online: 16 february 2011 modified: 14, 15, 16 february 2011 15 january 2011 the sky and elsewhere
edge of forest
for Joanie who left in 1996
from Jack, who arrived in the same year
...those words... inscribed on a seat... for one who left and for another who arrived... can seem to displace traditional notions of life and death.... to have the power to transcend an inherited idea of heaven separated from earth... by supposing an additional place ... from which we arrive... prior to earth or to heaven
...this reminds me of a temporary artwork consisting of three tall picture frames... the first (without content) was called before... the second (framing a mirror) was called now... and the third (also without content) was called after...
...sitting now by an ornamental pond in which warm sunlight is casting the shadows of floating leaves on the mud beneath...
... looking into the almost cloudless blue of the sky... and the bright green of the grass between me and the pond... i see faint moving patterns projected by the workings of my eyes and nervous system....
...all these are now penetrated by two parallel vapour trails progressing downwards from sky to earth... and already they are fading as they reach the white misty sky beyond the leafless birches along the horizon...
...all these... all these things... and now another high flying aircraft leaves a new trail... vertically down the centre of this scene... and then it changes course as two other vapour trails progress at diverging angles... then one of these two aircraft and its vapour trail turns towards the other...
...surely this is a kind of perfection... free of evident anxiety or trouble... (an abstract mix of nature... of landscape gardening... and of aviation)...
...now in a bus... a moving world of unrecorded thoughts... and of apparently greater complexity...
for comfortable line length please set the window to about half of the screen width
You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial
purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you
respect the copyright of quotations.
If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please
send a copyright permission request to jcj 'at' publicwriting.net
(replace 'at' and spaces by the @ sign)
