Dreams in the Landscape

On autumnal earth, with leaves that have become a memory of summer, the trees reach for the cosmic light of creation, presently obscured by deep grey haze that softens the landscape around me. The shedding of leaves is like a bowing before the creative authority - a recognition that submission to the winter is a price to pay for the beauty and wonder of the life of the year past. A relaxation of energy, as if an exhalation of breath before the biting of the forthcoming winter.

Slowly, from the revealed branches, whispers of colour descend to the silent earth. The gentle chatter of leaves in the cool breeze is the only movement. Taller branches sway almost imperceptively.

Be still, like my companions.

A ladybird: the first of many that I'll see today enjoying the autumnal warmth and later sunshine. I hear a distant skylark, crows and nearby a wren, a flock of tits and pheasants.

Be still like my companions.

I sit and wait, how different to the intenseness of the digital world that shapes our lives. There, energy produces the light of display screens through which we interact. Here, light produces the embodied energy of the wood with whom I interact. In the ten or so minutes that I have sat here little has changed. A subtle change of light perhaps. A new fallen leaf on the ground before me perhaps. Yet the same time passing on a tv screen would have thrown a multitude of mesmerising images towards me. Here, the millions of leaves are my pixels.

Dreams in the landscapes - the words that came to me just as I approached this place to write - seem a little out of place. And yet here in this landscape I can have dreams. Dreams that are just as valid as those that technology presents to me. Perhaps it is to do with expectations - resolved and unresolved, surprises, discoveries - dreams can be formed in both worlds. You have to shift your perspectives and expectations. Dreams are about taking hold of the imagineable and creating reality. Perhaps the tress can do this as much as a computer screen can. I wonder if they know that?