The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing *

I really just feel like wishing everyone a peaceful Mothering Sunday. (I never knew mine but that's another story, a lifelong blog in itself.) It's just that the more you look at the state of the world today, if in fact you look at all, the more you can despair at the breakdown of communication, and the more you want just to concentrate on what you at least perceive to be the good in most things. Keep talking. Keep mixing. Keep it open. And don't let the bad bugs bite. That's about the sum of it. I spent much of the day with the artist and the children in the park. I had a camera with me. I filmed them all, I filmed them a great deal, plus dogs, lots of dogs, planes, tree bark, flowers, a broken mirror, a collapsed wall, a boarded-up building, more dogs, a skateboarder, a jogger, a magpie, a keep-fit team, different clusters of trees, domes, a wedding. Everywhere you looked it was as if nature, or just life, was trying to tell you something profound, and it was simply a question of whether you had the patience to understand what exactly it was it was trying to tell you or not. I filmed another plane. At some point we passed a sign for a race from the park tomorrow and it then crossed my mind that this may well be what the man at the airport of the other capital with the helicopters and mountains in the background had been talking about. The one who surprised me by the candid explanation of what he did. It would be funny to see him. A small part of me obviously is not really here at all. It is still there in the other capital. Another part is simply waiting for the gallerist to return from holiday and cast her judgement. But my Mothering Sunday wishes are here. Respect. Which may, the more I think about it, be presence enough.
*Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Think global, act local

Our four faces were blank and emotionless as we stared out at the clusters of people in the capital rushing on foot along the pavements by the side of the road, as we were driven like innocents from the railway station back to our flat after several days of bliss in the pure and mountainous countryside, which is home to the artist's parents. Staring out from the taxi, it seemed insane to us at first that people should really be living so on top of each other, but then we sort of looked at each other and remembered, hey, we lived here too. In fact our children started singing and I took various pictures of this. In each of the images, examined later, they did not look like that first sentence at all. I could have begun: 'Our four faces were expressive and emotional as we stared out ...' Isn't it funny how a description based on one moment can be so invalidated the next? Trust me, though, when I say they were not exactly unhappy to see their flat again, even though the rain wept on the leaves and the grey sky was not how we had left it. We stumbled in and abandoned our bags. The artist made no mention of her recently commenced piece on the wall, but I know she will already have sized it up. (I think her main priority has been to get the children resettled.) I have meanwhile been reading up on things. I have been examining what they call in war the struggle for people's minds. I have been looking at what is said about propaganda as a force for peace. I have been comparing how much terrorists 'spend' on video publicity, effectively, versus how much a major power spends. And I have been concluding in my small and powerless way that effectiveness is more important than performance. The big picture. I must always aspire towards the big picture. On the train back, staring out at the last of the mountains, I was thinking globally. For now, while the children try to get to sleep, I am acting locally. Think global, act local.

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods and day by day the dead leaves fall and melt *

It is the time of year when people get out from wherever they keep them their sweeping brushes, old and new, and scrape away the dry brown leaves, mostly old, as they fall in greater and greater numbers from their tall and creaking trees, often ending up scrunched like bank notes beneath our feet. I am minded to concentrate on one of the pieces done by the artist along this theme. A meditation. It has for example several thousand dry brown leaves in the foreground. These are also at the foot of and around a single modern pram, and in the pram is a child, the artist's son as it happens, aged perhaps three or four, in an autumn-coloured coat and brown trousers, with his hands gently clasped on his lap, and his eyes staring out, upwards slightly, from beneath a hand-knitted hat. Now, between him and the leaves is a slightly frosted stretch of grass, like a blue river, and lining the distance, beneath an almost moody sky, a faintly thunderous blue sky, are some fifty-odd trees, and the hint of a bandstand with its allusion to music, or ghosts of bands past. Hanging from the side of the pram is the artist's handbag, a mad affair which looks part-tapestry, part-lingerie, and part-Victoriana. On the back of the pram is a navy-blue plastic bag. Who knows what this contains but it could be milk or food or tissues or all three. The shadow of the pram points leftwards - the sun is bright and the light as crisp as the leaves - and haunts further some of the fallen leaves. The dominant feature though is one of contemplation. The child seems to represent life and the leaves seem to represent death. It is an iconic image. It is an image that will be subliminally familiar to many people, especially mothers. It does not look down at us, but it seems to know more than us. If you look closely enough, the eyes of the child may even be peering at the sky, or towards the heavens. What is interesting, too, is the presence of green leaves on the trees in the background, some of them not evergreens, and this pricks our interest further about the tree, which we do not see, that has shed so many crisp brown leaves in the foreground. It is life and death done with love.
* William Allingham (1821-1889)