online: 2 may 2011 modified: 20, 21, 26 april, 1, 2 may 2011 15-21 april 2011 fitting and flying
city forest
...sitting at a favourite spot beneath trees by pond 2 where my family and friends picnicked with Edwin Schlossberg after making a film of ourselves enacting the motions of sun, moon and earth... it was Edwin's idea... in 1974...
...and at that memory i still envisage publishing those films... and also the book of letters between Ed and myself that we wrote at that time*...
...now i've moved from that seat to a spot at the pond side... quite close to the raft on which is a cormorant... which flew there over the water and which now sits (with beak up in the air) as it waits... and waits... (perhaps to digest some of the bodyweight of food that cormorants are said to eat in a day?)...
...before that i stopped on the dam to watch a heron standing still... and then elegantly stepping over branches... until it flew away on its broad slow-flapping wings over the water...
...and before that i witnessed four or five humans (strong-looking men with shovels and rakes) who were manoeuvering a vast concrete mixer into a position from which it could discharge slushy cement and stone aggregate into a trench they had cut into an existing roadway...
...as i watched their actions (driven more by the speed of the machine than the rythmns of the body)...i wondered if my theory of automation sufficiently reflects of the huge efforts and forced timings of the people who (by their integrated-thinking-and-doing) do the vital connecting (or 'fitting') of the mechanical dream to the natural reality as it is...
...now the cormorant has gone and is replaced by two canada geese who are standing on the raft while pecking at their feathers... the whole of which seem to be reachable by flexible neck twisting... and by adroit shaking and shuddering of wings and tail feathers...
...and now i look at my own position amidst waterside rushes and ivy and nettles and brambles (in most satisfactory wildness) on a dried muddy beach of dead twigs and vegetation... and i look also at big log that is half-floating... and revealing its upper surface... from which the bark is removed and dead wood lies exposed to the sun... and to smaller creatures who may thrive on it...
...i sit up and breathe in and watch various water birds now gathering
and feel reluctant to leave this little world by the lake...
...for no reason i touch the cracked mud cliff on which i'm still sitting and watch a black ant attempting to approach my finger tips but turning away from each at a distance of 5 to 10 mm.....
....on the way back i stop at 'the seat above a wooded valley' where i hear a wood pigeon cooing... and i look again at these trees... whose lower halves are hidden in the valley...
refrain:
and now, as i re-read, i remember vividly these moments in the city forest and rejoice at the thought of their being shared via these writings with anyone who may come upon this public writing place...
*Letters in Communication, 32 weekly letters between J Christopher Jones and Edwiin Schlossberg in handscript and typescript, London 1973-4.
The first letter was published in Interstate 5, pages 38-44, by Loris Essary, Noumenon Foundation, Box 7068, University Station, Austin, Texas, USA 1976.
Letters describing film making... and the motions of the sun, moon and earth... were published in Edwin Schlossberg's newspaper Better News. Chester Mass. USA, 1976... and also in the internet and everyone, Ellipsis, London 2000, pages 218-229.
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