eclipse

eclipse… an eerie spook beautiful light, sepia patina… serpent swallows sun whole… tip toe across the earth with astonishment and amazement
post evening swim I scrambled up the slumps and perched on my own piece of cliff, peering down at both beach and bay… further along our lemming throng, Rapture awaits
………
the only full solar eclipse I’ve ever experienced was ooh, back in 2010, I arrived in Bagan, Myanmar, a broad plain with hundreds of partially ruined 1000 year old Buddhist Stupas, only to be told there would, coincidentally, be an eclipse the next day, the only one for the last thousand years!
for totality I was alone atop one of the temples, looking out across at all the others… red, brick dust light. grok good!
I met an aged eclipse chasing raver, from thames ditton!… he told me there was a secret society, and their king was the one who had spent the longest, most cumulative minutes, in the shadows deepest umbra… we all need that to be true
as for the 99 UK eclipse I’d just started a new programming job, so was marooned in London, whilst everybody else scarpered to Cornwall
I watched it atop a grassy knoll, somewhere like telly tubby land, near Hammersmith… life’s spiritual carousel

the crescent, a motif in all 3 of todays snaps is a curious, distinctive eclipse effect

beech

audio of post

beneath the Beech wood canopy… a languid Symphony of leaf filtered, modulated light
the leaves a vibrant hue of lime green, yet the quality of this submerged light, cusp, of absinthe, of verdigris…
a gentle patina of bird song… else the susurration of wind caressing leaves, balm and hush… here, friston forest, people are few
this myriad columned hall
the trees are tall, smooth grey trunks… elegant, somehow high elven, cheerful, yet self contained, stopping short of aloof, beyond… fey
soft leaves, gentle to the touch, still holding the brown husk of their nascent sheath sleeves
leaf edges are can opener jagged, crinkle cut
the trunks are shaggy, moss footed, talons almost gryphon or basilisk? something from a bestiary… rising to a lightly speckled elephant grey
have you ever tried to push a tree over? I have. Obdurate

Rafferty gallumphs along the path, a happy, black, curly haired dog, so dry the ground, giving him the repetitive hollow thud rhythm of horses hooves
past nettles, ragged robin, purple campion

out on the fringes of the wood, a view across open farmland, field maple, elder, the white froth confetti of hawthorn in bloom
a hawk rises up, not a kite, not a kestrel, but buzzard
tatty, out stretched be-feathered fingers
she is framed in the foreground… paragliders, neon orange, away by the white chalk horse, on the hill beyond
stasis, painterly, stasis

[from a letter to T]