The Parks

Approach

Sketches made on 2nd October 2006 during Free-Writing exercises.

Free-Writing

I visited the Parks and chose six benches on which to write in periods of 2 and 3 minutes. The five benches were those as follows:

1. David Whitbread Angela Hoxey - The Parks Gave Us Great Joy
2. Bill and Sorrel Thomas - Many Happy Memories
3. Marcus Dutton - He Ran Here
4. To Maurice Sirkin who loved Oxford
5. Blank (a bench with no memorial plaque)
6. In memory of Margaret Hall and Sandy - Our walks were wonderful

Being as it is Free-Writing, that is writing without stopping to think, some of the passages might not entirely make sense.
[...] denotes a piece of unreadable text.

2 Minutes

1. Green. Sitting on a bench facing the river. The wind brushes the leaves of the trees and the cars of the city drone in the distance, combing the air, coming and going, a man walks in front of me scraping his feet. The sky is bright although rain is in it, sitting heavy waiting to break. Voices come from the right, they approach although I can't hear their conversation. I didn't want to. The branches of a shrub lean in front of me, like arms resting on the banister of a set of stairs, leaning upward. The voice...

2. Brighter here. The engine of something purrs in the distance behind me. The birds pepper the wind which blows as it always seems to do. The trees catch parts of the sky between their branches like the seams of lead in a stained glass window. Autumn is here, the summer trampled beneath my feet and all those who walk the Parks with me. I sit on a bench, the back of which, on its edge are covered with a lichen, spores like those grown in a petridish or found on leaning gravestones...

3. No-one runs here, except perhaps time. To my left the white trunks of two beech trees, small trees, not so old lean out of the ground and catch the sun behind me. To my left I see at once the dark red of a tree whose name I do not know. It seems almost ominous, scary, the opposite of these two young trees to my left. On the ground I see broken sticks littering the ground, chewed by days or taken from the trees by seasons. There is a green next to the deep red which is comforting, as if to nullify the red.

4. It's darker here, not dark, but darker and the sounds are stronger, they echo. Perhaps they are trapped like [...] in the large canopy of the trees beneath which I'm sitting. Footsteps walk past me, a man purposefully strides. Squirrels quarrel and birds sing - high pitched - not so much song as noise. The sun lights up the grass and despite the three large trees which stand to my left. My shadow is cast on the ground [...] before me, just my head in amongst the shadows of the foliage from the tree...

5. The tree - the pine - is partially obscured. The shadow of the tree before me is fixed onto the ground by the fall of leaves which slowly turn to mulch. A woman in a pink sweater (tank-top) walks past and voices not native to this country counter the lawn mower. A siren. A bench stands - or sits - before me and looks out over the cricket ground, the white pavillion stands empty. There are no scores on the scoreboard. A track goes off to my right and in the distance a train sounds its horn...

6. The 1930s loom behind me, their eyes as windows, their brick bodies. A row oh 'Hs' recedes to my right and the chainsaws dismantle the trees in the distance. A bird makes a curious rhythm, as if it's somehow trying to imitate a drum machine. It laughs and the mowers start up. A man purposefully walks the path. A rope fence seals off a square of grass, a patch of nothing into which no-one must go. The sound all around is building, that of building. A few specs of colour wander between the trees. I look...

3 Minutes

1. The words are grown with lichen. Behind a huge wave of foliage threatens to swamp me and the bench to find the river and the the sea where all memories must eventually go. The gate clatters and voices approach - voices without bodies, they have none, a bridge spans the river - reminds me somehow of Japan - the straight formal lines. The willow hangs down beside me to my right, its arms hanged with leaves like a child that wears a sheet and calls in the dark with the sound of a ghost. The sound of the city grows behind, crashes like girders being moved and replaced - things in flux - changing. School children play their games, call each other names, the wind rumbles through the trees of the manicured foliage/shrubs. A few dandelion...

2. Still the willow weeps, then the ragged pine and a chestnut tree. Before me the same sky caught in the same branches of the trees, blue despite the threat of rain. Are they truly dead? Are they talking, or is it someone else? Many happy memories - of what? Of this place, of someone? Or has someone many happy memories of them and this place? It must feature somewhere. Perhaps they left here? A green cagool and a wizened shrub already seems set for winter. What shade of green is that, like lime mixed with lemon - it has a taste, a tang, an after taste even though I've not put its leaves between my lips or set them on my tongue. The trees billow like plumes of green smoke extending from their branches, like...

3. There are four shadows here. I sit in one of them and listen to the wind whose long words and language are translated by the trees which in turn translated by the city behind. People walk before me - they speak a different language. A sapling grows and the red tree has become green. I'm sure it was red, that deep red copper colour. But no it seems I was mistaken. Is the sapling broken or has it not grown very tall. A girl stops and to talk on the phone. Is the other person there? She walks in that way that suggests there is no-one, that uncertain way, people - I - stop when I am waiting, it just seems normal. She stopped. A man runs. I am reminded of the man on whose bench I am sitting. He ran here. He has gone. He has gone completely, every sound, just the [...] as if it has erased him from the face of the earth. An aeroplane...

4. There is a stick, on the path just to my right, the sort of stick a dog would be sure to pick up and take home. I see a labrador, Sandy, that seems to be [...]. They walk off together, her and the owner, a woman, on their own. I haven't seen them before - but I'm remembering them. I must have done - somewhere if not in this park - I must have seen Margaret and Sandy before - I even know her name. Have I heard a friend call her? I wonder. The grass before me is most beautiful. Here come the voices, rounded vowels which tumble effortlessly through the air. There is a gate into the park over to the left through which they must have come. The city rumbles behind me, [...] like the sea, the sound of its whole, but heavier somehow...

5. I am sitting in bright sunshine. How can it be that I am only seen to me by dint of something which eight minutes ago was ninety-three million miles away. There one minute, here the next and then off back as it goes, carrying me with it out into space where I along with everyone, everything on this planet now and before exist in a huge web of light, a web in which we are all trapped. The girl who runs past me will run for all eternity, her light might fade, she might hardly be visible, but we know she'll be there. The wind cannot be seen yet by its moving the branches of trees we know its there. We can see it, hear it through other things. Are we like that, when we are not visible. Can we be seen by proxy in other things? Like those who once...

6. A game of football. Shouts and clapping. Laughter. Life. The tree beside me is beginning to turn, like a head of badly streaked hair, it's patched with rust and the rest is green. The seat is vibrating, as if purposefully it is being agitated. It is moving, like a washing machine. Am I the sole person in this earthquake? Suddenly it stops - then starts again, an aftershock. Perhaps the 1930s building behind me is responsible? Every bone in me feels it. I mustn't think about it. A train sounds its horn - where is it going to I wonder, where has it come from? Who is on it? Who will live the rest of this year who sits on that train? Why do I think that? Another train and the two mothers pushing their prams. New life, middle life and then the benches. A day runs in front...

Sonic Mapping

As with the Free-Writing, I sat on each of the six benches and wrote a sonic-map of all that I could hear, trying not to use words which simply described the sound I could hear, e.g. birds singing, cars etc. Again, I wrote without stopping for 2 minutes and therefore some passages will make little or no sense.

1. The sound of returning journeys, the blast, the casual caution. Home is not here. This is why we come. Rattling bones on the wooden bridge. Litter that is picked up and cleared away before we can ever see it. A tiny flaw in the glass - a mark that can quickly be wiped away. Muffled. Secrets. A place to tell them, to hear them and to make them. Slight conversation. Heavy breath, stops and tired limbs puff. A hollow rushing - a tunnel in the sky...

2. Maybe this sound is more ancient than we suppose. Perhaps it is just that we assume we know where it comes from, that tune in the distance, beyond the railings. Why does it not sound like that from within? It is the sound of things put back together, things that are mostly broken, suddenly melded into one harmonious sound. It is like the sea but constant, it is like a never diminishing storm, but one contained, shaped. It is always distance, never however obfuscated by the pounding, the scratches, the nothing. This place will always sound like distance, because that is where I want to be, away from everywhere else. This is a heaven...

3. Loose change falling - or rice poured into a bowl. Words are sharp but not heard till they are muffled and dissipate. A stone thrown into a pond, ripples appear and fade. Something breaks slowly, a breakdown like an engine, a victorian engine powered by pistons, it is the sound of a man's breakdown; then the calm. The sound of a name trampled. The sound of a solitary tree, still, standing. The sound of the closing day, everything travel quickly, with edges dark and defined. Even the [...]...

4. The sky is churned, moved above my head. As if butter is being made. The horns again, they call, this time more demanding, they seem to wait for an answer. Those that walk before me fall silent, breathe hard. Rhythms abound. A needle caught in the groove of an old record, the tune is ended, just the end, delaying the inevitable silence. The world is never silent, not at this hour. Speed is a sound, it is the ever-present churning in the distance, an agitation; oscillating horizon. Whispers behind me. Are they listening?

5. The sea; it's not near here yet I can hear it to my right. Crunched ground makes up the beat and the [...] of fingers on freshly cleaned glass flicker - if they were colours they'd be yellow, gold - white. A pendulum swings fast, cutting through cake. The mechanical sea ebbs and flows; they call from their island, those that sing and horns delay the stopping of a passenger for the moment, this is not where they are meant to start again. Wet sand. Pendulum and wet sand...

6. The other side is almost in vision, what I can hear to my left, a steady blend of pulses, rhythms which seem almost to be one, aside from the different [...]. Hooves. They pass, like rain, sudden sweeping over a glass roof. Engrossed, questions and firmly planted steps. The same. There is a haze, obfuscating. Still the sun sharpens its claws on the trees to my right. The sound of apparent nothingness as it moves in and around the stooping trunks of trees. The leaves which fell....