online: 24 june 2007
modified: 16 june 2007

12 june 2007 the freedom to destroy


18:27 ...on a seat under a chestnut in Sandy Heath... i'm surrounded by leaf green in all directions except for patches of blue sky and white cloud between tree tops... and close beside me is a field of tall nettles... beyond them are oaks, sycamore, elderberry and other trees that i don't recognise... on a hot summery afternoon...

...(later) sitting on the ground leaning against an oak tree on the Southern Heath close to the Vale of Health... i can see more of the sky here, and long shadows across the grass... two runners go by - one muscular, and moving smoothly, the other thin, and moving jerkily, as if running is too much for him...

19:36 ... now i'm at the Ethel Copeland Campbell* seat at the tumulus (the randomly chosen point towards which i was walking today)... I see that the seat is not yet repaired after someone set fire to two of its planks and burnt half their thickness into charcoal... I phoned the keepers a week or two ago and i shall do so again...

...i suppose this seat-burning is intended to shock, or to communicate contempt for those of us who value this bench, the heath, and the whole culture... but it is perhaps no wonder that this happens in a culture so impersonal... and so destructive of life and of spirit...

...i wonder if such a burning could occur in a tribe in which everyone knew everyone... but probably tribal cultures lacked freedoms which we still have, and would not want to give up...?



16 june 2007:
*the seat is inscribed 'Ethel Copeland Campbell, 1897 - 1987, vegetarian, socialist, pacifist'... no doubt a fighter for some of those freedoms!...

...a loud clap of thunder overhead, after a rain storm... there is energy concealed in each object!





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