online: 17 june 2009 modified: 16, 17 june 2009 16 june 2009 perceiving the whole
by pond two
...realising that there is no call on my time for many hours i decide to continue sitting here (by pond two) and see what happens...
...directly before me are two ducks, seemingly asleep, as they float with heads tucked into the feathers on their backs...
...a woman smiles, noticing me writing, and another looks back to smile while walking between a man and a woman... and yet another woman takes a boy of about two to the edge of the pond, as if to introduce him to ponds, water margins, coastlines, and such...
...and now there are no people in view... and my thoughts become less focussed and begin to take in, or attend to, the whole scene (the trees, their thousands of leaves, the clouds, the rippling surface of the water, the sounds of people and birds, etc)... or as much of the whole as one can grasp... for it is not easily perceived... perhaps it is impossible to see everything... at once... perhaps the idea of 'the whole' as a finite thing is mistaken
...as i hold my finger ready to write more words i see that it casts a shadow on my thigh... and when i move my finger the shadow resembles the head of a live animal... and i wonder again if and how prehistoric people found themselves making such conscious (or accidental) fragments of cinema (see 'oak tree as camera'
)...
...two ducks (perhaps the same two?) swim by while shaking and lifting their bodies out of the water (as if washing after sleep?)... and thereafter swim slowly (with least effort, perhaps)...
and now i realise that this is the spot where Edwin Schlossberg suggested that, while using a film camera, i try to attend to all the people in view as a unity... as if each of us (in our responses to a shared environment) is part of a single organism, or multi-bodied creature... those are not his words but i hope his meaning, or intention, is correctly represented... i remember that, at that moment, and other such moments later, it did indeed seem possible to perceive a number of people, including oneself, connectively... 'as a whole' as we say...
...while i was writing much of that a young man came to sit on the same bench, to eat some food and to drink, and then to read a book... he didn't say anything or react (except to turn slightly away and to sit at the farthest edge of the bench)... i found it impossible to say hello, or any other greeting... and so i continued writing as if he were not there... eventually he went away without either of us making any acknowledgement of our brief shared experience of sitting together... i had the impression that to him this seemed normal...
...in about twenty years of walking on the heath i can recall only a few occasions when someone has come to sit on the same bench... and no other occasion when someone sitting beside me has said nothing... and i don't remember going to sit on a bench already occupied...
...on my way back to the station i spoke to a man and a woman with painted faces who were sitting on the grass to eat a picnic... his face was red with black spider webs and her face was painted in black, grey and red in the form of a devil or demon... laughingly i asked then why they did it and they said 'we just do it' or some such good answer... i congratulated them on their nerve and said goodbye... glad to be talking to someone!
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