sorry about the misdated thread:

We have been talking about, and experiencing, presences and absences this last week or so. D.W. Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst, had a lot to say about what he called "basic trust", which he saw as in part founded on the ability of a child to cope with the absence of its mother. He noticed that there was a period in a child's life where the presence of the mother in the room was essential -- the loss of being able to see the mother at all times was frightening -- and then there was a transition, where the healthy child learned that the momentary absence of the mother wasn't permanent -- it was almost as if the child had widened out, or internalized the presence of the mother, even in her absence. The mother became a kind of "generic holder" of basic trust, i.e. the child would not be dropped completely whatever happened. Children in trouble (or mothers in over-anxiety) were not able to handle this shift, and never really gained a sense of basic trust in the world.

That is a theory. But I notice in myself that there are these gradations and experiences of presence in absence. I can often assume without thinking about it that my friends are still there, that my parents are around, that they don't have to be physically present to be present. But sometimes, on bad days, I lose my basic trust in the possible presence of anyone else -- I think the world is a collection of disconnected beings. When I have been in love, the person's presence is ever-present, even though their absence is agonizing (the agony is an ironic measure of their presence). I once talked to a woman who said that the best thing about being a Christian was that she always had Jesus in her presence, which made her less anxious, and more able to cope with the absences of the people in her life -- I became less grasping, less desperate, less afraid that if they left the room I would never see them again, was what she said to me.

I once conducted a discussion with students of mine about how they felt out in the woods. Some felt completely alone, some felt the presence of the forest as a being surrounding them, some were so caught up in thinking about something else that they never noticed the woods at all. It was a surprise to me: I had always assumed that people out in the woods felt a sense of presence, of something in the surroundings -- but then I saw that I was just projecting my senses of presence and absence onto others.

I have since noticed this more widely: as I have said, some people are accompanied by presences, and can live with physical absences; some cannot. Some days I am the first kind of person; some days not.

I have not really applied this to the odd presence/absence of Mudcatters; but it is there, certainly. I am lucky enough to know some of them in the flesh; and even luckier to be a witness to the cornucopia of arrivals on our doorstep. And of course, the paradoxes of the presence/absence of these travellers only multiplies the strange delight in the experience.