second memento.

So this is what we realize about England on the train ride south into the Channel:

that the heart of the country is not in the bustle of metropolitan London, or even in the grey stone edifices of centuries past, but in the rolling countrysides from London to the sea.

This land is different from America. Farther north, the slant of the sun is different. Golden. It is that light you feel most, but perhaps will remember least: that particular gold dusting upon everything the eye can touch.

Then, of course, one remembers also the look of the land - not the wide open spaces of the Great Plains, but the rolling wooded hills fading into the distance - the cloudstreaked sky, pale; the trees, old as the land; the tree-divided farms; the little rivers, ponds; the shaggy horses and the large, woolen sheep.

The geese, the fresh-cut hay, the farmhouses in red and white. The farmer in the field. The colors, the deep green, the olive green - forests and fields. The white sheep grazing. The dark horses. The grey geese. And above all, the light, the light, the light.

Remember. The emotion this land conveys. The sense of time standing still. No change. The peace & longing. The color. The ages. The bone deep ache of a gold-dusted land like memory.

This is a land that could bind a man to it so that wheresoever he might wander, it is still this that he will always, indelibly recall.

(something I wrote on the train south from london to paris, passing through the english countryside. it's disjointed and rambling because it was written by hand and by touch alone on a pad of paper while i stared out the window, dazed on 3 hours of sleep, at this incredible land like something out of memory, all hazy with morning fog and pale gold sunlight. since this is raw and unedited, i don't think it paints much of a picture for the reader. however, it splashes the memory right back into mind for me, and since that was the whole point of it -- to capture the moment, to capture the landscape streaking by in a way that a camcorder never, ever would -- i guess it's done its job.

i found the page i'd lost, and added the last line on. so there, complete!)