Parallel Lives

In my last I tried to convey something of the fascination of Cowes in a few shots all taken within a hundred yards of each other. But I’m hardly interested in picturesqueness for its own sake; only in what touches the soul.

Moving to Cowes in 1954 was the beginning of a new life. Till then, I’d attended a tiny boarding school for more than five years, kept out of the way while my mother’s unhappy marriage disintegrated; shunted to my grandparents for most of the holidays. Now I had a new stepfather, from a background I’d never before encountered: a Tynesider, someone from Newcastle upon Tyne, that proud city in the North of England. After much effort he’d passed the Merchant Navy’s exam for ship’s engineer, & spent the Thirties at sea. He and my mother had been spending clandestine weekends in Brighton—midpoint between their homes—till their divorces came through. Our sojourn in East Cowes, from which his ex-wife had fled to New Zealand with her lover, seemed like a long honeymoon in romantic surroundings: a honeymoon in which a twelve-year-old boy could join as a stowaway. My world became briefly golden, my curiosity set free to examine my new world, after those cloistered years. I knew some Latin & Greek, the Old Testament, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, a little Virgil, early British history, how to identify wayside trees & wild flowers. I’d encountered Bach, Elgar & Beethoven, several English poets, folk songs as collected by Cecil Sharp. As a substitute for actually being any good at cricket, I’d read books by famous English cricketers: how to bowl, bat & be a fielder. My lack of hand-and-eye co-ordination seemed hopeless, but a serious accident to my knee gave a useful excuse. Apart from my cousin Mark, I’d never had a friend outside school, never acquired any physical prowess other than how to ride a bicycle. East Cowes was heaven but lasted only a year, followed by nine months in West Cowes, the other side of the chain ferry.

My nostalgia for the place came from this, the tantalizing sense of a life I hardly began to live before it was snatched away. In a recent post, I wrote “And in that place, I am a rich kid and have it all.” As it happens I was not referring to Cowes, but a parallel world: that which I’m able to enter when the illusion of separation has fallen away. I called it “The Zone”, a place where the “I” expands beyond literal experience to embrace parallel lives which didn’t exist in the ordinary sense. Cowes is literally the playground for rich kids of all ages, whether for top-class yacht-racing or “simply messing about in boats”. In the seven years I lived on the Island, I never stepped into a sailboat—or indeed since. My school offered a sailing club where you could learn all the skills involved, but it cost money. Now I sail in other ways, with the clouds in the sky, the washing billowing on the line, and more.

I’ve written about Cowes lots of times on this blog, as a keyword search would reveal. Years ago on one of our first visits together K suggested we might go and spend our retirement there, for she has grown to love it too. Now we’re in the position where we could actually sell up and go. But would it be a good idea, practically? We rented a small flat with views on three sides, fully-equipped, and pretended we lived there, a few yards from the chain ferry linking East & West. It’s free to pedestrians & I found myself crossing several times a day, sometimes at dawn, to buy milk & a newspaper before breakfast. Ferry terminals to Southampton on the mainland are five minutes’ walk away; I'd see workers with laptops or briefcases hastening there each morning.

We could easily find a Victorian worker’s cottage just like ours here, but cheaper & prettier; and simply transplant our furniture there. There’s nothing wrong with here, in fact it has much to recommend it. But we share the sense of not being stuck here. We transcend our surroundings. There are no limits on our possibility. Like everyone else we can dream, as people like to say, of what we could do “if we win the Lottery”, not that we've ever thought of buying a ticket. Life is already a lottery: we’ve already won. Surroundings don’t define us. In the truest reality, we’re not defined by anything.

Said the Buddha:

Enlightenment is straightly obtained by freedom from separate selfhood.

I think this may be all the Buddhism we need.

And then we may see that

We live lives parallel to the one of which we are conscious from moment to moment *

so we can be forever young, gifted and black.

Click on image above for Nina Simone’s song (in a new tab)

* From Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon, by Wei Wu Wei.