online: 18 june 2011 modified: 11, 18 june 2011 31 may 2011 parts of nature
city forest
...blue sky with small wispy clouds... and sound of an aircraft climbing into the stratosphere... but hidden by trees... the sun is high above the horizon... i've been gazing at some unusually long pointed leaves*... in the evening light...
* the largest leaves are more than 120 mm long... perhaps of a hornbeam...
...the branch i'm looking at grows outward and upward to reach light that is not obstructed by higher branches... interesting that the lower branches of a tree are the largest and the higher branches are the least... reversing the order of social trees or hierarchies in which the lowest are the least (as with roots)...
...i suppose the forms of trees are not divisive but connective... thank goodness...
...the sun moved a little lower and a little northward while i wrote those words... and its light has become more golden and less white... an evening breeze begins... it's strong enough to move branches as well as leaves.... i can hear the wheels of an electric train thudding at irregularities of the track... and i also hear the distant siren of an emergency vehicle, a nearby crow and other birds... and i watch a greenfly standing on my sleeve, its tail or feeler aloft... it moves a few millimetres and raises its feeler again in the sunlight...
...all these things (and writer and readers of this text) are parts of nature... as is society says Gary Snyder... whose writings* and video interviews** took most of my attention yesterday... they are still recurring in my thoughts... including the question:
but perhaps nature (as an absract idea) is not a thing but a social construct?... i doubt if animals perceive or think it as we do...
.
...the air is getting colder as the sun gets redder... or perhaps more orange... and it illuminates dozens of insects flying to the west of where i am sitting... the greenfly has not moved and has ceased to raise its feeler... i blow it away... and then walk back the way i came...
*Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold, New Directions Books, New York 1969.
** interview with Gary Snyder (by Lew Sitzer), NCTV11 (there is a long introduction before the interview begins)
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