online: 1 october 2005
modified: 29 september 2005

29 september 2005 second walk from the north west


16:30 The view from a high point (in The Hill Garden, West Heath) from which i can see a steeple on the horizon at Harrow on the Hill - i estimate it's about 10 kilometres away... i sought it out on this my 2nd heath walk from the north west. A link to David Jones* who spent his last years there in a nursing home from which he continued to write and to draw with wide-ranging awareness of things British and things artistic and things sacred... Another influence i welcome in my life and writing in this place, half new to me... i will certainly return to this spot, a brick and stone tower, the northwestern extremity of the ornamental garden with elevated pergolas in the grounds of a mansion which is now, i think, a hospital...

17:20 Back in the heath i know: the meadow in Kenwood. Out of the forest of Sandy Heath and into open space, and sky, and cloud, and light, and awareness of distant aeroplanes and flying birds... and into a world i know and feel at home in every part...

The tall and bushy trees surrounding the meadow still have all their leaves but they've begun to turn yellow, or yellowish-green...

...a woman walks by and smiles and says hello - is it that someone seated, and writing, somehow invites friendly greetings?

The air is cool today, at the beginning of autumn. There are still a few insects in the air and i can hear the cawing of distant crows. I feel as if i'm noticing small sights and sounds in this part of the heath i know well whereas in the part new to me my perceptions were quite different - more to do with finding and choosing my way than with noticing the life around me...

18:10 Parliament Hill. I started going back the way i came but i felt strong urge to revisit this and other places i know well... As i walked through these familiar scenes, and experienced today's's variations in sights i like so much and know, the tumulus, the sight of the city, its towers, and the low hills beyond it, i realise that i have not moved - only added new sights and walks to the ones i know and can still visit.. I realise now that my world's not shrunk but expanded!



*David Jones, visual artist and author of In Parenthesis, The Anathemata, Epoch and Artist, and other books published by Faber and Faber, London. I cannot give the dates today as my books are still in boxes and my computer is not yet online at its new location. 1 october: now online


(these pages are designed to be read with the window set to two-thirds of the screen width)

what's new

atlas

homepage

daffodil email newsletter

© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 john chris jones

You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you respect the copyright of quotations.

If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj at publicwriting.net