Accumulation /Time /Graffiti

‘Walking is the way the body measures itself against the earth.’ Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/wanderlust 

In this line, under a sense of human feet striding, shuffling, across the planet, lies accummulation of time. 

I like it when the earth feels like time. When I walked today I wasn’t concerned with distance. I had to get around, and go where I was going – end up in the carpark I started in – before it rained and the Met Office put this at happening around midday. By when I arrived back, the almost warming January sunshine had definitely gone and I’d been watching the darkening sky for some time. I’d had time, and I’d taken the time I’d had. 

I’d measured myself against the weather. Is there a word that measures one’s actions against duration of the weather? Perhaps in German which seems to have already other appropriate words to signify concepts of time – Zeitgeist (defining spirit/mood of historical era), Eigenzeit (personal time.) It seems to me that with Britain’s changeable climate this should be something we should already have. But the only phrase that does spring to mind, is more prophetic / observational:

It’s a bit black o’er Bill’s Mother’s.

Wordhistories: https://wordhistories.net/2020/05/21/bills-mother/ has the earliest textual account from 1927 in Sussex / Bedford / Hampshire / West Country, over Bill, or Will’s, Mum’s house. 

There is a lot of conjecture over which direction this might mean. Is it East or West? I’ve normally heard it used simply to mean that a portion of the sky has turned dark and it will rain there, and might do so here soon - so preparations should be made. However, maybe it refers simply to a very common name; over there in that visible but still far distance, there would of course be a house of a woman with a son named William, because there were, and still are, so very many males named William. Perhaps now is the time to invent the word, as sophisticated computing now enables us to receive more accurately approximate, instant and free predicted durations of weather phenomena. 

By the way, although in trying to beat the rain I didn’t take much time to stop and see about me, I spied many horses snug under blankets eating grass together. I squelched through muddy fields, some slippery. I tried not to look for HS2 scars in the landscape. I enjoyed walking by the river. I photographed graffiti on the aluminium bridge. Long-tailed tits flitted around the trees. It was warm so I took off and replaced my hat repeatedly. 

I found my way by consulting directions on my phone and when I go again there will be changes to spot. I will notice differences in the hedges and trees, in the feel of the wind. But for now it is new to me and about as interesting as a hotel room. Places gain interest as they alter, as Laurent Olivier writing about ‘Time’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World says, ‘the important thing to understand is that accumulations of small differences over time produce a measurable quality that can be expressed as a trajectory.’ This is a construction of familiarity made from observations of difference. 

It also embeds the observer within those changes. It is comforting to feel part of somewhere that goes through some of the same personal changes that you do. You feel the eigenzeit of a place. It grounds you and it connects you to the world.