Perception and Landscape How do we perceive “landscape”? Perceive. We are not speaking of conceive. This follows. When we walk the land we take in ridge and valley, plant, stone, animal sign, cloud above, soil beneath. Do we take time to allow sensible perception to reveal the essence of the topography, chill of the north wind, sound of a body of crows, or are they crows? A mass of black movement against a pastel sky? An undulating wave of wings, rising and falling, sonorous cackle? Do we perceive intervals, melodies, harmonies as if a stupendous symphony conducted by circle of sun and cycling season tap a wand in rhythmic consistencies and inconsistencies, order concealed by chaos, chaos covered by symmetry? Do we step back, step forward, do we allow the body to tell its tale: how it twitches here, spasms there, how the eyes tear from cold wind, and the feet measure slope, mud, protuberance of stone, stump, and crackle of leaf? Is it autumn, spring? What mysteries are hidden beneath grass, feed the grass, crush the grass? Above, below? Left, right? Cold, warm? What textures, shapes, relationships, hue, chiaroscuro, line, circle, fluttering leaves, flagging trees? Does the wind move the trees, or do the trees give shape to the wind? Does the lip of a branch act as woodwind, like the reed in a mouthpiece of a clarinet? How is my body embedded in this vast grandiloquence of wind and water, earth and sun? And how is it, how, that I live off a waste product of trees breathing?
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 21:11:39 +0000
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