It's actually happened. The initial plan had been nothing more than to spend a few days relaxing by the Dorset Coast. But no sooner had I stopped than it hit me. The blur of faces and places, the endless background chatter, the continuous rush from place to place and the persistent superficiality which has come to typify the wanderers human interactions - I'm overloaded.
A week has passed and I'm just beginning to grapple with the reality. I've not gone anywhere, I've not done a thing in more than a week. It could just be that my body has wanted to rest the very legs which it seems never stop wandering. But there's a wider truth. I'm experiencing what many on the autistic spectrum will know only too well as sensory overload.
I'd say it's the first time, only it isn't. Sensory overload is a strange thing that all too often will hit when I least expect it. As much as it is perhaps an obvious byproduct of my lifestyle. Yet still, as always, I simply did not see this coming. Though now I know. This has become a dominant feature this last year.
It started last winter. No sooner had I lit a fire in the East Midlands before a week had passed and I'd not moved anywhere. No sooner had that week passed than I found mid-winter had gone by and I'd hardly left the woods for the entire two month period of time.
Sure I'd made myself comfortable in that time, had built a pasty oven in the mud and was existing on a far more comfortable camp site than I had been to begin with. But the urge to avoid other people and hide from the constant barrage of sensory assaults had struck me like never before.
At the time I wasn't fully recognising the reality of the overload. Yet persist it did all the same. Initially it was a legal issue I had to attend to in Wiltshire. Packing my camp site up and moving on I told myself that it was good I had left the woods and was at least interacting with other people again. Only I simply ended up feeling even more overloaded by an interaction which was to become a dominant feature of this year.
Cue a visit to see a friend of mine in Rochester. By this point the overbearing legal concern had been replaced with another. Such are the all too often complex responses a man might experience upon exercising his right to express himself freely in this most inhospitable of realities. But nevertheless. With much thanks to my friends hospitality, another three weeks passed with this poet so clearly doing nothing much more than engaging himself in an exercise at avoiding other people.
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Since then those concerns have at least abated, such is the time and freedom I've had to wander and get lost over the summer period. But with the wider feature of the year looming ahead of me yet again, I now find myself locked once more into the hermits mindset.
Perhaps it's the worry and stress caused by those unfolding legal issues. Misunderstood and confused though the conclusion of those who enforce such interactions may be, and every faith though I may have that all will come out in the wash, I know only too well that folk are rarely so forgiving when a lifestyle chosen appears strange and the person who has chosen his position is working to a logic they can barely comprehend.
But still, that is what it is and perhaps only forces me to reflect in this moment on what this year has brought, where I am at now, and where The Poet is to find himself in the year ahead. After all, if sensory overload and a hermits existence is to become the theme, what better way to experience it than with the food, company, and the assorted indoor comforts of yet another friend, who all told, has come to demonstrate a level of tolerance that only somebody familiar with an artists ways would ever truly understand.
I'd say it's the first time, only it isn't. Sensory overload is a strange thing that all too often will hit when I least expect it. As much as it is perhaps an obvious byproduct of my lifestyle. Yet still, as always, I simply did not see this coming. Though now I know. This has become a dominant feature this last year.It started last winter. No sooner had I lit a fire in the East Midlands before a week had passed and I'd not moved anywhere. No sooner had that week passed than I found mid-winter had gone by and I'd hardly left the woods for the entire two month period of time. Sure I'd made myself comfortable in that time, had built a pasty oven in the mud and was existing on a far more comfortable camp site than I had been to begin with. But the urge to avoid other people and hide from the constant barrage of sensory assaults had struck me like never before.
Cue a visit to see a friend of mine in Rochester. By this point the overbearing legal concern had been replaced with another. Such are the all too often complex responses a man might experience upon exercising his right to express himself freely in this most inhospitable of realities. But nevertheless. With much thanks to my friends hospitality, another three weeks passed with this poet so clearly doing nothing much more than engaging himself in an exercise at avoiding other people.
Click link to
Buy now on Amazon.
But still, that is what it is and perhaps only forces me to reflect in this moment on what this year has brought, where I am at now, and where The Poet is to find himself in the year ahead. After all, if sensory overload and a hermits existence is to become the theme, what better way to experience it than with the food, company, and the assorted indoor comforts of yet another friend, who all told, has come to demonstrate a level of tolerance that only somebody familiar with an artists ways would ever truly understand.