online: 13 september 2012 modified: 12, 13 september 2012 12 september 2012 the nature of nature
at Seven Sisters ponds
...amidst a plethora of vegetation (limes reeds ivy water-lilies ash thorn fern... and over-arching oaks) through which small patches of white cloud and blue sky can be seen... i eat a sandwich and drink some mouthfuls of gassy water flavoured with oranges from goodness knows where... and during which actions two coots swim into and out of sight.. and three ducks arrive from the treetops and splash onto the water... and soon depart in a steep climb with wings flapping vigorously... and a robin revisits this spot where one or two are often to be seen...
...i'm losing track of the logic of these near sentences or phrases as the north west wind speeds up and the forecast rain perhaps approaches and a distant train sound reaches my ears though i'm not wearing the hearing instruments (recently provided by our free National Health Service)...
...and while writing this i am remembering the words of William Blake (and Kathleen Raine's interpretations* thereof)... and wondering if in London three hundred years ago years ago he saw physical nature as (all of) reality... no, evidently he did not, for i half-recall (or re-state) a statement (of Kathleen Raine or of himself) that the visible world though so real is both fact and illusion made real by the operation of mind or imagination (outside which there is no existence)... at which a large bird cries once from somewhere beyond my vision while a blackbird appears on the path beside me... and then leaves (this local world of leaves)...
7.30 pm
...and now it is getting cold and rain is forecast for half an hour hence
so i prepare to leave... thankful of nature (illusionary or not) and glad of the power of mind to pose such questions as these... and glad also of the ability to create this apparent world of writing in which all these things can co-inhabit to the exclusion of less attractive ones (that one prefers to keep at bay)...
8.10 pm
....rain begins within 10 minutes of the time predicted (perhaps a day ago) by BBC Weather (in collaboration with the Met Office)... that apparent fact (like all these others) being part of the nature of nature... is it not?
*the words i was remembering were these:
the fallacy of materialist thought is to take the part - the material order - for the whole
Kathleen Raine, Golgonooza, City of Imagination, last studies in William Blake, Golgonooza Press, 15 Cambridge Drive, IP2 9EP, Ipswich, UK 1991, page 56.
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