online: 9 october 2009 modified: 8 october 2009 8 october 2009 autumn afternoon
a seat in memory of Meta Dachinger, artist*
...a seat i've often sat on... today it's surrounded by still-green undergrowth and trees... not many leaves have fallen yet... but, attracted by it's colouring, i picked up a twig with six oak leaves...
...the brightest leaf (which led me to pick up the twig) has vivid green veins (if that's what they are called), yellow surfaces between the veins, and is orange-brown at the leaf edges...
... now the tiniest insect, less than a millimetre in length, crawls rapidly over my leg and then climbs over my finger and now it has disappeared... i hope it's not crawling up my arm beneath the warmer clothes i put on today (feeling colder air on my skin)...
...people pass as i write, some speaking a hello, or nodding one... while a mosquito-like creature keeps trying to land on my face or on my neck... despite my trying to blow it away...
...looking round, away from the insects, i see only green leaves and the whiteish branches of a birch with several trunks... and an oak with up to twenty... then i look down at my brown shoes, the same colour as the fallen leaves, and that decides me to move on...
...sitting now on the third seat at the tumulus i enjoy seeing the open sky and grassland in place of trees and undergrowth... away to the southeast are the spires and tower blocks of east London and here on the heath is a dead oak tree standing alone in the meadow... crows fly overhead towards Kenwood and there are people sitting on the damp ground as the sun casts long shadows leaving more than half the grass in sunlight...
...there is a new inscription scratched on this seat: 'Annie Kinsky' and 'Edgar Wolf' linked by a sharply pointed heart... and in the trees above me i can hear and see a largeish bird pecking at a tree-trunk... out of season i should think...
p
the letter p
it got there by accident
* a Google search reveals 12 entries mentioning the Meta Dachinger seat... i am tempted to read them carefully but a quick reading of the earliest and the last but one reveals more than i can take in at the moment...
...this link is to the first entry to include her name...
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