the field

Life is not a walk across an open field.
---Russian proverb.

The field that you are standing before appears to have the same proportions as your own life.
---John Berger.

A strange co-incidence. I wrote some words in my 'Leonardo' notebook, and then opened Roxana's blog to see that she had written something on the same topic (roughly) as well! Bizarre! The great difference being, of course, that I just wrote whatever nonsense came to my mind whilst I was silently walking across the lawn early this morning, as if the words were part of an unfinished dream.

Crow, shining darkly. Black glistens as much as white, if you let it. The earth had heated up so that by 7 o'clock in the morning the heat and light was everywhere; it surrounded you, piled up like stacks of unread books, bounced off chipped floor tiles, streamed past opaque windows, gleamed off polished cars like a film, and all the time your mind slowed down, narrowed to a single thought. The warmth had opened up everything, unexpectedly, like the sudden expansive swerve of a road. Opened up and exposed to a harshness-a kind of penitence-that revealed each thing for what it was, as if it existed in that moment only, without weight or shadow. He thought he'd fall; he couldn't take much more of himself.

If you could walk through a field without any thoughts time would be abolished; if you could walk through a field noticing every disturbance, every event and season, if you could register every rare green, startled knotted brown, know its proportions, even then you would know nothing of your life, or of hers.