online: 28 october 2010 modified: 27 october 2010 27 october 2010 in a different world
a city forest
...a familiar corner of the heath... in wintry sunshine, west wind and oceanic clouds moving swiftly beneath blue sky... and (after a sandwich which was nearly eaten by a dog) i am thinking of how to realise both ideal and real together... for, if separate, each can destroy...
...as i contemplate this new/old aim i realise that both idealism and realism are easier to enact separately... but less effective than is the attempt to combine them... and each by itself can be destructive of the whole... or of the person...
...but theory (however good or comforting) seems out of place here among the neutrality of trees and winds and fallen leaves and people, dogs and sounds of distant traffic and of a helicopter circling overhead... (but now it's gone)...
...as my thoughts adapt to what is happening here and now in the forest... and to the accidents of writing... another man with dog walks by... but i see them only in part, at the edge of vision, as my eyes remain fixed on the touch keyboard... and on these emerging words and the letters of which they are composed by fingers arm shoulder neck and nervous system... almost automatically...
...walking further i stop to look at the surface of a pond that is smooth enough to reflect an inverted mirror-image of an oak tree with trunk and spreading roots, doubled... and as i do so a black dog comes to sniff my legs until it's owner (who has been performing yogic postures, or asanas) calls it off...
...and now i've moved to a seat from which the pond and it's surrounding trees are all visible...
...sunlight shining through the trees illuminates leaves from behind and seems to unify the scene... as if lit for an audience... but mostly this sight is unseen by anyone... as is most of the world for most of the time... as is the universe, so called... though the presence of internet and other media gives at least the illusion of increasing audiences for everything... and the new presence of democratised artists (people with cameras or other intelligent handheld devices) who now photograph, describe and communicate events of many kinds that hitherto were never seen or described or communicated by anyone...
...hundreds, even thousands, of photographs made by one person with a digital camera... when formerly, with chemical photography, one made only scores or dozens... and when pictures were painted with brushes and oils, or water colours, there might be only a single picture... one in a-day-or-two, or several days perhaps... and difficult skills to learn by amateurs or professionals... but not by everyone... we live in a different world... thank goodness...
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