online: 16 september 2011 modified: 15, 16 september, 9 october 2011 15 september 2011 end of day
city forest border
...sitting in the near silence of the city forest... while also hearing the sounds of not-so-distant traffic... i look at slightly drooping vegetation... and still wandering mosquitos attracted to warm flesh... i consider the sorrows of humans... and also their (or our) unbounded aspirations... good or bad or more likely both combined... as something else...
...giving ourselves permission to be happy or sorrowful... while remembering that scientific strength is only within limits... and that our minds can extend further without claiming wholeness... and yes, these words (though only partly understood by who ever is writing and who ever is reading) are frail carriers of the past into the future which we can ignore, imagine, influence or resist...
...looking up now beyond the tree tops i see grey cloud below with sunlit cloud above and then what we call outer space... things further away becoming invisible as we pass from what we touch or see or hear to theories and models of what can be known only as abstractions... which can inspire or depress...
...now i hear sounds of small things dropping... are they rain drops or perhaps acorns.. and are these the sounds and signs of autumn coolness... and goodbye to a summer that this year in Northern Europe barely happened...
...and as i prepare to depart i hear faint squeaky whistles from a small bird i cannot see... and notice in the dusk an almost uncanny stillness of the leaves nearby...
...another something fell upon my shoulder as i wrote .. was it was a large raindrop or a falling scrap of vegetation?...
...i wait alone as a slight wind moves through the forest... and as a helicopter flies across the sky beyond the trees...
...and now i see that the things that fell were dry pine needles, in pairs... looking wintry... and yet alive in their dropping... to nourish (or to help propagate with cones) the pines from which they fall... whether or not we notice...
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