Self-sufficing solitude

‘And I was taught to feel—perhaps too much—the self-sufficing power of solitude,’ wrote William Wordsworth. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal

The small beach is new to me, but I will be back. I have anchored here once before but it was summer then and crowded; today, on an overcast late autumnal day, I am alone, save for a small fishing boat some distance off. My own boat drifts languidly in the shallow water, its anchor buried in the sand part way up the narrow beach. I had first dragged my boat onto the sand, but I changed my mind with the falling tide, happy to ease it out rather than risk it being so high and dry that it will be quite an effort to get it back in the water later.

The westerly wind is blowing quite strong, but my little sanctuary faces southeast and is therefore protected. It is quiet here.

My first coffee is poured and waiting; brewed from the freshwater stream cascading over the rocks from above and collecting into a small pool in the sand, before running out in tiny rivulets to the estuary. We miss so much in our usual treated water from our taps. The sweetness and purity from what flows to me can be tasted in the coffee I now sip and in the eager handfuls I cupped to my mouth when filling my coffee pot.

The only sounds are those of water: the splash of water from the cascading spring and the lap of water in the falling tide. An occasional passing boat or plane overhead remind me that humanity is nearby, but the lengthy times in between are mine – mine to dream.

I lie as I am in the light, content in my surroundings. Oh, to be in nature again! To feel the air and coolness on my skin, to hear the sounds of water and to breathe the oxygen-rich air! This is freedom: a beach and alone. ‘And I was taught to feel—perhaps too much—the self-sufficing power of solitude,’* wrote William Wordsworth. It is intoxicating.

I saw a sea eagle on my way out. It was so near the start of my trip that I chose not to stop. I usually see sea eagles so to stop and watch so soon seemed frivolous. I saw it instead as a good omen for the end and the beach I am at tells me I was right – but my binoculars lay beside me at the ready.

The westerly wind has dropped off; but a growing rustle in the surrounding trees tells me it is swinging around to the south. The tide is dead low now and my boat still drifts easily in the shallows. I will have no trouble when I leave – but I don’t want to, I want to stay.

I am brewing another coffee now, more to feel the warmth from my Trangia hiking stove than from necessity, but perhaps too for an excuse to taste coffee made from the sweet stream water again. I have a few water bottles with me; I will fill one with this water and take it home.

A sea eagle flew by, as I knew one would. Perhaps drawn by the smell of coffee and the hint of warmth in the air. I was too slow with my binoculars but there was no real need: it was close. The eagle banked low and eased behind the small point. It was soon out of sight but returned moments later, a second one with it. Like me, the birds seem content. Their day is simple: to live and love, and to hunt when necessary. They just flew over again. I hope to see them once more before I go.

The fresh water intrigues me. I have filled a bottle and placed it in my tinnie. It makes me think of the joy and relief that sailors must have felt when coming ashore on a new land and finding a freshwater spring or stream to fill their empty or stale water casks. Graffiti on the small waterfall’s rockface reminds me of that time. It is not the paint of today, but the names of people and vessels carved carefully into the sandstone. The names are hard to read now, worn away from decades of running water, and any corresponding year is long gone. I know the area was a stopping point for whalers and merchantmen in the 1800s. It is romantic to think that I stand where they once did, thankful for the gift of clean water.

The wind is freshening again, and cold. The grey skies have remained that way and despite my pleasant surrounds, I know it will soon be time to leave. I may try for some fish—to replace what will be my dinner tonight, caught on a previous venture a few bays from here—but I will likely just go. I do hate to leave but I will be bashing into the wind and chop on the way home as it is. The sanctuary of this little cove sustains me, and my memories of today will take me through to next time.

* William Wordsworth, The Two-Part Prelude, second part, lines 76–77. Excerpt taken from The Penguin Book of Romantic Poetry, Penguin Books (2001), p281

The Writing Process

Above: Laptops by other names: my Olivetti Lettera 32 and an ever-present Moleskine notebook. Simple writing tools that foster ‘concentration, without interruptions’.

Every writer has their own writing process. These days, it would be assumed you would sit down at a laptop or desktop, open up Word, and let the magic happen. But of course, there are as many processes as there are writers: pen and paper, notepad, laptop, typewriter, voice recorder are some ways of getting words down; and place plays its part: car, beach, forest, café, bedroom, study, park…the list is endless.

Over a fairly short period of time, I found my writing process: a small notebook and longhand. But that came from something else. Back in the mid-naughties, I found myself writing a lot on a typewriter. It was a fairly retro move, but I wanted to experience what other writers and journalists had experienced. I wanted to write ‘deliberately’ perhaps. And I fell in love with it.

I found that what originated on a typewriter, required minimal editing later. Sentences, paragraphs, overall structure, flow, were all thought out in advance. Striking a key meant commitment, ink was going on a page, so more thought went into what was going where and when. The writing felt slower to begin with, but the gains came during the shorter editing process; and then my writing developed and became quicker too – there was no writing anything knowing I could fix it later, but – verb choice particularly – happened then and there; and rhetorical devices—those lovely flourishes that bring writing to life—found their way into my writing as I wrote it. I became a better writer.

But, for someone who spends a lot of time writing on a beach, and writing while away on motorcycle trips, typewriters are impractical. They also bring a large dose of self-consciousness because they are unusual in today’s digital world. They draw attention and are noisy. I remember one evening, writing on the balcony of a holiday apartment in Byron Bay when a young couple walked past on the street below and stood laughing and bewildered because they could hear somebody typing on a typewriter. I froze, and then retreated indoors to less solitude but a less judgemental environment too.

What worked for me was a small Moleskine ‘Cahier’ notebook and a gel pen. I have long been a fan of Moleskine notebooks and the Cahier series are classic work-a-day notebooks. The small size fits comfortably in the front pocket of my motorbike jacket, or in the back pocket of my jeans, and in the calico bag which takes up no space in my motorbike luggage and which I use to carry useful things down to the beach when I’m away. While a fountain pen remains my pen of choice, a Uni-Ball gel pen—first bought by necessity from a newsagent in Forster when I had oddly forgotten to bring a pen on a writing trip—proved itself so admirably on that one particular venture that it has become my go-to pen when I am on the road.

Like a typewriter, writing in longhand forced me to think about my sentences, paragraphs, structure, and style. I have a strange ego associated with editing: if I need to edit excessively, to rewrite extensively—and yes, editing does improve our writing—but if it goes beyond what is reasonable in my mind, it soon transforms into frustration which leads to a questioning of my abilities and of what I was trying to write in the first place.

And, like a typewriter, writing in longhand brought minimal editing. When I compare what I have written in my notebooks to what makes it to publishing, I have determined that I am about 90 per cent there in my notebook. When I write directly to my laptop, it never ends; I write and edit as I go, I shift paragraphs around, delete, change fonts and line spacings, and become distracted by checking emails and social media, searching the internet, and generally wasting time. When I write in longhand—or on a typewriter—I just write.

The process

So, what is my writing process? Time and place are important. Setting aside time is best but I often find it coming on first: an idea will appear, sentences will form in my head, a structure will blossom, and I reach for my pen and notebook – I carry one with me everywhere (again why small notebooks are excellent). A good example is from last week: I could feel an idea coming quickly, I had a 10-minute tea break due at the shop I occasionally work in; I took my break and soon had two pages of a story that will likely make this writing blog.

That’s an example of spontaneity, but my technical process is:

• I find and dedicate time to write

• I write out the story in longhand into a small notebook

• At some stage later, I will type the story into a Word document—making some slight and obvious edits as I go. If this follows a time away, it can require finding significant time itself

• I then let it sit for a day or two. It’s always good to leave it and come back with fresh eyes

• Those fresh eyes reveal surprisingly obvious edits that need to be made and omissions that need to be added. I do those

• I then upload it to my blog or paste it into a larger project.

Writing trips

Something I have come to value are writing trips. I alluded to this earlier, and for me, they usually involve several days away on my motorbike either camping or staying in a small cabin. They are times of solitude, fuelled by long days on empty beaches and broken only by trips to the shops or a retreat from the sun.

Above: The freedom and timelessness of being in nature, of having ‘the whole sky to fly in’. On a lonely beach, coffee brewing, sun rising, and ready to write.

They are times of uninterrupted thinking, where the overarching purpose is to write; the secondary purpose—which is so intrinsically linked to the first that it is difficult to separate—is being in nature. There is a freedom to being in nature, a timelessness I don’t feel anywhere else. There is a restriction when writing elsewhere—even at home—a sense of an impending interruption, a need to be somewhere else, other work that needs doing – yes, these are all the selfish qualities of a writer, but they represent the pressures that writers and artists don’t always respond well to. But having those open-ended days in nature are just magnificent! Days that can be devoted to your craft.

Mary Oliver said, ‘Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching…’* Never do those words make more sense to me than when I am alone on a beach, pen and notebook in hand, coffee brewing on my small metho hiking stove, and the day awakening before me, a day when I have nothing to do but smile – and write.

Processes are personal but common among them all is time. Find time, make time, carve out time; create a writing place and spend time in it. That time and that place are what you will associate with writing, and great things will come from being there.

A final note on familiarity

I have referred to such things as typewriters, pens, notebooks, and places, and even broader concepts like writing trips—which include said notebooks and pens—because association born from familiarity is important to the craft of writing. When I go away on my motorbike, I go away to write. A motorbike laden with panniers, my swag, and some camping gear means I am going away to write. Sometimes I am tempted to drive so I can take my surfboards and a guitar, but I know that my time will then be divided between surfing (usually best first thing in the morning, which is also my preferred writing time) and writing songs. Writing will become another player in a crowded competition where the prize is time. So when I go away to write, I go away to write – without interruptions.

I have written before of my reading place; it is where I like to read – and write. I have a study too, and that is where the final work is done. All are important stages of my writing process. The familiarity of our tools, the where and the when, are all part of that process, and all are conducive to good writing.

So, what is your writing process?

Appendix

What I use: an Olivetti Lettera 32

Above: Ready to write

I first heard of the Olivetti Lettera 32 when reading River of Time, Jon Swain’s excellent memoir of his time as a journalist in Vietnam and Cambodia in the early 1970s. ‘I brought to Phnom Penh next to no clothes but a few books and the usual immutable paraphernalia of the journalist in those days – an Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter and a camera,’ he wrote*.

As a budding photojournalist making his own forays into Southeast Asia—and Africa—and enamoured by the rich archive of material created by Swain and his contemporaries as they reported on the conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, I was intrigued.

Before long, I had my own Lettera 32, bought from an older couple whose typewriter repair business was fast becoming obsolete and would soon follow them into retirement. I immediately fell for the sea foam green colour, and the contrasting red tab key which sometimes gets mistakenly struck as my muscle memory sends my fingers for the ‘return’ key or apostrophe. My Lettera 32 was made in Olivetti’s Barcelona plant; a serial number search puts its year of manufacture at 1970 – it’s the same age as me and I find something special in that.

Other research revealed how correct Swain was: the Lettera 32 being a favourite portable typewriter of its time, adored by journalists and students alike, and also by writers including Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road) who allegedly wrote all of his work on the same machine he’d bought in the mid-60s.

Above: Simple and uncluttered. You can write, or you can write.

Continuing research since has shown that many serious writers prefer typewriters to computers—for the reasons outlined in the article above—and that many younger writers are finding something special in the clack and clatter of the keys, and the more direct and immediate connection to their writing.

As a photographer who doggedly resisted moving to digital, and who stubbornly stood at countless airport x-ray machines while security staff sifted through every roll of Ilford HP5 and Fuji Press 400 I could carry, an Olivetti Lettera 32 suited me and my Luddite ways down to the ground.

I have always resisted change-for-change’s sake and the misguided belief that newer must be better. Newer usually means more convenience—at least until you need to upgrade within months of purchase—not higher quality. The things we pay for now are not things designed to last, that stand the test of time, but rather mediocre things created and sold and superseded at an absurd rate.

I have upgraded my computer several times since I bought my Olivetti. Failing batteries and unsupported outdated software render the older machines obsolete. Hard drives litter my desk drawers and a nagging sense that I have lost much material litters my conscience. That I can sit down at a machine as old as I am and write story after story, article after article, or book after book if I wanted to, is testament to both quality (in design and build) and simplicity. And I have an immediate hard copy that can be filed away next my notebooks.

It takes time to learn how to write well, and that time shouldn’t be hindered by never-ending upgrades and endless adjustments and distractions. Sometimes, slipping a piece of paper into a typewriter, or reaching for a pen and notebook is all you need to fly in the whole sky.

This article was written on an Olivetti Lettera 32. It remains largely unchanged from the original draft.

* Upstream, Oliver, M. (2016) Penguin Books p.23
*River of Time, Swain, J. (1995) Berkley Books p.14

A Reading Place

I have a reading place. It’s a small corner of my back deck. I sit and lie on a cushioned sun lounge, a small table to one side is large enough to hold my coffee, my glasses, a pencil for underlining, a pen and notebook—for copying out those freshly underlined passages—and a pile of books. I always have a pile of books on the go: a main book supported by numerous others—poetry, philosophy, theology, or biography—that I flit between depending on my mood.

The deck faces east to catch the morning sun. I sit early in desperate anticipation, a wilting flower awaiting the day’s first rays of light, warmth, and life after a long night of darkness.

Kookaburra’s laugh in the distance; their guffaws drowning out the polite songs of lorikeets and minors and the hungry moans of a young magpie impatient for its first meal of the day. A gentle breeze moves through the bamboo that was planted hastily to erase the growing grey monolith next door. My planting has been successful, and the once wall of windows has been transformed into a shimmering palisade of soothing green. The sound of wind through bamboo is a sound like no other: it is a swirling sound that washes back and forth, a steady rhythm keeping time with the swaying baton of the culms. It is the sound of the seashore. Perhaps that’s why I like it so much.

My windchime offers a soft melody. Its brass chimes are tuned modally to a scale evoking ‘Aqua’; its tune lifts high above the haunting wash of the bamboo and adds texture to the preferred seascape sounds, extending the real seascape which lies only a few hundred metres away. A larger bamboo chime adds percussion. Its chimes long since split and decayed, yet it remains hanging, dead, lifeless, unable to offer any note of melodic value, but in its surrender now beats a muffled rhythmic tattoo that anchors the loose swish and wash of swaying bamboo and sporadic birdsong.

There are no rays today; the sun lies lost behind thickening grey. The light breeze blows an occasional spritz of rain—almost a mist—onto my bare chest. The moist air passes through my krama—a traditional Khmer garment often worn as a sarong and well-suited to humid days lying in the heat. Its’ wearing an ardent reminder of my times photographing in Southeast Asia—and elsewhere—and my yearning to be back. They were important times spent amongst communities deeply connected to the earth around them, to the vagaries of the seasons and the mood of a changing climate. Our days lie in contrast to those times, in competition or opposition, where we seek only to dominate that which nourishes us. Yet to feel Nature, to see Nature, to hear Nature…that is what I enjoy.

What’s in a name?

Above: The Adirondack Guide by Winslow Homer.

I often wonder when I first stumbled across the word sojourner. It somehow got into my consciousness more than 20 years ago and has since become the name of my film company, the title of a song I once wrote, the title of a book I have written; it is the title of this creative writing blog, and if I ever own a small sailboat big enough to warrant a name, then I suspect I too will name it Sojourner. The word has a deep meaning for me, but why?

Sojourner means ‘a person who resides temporarily in a place’. It’s a romantic and carefree notion to be sure: wandering from town to town, staying a while, and moving on. The Western genre is full of sojourners: cowboys riding into town, saving the day, and riding off into the sunset. And of course cruising sailors are the epitome of sojourners, gliding from island to island or from sea to sea seeking new ports and new experiences.

The word also conjures thoughts of pilgrimage and solitude, of deep thought and reflection. They are thoughts of living outside the box and seeing what lies around the next corner, and then the next, of uncommon experiences and a life full of stories.

But we are all sojourners aren’t we? We are only on this planet for a short time, we will reside temporarily in this place and then move on. Others have been before, and others will come after, so what we do during our time here—how we spend it and how we leave the planet for those to come after—matters. Along with being sojourners, we are also stewards.

That freedom to move is what appeals to me: of not being tied down but of being in control of your own decisions – of having agency. Some may consider that selfish, but freedom, true freedom, is vital to our wellbeing yet lost to our modern lives.

Whenever I have had the freedom to accept full time work, I have been both excited for the opportunity, yet terrified by the conditions. Yes, I will earn money. Yes, I will have financial security for a time. Yes, I will have prestige. And yes, it will come at an unbearable cost. My days will not be my own. My hours will be dictated to me. My life will be governed: what I do, when I arrive, when I eat, and when I leave. And, I will need to ask permission for time away. My life will be determined by the whims, competencies, and calendars of others. My days will be filled with minutiae: the unimportant will become the important. Great stress will be placed on fleeting subjectivity; fine details of inconsequential projects bearing negligible outcomes that will be forgotten soon after launch day.

Some feel great relief at the security such busywork brings. Others like me bristle at the intensity placed on its mediocrity. But while sustainable employment is a good and necessary endeavour in any society, it is how we define employment and what societal expectations we place around it that I find interesting. In many cases modern employment exists merely to perpetuate our foundational belief in consumerism and materialism. Instead of working for necessity, we work to feed an insatiable appetite for more. Like Huxley’s soma, our consumerism exists only to placate our quiet desperation, while the principles underpinning that employment lie at odds with a deeper connection to the natural world around us and the spiritual world above and within us. As Thoreau said, ‘We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.’ Our freedom and agency are expressed through a desire for more things, not more life.

Above: Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph) of the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce.

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, the Nez Perce chief more widely known as Chief Joseph, was quoted as saying, ‘You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.’ Joseph’s land had been taken, his people killed, and his culture and way of life were disintegrating before his eyes. As one of the last Native Americans to have experienced the true freedom of a primitive life prior to the white man, his was a harrowing situation. But that cultural disintegration happened to make way for our modern Western society, for a new way of life that focussed on prosperity through enterprise and the acquisition of wealth, and not on necessity and a relationship to spiritual and emotional wellbeing. The connection to land, to people, and to place were deeply rooted in the Nez Perce culture, even Joseph’s name—Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt—means ‘thunder rolling from the mountains’, the poetic imagery and connection evident; but in this burgeoning new society, the land was merely a commodity, something to be exploited, to be torn up, sold, built upon, mined; the rivers too were dammed and diverted; the oceans emptied of life, and the air polluted – all in the name of progress and Manifest Destiny.

Above: A replica of Thoreau’s cabin near Walden Pond.

As someone who craves connection and simplicity, and who bristles at hollow enterprise, it is little wonder that the word sojourner holds such meaning. But when did the word pop into my thought space? Many years ago I read Walden, the quintessential work by Henry David Thoreau about his living alone in a cabin for two years in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts. My cheap Oxford University Press, World Classics edition of Walden is worn and dog-eared, sentences are underlined, and numerous Post-it notes have been torn into smaller strips and stuck to the many pages to mark something profound. The cover is adorned by The Adirondack Guide – a peaceful Winslow Homer watercolour of an old, bearded man glancing over his shoulder as he rows his skiff across a pond in a thick Appalachian wood – itself a study on solitude and simplicity that gives the reader a hint to the enchantment that lies within. I read Walden several times in my younger years, but it has been many years since I last entered the woods surrounding Walden Pond with Thoreau. Having just read another of Thoreau’s works—the essay Walking—I decided it was time to re-read Walden and seek solace in those regenerative woods once more.

In the very first paragraph I read, ‘At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again’.

I should have known.

Above: Anchored in a quiet bay, trying out my new fishing rod, and with my trusty copy of Walden to hand, I noticed a surreal coincidence between the book’s cover and my surrounds.

The Outer Isles

Above: ‘The bank was where I would watch the line whizz back and forth; where I would watch it catch the light above and flick it down to me in the shadows of the valley.’ (Image courtesy of my mate Les who loved the story, put it into AI and sent me what came out).

When I go in for something, I go all the way. It was like that with fishing, fly fishing to be exact. It wasn’t going to be something I just did; it was going to be me – I was going to be a fly fisherman, a great fly fisherman. That’s how people would know me.

My father introduced me to it when I was a boy. I remember standing next to him on the bank of the river below our house. He would be waist-deep in the swift current, moving deeper, shallower, upriver, downriver – always moving, always looking, searching. I would edge closer, feet wet, knee-deep, until the subtle warning would come and the instruction to move back to the bank with it. I would sulk and go but the bank was where I could take it all in and my father knew it. The bank was where I would watch the line whizz back and forth; where I would watch it catch the light above and flick it down to me in the shadows of the valley. I would watch it come to rest among the ripples of the water. My father would do things with the line—mend it, he called it—moving it across or back, or he would gently tug the line, letting the fly look like an insect in trouble, he would keep the line taught and strip it in, or he would let it drift, always ready to strike when a fish took the fly.

And then one would. The line would race across the surface, spray would fly, the reel would spit and scream and hiss, my father would holler, and the light would bounce. And there it was: the fish. It would leap in the air, twisting and turning trying to get that thing out of its mouth, that thing it didn’t understand. It was an insect, like one of thousands it had eaten, but no insect had ever done this before. Nothing had pulled like this. Where did this insect get its strength? How could it have such control? At those moments I felt like the whole river could sense its panic. It was like all life in the valley, all eyes, all senses would stop and wait to see what would become of one of its own.

Soon the fish would tire and my father would reel it in. The momentary commotion forgotten as the river returned to normal and the eyes of the valley would turn away as quietness would descend once again. For we too were part of that place. Life and death were part of that place – the hunter and the hunted. The valley knew it and the river knew it; we knew it, and it was expected.

Watching my father fishing was mesmerising. There was something so graceful about it, so beautiful—the long thick fly line moving back and forth across the backdrop of the valley, glistening with sunlight; forwards, then backwards; forwards, then backwards; its tight loops opening and closing and rolling—it was dancing and I was watching. It was art, the way I understood art back then. There was technique, there was form; there was practice and patience. And there were times when everything came together and I felt like I was inside a masterpiece. If that moment could be captured, it would be known as a moment of perfection. Folks would talk about it for years; it would hang on gallery walls or be displayed in museums where people would queue for miles to catch a glimpse of it; it would be printed in books for others to study and teachers would present it to their students and say: “This! This is what you must strive for”.

Sometimes, when I was a little older, I would take the net and scoop up the fish my father caught, taking them back to my father like an obedient dog playing fetch. But it was the fly line rolling back and forth in the half-light of the valley that changed me; the only movement save for the running river and the wind through the trees. It seemed out of place, but not: something modern and immediate, disrupting a place where time meant nothing; yet it fit right in. It was natural. My father was meant to be there. I was meant to be there – and I wanted to be there more than anything.

Those were special days, those boyhood days on the river. And with every cast the hook was set deeper, and I knew that I too would become a fly fisherman – a great fly fisherman. People would know me by my skill; they would write books about me, they would make movies about me.

It’s strange what we learn from our fathers. It might be fishing or hunting. It might be motorcars or music, a head for figures or the way to swing a bat. It’s what dreams are built on, the dreams of the innocent, the dreams of the young. But sometimes things come along and snatch those dreams right out of your head. Unexpected things. Or they make you question whether it was ever a good dream. Sometimes the sins of the father make you forget your dreams altogether – or make you want to.

My father’s gone now. He’s not dead, just gone. I haven’t seen him in a long while. He lives in the Outer Isles.

The gifts of fortune

Part 3 of the Away Again series

The simple pleasure of a sunrise. Nature, freedom, and it doesn’t cost a thing.

Possessions, I have a few. But then I am amongst the wealthiest people on the planet – just having running water and a flushing toilet in my home puts me there. In my work as a photojournalist I have certainly spent time with many people who do not have those things. And I have come to understand and witness that there are different levels of poverty.

Globally, we measure poverty in terms of US dollars earned in a day—the international poverty line is currently US$2.15/day—but when you are amongst extreme poverty, you learn that life has very little to do with money and everything to do with access: access to clean water, access to food, access to shelter, access to a latrine, access to health care, access to education, access to stable/sustainable employment. That access then influences agency – the freedom to make your own choice.

The choices we make and why we make them is an age-old question. When questioning Fate’s influence on human affairs, Tacitus spoke of two things: choice and possessions. He cited the Stoics whom he said believed in fate but as a result of ‘natural causality’. Tacitus’ point, or rather that of the Stoics, is that our lives—for those of us with agency—are a Choose your own adventure story: we have the freedom to choose but in doing so we set in motion a series of events which ‘cannot be altered’1.

Tacitus also considered the notion of good vs bad and the popular assumption that good = possessions = happiness. Again he cited the Stoics who disagreed with that assumption because in their experience those with many possessions were often miserable while the happiest people were those in ‘dire circumstances’. It is, as Tacitus said, because the miserable people with much ‘do not know how to use the gifts of fortune wisely’ while the happy people with little have learnt to ‘deal with their situation bravely’.1

*          *          *

I have experienced tremendous joy and received generous hospitality from people in places like Kenya, Uganda, India, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Laos – from people who are dealing with their situation bravely. What little they have is gladly shared with much laughter and a sense of pride and from finding joy in simple pleasures.

My occasional motorbike trips away with their inherent simplicity are both a reminder of those times but also a desire to use my own ‘gifts of fortune wisely’. Brewing coffee on an empty beach while watching whales breach just offshore, having woken nearby in a swag under little more than a hootchie (a small Australian Army tarpaulin) and enjoying a roadside chat with a local shop owner is a peaceful reminder of how little we need to be happy. It is also a reminder of what solo sailor Robin Lee Graham wrote in Dove, his account of his five years at sea, ‘At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.’2.

*          *          *

It’s amazing how much the ocean changes in a day. A calm, serene sea one morning can be quite tumultuous the next. Despite my better judgement, I checked Instagram this morning and knew something was up when my friend Guy—who writes the ocean temperature on the wall in Manly each day—had posted the temp, 19.2, along with the words, ‘Ocean restless’. That, and I could hear the ocean from where I slept.

I am sitting in my usual spot at the northwest end of Elizabeth Beach. Elizabeth is usually quite benign: protected in a loving hug by Charlotte Head and Seagull Point to the south, and by Booti Hill to the north. But today’s swell is coming straight in from the northeast while a smaller secondary swell is hitting it from the south, making conditions quite messy.

There is a lot of mist—mostly salt spray I suspect. There was some rain last night, and with the rising sun, increasing heat, and crashing seas, there is a lot of moisture in the air. There are no whales today, well not that I can see. It can be hard to see their spray amidst so much confusion; maybe they stay further out when conditions are rough, preferring deeper seas where the swell is less pronounced.

The swell has calmed a bit now. While it’s definitely there, the edge seems to have come off it and I feel that it will continue to drop as the warmth rises. Either way, today I have agency: I have the freedom to choose, so I will choose to use my gifts of fortune wisely: I will choose a life of simplicity.

It’s going to be a good day.

1. Dobbin, R. 2008, Epictetus: Discourses and Selected Writings, Penguin Classics, Introduction p.xi–ii

2. Graham, R.L. 1991, Dove, William Morrow Paperbacks

Away Again Part 1

Away Again Part 2

Away Again Part 4

It’s four o’clock somewhere

Part 2 of the Away Again series

Lone swimmer. Photo: ©Matthew Smeal

It’s nearly four o’clock. The wind is easing, the swell is weakening, and I am lying naked on a beach. Oh, how I love to lie naked on a beach! To feel the sun on every pore, the salt drying on my skin, my still-damp hair from yet another swim brushing my shoulders and offering a soothing respite to the warmth now enveloping my body.

There have been many dolphins this afternoon: small pods, cruising languidly across the bay, their casualness broken by sudden outbursts as they chance upon unsuspecting fish. A rush, a swirl, and a splash and within moments the surface returns to an eerie calm, the just-gone commotion soon forgotten but for an occasional dorsal fin piercing the surface to reveal the pod’s course as it continues on its way.

A sea eagle came too: swirling, circling in unsteady arcs only twenty or so metres above the water. Its unsteadiness reminded me of two fledglings from a time before: young eagles desperate to improve, their inexperience contrasted by a larger adult that hung rocksteady in the heavy wind nearby. Is this one of those birds? Now a little older, its steadiness coming, its status growing? What a way to grow! To be left alone, to fend for yourself from an early age; to develop by instinct, by nature. Learn to fly. Learn to hunt. Learn to defend. But where is the other bird from that time? Did it not learn? Are the two birds now only one? Perhaps it is elsewhere, fishing further along the coast. It’s nicer to think that it is.

It is a stark reminder that nature is harsh. Maybe harsh is wrong, perhaps necessary is better. The only certainty to life is that it ends. ‘We must die,’ wrote Seneca. ‘Death is a law of nature; death is a contribution and an obligation required of mortals.’*

‘I did not wish to live what was not life.’

Henry David Thoreau

The sea eagle, like the dolphins, must eat fish or die; those fish must eat smaller fish or die. We too, must eat or die. Ecology, therefore, is a numbers game: an intricate balance of mathematical ratios as one population sustains another, which sustains yet another. But is it wrong to lose the emotion? To see life and death in such black and white numerical terms? I think not. If anything, I think it is healthier to accept what is finite and fickle. But I also think we should fill that stark canvas with as much love and colour as we can for the time given us.

‘I did not wish to live what was not life,’† wrote Henry David Thoreau on spending two years alone in the woods where he went to ‘live deliberately’. Our time here may be short, or it may be long, but let it not be dull! Let it be filled with purpose! Let it be deliberate!

*          *          *

The late afternoon warmth is reminiscent of winter’s apricity. The swell continues to drop, and the wind continues to ease, both loosening their grip on the day as the light too follows suit and begins its slow fade towards darkness. I will lie here for longer – an hour or so yet. If I’m lucky I will fall asleep to the faint sound of lapping waves, my entire body cocooned in a soft blanket of sunlight. How nice it would be to wake up naked and alone on a beach, veiled only in moonlight and a gentle sea breeze. I am reminded of Whitman, ‘To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as one with them.’¡ That would make me smile, as I would amble back along the dark, silent bush track to the roadside where I parked my motorbike.

* Seneca, Lucius Annaeus Dialogues and Essays Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press 2008 p247

† Thoreau, Henry David Walden Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press 1997 p83

¡ Whitman, Walt ‘Song of Joys’ The Complete Poems, Penguin Classics 2004 p211

Away Again Part 1

Away Again Part 3

Away Again Part 4

For you mate

A friend sent me something the other day. It was one of those well-meaning Facebook memes designed to comfort, encourage, and put a smile on people’s faces.

Why he sent it to me is perhaps a story for another time, so I won’t go into it now. But the message came with three simple words that meant so much more to me than what was in the meme: ‘For you mate’.

Where does this love of the sea come from?

Blueys Beach, NSW ©Matthew Smeal

…even then,

A child, I held unconscious intercourse

With the eternal beauty, drinking in

A pure organic pleasure from the lines

Of working mist, or from the level plain

Of waters covered by the steady clouds.

William Wordsworth
‘Images of a Mighty Mind’

Where does this love of the sea come from? It has been there since I was a boy, I know that for certain.

I remember fondly the time spent on my father’s boat—most weekends and holidays—my feet dangling from the bowsprit catching spray in my toes as my eyes remained fixed on the bow wave being pushed ahead of the hull. It was my happy place. I loved to stare at the water below until my father, having spotted me, or allowing me there for as long as he could bear, would call me back concerned that in my daydream I would slip and go straight through the twin screws propelling us forward.

So, I would retreat to the stern and sit on the marlin platform to watch the wake—the beautiful and perfectly formed peeling waves—and dream of surfing them for miles at a time. But Dad always said no when I asked if I could try, and he would soon call me back when he found I had simply replaced hanging off the bow with hanging off the stern. He never said anything, but I think he was secretly pleased that at least one of his three sons had an obvious love of the sea. It was where he seemed most happy.

Those nights on board—falling asleep to the sound of water lapping against the hull only inches from my slumbering ears, and the smell of salt and oxygen rich air filling my senses and my formative years—were joined by the days. While the adults on board would peel prawns and drink Blue Nun, I would swim, diving from the fly bridge to emulate the sea eagles circling above; swimming to empty beaches imagining I was a shipwrecked sailor or a pirate digging for treasure; I’d be fishing from a quiet rock or rowing off in the dinghy to explore the next cove and to be alone.

I am often surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that my life didn’t involve the sea more. Surfing, swimming, and lifesaving have become my coastal pursuits – and photographing – and perhaps that is enough. I did own a small sailboat once; and I did write and photograph for several sailing and boating magazines for a time; and I have worked in a ship chandlery on occasion to bolster the finances during lean freelance years – but when I consider the ocean and the pull it has on me, I am surprised that my career is not on the sea, or that I didn’t scrimp and save my way into a tired old yacht and embrace a sea vagabond life.

But I am in the ocean most days. I live in a beachside suburb, and I have my childhood memories of running around marinas and clambering over rocks and sand and swimming in little bays looking for crabs and catching yellowtail. The cries of a seagull and the slap of a halyard against a mast are my music; wooden jetty planks and coarse wet sand are my shoes; the smell of diesel and two-stroke afloat on a salt air breeze are my cologne. These will take me back to that boy in a boat in a bay, to the time at dawn watching the mist roll off the crystal surface, like the blanket I would have drawn from my tired body only moments before so I could sneak onto the deck and be in the morning.

How I loved that stillness and the creeping morning light. How I loved the quietness, broken only by the gentle splash of a jumping mullet or a diving tern hunting an early breakfast. It was my time of peace and solitude; a time to watch the bay awaken to a new day, to listen to the rustle of animals in the surrounding bush and try to spot them among the steep sides of a ravine that would reach for the sky.

Away Again

Part 1 of the Away Again series

Above: My morning ritual: beach, sunrise, swim, coffee.

I saw the sea eagle first, gliding low, searching for sleepy fish, riding the updraft from the small cliff face that rose above my chosen end of the beach. Looking below the eagle I glanced a dolphin’s unmistakable dorsal fin, then another, and another; a small pod no doubt looking for the same fish as their circling friend. Between the two and several hundred metres further out was the blow of a humpback whale followed by the slap of its pectoral fins; moments later came a smaller blow and smaller fins – a mother and calf. It is my first morning, I had been on the beach for less than thirty seconds, and it made me smile.

I walked on in ever-shortening shadow, the sunlight racing towards me along the sand as the sun rose higher and edged around the cliff behind me. Two hippie van-life chicks sat high up on the beach, caught in a meditative morning yoga trance, wrapped in blankets, eyes closed, and facing the rising sun. They missed the sea eagle, dolphins, and whales, which is both ironic and a shame. I suspect they would have been into that.

I nestled into a favourite hollow—a spot I’d found on a previous trip—just above the waterline, where the rock face meets the sand. It is quiet and mostly out of sight. I set up my little camp—towel, coffee moka pot, billy, hand-carved wooden ‘kuksa’ cup, Trangia stove et al—and went for a swim, my second of this adventure: the first was had yesterday afternoon, soon after I arrived: a ritual cleansing after several hours on my motorbike, a baptism giving me entrée into the secret world that would become the next few days. The swim was fine: a morning saltwater bath really. Just enough to shake the sleep from my body, to dive under a few small waves, and bodysurf a few more, to feel the ocean around me and welcome the day.

My coffee is poured, and, like my van-life companions, I too am now facing the rising sun, listening to the gentle waves fall onto the sloping shore while feeling myself warming and drying by the minute.

The eagle has gone, and the dolphins have moved on, but the whales have eased in much closer now. They are ‘pec slapping’, the mother teaching her offspring some ocean rhythms, tapping out the family song on an ocean drumhead. The calf does a few beats then gets distracted and leaps, breaching as high as it can to tell mum that school is out and it’s time for recess. I was smart and brought my binoculars with me this time. They were a gift I’d asked for last year.

‘What would you like for your birthday?’

‘Binoculars.’

‘Seriously?’

My family thought it was a bit weird, like Dad has now entered into a birdwatching stage of life and will soon be looking at tweed jackets and walking sticks – which is partly true. But for those like me who enjoy sitting on beaches and scanning the horizon for signs of whale life and sea eagles, binoculars make perfect sense. Despite them taking up some much-prized room in my saddle bags, this morning has made me glad I brought them.

The humpbacks have nearly gone. I can still see them but they’re heading south so I am gazing increasingly into the sun as I swing my binoculars in an easterly arc from north to south as the whales round the point. The mother is getting in on the breaching act now too, offering a few leaps in a joyous spirit of ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them’ playfulness. It is a long way to Antarctica and this mother and calf will leap and splash and play their way south, bonding as only a mother and child can.

I can faintly make out some sails through the binoculars. They are shrouded in the morning mist, simple shapes pressed deep into the background, impossible to see with the naked eye. The scene is reminiscent of a Turner painting, and one that makes me think of a ghost ship: sinister, hiding eerily behind the morning’s misty curtain, waiting to spring an attack while the whales play unsuspectingly nearby. Too many whales have played in full view of lurking ships. But these are different times, right?

Away Again Part 2

Away Again Part 3

Away Again Part 4

Welcome!

Sojourner Creative Writing Blog

Above: On the road. Where all the good writing happens.

Welcome to my writing blog!

I have always loved the term ‘sojourner’ – someone who resides temporarily in a place. The word conjures up romantic imagery for me: the Western cowboy, the nomadic hunter, the solo sailor, the biker; someone who comes and goes, who never stays in a place for too long but is always on the move. But we are all sojourners: our time here on Earth is temporary.

The purpose of this blog is to capture some of that time through creative writing. I will share some smaller pieces, some longer, and I may even share some thoughts about the writing process as well.

Regardless of what this blog ends up being, I would love to engage with other writers and readers and lovers of nature.

So please follow along and let me know what you think!

Sincerely,

Matthew