Scattered Moths

You might have found me here last summer, taking walks and turning them into words. Since I started to knit the fragments of my self back together, my travels have taken different paths. I walked myself into a space where healing was possible and now I am walking through my shadows into the light again.

I am still taking walks in the world. Smaller ones these days and with a different kind of purpose. I am becoming a native of these parts.

I walk to my local shop to buy blood oranges and milky tubs of burrata. Occasionally I go mad and buy sticky pastries, studded with pistachios and never divulge the price.

I walk to the greasy spoon with my husband. I read the thousand and one meals pinned to the wall in neon splashes and always, always have egg and chips. We sit and piece our days back together, dipping hot chips in sauce and burning our mouths as we talk.

I walk to the farm park to check on my favourite chickens and their ludicrous trousers. They walk over, looking like wind up toys, perennially disappointed that I have nothing delicious to feed them. Sheep trail the hills, looking both at home and entirely out of place as the glitter and smudge of Canary Wharf looms in the distance.

I walk by the Thames in every weather, marvelling at liquidity and the smell of damp, vegetal mud. At Trinity Buoy marina, I creep about the empty streets, curved by the Thames on one side and its shabbier sister, the Lea on the other. Shopping carts list in the wide mud flats of the Lea, water carving its labyrinthine ways through an ever shifting land of silt. I find the smell of mud surprisingly comforting. Rounding the corner I am always surprised by the loop of an island, rising from the mud. The Royal Ballet practice here. I wonder about tutus and if you can scrub the mud out.

I take the DLR to Shadwell, home to my favourite charity shop, where I buy impossibly strange things; three, bright, chunky zips, a handful of odd buttons, an old tea towel, an unused diary printed in Chinese; a wonky jug. I am delighted by this place. It is not pretty or charming but it is a neighbourhood that lives loud. The daily market, the traders in the railway arches, the hidden mosques, boxing clubs, courtyards that become basketball courts and the constant hum of people give me such pleasure. Turn a corner here and you find yourself outside Wilton’s Music Hall, a place of shabbily splendid magic.

Sometimes I walk home from Shadwell, threading through the streets into Limehouse, past the marina and the cut. Here I can drop down onto the canal, tunnelling through the city, very much its own world. Sometimes I continue through the streets full of converted warehouses and twisted, Dickensian pubs, Hawksmoor churches and tiny galleries until I catch a curve back up to the river and Canary Wharf. It’s one of my favourite walks to do at dusk, when the sun is setting over the wide sweep of the Thames and the sky goes on forever. On evenings like these, Rotherhithe across the water always looks impossibly romantic.

Sometimes I walk from Shadwell, threading across to Stepney Green and my favourite baker’s where I may or may not indulge but always want to. From there I curve up into Whitechapel where a different type of market stamps out the rhythm of the lives of the Bengali residents through hawkers selling mountains of fruit and vegetables I have no reference for. Mountains of reeking fish on piles of dirty ice trickle into my nose and under my feet. Piles of jewellery, bangles and beads, catch the light and give an air of faded glamour to the whole affair.

From there I dodge into the edges of Brick Lane, checking out new graffiti, browsing in a tiny, beautiful bookshop, heading into side streets of quiet houses lined with shutters and impressive door furniture, sitting next to lock ups covered in paste ups and tags. There are more choices here. I can cut through to Liverpool Street and home, go back to Whitechapel and home or push on, extending the boundaries further. Always further.

Last week I walked from Brick Lane through to Bethnal Green. I saw a lone piece of graffiti on a wall. It said ‘Scattered moths.’ I took a photo of it. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I thought about writing a poem about it. About the world of a moth, wheeling in the dark, cushioned by dust and fur, feeling its way through the world, reaching for the light. These moths are searchers, fragmented by pheromones and impulse, travelling in circles of desire. They come alive in the thick dusk, where they tear off corners for wings. They are the continuous morse of light and dark, tapping out tales. They find meaning in moments of poetry and being. Just like the rest of us.