Replying to LO29941 --
Dear LO,
> Hark! Tis Spring.
>
> [Host's Note: Spring? Andrew, I like the sentiment, but aren't you jumping
> the gun? I think Spring formally begins on March 21st?? ..Rick]
I took my lead from the flowers both in and around our garden rather than
the 'formality' of dates, Rick. ;-) I though recall with affection, the
calendar day that you visited us in North Moreton, the middle of March, on
your way home from London. It was a 'raw' grey day outside;-).
For the last ten days here the weather has been exceptionally sunny and
mild. Daffodils are in 'full bud' and some in the clumps are actually
out. Spring has sprung early, listening to the flowers. Yesterday was the
second time in a week that I saw a bee, up by the glasshouse drinking ;-)
at a small clump of flowers, called Pulmonaria [Lungwort, Boraginaceae]
(Pulmonaria officinalis) Normal to open in March ;-)
Anybody who ever read Varela et al, on the co-creative, mutual bringing
forth or symbiosis down the ages, between the flowers and the bees might
wonder what is the role of the humble bee in the 'local earliness' of the
warm and moist global breath ;-) Surely something as gentle as a bee could
not bring forth a summer;-)...looking as she does, with such soft eyes ;-)
What will America do I wonder, if Andrew ever steps ashore?
Bzzzzzzz. "M" is upon yesterday's horizon...
"I went for a walk in the country today. Went over to Steventon for a pub
lunch with friends I hadn't seen in months, and then came back via Appleton,
pulled up behind the church (which was closed to the public, but did at least
have mushrooms carved on the sign) and set off across the fields.When I go
for walks etc, I like to bring something back with me - a stone, piece of
wood, a poem etc, or else leave something behind... carve a thought, arrange
a stone circle, bury something... or better still, both. Keeps the creative
juices going, and maintains a fair exchange between me and the world in which
I find myself. Today I managed both.... I came away with a deep and
meaningful thought, and in return, <small snip ;-)> I shall now elaborate
on one half of the deal (this should be like one of those chose your own
adventure books..."For the deep and meaningful thought, go to page 87,
---".)I walked around the edge of a huge field of freshly sown grass, across
the middle of which was a long line of trees doing their impressionist
impression. Against the green grass and the yellow-grey sky, they stood out,
black and brown. But when I got round the other side, the grass was green,
the sky was yellow-grey and the trees.... were blue! Unequivocally so,
flickering throughout every shade, but definitely, undeniably blue. If I had
gone up close, I would have seen that the tone and texture of the trees was
exactly the same on both sides, no doubt, it was only the light that was
different. We all know that colour works according to the light that is
reflected, but it got me to thinking. Perhaps its as if there is no colour,
really, just a million ways of the same light playing off things. If the
colour of the trees can change so totally without any actual change in the
trees themselves, then the difference, the colour is insubstantial, is as
nothing. And all the differences, all the divisions, all the ways that we
see a tree become nothing. A tree is just that, a tree, in essence, and all
the rest is a matter (the matter) of the infinite play of the one light on it
and through it. And if it is so for trees, why not people? Perhaps there is
no difference, no division, just people.... each of which offers another of
the infinite number of glimpses of the one light that shines on and through
them. Bloody airy hippy. Still, not a bad exchange for a pint of
Guiness....m"
So, a bee drunk on early nectar and 'M', slightly tipsy on Guiness...no
wonder spring is sprunging all around ;-)
- And if we think of it, what does civilisation itself rest on - and what
object has it, with its religions and arts and schools, etc. but rich,
luxuriant, varied personalism? To that all bends; and it is because toward
such result democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale, breaks up the
limitless fallows of human kind, and plants the seed, and gives fair play,
that its claims now precede the rest. The literature, songs, aesthetics,
etc., of a country are of importance principally because they furnish the
materials and suggestions of personality for the men and women of that
country, and enforce them in a thousand effective ways;-) .
Walt Whitman. Democratic Vistas
"The other more amazing realization here, was that at the center of the
constellation I'd been drawing all the blossoms from, a blade of brown
grass was woven and winding all in and out of the bases of the flower
stems!! (See bottom of sketch 2). How in the world could it have come to
be there!?!? I wished I could have gone back in time to know what had
transpired, to allow the grass to come to be wrapped and wound so
intricately through those stems. Beautiful, and mystifying. Fiber art."
Copyright 2000 - Holistic Science MSc 1999/2000, module: Introduction to
Holistic Science, Schumacher College, Experiential Process of Plant
Observation: Cow Parsley by Heather Thomas
"..and when the deed was done/I heard among the solitary hills/Low
breathings coming after me, and sounds/of indistinguishable motion,
steps/Almost as silent as the turf they trod." William Wordsworth, The
Prelude
Before all this happened Rick, I watched as an invisible force played around
the flower beds, moving each stem, individually - as if....
...to be continued;-)
Love,
Andrew Campbell
Angel Meadow
Oxford
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