23 July 2001 kinetic art


19:22: Bragg seat. Kinetic art. The words themselves. A man walks slowly by. He has a huge Alsatian dog at which he shouts harshly when it runs towards a shy greyhound belonging to someone else. This a poem. The air is warm and the sky is nearly clear. The valley of trees is now silent and a few leaves flutter though there is no wind - only a very local air movement. A man whistles for a dog - and now he goes away. Away. I'm almost alone again with the sky and the grass and the trees. And this pen and the other eyes which some time later may read this. My experiment in public writing. I see a piece of broken mirror in the grass and in it see my eye. That's enough. Five people with a picnic basket and a folding chair and a rug and a book walk slowly by. The older man opens the chair and sits and the others sit on the rug and eat off paper plates and talk simultaneously. They already look as if they've been settled there for twenty minutes. You could call it an outdoor home, a little settlement, as important to itself as New York or Rhydyfelin.

20:29 This is the life of all of us. Next paragraph.

Somewhere else. A purple cloud. A man I've seen before goes by, He dresses and walks more formally than most people here, as if he is immune to informality. His movement is smoother and his posture is more balanced than almost anyone I see (though perhaps a bit stiff). Since taking lessons in the Alexander technique I've realised that very few of us can walk or run or sit with poise and without imbalance and muscular fixity. Is that a product of mechanised culture? I suspect it is. We are paid to ignore the whole, to not see the connections and to contravene the rhythms of our bodies. If only we were dancing.