online: 28 june 2008 modified: 23, 25, 28 june 2008 23 june 2008 midsummer's eve
above a wooded valley
...a quiet evening before midsummer's day... no visible magic but for the marvel of existence completely real and never fully understood...
...the silence of this forest clearing is broken or augmented by a noisy helicopter and by the silent walking by of three young men on stunt bikes and one on a skate board and then by other people walking alone and now by a magpie walking on the short grass and approaching within 2 or 3 metres... and then by a 2-engined aircraft heading for Heathrow...
...the oak leaves above sway in the wind, a man in black running clothes moves steadily forward... and a tall thin man in pink and fawn with long thin arms walks by: he has energy to look about as he walks (more quickly than the others)... and a drifting piece of vegetation sails downwind to settle in long grass...
...there is a perpetual flow of people through this valley, as I suppose there is everywhere on earth (and from now on even on the moon, if you wait long enough)... but these few passers through or by or above this spot become parts of literature and do not know it, such is the nature of looking and writing in public...
...the sun is sinking beyond the trees... a wood pigeon coos intermittently... a man on a bike rides close by and stops talking to himself when he sees me... and i strike out at the mosquitos that have discovered my body heat and blood... a man with a continuously growling dog with the lead in its mouth is being swung through the air by the man who is holding the other end of the lead (what a sentence, what a performance)...
...time to go home now after nearly an hour on this seat as the air becomes cool and i return to the city these words are not zero...
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