Morning ramble through anemoia

The forecast promised clear skies from sunrise until around 10 am, after which time clouds will start streaming in from the west. So last night I went to bed early. This morning I woke up at half past five, fed the cats, ate breakfast and set off before seven. First port of call would be the abandoned plum orchards of Machcin II, to top up my breakfast. The ground was still soaked with dew when I arrived, an Eden-like atmosphere, the sun streaming in  through the trees. Having eaten my fill of ripe plums and prune-plums (węgierki) off the trees, I carried on towards Grobice.

Wave after wave of exomnesia moments; a sense of longing for a time and places from before my birth that are so familiar to me, yet in this life I have experienced them not.
 

The bittersweet tang of losing something intangible yet beautiful, that I have felt since childhood. Something close, personal, familiar, integral with my identity – yet I can't grasp it.

For a moment, the sight of a new pavement being built alongside ulica Zamkowa in Grobice takes my mind off anomalous reminiscences. This infrastructural investment is much needed, good to see work in progress.

Below: but then the sight of this rural suburbia whisks me right off again...

Across the DK50 approaching Sułkowice. That klimat is there; intense.

As the morning ticks away, the sky starts filling with clouds. Below: looking towards the railway line in Sułkowice, and beyond it, the police dog-training school.

Back to Chynów and Jakubowizna by following the railway line. That atmosphere remains with me. Drifting in and out of a hypnagogic dreamworld in which details like time and geography lose all relevance.

Below: from the same spot, looking the other way, the day before yesterday, just after sunset.

This time five years ago:
Age and Ego: Part I

This time six years ago:
Getting There

This time seven years ago:
Best and worst railway journeys in one day

This time eight year:
What's new around Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
Hydrology - droughts, floods and sandbanks

This time 13 years ago:
Radom air show - Part 1

This time 14 years ago:
Restricting passenger movement and safety

This time 15 years ago:
Seasonal fruit - eat it in bulk, while you can!

This time 17 years ago:
Russia-Polish 'unification', 1939-style

The psychological benefits of 'place nostalgia'

An interesting academic paper has appeared that suggests people are likely to feel more nostalgic toward the seaside, lakes or rivers than they are toward fields, forests and mountains. Or indeed toward the built environment. The study, led by the University of Cambridge and conducted in the UK and US, suggests that coastlines may have the optimal visual properties to make us feel positive emotions, and argues that ‘place nostalgia’ offers significant psychological benefits.

Yes. I absolutely agree. The sea, the rhythm of the crashing waves, sea breezes, the sea sparkle, that fresh smell – it's emotionally powerful. Whether a peaceful sunny day by the sea or under dark clouds propelled by a howling gale, it is always a memorable experience (unless you live by the sea and it becomes commonplace). Memories click, connect, get triggered by smells, tastes, sights, sounds or sensations; the seaside offers many. The Daffodils effect (Wordsworth's most famous poem, about a qualia memory of lakeside flowers) tells us this: "For oft when on my couch I lie/In vacant or in pensive mood/They flash upon that inward eye/That is the bliss of solitude". Place nostalgia can be triggered (by a sensory input) or bidden (conjured up by the mind) – or spontaneous, the last being the most mysterious. (Why did I just experience that flashback?)

I have written many times about the emotional power of nostalgia coupled to spirit of place in my blog; the two are closely linked. [Hence my fondness for the poetry of Sir John Betjeman.] Now, the Cambridge University study,  Searching for Ithaca: The geography and psychological benefits of nostalgic places by Militaru, van Tilburg, Sedikides, Wildschut and Rentfrow, misses out on one crucial word; 'qualia'. 

Qualia are the pure, raw, uninterpreted subjective sensory qualities of experience. They are inherently personal and private. Memories of qualia are key to what drives nostalgia; the longing to relive a moment experienced, a moment that our consciousness holds dear. Memories of such moments, such experiences, shape our personalities, they make us who we are, over the decades. Qualia are strongly associated with place, how we experience place through the sense.

Had I been approached by the researchers, I''d have said that the strongest qualia memories I have are indeed from the seaside; from holidays in the Northern French beach-resort town of Stella-Plage in the 1960s and '70s. I have been there six times; on the other hand I have been to the beaches of the Llyn Peninsula in North Wales maybe 16 times – and yet the nostalgia sparked by thoughts of Stella-Plage are stronger than those of Porth Oer, Porthdinllaen or Llanbedrog (strong those they are). Why should that be? Experiences at a more formative age? Or the fact that France was more exotic and different to me than North Wales?

Both seasides trump another familiar, nostalgia-jogging place for me, Oxshott Common, near Esher in Surrey, that I must have visited at least a hundred times. But then it is forest and heath, not open water. "All that's missing is the sea"; that something extra special. The aquatic ape hypothesis fits in nicely with thoughts of atavistic memories of migrating along ocean shores. More about the sharp pangs of nostalgia for Stella-Plage brought on by the smell of suntan oil and cigarette smoke here.

This time last year:
From automatic action to mindful control

This time two years ago:
Keep on keeping on

This time three years ago:
Time and Consciousness

This time four years ago:
Altered states – higher planes

This time eight years ago:
Warsaw-Radom line modernisation – Czachówek

This time 15 years ago:
Climbing Mogielica

This time 16 years ago:
Good graffiti, bad graffiti

Back to explore deeper

So taken was I by the forest west of Sułkowice (which no map seems to want to name), I returned again today, this time with Moni who had popped over. Learning from my brother that the forest's most prominent feature is an esker, a "long, winding ridge of stratified sand, examples of which occur in formerly glaciated regions of Europe", we decided to check out more of it. Sunlight and clouds added drama.

Below: cross-section through the esker showing the stratification of the sand.

Below: we followed – as far as possible – the top of the ridge, as it snaked around from south to north.

Below: the highest point, Hill 133, marked by a geodesic post. This is over 20 metres higher than the river Czarna which runs between the forest and Sułkowice. This may not seem much to mountain folk, but in Mazowsze – that's a lot! 

Below: a thinning of trees, whitish undergrowth – lichens growing among the moss.

Below: close-up of the forest floor. Lichens and mosses. This part of Poland experienced a total of six waves of glaciation; Czechia, where Moni lives, experienced none. Consequently, she says, the soil in forests there smells different.

Below: towards the south-western end of the forest, a hunter's pulpit. Hoofprints in the sandy soil suggest the presence of deer. May the hunters miss.

Below: on the way back: the bridge over the river Czarna, which separates the village of Hipolitów from Sułkowice.

"I live in a part of the world that is SHUNNED by space aliens."

This time last year:

Hottest September in Poland?

This time two years ago:

Box-top art in the Sublime Aesthetic

This time three years ago:
Trains of thought, insights and 'voices'

This time five years ago:
Parliamentary train at West Ealing station

This time six years ago:
Progress in Jakubowizna

This time eight years ago:
Miedzianka by Filip Springer

This time nine years ago:
Out of the third, into the fourth

This time ten years ago:
Inverted reflections

This time ten years ago:
Observations from London's WC1
and Observations from the City of London

This time 12 years ago:
Civilising Jeziorki's wetlands

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw's Aleje Jerozolimskie

This time 15 years ago:
Melancholy autumn mood in Łazienki

This time 16 years ago:
Autumn gold, Zamienie

This time 17 years ago:
Flamenco Sketches – Seville

Geomancy: in search of magical places

The other night, I woke with the thought which I immediately wrote down: "Places that bring biological energy and healing/places that bring wisdom & inspiration."  I went back to sleep and dreamt I was on my way to a business meeting in London and had to change trains at Hammersmith; the escalator between platforms turned into a stepladder which was getting narrower and narrower...

In the morning I looked up the notion of geomancy on Wikipedia: "The term geomancy was originally used to mean methods of divination that interpret geographic features, markings on the ground, or the patterns formed by soil, rocks, or sand. Its definition has expanded over time (along with the recognized definition of the suffix -mancy), to include any spiritual, metaphysical, or pseudoscientific practice that is related to the Earth. In recent times the term has been applied to a wide range of other occult and fringe activities." Earth mysteries, in other words.

Yes, this clicks. All the stuff about stone circles, ley lines, chakras, feng shui and the like; fine if you live in Wiltshire, but I'd like such a place within walking distance of my działka. A place that resonates with my aesthetic preferences, a place with a strong spirit of place, where everything fits together in harmony. I have been writing about spirit of place more or less since setting up this blog over 17 years ago, yet I am now drawn to a deeper search for what geographical location and alignment of horizon mean for the human experience.

Today I was drawn to return to Hill 126, in the forest to the west of the railway line, between Sułkowice and Czachówek Południowy. Other than a cyclist heading the other way as I entered the forest, I saw no one for an hour and half. It was blissful – the last day of astronomical summer, a cloudless sky, the temperature topping out at 25C. Despite autumn being near, there were no signs of it. No first leaves falling from the trees. No profusion of spiders' webs – just the odd strand here and there. No mosquitos. I could hear woodpeckers, tits and chaffinches. Otherwise silence (broken near the end of my sojourn by the sound of a distant chainsaw). The spell had been cast. The magic moments were recorded on my mobile phone because... (see below)...

I took a series of photographs in the forest on my Nikon Coolpix A. Getting back home, I took out the SD card to transfer the files to the laptop. As I did so, I noticed that every single shot I took in the forest had disappeared. Only one photo, taken on the way, remains on the SD card. This hasn't ever happened to me since taking up digital photography in February 2007. Second coincidence: yesterday on a call, discussing the recent discovery that the earth has an electric (as well as an electromagnetic) field, I mentioned the phrase 'earth mysteries' – and at this exact moment, a gust of wind blew the 20+ kg stone used to prop the front door open so hard, it caused the door to slam shut (and I have two witnesses!). Third coincidence. I'm writing this post and a colleague from work emails me about getting to a business meeting in London and changing underground trains at Farringdon station... (see dream at the top.)

So – hunting those magic places where physical effects have no physical cause is to be my calling.

Incidentally, the list of posts from this time in past years shows how strongly spirit of place affects my consciousness, creating those qualia experiences.

This time two years ago:
Gathering moss – and hops

This time three years ago:
Gdańsk, Northern Europe

This time four years ago:
Herons in Jeziorki, summer's end

This time five years ago:

Sublime September sun, Ealing

This time seven years ago:
Stepping up the pace

This time eight years ago:
Evolution of human consciousness

This time nine years ago:
Farewell to Ciocia Jadzia

This time ten years ago:
By train from to Konstancin and Siekierki

This time 11 years ago:
Summer's end, Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Ząbkowska, Praga's newly hip thoroughfare

This time 15 years ago:
Catching the klimat

This time 17 years ago:
Road to Łuków - a road trip into the sublime

Flashbacks multiply as autumn sun wanes

The morning sun in a pure blue sky blazes, inducing flashback after flashback to that old anomalous familiarity. Reading a magazine on the train, catching sight of an attractive woman on the platform - the spirit of mid-century America as experience by a man in his thirties returns. And back in Jakubowizna in the evening for a sunset stroll, this canonical prospect, side-lit from the west, carries me away.

And a further flashback - prosperous farmhouses surrounded by arable land. Familiar, pleasant, instantly recognisable - but not from distant Hanwell nor Perivale, nothing to do with the endless streets of terraced 1930s and Victorian houses and traffic jams among which I grew up.

Below: a landscape that triggers a present-life flashback, this time to Stella-Plage in northern France, and precisely to what is now the junction of Chemin du Baillarquet and Rue des Iris; although back in the 1970s, these chemins vicinaux were unnamed, unasphalted and undeveloped. 

Tomorrow looks like rain, and the next day, and the weekend, and right through to next Thursday, but no frost forecast. Sunny October must inevitably yield to damp, grey October, though knowing the Polish climate, some nice surprises can still turn up. As it is, I have yet to switch on the heating, daytime temperatures inside my house haven't yet fallen to anywhere near uncomfortable (at 18C I shall activate under-floor heating, but at 19.5C all that's needed is a thin jumper over my shirt and some press-ups, squats, weights or plank to warm myself up. Last autumn - well, late summer actually! I already had to put on the heating on 19 September. 

Changing seasons are strong flashback triggers. One I look forward to is the first evening frost - leaving the office in town with temperatures below zero, and the anticipation of Christmas...

This time last year:
I dream of telepathy

This time three years ago:
S7 update, around what's now Węzeł Zamienie

This time four years ago:
Marchin' again

This time five years ago:

Ealing and West Ealing memories

This time eight years ago:
The autumn sublime in Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
Enduring Ealing - Victorian and Edwardian klimats

This time 11 years ago:
Krokowa, Poland's former northern borderlands

This time 16 years ago:
Aerial photograph of Central London

Travel, tourism and materialism

Have you seen those tourism bucket-list things doing the rounds on social media? The ones where you are supposed to say how many of these 30 destinations you've visited, so that your virtual friends can be impressed?

Well, I have absolutely no desire to visit Thailand, Venezuela, the Philippines, Nigeria, Dubai, Beijing, Vietnam or New York before I die. I don't fancy Egypt or Israel, nor do I wish to mingle with tourist crowds in summer in Venice, Rome or Paris. I don't like crowds. I don't like crowded beaches or crowded mountain trails.

Kraków I know well; often I will get to my business destination on foot from the station, passing through the old town. Electric carts full of tourists glide through the narrow streets, their heads looking left, then right, as their tour guide points out the 15th century basilica and the 16th century convent. No one is really interested. Most are only there because everyone says "you must do Kraków".  Leaflets advertising restaurants, bars or tours are thrust into your face. 'Auschwitz - Schindler's Factory - Salt Mines CHEAP!' It's all too much. 

Why are you going there?

Spirit of place is what draws me. There has to be a spiritual calling to visit - a subliminal desire to commune with a location, on my own, or else in the presence of someone else who gets it. Tourism for the sake of variety, for the sake of ticking off a box on a bucket list, is morally wrong on so many levels. There's tourism for the ego, and tourism for the soul. The latter is the only sort of interest to me.

[If you do harbour an intense, spiritual, longing to visit Kraków, do so in mid-January, the low-low season, before Polish ferie winter holidays begin. You should have the place pretty much to yourself and to the locals.]

I've often written that the travel destination of the future will be the past. Spiritual longings for places as they were are rarely rewarded with a repeat of the hoped-for experience. I remember my first trip to the US in 1978 (45 years ago right now!); already by then, America had changed from what I was seeking. Today, the America of the 1930s, '40s and '50s has vanished, replaced by identical strip-malls, SUVs and billboards advertising prescription medicines, peopled by the overweight. I have no ambition to return to the US, like, ever. 

Google Maps Street View (where available) gives a beautiful visual insight into spirit of place, of course without other sensory inputs, you're only getting a fifth of the experience. But it - plus access to myriad photos and films online offers glimpses of places that the pre-internet world couldn't match. My basic curiosity about places can easily be assuaged by diving online.

So where would I go? Rural - deeply rural - Europe. Villages in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France - right off the tourist trail, scarcely known of, still abiding in traditional rural ways. How would I get there? Train, bus, bicycle. I'd want to stay for several days, get an understanding of the place. Scandinavia? Maybe. And there's still vast swathes of Poland and its immediate neighbours to visit.

Left: a consciousness moving across the face of the Earth. I am entirely happy wandering around on foot for lengthy strolls in my immediate neighbourhood; I require little more than a sunny day (any time of year!) to be moved into sublime spheres. 

I have foresworn air travel (Jet Zero). We haven't got 'until 2050' - what's needed is immediate action, bottom up, by the two billion richest individuals on this planet; we must change our behaviour and dramatically curtail our CO₂ emissions.

 I'm doing my bit - I hope you're doing yours. 

"Do not go unless your heart tells you so."

UPDATE: In the comments, Michał Karski rightly mentions pilgrimage. Yes! A crucial idea (entering the word pilgrimage into my blog's search box yields many posts). We all need our own pilgrimage destinations, even it's just down the road and round the corner to catch the sun setting over Wola Pieczyska or Sułkowice. Some thoughts about places spiritual here.

This time last year:
To Rzeszów and back by rail, part II

This time six years ago:

Of pipes and pylons

This time eight years ago:
What's the biggest threat - Putin or ISIS?

This time nine years ago:
Scenarios for change in Russia

This time ten years ago:
A new bus for Jeziorki - the 809 to Bobrowiec

This time 12 years ago:
Bunker in Powiśle

This time 13 years ago:
Sunshine brings out the best in everything

This time 15 years ago:
There must be a better way (3)

Hipolitów

Villages are there to be discovered; here's one that's easy to miss being off the main roads - the tiny village of Hipolitów (population in 2018: a mere 38 souls); bordered to the west and north by forests, to the south by orchards and to the east by the Czarna river*, which has a tendency to burst its banks and spill over into the marshy meadows alongside it. To the east of the Czarna is the much larger village of Sułkowice, home to the famous police-dog training centre.

I called by last weekend and again today, to approach it from different angles and get a feel for the spirit of the place.

Below: a small farm in Hipolitów, as seen from the road running into Sułkowice, ulica Ogrodowa ('garden street').

Below: track running through the significant tracts of forest to the west of Hipolitów; sandy soil - birch, aspen and fir predominate. These are state-owned forests - Lasy Państwowe. Here and there, patches of heathland, where no trees grow, only low scrub.

Below: a homage to Ansel Adams' Aspens.

Below: descending from the forest into Hipolitów from the west. Unlike my local forest above Jakubowizna, there's no sign of recent tree-felling activity around here. Lasy Państwowe has felled as much timber in 2022 as in the past five preceding years.

Below: houses begin to appear, new ones at that - it's quite likely that the population has grown since 2018, with newcomers' cars bearing Warsaw or Piaseczno plates. The current online map of the local authority shows 24 individual plots - a mixture of brand new energy-efficient houses and tumbledown wooden cottages.

Below: altared states. Traditional wayside chapel, Hipolitów. Most villages around here will have one.

Below: view from the bridge, looking down the road towards Sułkowice. Note the yellow post by the side of the road, indicating the presence of a recently laid gas pipeline to Hipolitów.

Below: view from the bridge II - looking south towards Chynów beyond the treeline. The river Czarna flows north, eventually reaching the Vistula near Czersk.

Below: just across the bridge, around the corner, the border.

Below: if this were England, the building at the top of the lane would be a pub - the Royal Oak, the Fox and Hounds, the Crown - something like that; a place to rest my legs and sup back a frothy pint of ale before continuing my journey. A tin of insipid beer from a village shop isn't something I'd pause for - even if there were a shop here. Which there isn't, but then everyone has a car. I even spotted some electric cars!

Left: looking north from the edge of Hipolitów, towards the settlement's furthest-flung house. I am getting a strong vibe around here, that rural-USA-1940's feel.

Below: a bit more of that same vibe... a row of medium-tension pylons bringing electrical power to rural communities. The police-dog training school is behind the trees to the right of this picture.

Below: hard to believe that this is a river valley - the Czarna is down there somewhere... well before the treeline... Such flat lands flood easily.

Below: blink and you'll miss it - the roadsign to Hipolitów from  ulica Ogrodowa. The one way in by car.

One by one, I am visiting all settlements surrounding Jakubowizna to a radius of 5km on foot; still a few to go. Quiet, peaceful and pleasant.

* UPDATE, LATE SUMMER 2025. The Czarna has run dry. I have crossed it on foot in five separate places in the past few weeks. Not enough snowfall in the winter. Climate change is happening, folks!

This time two years ago:
Your life: a miracle - or just something that happened?

This time five years ago:
The evolution of the biosphere cannot be predicted

This time six years ago:
Jeziorki meltdown in the fog

This time seven years ago:
Health, happiness and wholeness

This time eight years ago:
Kicking off Lent again 

This time nine years ago:
Improving the procurement of Poland's infrastructure 

This time ten years ago:
Wait to spend or save lives now? An infrastructure quandary

This time 14 years ago:
It's not rich countries that build roads, its roads that build rich countries

This time 15 years ago:
Snow that was doomed to melt

Winter's on its way

Woke up this morning to sunshine and snow lightly falling, a gorgeous sight after nine grey days. Two walks are needed - one to the shop, one to catch the dusk. Below: the Kolberg InterCity train heads south towards Kraków. I just love this Canonical Prospect.

Below: the reverse view - sun and clouds doing battle.

Below: ulica Wspólna, connecting the centre of Chynów, to the station and Jakubowizna across the tracks. Fields on either side of ul. Wspólna are now in winter mode; the orchards mostly picked clean, the straw baled.

The last of the apples are still being picked, the last teams out dropping ripe (and chilled) fruit into pales. Trucks head off to the cold stores. These are supermarket-grade apples below - visually attractive, tasty - but sprayed; best to eat after peeling. My apples, unsprayed, can be eaten together with peel - however, they don't store; what's not been turned into cider is now bruised to the point of inedibility.

Below: sunset's getting earlier and earlier. Barely enough time to wash up after lunch before going for my second walk. Sunset today in Chynów was at 15:39; the earliest is quarter of an hour earlier, from 8 to 16 December, when it sets at 15:24. Looking back towards Jakubowizna.

Below: logging has been going on around here for the past week and half. A pile of tree trunks and branches is visible in the distance. The chainsaws, heavy logging equipment, tractors and trucks have scared off the wildlife, so I don't hold out too much chance of seeing any today. 

Below: out of the forest, into the orchard. This is the one in which I snapped an elk the other week. Today, I came across a young deer at the far end of the row of apple trees - it fled before I could raise my camera to my eye. Incidentally, last week I spoke to a local farmer about seeing the elk; he told me that he hadn't had a sighting in ten years. A female elk and her calf found themselves in his orchard. The mother managed to leap over the fence, the calf couldn't - in the end the farmer used wire-cutters to make an opening in the net fence, allowing the calf to make it back to its anxiously waiting mother on the other side.

Below: these forests are, however, for logging. To the left, three rows of young birch, to the left of them, dense rows of not-so-young pine. An older, mixed, forest to the right.

Below: another of the Canonical Prospects; photographed many a time - but with fewer trees now after the logging. Straight on for Jakubowizna, bear right for Grobice. From here, I'm 15 minutes from home.

Just outside my działka - as the key slips into the lock, there's a sense of elation of being home, into the warmth, into the light. Onto the stove, a leek, potato, tomato and red-pepper stew with lentils, flavoured with Chorizo sausage, cubed Parmesan cheese rind and chives.

A quick check-up on electricity usage. Since the panels were connected to the grid on 12 July, they have generated over 1,050 kWh of power, whilst I have consumed over 650 kWh, which means I can use another 400 kWh before I start borrowing from next spring and summer's surpluses. Yesterday I received 4,000zł subsidy from the government, reducing my capital outlay of 27,500zł for the eight-panel array. A quick glance at my Solis Home app reveals that today's sunshine generated more electricity than the past four days put together - sunny days are profitable as well as good for the soul!

This time five years ago:
Kolej grójecka by Bogdan Pokropiński

This time seven years ago:
PIS, thinking wishfully about the village

This time nine years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time 11 years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time 12 years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Spirit of place - anomalous familiarity moments 

Qualia compilation 5 - Hanwell

Growing up in Hanwell, my childhood topography was delineated by the Uxbridge Road to the north and Boston Manor Road to the west. The former - into West Ealing and the shops. The latter - across the road and into Elthorne Park, beyond which ran the railway line and the Grand Union Canal. Trumper's Way connects Boston Manor Road to the canal; the railway, which ran from Southall to Brentford. As a child, my mother forbade me to go beyond Elthorne Park, which made that which lay out there all the more alluring. 

Until I was eight and had eye surgery, I had a strong squint which affected my distance vision. As a result, I could not see the far end of Elthorne Park clearly; I somehow felt it stretched out west all the way to America. The M4 motorway had not yet been built; Windmill Land and Osterley Park were out of sight. 

For my tenth birthday, I received a big boy's bike - a Hercules Jeep, 24" wheels but no gears. Once the mudguards, chain guard and saddlebag were removed, I had a decent mount on which I could bomb down Trumper's Way and ride along the canal towpath (don't tell my mum!). All of a sudden, my horizons were expanded and I could explore territories further afield. A canal-side warehouse, a great looming shed, triggered anomalous qualia memories, especially at dusk, as did the walled-off towers of St Bernard's mental hospital - the former County Asylum. Images of late Victorian/Edwardian England, more the Midlands than the Home Counties.

Another part of Hanwell, just over a mile from home that clicked with my imagination is what's now the Hanwell Community Centre, but was once the Central London District Poor Law School (whose most famous former pupil was Charlie Chaplin). Again, at dusk, towards the end of the school summer holidays, this would be a place with atmosphere, its clock tower and brick structure rising above Cuckoo Park.

In between the two stands Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Wharncliffe Viaduct, spanning the Brent Valley. I recall playing with friends in Churchfields recreation ground to the north, one late summer's evening and watching a works train crossing the viaduct, grey and ghostly.

These places flash back to me in my memory still, living a thousand miles away - and indeed I've not been back there for over two years now. Spirit of place is strong; it lingers, it becomes part of one's consciousness. Part of personality, an intrinsic part of who you are, wherever you are - whenever you are.

In the same way that I have been experiencing anomalous-memory flashbacks all of my life, I am certain that some future incarnation of my consciousness will have flashbacks to Hanwell in the 1960s.

[Some photos from my childhood Hanwell in this post from 2015]

This time last year:
Brooding, moody sunsets

This time two year ago:
Town and country in summer

This time three years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time four years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park - waiting for Crossrail

This time five years ago:
tRUmp flies into Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

Spirit of Place and Metaphysics - Lent 2022: Day 43

To what extent are we people of place? I'm a Pole born in England, a Varsovian Londoner; my corners of these two cities are the district of Ursynów and the Borough of Ealing.

My dreams, as I've often related on this blog, span the two countries. One end of a bridge is in Warsaw, the other in London; Ealing Common and Shepherd's Bush are but a bus ride away from Góra Kalwaria. This is disjunctive cognition of setting, a common feature of dreams. Rarely do my dreams stray from some version of Britain or Poland; early this morning (as I wrote in an addendum to yesterday's post), I dreamt I was at Cambridge University but it was set on the side of a hill or mountain and featured bigger and grander architecture than the real Cambridge. Another frequent dream setting is a vast, dark, brooding Brictorian railway terminal, riddled with tunnels and passages, ramps and staircases, underneath a cast-iron and glass roof. Having passed through Paddington station daily for several years while studying and working in London, that makes sense.

Can a soul - a consciousness - attach itself to place by way of its qualia memories of it? 

Can qualia memories of place transfer themselves across generations? I remember when I first cycled through the area around which my paternal grandmother was born - Mogielnica, south-west of Grójec - having a strong, preternatural, connection with the landscape of gently undulating orchards. And although I have never been to the area in north-west Ukraine, pre-war Wołyń, where my mother spent her childhood, I can sense the spirit of place of early spring, wide muddy roads, silver birches on their sides.

From the outset, this blog was intended as a place where I could record my surroundings in words and photographs, with the aim of creating a beacon for the future; triggers for qualia memories.

The notion of where I'm from is very important to me. Roots here, roots there - but deep roots. Roots that are embedded in the soul. And so when I have exomnesiac (or xenomnesiac) flashbacks to another place in another time, beyond my history and geography, I take note. They are life-long, familiar and similar in quality, in klimat. If I had to pin them down, I'd place them in America from the 1920s into the late 1950s. It was a klimat long gone; a klimat I searched for on my first visit to the US in 1978 and could just about feel especially in rural America, not yet subsumed into identical strip-malls, flyovers and interstate highways.

Paradoxically, it was something I felt to be chimeric, growing up in grey West London; the qualia memories came back more strongly and more frequently on moving to Poland - to Mazovia - in the late 1990s. In London I tended to dismiss the flashbacks as mere imagination, having no terms of reference; no flat landscapes under blue skies, no rural homesteads with electricity and telephone wires stretched along the straight road. The nearest I got to it was the fenlands of East Anglia. See what I mean? Memories triggered in a way that no Alpine vista or Mediterranean island can do.

Are we rooted in place? Can we will our next incarnations to a geographically specific location? 

This time two years ago:
Lockdown stroll, S7 roadworks

This time three years ago:
Construction updates

This time nine years ago:
Pigeon infestation by Dworzec Centralny

This time 12 years ago:
Magnolia in bloom, Ealing

Where are you really from? Lent 2021: Day 21

It was Brexit that divided society into 'citizens of somewhere' and 'citizens of nowhere'. The former have deeply established roots in a given community; the others are migrants - said by Brexiteers to be rootless nomads, settlers from elsewhere. Before then, urban Britain had somehow got used to newcomers moving in from other countries and other continents, while rural England was largely unaware of the phenomenon. Whilst most English cities voted to remain in the EU, small-town and rural England (and Wales) voted to Take Back Control, because they didn't like strangers talking  foreign in the High Street.

My son was born in West London to parents who themselves were born in England and whose four grandparents were all British citizens. He moved back to Ealing after completing his postgraduate studies in Paris and before that, 20 years living and studying in Poland. When applying for a UK National Insurance number, he was asked "...but where are you really from?"

A good question, and one with a metaphysical dimension. And it's the metaphysical dimension alone that I wish to pursue in this Lenten post.

Sensitivity to spirit of place is important to who we really are. Those qualia - those subjective conscious experiences that are at the heart of what it is to being ourselves - are often triggered by being at a certain place at a certain time. You catch yourself being suddenly aware of the flavour, the atmosphere, the klimat. It's unique. It could not be elsewhere. And that moment of intense sensation of being there can often come back to you, in flashbacks and in dreams. Geographically, such moments root you.

Now, if you are a well-travelled citizen of nowhere, who has had many an exotic holiday, trekking along mountain ridges, splashing in the ocean's surf, hiking through the jungle to visit a hidden temple, who has worked in the great financial hubs of the planet, those moments can come from all over the world. The citizen of somewhere, however, has stronger connections. 

Probably the place that most frequently appears in my dreams is Paddington Station, with its vaulted glass roof, cast-iron and Victorian brick arches, ramps and tunnels, platforms and kiosks. Sometimes this dream station is located in London, sometimes its in Wiltshire or Warsaw. But it is recognisably Paddington - the station I commuted through for many years while working in Central London. However - it's not today's Paddington Station. In my dreams it is darker, eerier; full of soot, smoke, grime and steam - it predates my childhood. Then there are the flashbacks to place - particular places that I find it harder to pin down; but the sensation is so familiar; again, they predate my childhood.

I have written much about this phenomenon and how it has shaped my spiritual worldview; the question you should ask yourself is whether you too have such experiences that might point to a past conscious existence. Some I have spoken to feel an affiliation with early 19th century Paris, colonial East Africa, Sweden under King Gustavus Adolphus, the Deep South, the Basque country, the British Raj in India or Ancient Greece. But such discussions are rare; they are always with mindful people.

Takes you back? Where?

I don't know how the physics or indeed metaphysics behind this phenomenon works. Easier to explain are atavistic memories - ones with a possible genetic vector. One such I experienced was the intense sensation I felt one summer's day as I cycled along the road from Grójec to Mogielnica, never having been there before - cresting a low hill just before Mogielnica, an apple orchard to my left, I felt a sense of this place being strongly familiar. Year later, I would find out that my paternal grandmother was born around here, her family had a farm in these very parts. Or the time one late winter/early spring day on Wimbledon Common, South-West London, a broad sandy track between banks of leafless silver birches used for horse-riding - I felt the lie of the land reminded me of the Kresy in prewar Eastern Poland that my mother's family came from - having never been there myself.

Far harder to explain the America flashbacks that I have had since earliest childhood and continue to have to this day; they are familiar and comforting.

I hope that over time, my nightly dream diaries will offer enough quantitative data as to places about which I dream (even hybrid places, or ones improbably located) to take some educated guesses.

A consciousness anchored in spirit of place has a better recall of the thread of time passing through our biological lives; we have so much to discover about our purpose and our journey along the infinitely long road from Zero to One.

This time last year:
Buildings and the sense of the Mystical

This time two years ago:
Face to face with Schrodinger's Cat

This time six years ago:
Opening of Line 2 of Warsaw's Metro

This time eight years ago:
A selfless faith

This time nine years ago:
Ul. Profesorska after the remont

This time ten years ago:
Lent kicks off again, for the 20th year in a row for me

This time 11 years ago:
Halfway through Lent

This time 13 years ago:
Spring much closer