9 november 2004 on a balcony
14.38 Sitting in the late autumn sun on a wooden seat on the balcony of a renaissance style mansion of the early 19th century surrounded by stone balustrades with vase shaped verticals (balusters)... A heron has just flown slowly past at tree top height and now it has gone and the blue sky is the only sight above. It extends behind the tall trees, two oaks, several beeches. Beyond the balustrade is a formal garden with shrubs shaped into cones and miniature walls enclosing straight rows of transplanted pansies - a use of geometry that I used to deplore but now can almost tolerate if I look away... Two women have come to lean against the balustrade with eyes closed as they let the weak sun shine on their faces for a few minutes... I am glad to be continuing this description of small parts of the earth and of what is happening here in this public writing place among the things described. Architecture. Paragraph 1.
I breathe in deeply and feel the cold air in my nose and lungs. I sit up to reduce the universal backache. A gull (black headed) squawks, others circle above the canal that borders the mansion. Yellowing leaves move slightly in the wind and now I think of leaving this place and walking somewhere else.
I walked, passing a man and a woman each carrying a folding aluminium chair (new appendages to the human animal)... and then I looked inside a tent-like theatre for clowns, drawings of whom were visible inside beside a platform and some benches (but the tent was otherwise empty of clownish nonsense or anything else)...
10 november 2004
and now I am remembering these thoughts and moments of equal significance to all others, as I read this public diary of what is happening here and now on earth and through these words.
(these pages are designed to be read with the window set to two-thirds of the screen width)
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