6

The gaping mouth of a mine – dark tunnel running back into the earth. Like the innocent railway in Edinburgh, or the mouth of the coal-shaft at Millerton.

You walk in cautiously, clutching at the moss-covered walls for guidance, trying to avoid tripping over the tracks. An indistinct spot of light appears at the other end, wavering like a pale flame. You continue towards it, as it gradually expands, revealing the end of the passage.

There were only a couple of minutes when you were wholly in the dark, and you felt nothing in particular – no sense of transformation, metamorphosis – but somehow, as you approach the other end, you find that everything has changed. All changed, changed utterly. Change for Crewe Junction.


[… Memories of that incident in the tunnels below North Head, standing in the dark of a cave, with a group of girls looking at you, straight in the face. “There’s someone there. I can almost make him out. It’s not completely empty.” They persisted beyond all reasonable expectation.

Finally, realising they weren’t going to go away, you walked out into the midst of them, commenting how interesting it was that one could see nothing when caught in the light of the window.

They stared: dumb, flabbergasted – shocked that anyone could want to stand there silent, hidden from the world …]


On the other side, everything’s reversed. A pretty blonde girl comes up and links her arm in yours. There’s a tribe of kids running around, demanding that you participate in their game. You grab a beer and start to argue about the rugby with a group of loud biker friends.

As evening falls, you ride back to the wilds of Titirangi. The house is full of people – not a book in sight – clamour of voices, curses, tantrums. You’ve got to be up early next day for work, so go to bed with your wife, the blonde girl, Sally. The two of you make love. She turns away and starts to snore.

Antiterra – tunnel into the earth
North Head / [Crewe Junction] / Titirangi

21

Come inside and be me
jump in and be me

There’s always good through bad

I know who I am with a routine

– Debbie


I can’t even remember
what it’s like to remember
Will I remember to remember?

– George


[writing poems]

It helps me to remember
because I can hear
the next part

[keeping a journal]

I only read the words
I can’t think back
to what I was thinking

– Sally

22

Imagine you forgot everything you heard straight after hearing it. People come in and introduce themselves to you. Before they’ve left the room you can’t remember who they are … can’t remember remembering who they were, in fact. As far as you’ve concerned, time stands entirely still. In this condition, anterograde amnesia, everything, for you, is perpetually beginning.

What do you do?

One way is to stick to a strict routine: do everything in just the same order every day: see the same people, do the same activities. Your day, your week, your month, your year all mapped out in advance. 50 First Dates.

Another way is writing down everything you do just as you do it – keeping a journal of your daily round. If you write it down at least you won’t lose the writing, however little it may mean to you as soon as it’s complete. The word becomes the thing it was describing.

Another way is writing and/or memorizing poems. Because they have an ordered structure: the predictability of rhythm and rhyme, it’s possible to hold them in your head: that part of your head which rests, miraculously intact, below the level of dysfunction.

The television documentary Living without a Memory (BBC, 2003) tracks the daily lives of three sufferers from this condition: Debbie, Sally and George. They all exist within a family structure. It’s hard, in fact, to imagine them surviving any other way …

How do you recover your past if you have retrograde amnesia?
Write down, blindly, everything that comes into your head
check it back for clues

How do you hold onto the present if you have anterograde amnesia?
List the things that strike you
link them up to preserve your train of thought

26

Park at Spencers Bay (past Port Jackson) – scruffy tents and loos – Path up the green hill past the ragtag campers – lovely swimming beach (almost deserted) ten minutes away – Sign

To Poley Bay (1 hr)

It seems just over the hill – Up top the bare sheep-nibbled slope – Past the bitten chimney sloping to one side a sheep crouched in its shade – Past the sandy hollow– up & up – After ½ hour another sign

Poley Bay 30 minutes)

Breathtaking viewpoint – Green rocky bay below with white yacht scudding past – Stop there for lunch (two tracks heading to bush-clad point) – “It’s the mixture of gorse and native bush that gives it its character” – On on & then descend into native bush – down & down & down – through glens & thickets streams & fords fronds ferns – until the river – one more sign

Poley Bay 1 minute
Lookout Pt one hour
Stoney Bay 3 hrs)

Poley Bay is rocks swirling around a shelf of gravel – driftwood caves – No sign of habitation – anything – A little stacked square of sticks stands as if for a fire – Possum/ rat trap a few metres away

45

I got out to stretch my legs at the Summit Café – 555 m to the top of the Rimutakas, the sign said – I thought they meant a brief walk behind the café to a viewing area. Not so. As the path meandered on, I realized I had got onto some kind of walkway stretching right along the range. And so turned back.

On the way back to the parking lot, I started to think about what I’d do if my car was gone when I got there. ‘Learning how to get lost’ – that was what Michael had talked about that afternoon, over a glass of shiraz at lunch. Reading the maps, then forgetting them and walking round on instinct.

My money, my clothes were all in the car – luggage, books, i.d. cards. I had no friends nearby to call – no friends with cars, at any rate – Perhaps I’d hitchhike on – stop at the next town, try and get a job, disappear: identity, antecedents all erased. One more wanderer among the millions on the endless leagues of Middle Earth.

65

• the Buddhist Stupa
• No Dogs in Northern Campgrounds
• the closed gate
• three stone-blows
• the ford
• the open gate
• the track
• the motor camp
• the card-phone box
• three dead possums in the road
• the wooden bridge to nowhere
• the broken concrete jetty
• No Dust Please

13 gates of the Land of Shadow