online: 14 december 2005
modified: 29 november 2005

29 november 2005 a cold day on the heath


13:41 ...listening to gentle music of a classical guitar on Parliament Hill...

...a moment of exceptional clarity in that each leaf is discernable (many still not fallen...)

the city towers / the cranes / 2 women with prams / several people standing and looking, some towards the city, some towards the woods (yellow leaves and brown)/ the sound of a train ... and of a helicopter hovering in one spot over Highgate, for 10-15 minutes, close to the church steeple/ dry air to breathe (i feel it in my throat and lungs and even brain) / a cold breeze... need gloves today, and scarf and winter coat and my sea fisherman's jersey (from Jersey, or was it Guernsey?)

...and the sound of the guitar, each note is a music in itself ...the young man who was playing it says he is from Australia where the weather is almost never as cold as this...)



later: Aussie Jen seat, Summer '88 ...a huge many-branched beech tree has broken off half way up and the top half stands upside-down on the ground ... the air is perfectly still here in the woods - not a leaf is moving

i feel revived to be back here in the part of the heath i know well... no sense of fiction here, yet fictional it is (as is everything, in my perceptions - soon to re-appear in some new in writing, i trust - i've been thinking about non-realism)



Now i cross Spaniards Road close to the radio mast and look up at the invisibility of radio waves beaming out of it to the fire fighters of London...

...as i enter the northern heath i wonder how it will seem today - after walking the southern heath i know so well and like so much... it seems good, much wilder, more squirrels, and completely unattended undergrowth and moss and algae and fungai and such... but i can smell something, what is it?... a smell of cinnamon?... i see it is fine blue smoke emerging from the garden of a big house that is almost in the forest... and now i walk along unplanned footpaths amongst holly trees as well as taller trees, mostly oaks... this is more like a private wood, or one that is walked in only by people who live close by, as i do now... there are cyclists who come here to ride in steep places and away from cycle tracks... yes this is a city forest, what there is of it... (this wildest part is about a square kilometre)



Back in my flat, or residential office, or library, with kitchen, i eat part of a delicious rye loaf (made with date and walnut) and feta cheese, and a mixture of green tea with peppermint tea (lucky to be alive to all this!)


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