Seeing Life In Vitro.

I was walking up the lane called The Hollow today. That’s the sunken lane I’ve talked about before on this blog, sunken – or so it is said – over many centuries by the weight of pigs being taken by smallholders from the village to the woods to grub for truffles.

The sides are steep and reach a height of around fifteen feet in places, topped on one side by a wood, and on the other by a line of old oaks, sycamores, and ashes. Much of the lower level is covered by a carpet of white garlic flowers at this time of year, and the uppermost level is festooned with the leaves of countless bracken plants come nearly to full growth. The intermediate level is liberally splattered with wild plants of many denominations, while the whole is backed by a ubiquitous mantle of wild ivy.

Even though it’s only around three hundred yards long, I’ve always thought it the most characterful – and I wouldn’t hesitate to say ‘magical’ – lane in the whole Shire. The atmosphere there is quite unique, especially now that the arboreal canopy is beginning to fill and imparting a sense of being in a natural grotto. But today something else captured my attention. I felt a sudden and deep awareness of being alive.

You might think that there’s nothing unusual about feeling alive. We’re all aware of being alive, aren’t we? We all think about life; we ponder the meaning and purpose of life; we all think, at least occasionally, about our inevitable mortality; we all, at least occasionally, take pleasure from a sense of being alive in those instances when life is vibrant and enjoyable. And yet at the same time we take it for granted, and that’s perfectly normal. But that’s what was different about today’s experience, and I have no other way of explaining it except in a feeble and half formed way.

I became aware of my life from the outside somehow. It was as though my consciousness eased a little distance away from me and observed the process of being a material body functioning in a material environment and responding emotionally to the delights contained therein. It was a dispassionate, pragmatic experience which lasted for only a minute or two before I slipped back into simply being me again.

That’s a hopelessly inadequate description I know, but it’s the best I can do. And the only thing to add is that I’ve never had it before.