online: 8 september 2011 modified: 7, 8 september 2011 7 september 2011 new spectacles
sandy heath
...a familiar place now seen as slightly different... through new lenses...
...in these last moments of summer... the leaves are still green... but the air is colder... and one of the two ponds before me is covered with green algae...
...through a gap in the trees i see the windows and gables of a
large house that exists where the city becomes forest...
...many sounds from distant traffic but here all is still... and suddenly the wind blows as if from nowhere as i look at the nearby trees and the ponds and the sandy ground which appear more three-dimensional than they did without these new lenses...
...for several days i've been expecting the return of a world that is as real as it is imaginary... and in which we can let go of identity as words and images are not as expected but evidently comprise a new existence beyond the well-known and the predictable... cough cough...
...if these swaying branches and still ponds and surrounding city were discovered on another planet they would seem miraculous... as perhaps are the people whom i heard speaking close behind me... but when i turned round they were gone...
...and as soon as i wrote that there came the sound of a man speaking to a live duck that he was carrying.... he put it down as he talked to me... jokily... after which he picked the duck up again and walked off... (i felt at ease in his presence)...
...and now he returns with the duck walking behind him...
...when i tell him that i'm writing of 'the man with a duck'... he repeats 'the man with a duck' and then laughs... i expect we'll meet again he says... as he returns to where ever he came from...
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