Friday 14 March 2014

In 2006 after a brief and abortive fling I began reading The Rings of Saturn by W G Sebald, strangely I didn't finish it though I can remember the writing left me breathless. 
Less than a year later I met someone else and the places Sebald describes became personally etched into my being. Walks, with that man, at Benacre, Covehithe, Dunwich, Southwold and particularly Bungay and its environs became soul spaces, homelands. Later still in 2010-2011 I took the first year of my degree at Lowestoft Technical College and the train journey from Norwich to Lowestoft and back again became a rich seam of inspiration. The train itself a moving home that passed through a familiar yet daily changing landscape. 
Those three/four years 2007-2011 were watershed years, good things happened, bad things happened, but they marked me, as some years do, more than others. 
I mention that part of my life story because by chance I picked up a film at my local library the other day - Patience (After Sebald) A walk through The Rings of Saturn by Grant Gee - and knowing that it would cover familiar territory I borrowed it to watch. I was unsure if it would be turgid memorial piece but I loved it. I guess the footage of towns and villages and coastal stretches that I too have walked or travelled gave me an instant connection but actually the film is beautiful in it's own right. It reminded me of the walks I had taken those many years back and how full they made me feel and 
my desire to get out walking is re-inflamed. 
I have also picked out the book from my shelves to go on my very-soon pile of books-to-read as I cannot for the life of me think why I stopped reading it before. Maybe I was waiting until I knew, until I had begun to build my own maps so that I would be better able to take in Sebald's way of writing and being.

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