online: 10 april 2011 modified: 28, 29, 30 march, 10 april 2011 28 march 2011 a peaceful spot
beech mount (scene for an imaginary noh play)
...i arrived here slowly by following the direction of bird calls...
...once here i ceased walking or other movements... while revisiting the crows... the rabbits... and a little fetish, shrine, or altar (presently destroyed)...
...the birds and rabbits do not run away but continue perching on a pine tree or grazing on the short grass of this place... that to me is the most peaceful... or sacred... on the heath...
[i was about to go away and continue walking when something made me sit down and await whatever thoughts might come in this place i like so much]
...now i look up and see a man and a woman... also standing still (as i did)... and now strolling slowly beneath the pines that i think of as scenery for noh plays*...
hh (two accidental keystrokes)...
...now i hear sounds of smaller birds (perhaps starlings) and a distant crow and a pigeon... as the two people (or characters) walk slowly off stage and in step...
...now i'm alone again before dusk on this first visit to the heath this british summer time (or BST)... and (the people, crows and rabbits having disappeared) i experience this as a noh-like pause... or a theatrical interval...
... a sudden but gentle gust of wind reminds me that the air was motionless... and soon it is motionless again... my peace (i realise) is mainly a liking for still air, no wind... though the winds are my allies... even those from north and east (from the Arctic or from Russia)... but i prefer the warmer winds that come from the west or south (from the Atlantic or the Sahara)...
...imagining that the interval is over i look and listen to what is happening in the imaginary noh play...
...nothing is happening on the ground or in the trees of this sacred clearing... but in the air comes a loud-booming and air-thrashing helicopter... at which i realise that this theatre now extends beyond the surrounding land-surface to all of the air... the air of the troposphere... and of the stratosphere too... as well as the earth's presence as planet... and the surrounding universe... and the extent (ever enlarging or shrinking) of every mind and work of thought or speech or gesture... which teaches or persuades me to stop limiting imagined plays to this or any other bounded place...
...instead...
...instead to write and to enact what could be called the theatre of life...
...unbounded...
...no one's around but me as yet... perhaps the performers await some opening words before they can reveal the possibilities (dramatic) of what can happen here and elsewhere in the world as scenes and acts and thoughts of new... of new... as way to be no matter what...
...at which i hear the many voices of tree-top crows in the distance... and footfalls of someone running...
...time now to go dear actors all of us the population (human or robotic) of the earth and moon and planets and what else beside this noh place where the play begins...
...two runners dressed in blue pass by... they look to me like brothers... and the rabbits reappear...
...and then i left and walked... while every thought became a part of this... no less... the future as it happens here in every detail is...
*Twenty Plays of the No Theatre, edited by Donald Keene with the assistance of Royall Tyler, illustrated with drawings by Fukami Tanro and from the Hosho texts, Columbia University Press, New York and London 1970.
Japanese No Dramas, edited and translated by Royall Tyler, Penguin Books, London 1991.
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