online: 3 march 2005
modified: 4 march 2005

3 march 2005 heat, and its absence


17:02 Winter sunshine and still air beneath blue sky with fluffy cream-coloured clouds moving westward in a cold wind from Russia or Norway... Few people about and the trees are still bare though i saw a new sapling in bud. Thin spikey leaves. The sun is about to be hidden by a hill to the northwest as the earth rotates eastward... While it lasts the clear sunlight is illuminating the westward sides of hundreds or thousands of trees so that this glade resembles the interior of a cathedral - but as soon as i think of that similarity i realise that woodland came first and may well have provoked the cathedral makers to imitate the interiors of forests.

Now the sun is half concealed and the sunlight is diminishing every minute... the grey light of evening and a sudden cooling of the air make me think briefly of moving - but as yet the inertia of my still warm body (beneath several layers of clothes) keeps me seated and writing...

A woman walks past in a leaning-forward posture and i remember how, having taken lessons in the postural technique of F M Alexander, i notice everyone's posture and movements and how few seem to be easy and spontaneously upright! ... And now a man runs by with just that ease and poise that Alexander teaching can induce. Very few people seem to have it spontneously, about one in 10 or 20.

The sun's now out of sight and the air is cooling. The topmost branches of trees are moving in the wind and i listen to the sounds of distant aeroplanes and birds and i hear a crow caw as it flaps its way to a treetop... A half-conscious impulse to move causes me to stop writing and to walk a little further.

18:00
There was no-one at Parliament Hill and the wind was cold. I watched a solitary jumbojet climing eastward in a patch of blue sky across London. The city looks grey and the ground is much trodden and muddy... i look up as the jumbo passes overhead and i see it emerging from one cloud and entering another.

...now i'm writing in the warm train sitting opposite to a young man who is writing rapidly in a notebook. He's filled half a page while i wrote these pargraphs... He is writing as if driven but he pauses for a moment before continuing to write...

...and now he reads a book. I get out to an icy cold station, especially on the footbridge. A shopkeeper asks me how i keep warm in this weather... as i re-enter my flat i realise how warm it is compared to the partly-heated houses of my childhood. In those days we wore thick clothes even indoors. I took off my thick sweater, outer socks and thermal pants to write this paragraph.





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