Mill Park

Posted on by Vincent
Mill Pond, Bracknell: you can see graffiti on the walls, and the Fujitsu building on the horizon
enlargement of top left corner

Restored from corrupted version published on 7th March 2007, when I was working on contract at Fujitsu

There have not been many pictures decorating this blog lately. I almost feel like renouncing photography as a means of trying to capture the world’s beauty, because it cannot reproduce the glowing mysterious surfaces that I see. I have recently renounced being a therapist * What a liberation! On one hand, it was a vehicle for compassion; but on the other, that very compassion could be deadly, both to me and the patient. Oh, it feels so good to abandon that pretension! Writing is the only medium whose honesty and artistry are capable of conveying my perceptions, which are a portion of the universe.

Photography and therapy have this unfortunate thing in common: that they choose something on which to focus and leave the rest. Increasingly I choose the choiceless: “in voiceless laughter and in choiceless gesture then”, as in a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti evoking San Francisco of 1950 in the image of a woman hanging out washing above North Beach. What is poetry but crystallized memory, yours & the poet’s, mingled?

millparkpond2
early March, leafless trees reflected in shallow water. You could imagine them as roots

I walked the circuit of a large pond in Babylon’s Mill Park. (Babylon was my blogging code name for Bracknell.) The park is almost perfect, but time will enhance its charm further, when the good intentions of the drawing-board and over-nurturing by the park-keepers are progressively weathered and vandalized. Then we will have a better harmony of nature, divine and human, paternalistic and teenage-rebellious. The pond has reeds and a boardwalk, from which jut fishing platforms. Various varieties of ducks, geese and aquatic plants are given sanctuary here and protected with netting and other works. Trees have been recently lopped and pollarded to within an inch of their lives, like an army recruit’s first haircut.

The pond fills up from culverts artfully positioned to cascade water down concrete steps, and as the sign proclaims, it’s a “balancing pond”, designed to fill up quickly after rain; releasing its excess waters gradually into the sewerage system. In the top picture, you can see MaxiRam Castle (! my code name for the Fujitsu building) at top left.

Something more than a blog is germinating: a real book has become a gleam in the eye of its begetter and I give it the provisional name Mill Park; for the ideas springing forth from just one walk round the pond could fill a chapter, and not just these 500 words.

What’s the secret of this joy of walking in landscapes, and observing the crusty lichen and graffiti on weathered walls? It’s a puzzle. I only know that my life is daily more vivid and choiceless and imbued with an odd kind of renunciation. I’m not letting go of the pleasures and pains of the flesh, for death will achieve that, without any striving on my part. I’m renouncing partiality for the sake of the whole. I am renouncing prejudice against myself and others, in order to embrace the whole.

satellite view clearly showing grid-like car park

*After I’d been magically cured of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which I now understand as psychological, I trained under the guidance of Dr David Mickel to become a therapist myself. I practised for 18 months then resigned.

 

Fujitsu offices where worked top left
millparkpond3a
Mill Pond

14 thoughts on “Mill Park”

  3. still, all the pics, both photo-shopped and non, are gorgeous.

    to me, writing has exactly the same issues. It is an editing problem. In pics, in paintings, in writing – how do you edit, and where focus the lens?

    and it drives me to distraction trying to capture all of the abundance that is there –

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  5. I especially like the second one, that whole tangle of branches against the sky.

    You seem to take walks in just the sort of locales I used to seek out for jogging, and for the same reasons.

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  6. “Something more than a blog is germinating: a real book has become a gleam in the eye of its begetter…”

    I am joyful to hear this. Your words are so beautiful and so meaningful and you put them all together with such artistry and emotion. I can't help but let out a cheer.

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  7. Well, Serenity, you and other friends I have met in the Blogosphere have played a big part in helping me establish a voice, a way of writing that feels comfortable.

    I am most indebted to all commenters who have been consistently encouraging.

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  8. Paul, I cannot decide whether I do things for reasons, as you suggest, or whether circumstances merely arise, and I am drawn without reasons to certain things. This attraction seems to be trustworthy, though.

    It's like the discussion over at your blog about beliefs and evidence. Do we believe the law of gravity? I don't know, but there's a law of attraction somewhere, by which we choose without knowing it, and in this unconscious choosing, our own brain pathways are changed (metaphorically and perhaps literally) and of course the world is changed too.

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  9. Hayden, I wonder why we try to capture the abundance at all? I see beautiful pictures in your blog, and am grateful for them, for you take pleasure in architecture, and deserve to play your own part in the further beautification of this world.

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  10. Paint Shop Pro is a great basic graphics program, I use version 4.01. I reduce the picture sizes to upload to the net though.

    I like to see pictures and videos of other places as a sort of tourism so I don't have to go there.

    I did my share of damage to this planet when I was young and stupid and believed that it could fix itself.

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  13. The enhanced photos are interesting; these could be scenes at a different place under a different sun.Nice words as well. Good luck with the writing.
    [I’d applied a “dither” in the pointillist style]

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