vicodin

and wine.

I’m getting into the swing of eating alone. Not

anywhere or all the time, but at an exquisite hotel after a

day when someone so darn beautiful takes me in.

Horses are strolling in the garden.

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I would like my body to feel how the body of that

nameless woman looked.

I am eating very slowly because this lasagna is really

fantastic.

What have I done to my leg?

I sit at my table and name each of the days of my walk thus

far:

1. The Antidote is in Reach of the Poison

2. Damn Copper Slag Heap Slide

3. Fingle Bridge Bird that was not a Woodpecker

4. No Sparrow, No Songline

5. My Bleeding Ear

6. The Hound at the Rectory

7. Cold Feet

8. Clown Walks Conchie Road

9. Disused Railway Disaster

10. Kids are Dark

I’ve successfully medicated myself.

I’ve learned to be polite. I just answered the question,

“Tea?,” clean and straight, showing no affect. Undesirable

grimaces have been waylaid and redirected. “No thank you, I

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do not want any tea at this time.” It was not a great

triumph as I am not just off the moor, limping, my face to

my knees, burnt and bruised and dazed. I am having dinner

at a restaurant hours after arrival. And I’m drugged. All

the same, I think it was a worthwhile rehearsal.

They need to turn off the Boticelli. Now.

Could a walk in England be part of a master plan to curb

excessiveness? Is the straight man trying to domesticate

me, turn me into his obedient puppet? Through a strong dose

of the subdued and understated, a clown learns to temper her

drama and create a more measured presentation of self. I’m

not certain who benefits. Has subjecting the clown to a

walk in England obliterated the clown? Made absurdity

customary, unnoticeable? Perhaps the clown would have

survived domestication if I never recovered from my recent

foray in disorientation. If I were still out in the sun

twirling like a top.

Dreidl, the Clown.

Why do I rely on words to explain who I am? Can words do it

better than flesh and blood?

26

I talk like I’m a clown, but I’m not funny. I’m a bad

clown. Doesn’t that sound like the saddest thing in the

world?

June 11I can’t walk uphill. So I opted for the Granite Way. It’s

flat, dull. But I had no choice, it was either granite by

foot or hopping a bus. For the very last leg approaching

Okehampton, I risked some terrain and reconnected with the

Dartmoor Way for a last bit of green and cow shit. Chatted

with an elderly couple riding tandem, we had seen each other

yesterday as well. He’s a retired mechanical engineer, she

a retired pharmacist. Witty, curious, cheery people.

Paul Day however is an ass, along with his partner

Elizabeth Ryder. I called for pick up tomorrow to get a bus

back to Exeter. Not a single question about how the trip

went. Let’s Go Walking can take a hike!

“She has the eyes of Caligula, the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.”

Mitterand on Thatcher. I overheard that this morning.

I headed over to the Pickled Walnut for my last sip of warm

beer before departing tomorrow. Beside me at the bar is a

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Peruvian living in New Zealand, in Devon to visit his son at

college in Exeter. I’ve no clue what brought him to

Okehampton but there he was, much more friendly and chatty

than any Dartmoor resident I’d met in the last twelve days.

I told him about my walk, perhaps embellishing a bit given

that I hadn’t spoken much in weeks. “It's not like just

taking a walk,” I try to explain. “Something about a one-

way trek makes the walking more urgent, the walker more

vulnerable. You have to arrive, you need to reach your next

bed, the forward thrust of it all is profound.” He indulges

me my drama, listens closely, nods intently. “Now,” I say,

“it’s all over, all the oblivion and bliss.” Pause. Sip of

beer. Silence. And then with the utmost sincerity in his

voice, and unmistakable amusement in his eyes, he leans

close and whispers, “No more moor, mi amor.” I could barely

appreciate the tenderness (if there really was any) in the

face of the funny homonyms. In fact, I could not get

through the next hour without cracking up, bubbly residues

of that silly line whooshing around in my head. With each

inadvertent chuckle, he would stare at me with a straight

face, a consequence merely of better control as his curling

lips betrayed his solemnity. We parted on a jolly adios.

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June 13I continue to care about the weather, yet suddenly it’s of

no real consequence.

I’m as nervous to return to the familiar as I was to

leave it. There’s new terrain mapped inside me, my innards

have run a bit amok, split some seams, basted some messy new

ones.

From the jagged rip comes some jagged light.

The familiar is odd, isn’t it? Family is odd.

June 14 I’m back in the stupid world of well-educated and well-

meaning folk. People around me spurt knowledge just to

break silence. And the café latte is all milk.

The road is gone. My body is floating several feet

above the ground. Some kind of spatial surgery has left me

walking in place.

Out of the clouds, a hand

holding a stone

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June 15Sitting in Toronto Public Library on College Street reading

Congress of Clowns. Kisso was a 1930s Russian circus clown.

His act was basically to die laughing. He sees a funny-

faced stagehand on his way into the ring and the laughing

begins. He can barely control himself. He gathers himself

and then tells some jokes, laughing himself into a frenzy,

falling and rolling on the ground, splitting his sides. He

knocks the audience and himself dead. A stretcher comes out

to get him. As they carry him out the same stagehand walks

by. Kisso lifts his head, peaks a final look, and laughs

himself to death for a second time. Other clowns have tried

and tried to repeat Kisso’s act without success.

Maggie and Larry have left phone messages. Susan and

Carole send funny quips on email about feet and bogs and

Brits. Maureen calls as soon as I arrive this side of the

Atlantic to find out if I made it. We scream like girls; we

know the lark of it all.

One great joy of buffoons is to make war, fight, tear

out each other’s guts. They indulge in repeated mutual

massacres just for the fun of it. They are also

soothsayers. Now that the gods have disappeared, the

buffoons have moved in and replaced them.

30

June 16Sitting at Naval Memorial Park on Lake Ontario in Kingston,

Canada. Brutal in the sun. Last night went to see the

Adventures of Juan Quin Quin, Cuban film directed by Julio Garcia

Espinosa. Odd spoof of Hollywood, of landed gentry, of

guerillas, all done through circus slapstick.

Before: anxiety, train wreck, preparing for doom.

During: endorphins interact with anxiety on a pseudo-

designated one-way trek that releases body from said anxiety

in lieu of peripatetic rapture.

After: anxiety, spirit wreck, belated doom that turns out to

be the everyday seen without funny glasses.

Maps have nothing to do with bodies.

This morning, before leaving Toronto, I filled my REI

Nalgene with tap water. Julie and I stop at the Big Apple,

a travel center en route to Kingston, and I grab the Nalgene

and take a sip. It’s disgusting. I make a note to avoid

Toronto tap water and then notice one of my hi-tech sports

shirts soaked and floating inside the blue plastic bottle.

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I had packed very well, the shirt still inside where I

stuffed it to save space. The clown is here, the trip isn’t

over.

All the dying, the news, ripples of shock and grief, the

initiation of traditions, negotiations, furrowed brows and

tears, memories, refusals, the incapacity to go on, the

impossibility of letting go. Rites of passage. Loneliness

and anger, altars and reconstitution of belongings,

unexpected humiliations in the name of, for the sake of,

exalted words, words in the wrong tense, the excess of it

all. The desires of the body. The legs, the heart beating

in the throat, the importance of soles, how joints adapt all

the way to the tilt of the head, the twitch of the jaw. All

this is dismissed when you return, like foreign coins

suddenly of no use. Time without purpose or direction

lingers as if time were expendable. And then a torment, as

time asks to be filled, justified. The rash of decisions

and personalities cutting the space recklessly, randomly,

making a passage, any passage, a grueling effort, an

exercise in management. The narrowing of the canyon of

sight, of all sensual things, the waiting for a reason to

move again, the terror of waste, the misuse of stuff one

cannot recycle. The fear that life will end, absolutely.

32

In tragedy, the book says, the role of the chorus is to

warn, to give advice or sympathy. It is present throughout

but never involves itself in the action; the chorus is only

reactive. All my legwork has won be a membership card. I am

in the choir now, here at the threshold of stress wearing a

little red nose, the smallest mask in the world.

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