the philosophy of gardens

Abandon hopes to re-read Havelock's Preface to Plato since it would have to be read in conjunction with Iris Murdoch's brilliant Fire and the Sun. Then, you think to yourself, that would only be worth it if you'd read The Republic but you haven't, and you shan't, so you won't. Twice removed. And what good would it serve? You are an economist, aren't you?

~~~

At the hospital, Raymond says to Peter: Well, at our age I think we're blessed. But I can't go one step further and say 'thank God'.

On the way down the silver lift doors reluctantly close, shaking and trembling as if in an epileptic fit; only the electronic voice is constant, calm.

~~~

At the money-exchangers: do you accept Pk. Rs?

"No"

Then a long pause, a shifty look...

"Where are you from by the way?" (he says in Urdu)

I explain, not really wanting to get into this. He says he thought I was Italian or something.

"Your good name?"..."You're Kashmiri! "

It turns out that he is as well and wants me to come back on Saturday for lunch. He opens the door and walks out of the small cage he's in, hugs me and tells me that the home country is finished.

Yes, all very good. But do you have any bloody pounds for this mickey-mouse currency, I ask myself.

~~~

Walk down into the gardens, just past the small desi coffee shop (sells the worst coffee in the whole of London!Trust me). A small oasis of calm in the storm of the day. A place for sheltering oneself, disappearing. A small ribbon on a grey sackcloth, a dream within reality. You amble down to a small lily pond, surrounded by ferns (it came after this painting was made). And there it is, cool and still, dark, reflective, silent...a dream within a dream, since time out of mind.

~~~

Civilisation: books or gardens (or a book about gardens) ?

Not gardening, which is a philosophy in its own right; not philosophy as an idea either, but as away of living. Gardens as a cultivation of what's most human from what nature gives. A book on gardens, therefore, is twice removed. But that doesn't make it any less valuable...far from it. The dream within the dream is sometimes what's most real. Like an ancient park that is flattened, remodelled, renamed, so that nothing remains, except as an image in a book on a shelf near the high windows of a library.

Turn it inside out. The small pond...reminds you of Solaris. This small corner of London, unseen, stumbled upon. Proud statues of forgotten people.

Gardens as a place for individuals to breathe. Not the horrors of a family picnic. Jesus! That's too American by far. No, a place to lose oneself.