...daisies, molehills, crows pecking out tufts of grass to extract insects... also daffodils... all together in this grass between motorways... cherry blossom, hawthorn, what else?... spring is here but i don't feel it yet...
...a seat at edge of a forest park... bleak weather with patches of sunlight, spring is here but i feel we are still in the tail end of winter... last autumn's fallen leaves are being blown along by the wind... a feather and a cigarette stub and a fallen twig lie near my feet... expensive silent cars wait along the roadside... two emergency vehicles pass with sirens screaming... two tall women with large dogs and children urge and lift the dogs into the back of a 4 x4 vehicle and drive off... and i continue walking... this is the life of everyone divided by six billion...
...walking: the beech trees here grow taller than those i am used to, i see a white dog in the distance and i think of it as a dog in a painting, suggestive or symbolic of something, put there with intended meaning (an intention i dislike - and those who wonder why i do should not be reading this says the voice of another presence)... i look up and see silent birds (are they pigeons?) and the branches where they sit silhouetted against the soft grey of the sky... the whole scene is a unity of disparate elements, each one an independent creation, and the forest is nothing apart from all these, nor is the world, apart from everything else... (that isn't quite nonsense!)
...and now i've been walking diagonally, (in this rectangularly planted forest) aiming at a solitary fir tree visible through the still leafless branches of the tall beeches... and now that i have reached it i have all the time in the world (what a concept) to consider and note these unintended thoughts...
...on the way here i had to make small divergencies from the diagonal so as to avoid young beech trees, and perhaps larches, elders, and others i don't recognise, about the height of one or two persons... and i stopped several times to look at their new leaves just appearing, bright green and precious ... ...but it's raining here so i stop for the moment...
...then i saw 2 people photographing the newly blossoming cherry trees and i went to look at them also... i see several bumble bees visiting the thickly clustered blossoms and i pick up a fallen blossom and put it in an envelope... i see that the leaves are just emerging and that the flowers are in full bloom...
...today i think i am noticing smaller and less significant-seeming events and thoughts than usual and i am happier to be doing so - perhaps because this reveals, in the ordinary, the presence of the whole.
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