jigsaw
August 4, 2006
Imagine that you have a jigsaw puzzle, and you have it all put together except for one piece. It won't fit. It just sits there, on top, not aligning itself, while you pound on it over and over. You're growing increasingly frustrated. You know it should fit. Why doesn't it fit? Bang bang bang, it just. won't. fit. And then suddenly, you twist it. And it slides beautifully, cleanly, perfectly and seamlessly into place.
That's what it felt like when I walked off the pier, and found myself on Inverie high street.
Had it been years? I didn't feel it. And neither did Cath and Steve and Judith, sitting at the picnic table in front of the pub. Neither did Sandy or Tommy, the latter of whom actually spoke my mind that night when he sat next to me outside, looking at the lights of the boats offshore, and said, "Does it feel like you ever left? Because it doesn't to me." Rhona couldn't wrap her mind around the phrase "two years" and neither could Stewart. Person after person, hug after hug, excitement that I was back mingled with a calm undercurrent of comfort. Not a beat was missed. The smells, the smiles, the looks, the faces, the air, the sounds and pace and life, they proved my memories to be flawless. A humming tension in my being quieted at last. It's such a cliche, but finally, everything was in its right place, and it was easier to breathe.
I had found out in Mallaig that Daniel had left town that morning, and no one knew when he'd be back. On the boat ride over, I'd said to Renee that if he left me his keys, it meant he'd be back soon and was tacitly apologising for his unannounced absence. He did leave me his keys, and I had them in hand minutes after entering the pub. Renee and I went over to his flat and let ourselves in.
It's hard to adequately describe Daniel's flat and its place in my history without seeming hyperbolic. I lost count of the number of nights I spent in that flat, drinking obscene amounts of tea and talking with Dan until the sun rose. The most intense conversations, charged silences, communicative eye contact, raw self-awareness, revolutionary understandings, mystical speculations, exhillarating hilarity, and unsettling bonding I've ever experienced, I experienced in that flat, in the wee hours, with nothing but tea and tealights and music and Daniel. Some of my brightest joys and sharpest pains were there. I won't go on and on about it, because that is not the point of this entry. Suffice it to say, what happened in that flat fundamentally changed my life, fundamentally changed his life, and burned itself into the walls and air.
I walked in the door with Renee and the energy of the place hit me like a burst of steam. I could feel the way time quivered and bent, the heaviness of the atmosphere, the madness that had been brewing since I'd left. I believe ghosts are made when you charge your surroundings with your mind so strongly that it singes the spacetime, and I believe it's hard to do. I also believe that Daniel has created a ghost in that room by doing just that, and I could feel it there as if he were sitting on the couch. We were hushed as we used the bathroom, checked our email on his laptop, borrowed flashlights and a jacket.
Whether it was the crazed look on my face as I breathed that familiar presence or the presence itself, Renee was quiet and meticulously observant of the place and my behavior. She was being, as she did throughout the trip, the only real witness to my deeper experiences with Knoydart that I've ever had. Two years of stories and phases and ups and downs and rants and tears and joys and unfiltered experience and the daily burden of a psyche stretched across an ocean have been received with care and understanding in the most amazing ways by Renee. I hesitate to say I needed her there, but that may just be true. What is definitely true is that I was only beginning to understand how valuable it was to have her with me, facing these things the way I was and would.
We left after maybe 10 or 15 intense minutes and headed up the road to the hostel, a low building next to the horse paddock and the market garden. To truly appreciate what I mean by "road" you have to remember that Knoydart only has a few miles of pavement, which exists mostly to facilitate the landrovers (brought over by boat) traversing the mountains on the peninsula to connect Inverie and the other smaller settlements. There are only about 70 people on Knoydart year-round, and far fewer vehicles. So it should not be surprising that most "roads" are composed of dirt, stone, some gravel, deep trenches and potholes, and the occasional bit of tarmac. They are much easier (and less painful) to walk than to drive on. The hostel was only a mile away from the village, so walking was how we intended to get there. However, in a moment of true Knoydartian color, an old friend opted to bustle us into his landrover and drive us up. While I held his whiskey.
I love Knoydart.
Walking back into the village once we were settled, I laid eyes on a short, stocky, skin-headed man in a leather jacket lounging outside the pub. I grinned so broadly it hurt, and when he saw me it was like he was watching the sun rise. Paul the diver, the Forge's north Irish scallop diver, was one of my earliest and closest and most unlikely friends on Knoydart. Paul is by far the most abrasive, bellicose, and insightfully insulting man many women ever meet, and we took to each other because I could tell that he was doing it for humor, connection, and self-preservation, and because he could tell that I saw through it and rode it out with a smile and a sharp tongue. There were many, many nights when Paul and I, either from across the bar or on the same side of it, digressed at length on humanity, life, wisdom, individuals, histories, love, and philosophy not of the academic variety but of the daily life variety. We made a space of wonderfully safe and bonded connection and communication. Once I cut through Paul's abusive mannerism and established trust, respect, and fondness, he became one of those friends who would literally die fighting to save you if it came down to it. Much if not most of Knoydart and Mallaig never get past Paul's thick shell, and it's a shame. He's a particularly lovely diamond in a particularly forbidding rough.
So Paul and I had a fond hug and chat, with him describing how he'd immediately recognized me from a hundred yards away, no mean feat for a man who can never seem to recall women's names, let alone faces. One might here point out that it was less the face and more the amazonian build that he clocked from a distance, but regardless. We were very happy to see each other.
That night, the pub was packed. Tunes, reunions, madness, it was a classic Inverie-style piss-up. Those I'd not seen earlier, I saw then. Tam the Banjo and Caz went mad along with the other musicians, and the tourists mingled particularly well with the locals. Paul took that opportunity to stun onlookers by being ridiculously affectionate towards me, hugging me as he walked by my low stool and cradling my head tenderly against his ribcage. He spoke of how special I was, how we'd always been on the same wavelength, how he'd never forgotten it and never would. People within earshot stared a little, shocked that he wasn't berating the size of my thighs or chuckling at my expense. I was truly touched, and simply hugged him back.
Tommy and I found ourselves sitting together outside at one point discussing the bending of time that I was feeling so acutely, and the fact that I wasn't the only one feeling it. I hinted to myself that on some level I felt fear at the experience of it. The saving grace was the glove-like fit of the place, and the stable ground that that gave me to stand on. In fact, it was more stable at that moment than it had been since I'd left. I'd left, right? I think so. Maybe. It's not important. I'm here now.
And the next day... were the games.
Imagine that you have a jigsaw puzzle, and you have it all put together except for one piece. It won't fit. It just sits there, on top, not aligning itself, while you pound on it over and over. You're growing increasingly frustrated. You know it should fit. Why doesn't it fit? Bang bang bang, it just. won't. fit. And then suddenly, you twist it. And it slides beautifully, cleanly, perfectly and seamlessly into place.
That's what it felt like when I walked off the pier, and found myself on Inverie high street.
Had it been years? I didn't feel it. And neither did Cath and Steve and Judith, sitting at the picnic table in front of the pub. Neither did Sandy or Tommy, the latter of whom actually spoke my mind that night when he sat next to me outside, looking at the lights of the boats offshore, and said, "Does it feel like you ever left? Because it doesn't to me." Rhona couldn't wrap her mind around the phrase "two years" and neither could Stewart. Person after person, hug after hug, excitement that I was back mingled with a calm undercurrent of comfort. Not a beat was missed. The smells, the smiles, the looks, the faces, the air, the sounds and pace and life, they proved my memories to be flawless. A humming tension in my being quieted at last. It's such a cliche, but finally, everything was in its right place, and it was easier to breathe.
I had found out in Mallaig that Daniel had left town that morning, and no one knew when he'd be back. On the boat ride over, I'd said to Renee that if he left me his keys, it meant he'd be back soon and was tacitly apologising for his unannounced absence. He did leave me his keys, and I had them in hand minutes after entering the pub. Renee and I went over to his flat and let ourselves in.
It's hard to adequately describe Daniel's flat and its place in my history without seeming hyperbolic. I lost count of the number of nights I spent in that flat, drinking obscene amounts of tea and talking with Dan until the sun rose. The most intense conversations, charged silences, communicative eye contact, raw self-awareness, revolutionary understandings, mystical speculations, exhillarating hilarity, and unsettling bonding I've ever experienced, I experienced in that flat, in the wee hours, with nothing but tea and tealights and music and Daniel. Some of my brightest joys and sharpest pains were there. I won't go on and on about it, because that is not the point of this entry. Suffice it to say, what happened in that flat fundamentally changed my life, fundamentally changed his life, and burned itself into the walls and air.
I walked in the door with Renee and the energy of the place hit me like a burst of steam. I could feel the way time quivered and bent, the heaviness of the atmosphere, the madness that had been brewing since I'd left. I believe ghosts are made when you charge your surroundings with your mind so strongly that it singes the spacetime, and I believe it's hard to do. I also believe that Daniel has created a ghost in that room by doing just that, and I could feel it there as if he were sitting on the couch. We were hushed as we used the bathroom, checked our email on his laptop, borrowed flashlights and a jacket.
Whether it was the crazed look on my face as I breathed that familiar presence or the presence itself, Renee was quiet and meticulously observant of the place and my behavior. She was being, as she did throughout the trip, the only real witness to my deeper experiences with Knoydart that I've ever had. Two years of stories and phases and ups and downs and rants and tears and joys and unfiltered experience and the daily burden of a psyche stretched across an ocean have been received with care and understanding in the most amazing ways by Renee. I hesitate to say I needed her there, but that may just be true. What is definitely true is that I was only beginning to understand how valuable it was to have her with me, facing these things the way I was and would.
We left after maybe 10 or 15 intense minutes and headed up the road to the hostel, a low building next to the horse paddock and the market garden. To truly appreciate what I mean by "road" you have to remember that Knoydart only has a few miles of pavement, which exists mostly to facilitate the landrovers (brought over by boat) traversing the mountains on the peninsula to connect Inverie and the other smaller settlements. There are only about 70 people on Knoydart year-round, and far fewer vehicles. So it should not be surprising that most "roads" are composed of dirt, stone, some gravel, deep trenches and potholes, and the occasional bit of tarmac. They are much easier (and less painful) to walk than to drive on. The hostel was only a mile away from the village, so walking was how we intended to get there. However, in a moment of true Knoydartian color, an old friend opted to bustle us into his landrover and drive us up. While I held his whiskey.
I love Knoydart.
Walking back into the village once we were settled, I laid eyes on a short, stocky, skin-headed man in a leather jacket lounging outside the pub. I grinned so broadly it hurt, and when he saw me it was like he was watching the sun rise. Paul the diver, the Forge's north Irish scallop diver, was one of my earliest and closest and most unlikely friends on Knoydart. Paul is by far the most abrasive, bellicose, and insightfully insulting man many women ever meet, and we took to each other because I could tell that he was doing it for humor, connection, and self-preservation, and because he could tell that I saw through it and rode it out with a smile and a sharp tongue. There were many, many nights when Paul and I, either from across the bar or on the same side of it, digressed at length on humanity, life, wisdom, individuals, histories, love, and philosophy not of the academic variety but of the daily life variety. We made a space of wonderfully safe and bonded connection and communication. Once I cut through Paul's abusive mannerism and established trust, respect, and fondness, he became one of those friends who would literally die fighting to save you if it came down to it. Much if not most of Knoydart and Mallaig never get past Paul's thick shell, and it's a shame. He's a particularly lovely diamond in a particularly forbidding rough.
So Paul and I had a fond hug and chat, with him describing how he'd immediately recognized me from a hundred yards away, no mean feat for a man who can never seem to recall women's names, let alone faces. One might here point out that it was less the face and more the amazonian build that he clocked from a distance, but regardless. We were very happy to see each other.
That night, the pub was packed. Tunes, reunions, madness, it was a classic Inverie-style piss-up. Those I'd not seen earlier, I saw then. Tam the Banjo and Caz went mad along with the other musicians, and the tourists mingled particularly well with the locals. Paul took that opportunity to stun onlookers by being ridiculously affectionate towards me, hugging me as he walked by my low stool and cradling my head tenderly against his ribcage. He spoke of how special I was, how we'd always been on the same wavelength, how he'd never forgotten it and never would. People within earshot stared a little, shocked that he wasn't berating the size of my thighs or chuckling at my expense. I was truly touched, and simply hugged him back.
Tommy and I found ourselves sitting together outside at one point discussing the bending of time that I was feeling so acutely, and the fact that I wasn't the only one feeling it. I hinted to myself that on some level I felt fear at the experience of it. The saving grace was the glove-like fit of the place, and the stable ground that that gave me to stand on. In fact, it was more stable at that moment than it had been since I'd left. I'd left, right? I think so. Maybe. It's not important. I'm here now.
And the next day... were the games.