online: 8 july 2010 modified: 4, 6, 8 july 2010 3 july 2010 tall grasses
and other vertical features
...3 or 4 steps out of the bus... 1 or 2 to get over a railing... and grasses nearly as tall as himself are brushing his face and clothing as his body moves rapidly down a steep and dusty path between blackberry bushes...
...and as he walks on he remembers that it's 21 years since he came to live close enogh to the city forest to walk it several times a week...
...today he notices that what he calls the seat overlooking a wooded valley is now set in a cave of vegetation that has grown above and round it over the years...
...feeling midges biting at neck and ankles he buttons shirt and pulls socks over trousers...
...the sky is calm with small blue grey clouds beyond the trees... leaves and grasses are almost still...
...he hears distant voices from a field where people are playing football... and there is music from a picnic somewhere else behind the trees...
...already the light is fading as insects continue to bite... but he waits to see how these events and words proceed today... a deep breath occurs spontaneously... he feels the air getting colder and puts on a pullover...
...there is now louder music, and occasional applause, from the invisible picnic...
...as blackberry blossoms begin to close for the night he stands up and continues walking...
...retracing his steps he returns to the steep path through long grasses... surprised to see two lofty constructions that he did not notice on his way here: a radio transmitter (disguised as a black street lighting pole) and a white flagpole from which flies the red on white cross of St George... and of England... (is this intended to exclude celtic or pre-celtic aboriginals as well as new immigrants?)...
...these 'vertical features'* remind him of the internet (which is already expanding our culture)... and of the myth of Saint George slaying the dragon (which seems to embody rejection of the snake or dragon which in pre-industrial culture is a symbol of life not of evil... he thinks of the intertwined snakes symbolising medical practice)...
...dangerous ground... no, not ground, but the invention and re-invention of beliefs and of culture... at present (as always) in flux... and the real work of our time
*i was thinking of the 'skylon', a tension structure that was chosen as a 'vertical feature' (to complement a horizontal feature, the 'dome of discovery') at the Festival of Britain, South Bank Exhibition, in 1951 (my first place of work and a formative experience)...
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