Time and Distance
Copyright Š Jendella 2013 The right of Jendella to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 First published in Great Britain in 2011 Printed and bound in the Netherlands All rights reserved. The digital edition of this book is available freely for digital distribution as a whole entity, unedited and unaltered from its original state. Individual extracts of text or images are not permitted to be reproduced or published in any form, digital or otherwise, without the express written consent of the author. The print edition of this book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author. Design, images and photography by Jendella.
In Loving Memory of
William Keith Rodely Hallam and
Melchizedek
anoesis
a state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content
pilgrimage a journey to a sacred place or shrine; a long journey or search made for an exalted purpose, moral significance or sentimental reasons
From a young age I became accustomed to the idea of ‘the commute’. If I wanted to get anywhere in life, I was taught that no distance was too great to traverse. As a result of long journeys to and from school, college, and university, I have found travelling and “the time in between”, as Rebecca Solnit puts it, to be an opportunity for meditation and reflection to the calming rhythms of the bus or the train, before the day officially begins in this frantic twenty-first century. The philosophy of ‘going the distance’ runs through my family, and I have seen my grandparents, parents, and other relatives, work long hours and travel great distances to chase their goals and secure their future. As a result of such globe-trotting my family is scattered between three continents. This felt fragmented and almost isolating in contrast to the neighbourhood I grew up in, where you could often find four generations of the same family living within a fifteen minute walk of each other. In April 2011 I travelled a distance of a different sort. I travelled to the family home in a village in the Dordogne region of France. My grandfather bought the house in the seventies and it was where my father and his siblings spent their childhood. As a child I came here on holiday, but after my grandfather passed away the house lay uninhabited, apart from objects from the childhood of my father, uncle, and aunties and the memories that go with them. This visit was probably my last as the house was emptied and my grandmother moved towards selling it. The journey was an attempt to weave a thread through the memories and experiences of three generations of my family to draw us closer, if not spatially then at least psychically and emotionally. I travelled with my auntie and my cousin, who incidentally was the exact age I was the first time I visited the house. We went not only to the house but to the surrounding areas where we had all swam, ran and played as children, years and decades apart.
About the Author Jendella Benson is a photographer, filmmaker and writer based in London. www.jendella.co.uk