online: 11 march 2010 modified: 10 march 2010 10 march 2010 sun and wind
city forest
...on a cold and bright afternoon in the shadow of a fir tree... the sunlight is casting sloping shadows of many trees towards a lawn that separates a neo-classical mansion from the forest... birds swoop and dive and make cawing sounds while the trees remain leafless in the cold east wind though the dry air and sunshine give the appearance of spring...
...someone wrote to say how lucky i am to perceive things as i do but to me the things i write about seem obvious or ordinary as well as marvellous... and universal...
...and now i observe this handheld computer anticipating a word before i've completed writing it... sometimes it guesses the one i intend and sometimes it imposes another... ('it' being the people who wrote the software... not this computer... which shifts in time and place their knowledge and presence)...
...sitting now in a different place i see the lawn from the west, from the forest... and beyond the lawn i see the mansion (now a place for weddings parties, business meetings and occasional film making... but most of the time it is empty of people)...and today people walk briskly past in the cold air...
...looking now at the whole scene i try to take in not only the house but the trees, the birds, the sun, the sky... the smiling man who runs past in a high visibility jacket... the woman who is also smiling as she eats something and says hello with her mouth full...
... but this description does not grasp the whole of it... this moment... which is like every moment a connecting fragment of the earth, the world, the universe (those words too abstract to conjure definite sights or sounds or other sensations... particularly those of one's body-sense... unique and separate yes yes)...
...with freezing thumb (and with the other fingers in a glove) i decide to stop in order to warm my thumb (which while writing these paragraphs today has learnt to pick out letters on a touch keyboard... previously i wrote with my first finger but that gets cold more quickly)...
...as i got ready to rise a man came past with an enormous scarf reaching down to his legs as he walked with his eyes almost closed in the sunshine... and i could not resist describing him...
...at the edge of the forest a large rock blocks the way... and a small boy (perhaps tired of the slow pace of the adults he accompanies) climbs over the rock and slides to the ground on the other side... thus contradicting i imagine all expectations of what is normal and sensible but for him i expect the easiest path lacks purpose or excitement... (i saw that the top surface of the rock is smoothed by the touch of people)...
...and on my way back to the road i pass about a hundred daffodils in grass... and not one yet in bloom though they would have bloomed in early march and in the sunshine and blue sky that has prevailed for a week if not several... had the wind been from the west...
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