online: 26 june 2012 modified:25, 26 june 2012 25 june 2012 summer stillness
in a wooded valley
...long grasses of several varieties all in bloom or seed... the air is still... tall trees... chestnut beech sycamore and others... all in full leaf... while a minute insect moves rapidly in jerky loops and circles on a few centimetres of the plank on which i also sit... writing these words... the sun emerges from a cloud and immediately changes the radiant heat from cool to hot.... while a wood pigeon sings or speaks its murmuring sounds...
....four or six people passed through the valley while i wrote that paragraph... and now i am alone with the trees and grasses plus some bushes of broom and flowering elderberry and brambles and dock leaves sprouting nearby...
no sign of butterflies...
...having become aware of the vegetation and the peaceful scene i look at the variety of greens and browns and dark green shadows beneath grey and white clouds separated by blueness... and (as i look exclusively at the colours) the trees and plants seem to become more three-dimensional... as the space between and around each growth becomes itself a thing or presence...
...reluctant to leave (now that i am getting to know this place and moment) i sit and wait for whatever may happen...
...several more people pass through the valley most of them running in athletic clothing and some with rucksacks or plastic bags and some with earphones... and several are already tanned... despite the lack of sunny days or weeks but only hours... as now... as the sun keeps disappearing... while i sit here wearing nearly as many clothes as in winter...
in a bus
...as i walked back to the road past indescribable complexity of the vegetation on a hillside (of brambles, gorse, long grasses and other plants i cannot name) i felt reluctant to leave this paradise of natural forms and colours... all growing in apparent stillness... such as to seem much better or more beautiful than are the forms of human life as usually experienced...
...but then... on returning to my kitchen... i became pleased enough with the implements and actions of cooking and eating an egg pastry... and then happy with the familiar marvel of being able to talk to someone at a distance... and to continue these thougths and to complete this writing through the miracles of language and of internet...
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