online:28 june 2008 modified: 1 june 2008 1 june 2008 still water
at the Vale of Health
...this evening the water surface is almost still - there is only slight undulation, enough to blur reflected images of buildings and trees... and occasional circular ripples (seen as elliptical) where water birds or fish break the smooth surface... the sky is palest blue mistiness... a solitary coot calls and calls but provokes no response... i see this artificial place as a second nature, closer to wildness than to domesticity, perhaps...
...in the middle distance i see what could be five ducklings swimming slowly about the pond... and a swan disappearing into some overhanging willow that is partly submerged... i wonder if there is a swan's nest within?
...and now as I sit on the highest seat, expecting a view of the city (it could be my last) and find that the buildings are hidden by mist... only some lights on the tallest shine through... and then i asked myself if after death there is something, or nothing... to my amazement, i realised that, if realism is a mistaken theory, then nothing (after death) is unlikely!... (this is the first occasion when I remember thinking that...have i suddenly become a believer?)...
...i look now at the village below and realise that it is disappearing in the dusk... and i can hear one or two birds in an evening duet if not a chorus... (our habitual language is so overloaded with anthropomorphic images and assumptions... i try to avoid them but fail, as we all do)...
...so now, in these darks or lights, i get up to return home, wondering if i am in a different reality now...
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