online: 14 november 2011 modified: 13, 14 november 2011 13 november 2011 human nature returns
the hill garden
...the geometrical terrace is already re-naturalised by bright green moss that is growing in narrow spaces between rectangular paving stones... and more naturally by occasional falling clouds of yellow leaves from a birch tree... and even more so by two small children who are exploring and disturbing (with fallen branches) the life of the ornamental pond... while a man who accompanies them tries to photograph a woman with long hair as she poses and laughs and re-poses with more laughter...
...by now this no longer feels like the digital diary but like the deliberate shaping of experience as if i'm infected by the artificiality of photography or of gardening that prevails here today!
...now the two small children with their adults have disappeared and a party of about ten people arrive with picnic bags and walk straight to this location... is their presence too much for my simple process of writing about small events as they happen... or is this life in its variety taking over and bringing social liveliness to my solitude?
...as i write this the picnic people are treating the semi-underground shelter (or modern grotto) as a stage for the enacting and photographing of the children in poses that i cannot see from this seat, but they all laugh... while some of the women are producing scarves and shawls perhaps also for wearing during posed photos... are they reconstructing life as well as living it... as did Henry James in his novels and way of talking...?
...i think this is enough and get ready to go...
...but several of the women wearing sparkling dresses and even high heels walk over the terrace to be photographed... while a man sitting near to me (who is not part of the picnic and speaks a language i don't recognise) dances silently and without inhibition to the amusement of a woman who is with him...
...feeling sun burning my cheek i move away to seek shadow...
...sitting now on the highest seat (with the sun on the other cheek) i am surrounded by more people who are not so much walking as moving from one photographic pose to another (for today many take photographs with handhelds... and one has a professional video camera)
...the distant city towers are hidden in mist yet the village rooftops before me are in sharp focus...
...a man sitting on an orange bicycle is holding on to a pine tree while speaking on a mobile... there are gusts of wind blowing gorse and grasses and brambles and some seedlings of sycamore into movement...
...as i walked here i felt glad to be accepting these unexpected people and their remaking of the city forest and their numerous perceptions and precedents influencing all this... it is indeed a rewriting of eden... a brief sight of the plasticity of everything... given minds...
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