online: 9 may 2009 modified: 21 april, 9 may 2009 21 april 2009 destruction/creation
summery evening in spring
...a cool breeze and weak sunshine but warm enough to shed winter clothes and to sit writing here at the edge of the forest... i hear the familiar rhythm of an underground train travelling overground and occasional shouts or cries from children playing in the park nearby... the clunk of a car door from the tiny village of North End (now an exclusive forest-suburb) and the sounds of cars and buses climbing to the summit of this hill or moraine or small mountain (about 150 metres above the slowly rising sea level)...
...looking downhill at a stretch of chopped-up bracken where profuse and lively ferns have been cut (or eradicated?)... i see a large bumble bee visiting the few brambles that seem to have survived the devastation... the surrounding trees and undergrowth are in leaf and are seemingly unaffected... i seem to remember that a few months ago there were isolated trunks of the ferns that had grown up since the cutting down - in which case have those survivors been uprooted or otherwise eradicated?
...today i am feeling isolated (in this populous world!) because the (indescribable) thing i want to attempt seems beyond me (though in other moments it has been possible)... looking around at the profusion of spring i realise that the remedy to my inertia is simply to do each thing that is locally inviting and possible and to trust the whole of our circumstance to provide general guidance, or purpose (if any)... and i hope this will provoke smiles in place of worried inertia...
...now the sun is shining through the trees as it approaches the horizon, a blackbird or thrush has been singing for about half-an-hour... and an overhanging branch of a pine tree is swaying in the wind above my head, immune to all this as if in a noh play...
...shamed by these examples of organic creation i close my eyes so as to see whatever comes to mind...
...in darkness i feel immediately the hardness and steadiness of the earth beneath my feet and hear the feet of people stepping and running nearby... while the bird continues singing and many other sounds tell me that the the world and its people and other animals are alive and active and not waiting for me or for improvements...
...and with that i decide to return home to eat and to rest and to put these thoughts on the internet... at which a keeper comes in a slow-moving truck to lock the park gates and i correct mistakes and make other slight alterations to this before leaving...
later that day:
after making more alterations i again close my eyes and feel the slight tingling of my scalp that i once felt after acupuncture... and i take that as a sign of relaxation and rightness...
9 may 2009:
...for some reason, or none, i didn't put this on line on 21st april but today, after slight alterations, i do so!
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