Finding the Lea
This is a follow-up to this old blog post.
In my memories of it it is pallid, empty, filled with a low-hanging winter fog; the arching line of trees above the footpath darkens the way to it, and whenever I went there I was too cold. That was a comfort, then, of course: it matched my mind-state well, the isolation, the bitterness, and I would sit on the damp wooden bench and smoke a cigarette or two as the waters of the river gently pulsed by and, on occasion, a National Rail train trundled loudly past on the opposite bank.
I knew I had to find it. I was back in London, for the first time since 2015, and the jet-lag combined with a near-excruciating excitement spurred me to wake up early my very first morning there (six o’clock or so; I watched the sun rise over the sallow bricks of Shoreditch) and, unhesitant, electric with anxious joy, make my way to it.
I did not know where it was and yet I did know where it was. No maps app was of any use: the spot I was looking for had no name, was of no real significance; what would I have searched for? Bench? –No, now that I was in London again I could feel the memories of how to get there filtering rapidly back, remembered the stop I would take the bus from towards it, the dips in the cracked path leading down towards the park – if it’s lined with blackberry bushes you’ve found it – it was time, it was time, and I had enough pieces put together now to go back, to sit at peace on the bench once again.
Bus announcement: 55 to Walthamstow Bus Station.
Bus announcement: Lee Valley Riding Centre. I disembarked, stumbling off of the bus onto a ramrod-straight street heading north, lined on both sides by verdant green, pavement towards the river dappled with sunlight-dots filtered through the trees. That’s funny, I thought to myself, it’s sunny out – well, of course, it’s September and global warming is happening, but still! I don’t remember it like that!
I don’t remember it like that. A refrain.
In the past, I’d walked east through Millfields, two slabs of sunken deep-green grass cleaved in half by Lea Bridge Road, then past the Princess of Wales with its white Tudor walls perched on the banks of the river, and the memories of these walks are always clouded by a darkness, not just visual but emotional, visceral: coming back to London in my current mental state involved a jarring realization that my past unhappinesses there were more deeply-rooted than I’d realized, that I’d seen grey constantly because I felt it, too. I could feel old Willem still there, still puttering around (or perhaps trudging is a better word), his misery rising off of his skin like a sickly vapor. A personal hauntology, I suppose. I don’t know.
So – strange to be there in the sunlight, and stranger still to realize I was in no way alone on the path towards the river, that despite the still-early hours there were multitudes of people out for morning jogs, morning cycles, morning dog-walks, their eyes clear and focussed, muscles glistening, this place simply another spot for them to get some exercise. Nothing here meant anything to anyone else. I was, in my own way, alone.
The path soon cleaved in two directions; I picked the right-side one, vaguely recognizing a bridge that I saw up ahead. Upon crossing it I came face-to-face with the bright sprawling fields of Hackney Marshes, teams of football players bouncing footballs from knee to knee in the distance, cyclists whirring by, children playing and fussing; I wasn’t sure I had gone the right way until I saw the great, arching line of trees to my left. Those are the trees, I heard myself think as my legs, now beyond my control, carried me towards them.
–And I wish I could tell you – I wish I could tell myself, really – that I came to that line of trees, walked down that dark and cool path, found that bench, and was met with what I wanted. I wish I could say that it was the same as I’d remembered, that I was submerged in the same silver dewy mist, felt the same glorious solitude as I watched the glassy water filter by, heard the same train rumble in the distance. I had forgotten that memory remains static, a mind-wrought tableau; like dreams, facets of it fade out over time and, desperate for coherence, we fill in the holes with things that may or may not be true. And expectations are never reality. How stupid I was to think that seven years later things would be the same, that I’d be able to show up on any given day and experience exactly what I had at age twenty! –No, as I walked down the path I heard people sat on the opposite bank of the river blasting terrible D&B, watched as two men chopped at a tree for kindling for a barbecue – how rude of them all, disturbing my peace! Fuck off!
A pit of horror in my stomach that had slowly opened as I desperately searched for the bench became a gaping maw when, at last, I found it: someone was standing in front of the bench – my bench – shouting into their phone and brandishing a cigarette. I felt tears of disappointment and anger spring to my eyes, then admonished myself for it: stop being childish! So you didn’t get what you wanted – that’s fine, it’s been ages, you may as well accept it. This is just how things are, no point in getting this upset.
But I tried to be gentle with myself, too: you should still try to make it nice somehow. At least that guy isn’t on the bench, just near it. Sit down.
The honorary cigarette I smoked hit me poorly and I couldn’t finish it, my stomach turning and my head spinning with too sharp a nicotine hit. D&B filtered through the trees from far away; joggers and cyclists passed behind me at a rapid clip. I kept wanting to check my phone. There was no meditative aspect to it, that much was clear: too many people, too much sun; the man on the phone had left, but past him I saw that the waters of the river were tinged green with low tide, the bushes on the opposite bank still dull and cracked with summertime dryness.
Desperate for some modicum of joy, I tried to stave off my disappointment, shove it aside and appreciate the fact that I was there at all. And certainly I did appreciate being there – how could I not? Seven years had passed since I’d had the opportunity to come back here, to once again take the trip of path-bridge-trees to the bench, to sit and stare out at the water. But, too, I had to acknowledge the fact that things were not as I’d remembered them, that perhaps I’d clung onto a specific aura of the place too hard, forgetting that time passes, seasons rotate by, people and places warp slowly only when you’re there to witness it. To leave and come back over a period of time is to see a place change on fast-forward, many of those changes bleak.
How long did I sit there? I don’t remember. Half an hour, maybe. I had to meet a friend in Covent Garden soon-ish, nowhere near where I was, and so after some time I got up and walked back under the trees and across the bridge and down the path past the dead blackberries and got on the bus to Walthamstow Bus Station and took the Victoria Line to the Piccadilly Line and headed over to a pub on Lamb’s Conduit Street, where I ate a very nice Sunday roast.
Something to be said, I think, for my having been led back to the bench not by the logic of a map but by pure back-of-the-mind memory. And something to be said for that memory, while still true, to also have become warped, sunken into dead time. Lea Bridge Road still took me from the roundabout in Upper Clapton towards the path towards the river, the bus stop was the same as it had been before, but gone was that visceral aura of hazy wet darkness and the misery that came with it. I can take some comfort in it, I think: I am now not nearly as unhappy as I was in those days, have more energy and hope. The sunlight, in that sense, feels symbolic (shallow, yes, but true). Brighter times ahead and all that.
But just as well, I try to let myself mourn, not just for the sadnesses of my younger self but for the existence of a place that is no longer there, my dead memories of it. Seven years away, and now London as a whole was shinier, crueler, scrubbed painfully clean, my friends were in the outer boroughs due to high rent, the sun beat ceaselessly upon it in a way it hadn’t at this time of year back in 2011. Certainly I did not hate my trip – in fact, I had a wonderful time, had missed it so dearly that when I first saw Dover from the window of the plane there I nearly cried. But there was a deep sadness to it, too. I think of the bench now and feel it again. I don’t remember it like that.
The bench, as it turns out, is at the northern part of Hackney Marshes, latitude 51.561204, longitude -0.0297702. It is one of two “starred” places on my Google Maps app, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
This was so lovely to read, thank you
A perfect piece of writing 🏹