online: 18 july 2014
modified: 18, 26, july 2014

11 july 2014 at seven sisters ponds


visions of the moment

...the air is still... i can't detect even a millimetre of movement in a leaf... and i'm surprised to see that a newly grown hedge is already concealing perhaps a third of the view of the pond... no sign today of any robin... and do they sometimes move their territories even in midsummer?...

... after sitting here for perhaps 20 minutes with no wild creatures but mosquitos in sight or touch... i see a small coot through a chink between the hedge and the iris leaves (if that is the name of this most profusely growing water vegetation)...

...still not the slightest movement of the air... and the pond itself is hidden beneath a thick layer of floating leaves... smaller than those of water lilies but covering the whole water surface...


...about a kilometre further on i come to what i think of as 'the film maker's seat' and i note the inscription:

RENATA AND HOWARD CLEWES

FROM MILAN, FLORENCE AND TAHITI TO HAMPSTEAD


...i recall the silence as i walked here... a dampness too... and a scarcity of people here this evening...

...no sign here of 'the film we never made' but a wish to begin it... and to recover that enthusiasm:

'Tahiti' reminds me of Dylan Thomas's film script of a south sea island story by Robert Louis Stevenson... at which come thoughts of the unreality of cinema... and also of our lives... and voyages... (the story is called The Beach of Falesa)...

...i look up and see a pigeon flying silently away towards the east... out of the clearing...

...the strongest influence here is perhaps the tall straight oak now becoming a shade or shadow beyond which is the green light of the clearing... full of tall nettles and other undergrowth...

...and the next influence is that of these words... and the hundreds of thousands of other words many of which could appear in this writing... unexpectedly or otherwise... or perhaps not...

...still no creature appears (but for an insect that buzzed in my ear and disappeared)... has there ever been a novel or a myth of insects?... surely yes (Kafka's Metamorphosis... and the invented categories of botanists... the traditional names of plants and animals both real and mythical)... but these barely arouse my enthusiasm this evening....

...but what of 'Seven Sisters Ponds'... and of The Petrified Forest (a film with Bette Davis that reminded me of the dead look of these bare tree trunks growing on sand with little undergrowth)...

...in the increasing darkness i look about and notice little but the shadows... and the light reflected from the screen... glinting on the frames of my spectacles... illuminating the folds of a shirt... and the silhouette of fingers writing this... and the shapes of these letters...


...and now that i am back i see elements of cinema amongst these words:

shadows, light, screen, illuminating, frames, spectacles, silhouette... and letter-shapes

(not accidents i think... but visions of the moment)...







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