Part 1

This piece of pottery can fit in the palm of my hand. The shard measures just over three inches in length. The narrower side of the shard (the bottom) is around two and a half inches in width and the top (the rim) about three inches. It is delicate, quite thin – about four millimetres thick. It weighs very little and is rough to the touch. As I rub my thumb and forefinger over its surface I can feel the indentations, ridges on its surface. Looking at it, the surface on the outside appears smooth. Of course here I will have to distinguish between the outside and the inside of the shard. Looking at the shard sideways on, I can see how the shard bows to one side. This curve appears quite uneven but from the top of the shard, it appears quite uniform. Looking from the top I can see two ridges running down the surface (the outside) of the shard just below the rim. These ridges are either side of a groove and find their opposites on the inside. Where there are ridges on the outside so there are grooves on the inside and vice-versa. As I feel the surface of the pottery fragment, bits fall onto the page like small grains of sand. I can detect more ridges, though more shallow than those which run across just below the rim on the outside. Furthermore these ridges are on the inside of the shard. Closing my eyes I can feel about eight or nine.

The shard becomes thicker near the bottom – almost twice as thick as at the top. In the side of the shard I can see small holes – about a dozen – little more than pinpricks. The material is light grey in colour and moving my finger down the edge I can detect a shallow groove running from the bottom of the shard to approximately halfway up. The colour of the shard as a whole at first glance is very dark grey, almost like charcoal, perhaps a little lighter. On the outside there are patches where the shard is darker and indeed lighter than other parts. There are also very small patches of colour in the shard, tiny patches which are sandy in colour and even smaller patches which appear white. Although mainly grey, there is a hint of brown throughout the fragment, particularly on the inside of the shard where there is a greater build up of material particularly around the ridge near the top. The colour and patination on the inside of the shard is much less uniform than on the outside. Just as I can see more ridges and grooves in the surface, so I can see more variations in colour. In the centre there is a large patch of light grey within which I can see speckles of white and brown. I can see lines running through the middle of the patch. Towards the top of the shard on the inside right as I look at it, I can see distinct brown markings and around this are what look like crumbs of dirt – dark grey which if gently rubbed fall from the shard. There is some writing on the inside too, just beneath the top of the rim written in black – OX TMS 02 II with a 35 in a circle beneath.

On my fingers I can see patches of grey from the surface of the shard. I can see the dust on the piece of white kitchen towel on which the shard is resting on the table. I can see particles on the surface of the table too and my finger tips can feel the edges of the shard even though I am no longer touching it. If I hold the shard in my hands and without looking move it around I can feel both its smoothness and its edges which though not sharp are nonetheless rough. This object, without looking, becomes an object in its own right rather than a part of something else, but the rough edges tell you there was once more to this piece. Feeling the smooth side with its ridges and grooves one can feel suddenly the sharper rougher edge, which is quite at odds with the rest.

Looking at the shard from the inside, it’s difficult to see this object as being anything other than a piece of something. Looking at it I can see of course see (even if I hadn’t known already) that this piece of pottery is a broken piece of something bigger. However what that bigger something might have been is difficult to discern. It’s only by observing the piece from certain angles that the bigger picture’s revealed. The curve of the shard, looking at it from the top down, shows the bulge on the right hand side. One can also see a tapering of the two longer sides towards what is the bottom of the piece and even though these sides are jagged and obviously broken, they carry nonetheless the dynamics of the shard. One assumes that whatever pot this piece was a part of it narrowed towards the base. Looking at the curve again from the top and holding the shard in my right hand, I can see roughly how the curve would become a circle using my left hand as a guide. In order however to judge its height, I need to know the size of the base. If I hold the shard in my left hand and look at the shard from the bottom I can see the curve and with my right hand get a sense of its diameter. I then look at the sides of the shard and draw the lines down towards the base, thereby gaining a sense of the volume of the pot from which this fragment remains.

[drawing the line up and down mirrors the physical gesture of the potter’s hands]

However I must leave the reconstruction to one side for a moment because to understand this shard fully I need to take it back in time. I need to see it first as part of the collection in the museum stores, stowed away in a box with hundreds and thousands of other pieces. I need to see it being assessed and given its reference number (visible beneath its rim). I need to take it back to the day it was pulled from out the ground in 1985 in the area of the Trill Mill Stream in St. Aldates where it had lain in the dark for perhaps as long as 500 years. Half a millennium in which time its original colour was changed by it being in the waterlogged ground. Was it broken in the ground, or thrown away because it was broken already? Either way this fragment has been an object in its own right for several hundred years.

[the rings are testament to this other complete object]

How it ended up in the ground I cannot say, but I can speculate that it was broken before it went in. There is evidence of burning on the surface of the shard (although one must be careful as the discolouration could be confused with burning). Perhaps this points to its main use – as a utilitarian piece of pottery used for heating food or drink? Whatever the answer, I can perhaps surmise that the fragment has had contact with fire. Perhaps that’s why it broke?

Certainly it was broken and it broke at a specific moment in time. The edges of the shard therefore reflect and illustrate this very specific moment in time. There is a sound associated with those edges; a sound I can feel when running a finger over the surface.

There is then within this single shard, evidence of two distinct time spans: 1) the staining caused by it being buried in the ground for several hundred years and 2) the moment it broke – a second in time several hundred years ago. There is also therefore a sonic quality to the shard in relation to these two periods of time 1) the long sound of silence and 2) the short sound of a break (one can also imagine that this breakage came with other sounds – perhaps that of the person responsible for breaking it?).

[what other sounds were there at this moment in the city?]

Before the breakage, this fragment was part of a bigger object which we can speculate was used over a given period of time – how long exactly we can’t be sure, but we can imagine it being used in a mediaeval house – perhaps as part of its everyday activity. But what did it hold? What was it used for? Whatever the answer to these questions we can say that it held something and was used by people in the mediaeval period.

I have described the ridges and the grooves on the inside of the shard which tell us that this piece of pottery was made on a wheel. It was thrown. The rings are evidence not only of the movement of the wheel but of the person who made the pot. The wheel would have been turned by hand by the potter and then using his hands he could have drawn the clay up to make the pot. Every groove shows the movement and the physical presence of the potter.

[I’m reminded of a record player, with the needle drawn over the surface of the record, replaying a sound that has already happened. In a sense this shard reveals to us something that has already happened – not through the fact of the pot (as a whole) but rather the physical gestures of the potter. Drawing my fingers over the ridges and the grooves and keeping my eyes closed, listening to the everyday things going on around me, I can begin to find a window into the mediaeval world – not by sight, but by tough].

Having described the two sounds associated with this fragment (silence and the break) as well as the two time-spans (the moment in time that it broke and the few hundred years it was buried beneath the ground) I can also add to that this sense of movement; the wheel being turned, the wheel turning, the clay being pulled up into shape and the physical presence and skill of the potter. Through touching the object we can make a physical connection with an anonymous individual who lived between the 13th and 15th centuries. We can make a physical connection with a time. Just what was happening when those rings were made? It’s almost as if what was happening at the time has been recorded in these grooves – including the thoughts of the potter himself.

With this piece of pottery therefore we can go back even further, for the shard is evidence of the pot and the pot is evidence of the skill of the potter – skill which was no doubt learned over a long period of time, passed down from other potters. It is evidence of an exchange between people in the mediaeval period. It is evidence of dialogue.

In terms of the fragment’s materiality we can also think about what it is made from. I think of the piece of clay sitting on the potters wheel, without shape, inert. Only through the intervention of the potter, through his eyes and his hands and through the skills he has learned over time could this piece of clay have become shaped into the pot of which this shard was a part. The question arises; what about the other parts of the pot? What happened to them? Perhaps they are hidden away somewhere in other boxes in the museum stores, or still buried somewhere in the ground. Perhaps like so much of the world from which this fragment originates they have been lost altogether?

It’s strange to think that when this fragment was part of a much bigger pot and indeed when it was in the ground, it was more a part of the world than I was ever likely to be. Now as I look at the fragment, I could say that the fragment is now more a part of the world than the person who made it, although of course it might be that there are people alive today who wouldn’t be here had it not been for this anonymous potter.

Any work made and inspired by this shard should not necessarily be considered as separate from the pot itself but rather as a continuation of the pot, and just as the fragment is a direct consequence of the thought, skill and physical gestures of a potter living some 5, 6 or 700 years ago, so this work might be considered the same. This shard has been living the same moment ever since it was made and so it continues in this work. The mind of the potter, my mind and that of all who see the work I make will somehow be connected.

I want to draw out from what I’ve written about the shard, points which I think will lead to further research as regards the production of works about the shard. The following is a list of those key points.

–

This piece of pottery can fit in the palm of my hand.

–

As I rub my thumb and forefinger over its surface I can feel the indentations, ridges on its surface.

–

This object, without looking, becomes an object in its own right rather than a part of something else, but the rough edges tell you there was once more to this piece.

–

Looking at the curve again from the top and holding the shard in my right hand, I can see roughly how the curve would become a circle using my left hand as a guide. In order however to judge its height, I need to know the size of the base. If I hold the shard in my left hand and look at the shard from the bottom I can see the curve and with my right hand get a sense of its diameter. I then look at the sides of the shard and draw the lines down towards the base, thereby gaining a sense of the volume of the pot from which this fragment remains.

[drawing the line up and down mirrors the physical gesture of the potter’s hands]

–

Either way this fragment has been an object in its own right for several hundred years.

[the rings are testament to this other complete object]

–

Certainly it was broken and it broke at a specific moment in time. The edges of the shard therefore reflect and illustrate this very specific moment in time. There is a sound associated with those edges; a sound I can feel when running a finger over the surface.

–

There is then within this single shard, evidence of two distinct time spans: 1) the staining caused by it being buried in the ground for several hundred years and 2) the moment it broke – a second in time several hundred years ago. There is also therefore a sonic quality to the shard in relation to these two periods of time 1) the long sound of silence and 2) the short sound of a break (one can also imagine that this breakage came with other sounds – perhaps that of the person responsible for breaking it?).

[what other sounds were there at this moment in the city?]

–

The rings are evidence not only of the movement of the wheel but of the person who made the pot. The wheel would have been turned by hand by the potter and then using his hands he could have drawn the clay up to make the pot. Every groove shows the movement and the physical presence of the potter.

[I’m reminded of a record player, with the needle drawn over the surface of the record, replaying a sound that has already happened. In a sense this shard reveals to us something that has already happened – not through the fact of the pot (as a whole) but rather the physical gestures of the potter. Drawing my fingers over the ridges and the grooves and keeping my eyes closed, listening to the everyday things going on around me, I can begin to find a window into the mediaeval world – not by sight, but by tough].

–

Through touching the object we can make a physical connection with an anonymous individual who lived between the 13th and 15th centuries. We can make a physical connection with a time. Just what was happening when those rings were made? It’s almost as if what was happening at the time has been recorded in these grooves – including the thoughts of the potter himself.

–

It is evidence of an exchange between people in the mediaeval period. It is evidence of dialogue.

–

Only through the intervention of the potter, through his eyes and his hands and through the skills he has learned over time could this piece of clay have become shaped into the pot of which this shard was a part.

–

Any work made and inspired by this shard should not necessarily be considered as separate from the pot itself but rather as a continuation of the pot, and just as the fragment is a direct consequence of the thought, skill and physical gestures of a potter living some 5, 6 or 700 years ago, so this work might be considered the same. This shard has been living the same moment ever since it was made and so it continues in this work. The mind of the potter, my mind and that of all who see the work I make will somehow be connected.

Part 1

Puddles, water, reflections.
Old road surface, scattered cobbles and stones.
Tyre tracks, undulating surface.
Birdsong, the sound of distant cars.
Shadows.
Hedgerows on either side, mainly brambles.
Old trees, young trees lining the way.
Fallen trees laying by the wayside – the rings on the exposed, cut branches.
The sky, the clouds, the position of the sun.
My shadow stretched across the road’s surface.
The squelching of people’s footsteps.
The rippling of the surface of a puddle in a pothole.
The almost indistinct wind.
Last year’s leaves scattered at the edges of the road.
A blackbird flies low over the ground.
Conversations grow as a couple approach.
Fly-tipping off the road behind one of the hedges.
Old clothes, pots of used paint, broken glass, bottles, cushions, an old teddy bear lying face down on the ground, pipes and bits of wood.
More cuddly toys face down, pale and faded. Saturated and soggy.
Huge tracks gouged out of the surface. Within them the water gathers. Reflections move with the wind blowing down the road.
The rounded stones of the surface. Smooth yet irregularly placed. A plane flies above cutting through the sky.
Molehills. A ditch running beside the road on its left hand side (as I walk west).
Large stones separate the ditch from the edges of the road.
The ground on the left hand side is at a different level to the road itself which I can see is raised up.
A siren in the distance over towards the city.
The sound of the stones – silent today.

At this point I began to move into the second and later phases. I had thought for the purposes of clarity to keep things in strict stage order (i.e. 1, 2, 3 and 4) but I think it’s important to record my results as they came. I shall write them as they were written (in italics).

There is a point walking away from the city where the road turns a corner and heads off to the left. Here the shadows are gathered together. The road also narrows or rather the countryside around it encroaches. The shadows and the trees. Towards the city the countryside backs away.

The passage of time in the tracks left by the wheels.

I started again to look at the road itself, as it was ‘presented to me’. I measured its width and found that it was approximately four paces wide and then started looking more closely at the stones which made up the road’s surface. There were I noticed some stones which were larger and flatter than the others. I also noticed that the road itself seemed to be on a slight angle, with the right side slightly higher than the left. I noticed, as I observed the surface, the sun catching the puddles and the moist mud around them. Yellow, ochre puddles.

Lichen on the boulders on the left hand side of the road, like fat unmade gravestones.

It was as I walked back up the road towards the city that I began to sense something about the road that wasn’t to do with its material or physical quality (although it’s precisely its physical and material quality which causes this sensation).

Walking back towards the city there is the sense of going somewhere for the first time even though I’ve walked this path many times before.

Silver, green lichen.
Blue stone.
The grass at the edges of the road [is] in patches encroaching on the roads itself.
In one section smaller stones have been used.
Many of the stones are either missing or covered with mud on which the grass then grows.

There was here a sense of the passing of time, the way of nature, as the mud and then the grass reclaimed the road. In the mud I saw the prints of horseshoes which made me think of its early years when horses and carriages, as well a pedestrians, would have used it. I thought back to the tracks left by wheels and found myself considering the road in terms of the changes in transport over the past few centuries.

Further towards the city, the stones disappeared all the more. They were covered in greater thicknesses of mud and consequently more grass.

As I have written, what is important to me in this kind of observation is noting everything that is going on around me, so as to give a more holistic view of the road, to not see the road as something which is separate from the landscape but a part of it (just as I was at that point not separate from the road but also a part of it). I became aware, through a gap in the hedgerow, of the blueness of the distance which I could see over the fields rolled out below.

Movements in the hedgerows (right).
The stones reappear like a spine running up the centre of the road.

It was on turning round and walking back up the road away from the city that I noticed very strongly a difference in the feel of the road. Almost straight away, I got the impression of leaving, of heading towards something familiar (even though for me the feeling should be reversed).

Walking away one can see the blue distant hills. To the left just the trees, parked cars and the radio mast.
A house through a gap in the hedgerow. Dark windows.

Walking away [East, away from Oxford] is almost like being in the past and walking towards the future, whereas vice-versa [West, towards Oxford] it’s like being in the present and walking into the past.

I appreciate that this may sound a strange thing to write, but with this sort of observation it’s very important to make a note of everything you see and indeed feel. This is all part of intuition, ‘seeing into’ the phenomenon being observed. As I said, I rather mix the stages together and in a sense some of the things I am recording here belong to the fourth stage (being one with the object [Intuition]).

The future is missing when walking towards the city. Curiously walking away from the city, one has the impression of leaving something behind, which I am doing by leaving behind something which is familiar.

The sense of leaving and going to a place which was evidently so much a part of this road is not something one finds so much on roads today. Roads today carry people through and around places, they are somewhat unattached to anywhere, whereas this stretch of old road is very much linked to places. It is very much a road which takes you away from somewhere and to somewhere else.

The undulating surface of the road… the divots and bumps… the stones, make it a slow road. It moves at the speed of thought and as such everything around it, the hills in the distance become a part. Again the difference between roads today (which one can hear constantly) and roads then, becomes very apparent. Because the hills, trees and surrounding countryside move at the same speed as you, you feel more attached to the world.

It’s a road which generates thoughts and carries thoughts because it is slow.

Movement of the road. Even though it feels like a road which definitely connects two places or rather things, it seems to have a sense of going on and on and never really ending. It’s as if walking on this road you will never get there. It connects you to two places you can never reach; the past before you were born and the future in which you won’t exist. The road is always the present, but a present made of all the past (moments upon moments) which can be found as you walk it.
Through this first set of observations I began to understand the road not just as a thing in its own right, but as something which is very much a part of the landscape. I found that in participating in the road, rather than simply just observing it, I began to participate in the road’s wider landscape, both physical and temporal. It’s a road in time as well as in space.

Part 2

The second stage of my observation of this road is to ‘take the road’ into my imagination and to perceive the time-life of the phenomenon; Exact Sensorial Fantasy as Goethe called it. To do this, I closed my eyes and recorded myself talking whilst drawing my thoughts, describing all the while what I could see in my mind’s eye.

Below is a transcript of my recordings (NB. The digital recorder malfunctioned and so the following is taken from three recordings). I have also scanned some of the drawings made whilst describing that below.

Walking along that road, looking at everything around it, the distant horizon, the trees, one feels a connection not only with the landscape but with everyone who’s walked or ridden along that path.

Along this road people are still carried. The thoughts they had as they walked or rode along arranged upon the ground in the stones just as the magnets arrange the tiny particles on tape. And even when the grass has completely covered it over, when people don’t walk hear anymore, when the voices are covered over as their bodies are and have been for hundreds of years there will still be the marks in the ground. The road is then a kind of palimpsest. When we walk we are writing ourselves on the ground, changing the ground just a little, imperceptibly, but a little, adding to all those changes which have been made before. Voices which are made more distant but which are never fully erased. Like a never ending book that has no start the lines just go on and on. Words are written over the top of each other, it’s not even a book, just a single line When the grass is grown over the road which it’s sure to do when the trees are bigger and they themselves have walked to cover the ground so that the road is just part of the forest, like a trench. What else will be gone? Will all the sounds in the distance be covered or will they be replaced by other sounds, things we can’t imagine now, just as those who walked the road a hundred, two hundred years ago could not imagine the sounds of an aeroplane or the distant drones of the traffic thundering down the bypass. Will the ground too have begun to cover those roads, to cover the buildings? I look at the grass, there’s not much road to cover, it wouldn’t take much to swallow it completely and yet one gets the sense that when that road has gone everything will have gone with it.

Standing back on the old road from Oxford to London running over the top of Shotover, this long muddy track which cuts through the grass into the distance. On one side is the hedgerow on other side the forest, much smaller than it used to be. Beyond the hedgerow are the fields and the distance. Looking at the road one can see the stones, all different types smoothed over with age, covered with mud and in the patches in between grass can be seen to grow as if slowly it’s trying to reclaim this road. In amongst the stones are also puddles in which you can see the sky the trees and if you look yourself, you can see yourself and inevitably the weather will change the days will become warmer, drier the puddles will dry up and take their images with them down into the ground up into the air. One imagines this place before this road was ever built. It makes one wonder what it takes for a road to be built long before the stones are put there when people first started walking that way when the first few footsteps marked a rough track which people followed through the landscape. Footstep after footstep. In many ways the landscape determines the route we take and therefore it’s almost as if the landscape is using us to draw upon itself. But what is it that makes this road a road? It’s not simply a collection of footsteps going in the same direction or back the other way. Every footstep is made, at first at least, consciously in this place. There is a conscious act behind the steps planted in the ground. Someone a long time ago hundreds of years ago had reason to walk there to get from somewhere to somewhere else, were they leaving or going, or coming? The road itself therefore becomes a kind of palimpsest which footstep after footstep is written upon the ground like words across a page and though footsteps which come afterwards gradually remove all traces of the others they can never fully remove the traces. Every footstep we plant changes the landscape just a little but a little nonetheless. Many of the trees are not as old as this road and yet this road is much younger than everything around it. What were those first footsteps thinking as they were planted in the soil. What languages did they speak. What images did they hold in their minds? What did the world look like around them? The forest was much bigger the sounds in the distance would not have been there. It would be the sounds of the wood and the forest, the birds and the human body which planted the footsteps in the first place. When I first went to the road I had the impression that although it led from somewhere and went somewhere else that nonetheless one could never reach the end but that somehow it would always keep turning; moving as if it was a conveyor belt of some kind.

Thinking about it now one can take that analogy and think of it instead as piece of tape which runs and runs and runs and which every step upon it is like the recording head changing the ground, changing the particles on the tape just a little. And just as we record when we walk so we also play, play the ground which passes beneath our feet. We can hear very distantly the thoughts which came before us. I could hear the sound of people’s footsteps planted in the mud, the same sound that’s been made on there for hundreds of years. And looking ahead one can imagine the grass that is already beginning to reclaim the road growing over the road entirely covering it again so that it’s hardly visible but should it do that, what would it mean? What else would have had to have gone for that to happen for no-one to walk there again? What else would have to be covered by the ground? What other roads, buildings, the town even. Perhaps then the woods would return to what they were? And though there’s not much left for the grass to cover it wouldn’t it seem take much for the grass to cover the road completely and yet one imagines what that would signify if it ever occurred. One would look at the radio receiver behind, the aerials, dishes and know that they would all be dumb and deaf. The mounting stones, one at the top and one at the bottom of the hill would be like gravestones.

What did the world look like for people to walk in this direction in this space? What drove people to walk here? What was on their minds as they did so? Were they excited, nervous, lovesick, jealous, happy? When the road was young and not a road but a small track one has the sense that people walked there consciously, that they were making the path through the landscape although the landscape was itself using them to write upon the world and that all those who came after were not so conscious of this path. This was simply the way you went.

There is the sense that when you walk along this road, you are adding to the thousands of fragments of thoughts left on the road. One can imagine these fragments as like the tesserae of a mosaic uncovered beneath the ground; one to which pieces are added just as they are taken away. What do the gaps tell us? Good litter, left on the road, not like that dumped in amongst the hedgerows.

Part 3

There is a sense as I walk and see the distant hills and the horizon that the road is waking as I walk. When no-one walks upon it, it sleeps. It uses our eyes to see the world around it. What lays beyond the hills? There’s a connection between our feet and our eyes. What lays beyond the horizon is hidden from everyone who walks this road, no matter what the century. The road is the people who walk it or ride it. The road is not so much a physical thing but a short trail of thoughts. The road is whatever people who travel it were/are thinking.

Part 1

Freshly dug earth, a small pile. A new name on a label planted in it. Twigs and pine cones scattered upon the grass. The wind blows through the trees. Something creaks. The traffic drones in the distance. Grave stones with their backs towards me. Slate-grey surfaces. Voices in the distance talking. Different shades of grey, marked with stains of age. An alarm sounds for a while then is quiet again. The birds chirping around me. The sun catches the top of a smooth marble gravestone. To my right beyond the neatly clipped hedges a burial is taking place – a wicker coffin, the same I saw in a hearse driving past as I walked here. An aeroplane flies overhead and marks its presence with its noise. A fly buzzes. To my right the gravestones show their names. Gold and black lettering in latin and hebrew alphabets. The coffin is lowered into the ground. A man walks past outside and a siren rips through the comparative calm.

Daffodils are growing. The mourners leave the graveside and hug each other.

In the ground, in the grass the plots of land are marked in different ways. Some are slabs of grey, flecked with stain of age and lichen. Green glass beads and bits of gravel, purple flowers or shallow depressions in the ground. Or of course the small mound of freshly dug earth. The mourners are shaking hands. Two men walk between the graves before me, looking for something. One of them yawns with his hands in his pocket. Looking at the back of the gravestones it is as if the graves have turned their backs to me. To find them I will have to walk between them.

The shapes and the heights of the graves are all quite different.

There’s a feather on the ground. Grey and white like the graves themselves.

On the slabs of marble, stone etc. which mark the graves, a pot of broken plant. Holes for putting flowers in. Stones left in memory. Two on one grave. Five on another. Some have none. Others have many more.

Names begin to talk. Dates. Occupations. Places of birth and death. Daisies and last years’ autumn leaves upon the ground. Flowers on one grave; a pot of lavender and white roses amongst them.

Flowers left on turned earth. A mug.
Physician.
Hamburg.
Deported to Riga. December 1941.
Cellist. Artist.
Social Anthropologist.
Geographer.
Moss grows on the glass beads of a grave.
The edges have fallen.
Names. Places and dates slowly melting into the bluish stone. The grass creeps over the edges.
Calgary.
Tartakov. Poland.
Holocaust Survivor.
Reflections of the trees in the polished marble slabs of the graves.
Teacher.
She graced the world.
Lavender growing marks another grave.
Orange lichen creeps up the base of a gravestone.
The stone slab of a grave has almost been swallowed by the grass.
Car doors close as mourners leave the cemetery.
A rose bush, cut back, climbs through a hole.
To so good a man no evil thing can happen.
Wloclawek, Poland.
Nikolai.
Prague.
Perished in Dachau.
Tachow, Poland.
And her family who died in the second world war.
Komotau.
Goerhau.
A small head stone barely poking above the ground.
His work lives.
Komotau, Czechoslovakia.
Who were put to Death in Poland in 1942.
Members of her family massacred in Poland 1942.
Victims of the Holocaust.
He made a new life in England.
A single stone on a grave.
Hamburg.
Komitau (formerly Bohemia)
Minsk.
Riga.
Uneven surface.
Painted stone on a grave.
An artists life.
Scratches on a grave.
Berlin.
My shadow upon the grass before me and as I stand and walk.
Como, Italy.
Swansea.
Cold wind begins to blow. Constant sound of traffic.
Faint names slowly disappearing into a grave.
Vienna.
Breslau.
Berlin. Vienna.
Pomorzany (Poland).
Skoczow (Poland).
Bratislava. Arch. and Eng.
Dried leaves crunch beneath my feet.
The ivy rattles on the tree trunk.
A train horn blows.
Graz (Austria).
Enkirch-Mosel.
Berlin.
A plant pot in its plastic.
A grave grown over with ivy etc.
A coloured windmill turns.
St. Petersburg.
Walking and looking back, the names become once again the plain surfaces of the stones.
A digger fills in a hole in the ground.
The diggers work is done.
Names all face the same way. Dates blur.
For many, the dates are carried everywhere by those who remember them.

Part 2

The following is a transcription of stream-of-consciousness thoughts spoken about the cemetery, considering the cemetery in both the past and the future as well as in the present. The images were made during the process as aids to thinking.

Looking at the cemetery today, not necessarily those graves in the Jewish section but the stones of those buried 50, 60 years or more, one sees how the names slowly recede back into the stone, how the edges of the letters are smoothed, covered over with lichen. How the front of the gravestones become no different to the back. The boundaries of the grave if they are marked with stone begin to collapse. The graves themselves begin to sink. One day the stones will fall and the grass will cover them over and perhaps all that will be left in years and years to come will be a shallow depression in the ground, something like a footprint at the end of one life’s journey.

Cemeteries are places where names go to die. When these names are lost from the stones, when the people that remember them are themselves gone, so we are lost to memory. All that is left to remember us is the ground itself, the world itself. We are that footprint on the ground and beneath the ground our remains live on. They decay, break down and every part of us carries on somehow. Looking at the trees in the cemetery one can see them as metaphors for those buried within. We are in a strange way like seeds in reverse – like an acorn. We begin at the top of the tree before the tree has even grown and we travel between villages and towns, in and around our home towns; every thought we have every connection we make grows its branches, the branches of the canopy until those branches become less and less, albeit thicker and thicker until we’re left with just the trunk marking a small spot in the round and beneath the ground the roots echoing the canopy itself. Perhaps in a way when our bodies decay when we’re broken down into atoms, that is what the roots somehow represent.

And when that tree grows its leaves, every year bears its fruit, we can imagine every place that person had been to, still bearing a trace – a living trace – of their existence. Looking around the cemetery, the Jewish part of the cemetery, one is struck by the places from which people have come, the journeys they have led often in tragic circumstances, which have led them to this small patch of ground.

As I was coming home on the train yesterday watching the landscape pass me by anonymously, one part blurring into the next as if rushing into the past, I saw a small pool of water surrounded by trees into which I threw my eyes imagining what it was like beneath the water’s surface, and there they remained for some of the journey. Whilst I saw the world whizzing by, my eyes were still. All sounds were gone as my thoughts and my eyes drifted beneath the water. And a day later I can still imagine them there the world seems not to have changed and yet a lot of things have happened since then.

One can almost imagine the bodies buried within the cemetery as being like that and the lives they led as being like the man on the train, that though they are still now, in the quiet and the dark, somehow the lives they led are still moving; between Berlin and the cemetery, Vienna and the cemetery, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, all the places from which they’ve come.

One can go back before the cemetery was even there when it was just another field, another plot of ground, perhaps it was farmed? I don’t know. Things grew in it of course, the grass grew, trees grew, every blade of grass was more a part of the world than any of these people. And yet within the ground now a wealth of experience has been poured into each of these little holes, experience that is full of happiness, tragedy. Thinking about the trees the branches separating off one should really think of them as one continuous branch that starts high above the ground and snakes its way downwards, every encounter is a knot making up the vast canopy of the tree until it reaches the soil.

When one’s in the cemetery one can’t help think of one’s own death and where we will end up, which patch of ground we will occupy and looking at any patch now one can think whether it will be the place where a life not yet even begun will be remembered by the earth long after the name has died. And in any patch of ground one can also think whether someone is there beneath, unknown, unseen of course, unknowable, but a person who’s left a mark somewhere in the world.

I can’t help but think of the battlefields of Verdun, where from the barren wastes whole forests have now grown, each tree in some way reminding us of the people that died, each branch part of the journey they made through their lives. There’s also the trees grown around sites of the Holocaust those planted to hide the places, those which have grown afterwards. Somehow they too serve to remind us of those lost on those small patches of ground.

There is a connection between this idea of small patches into which so much is poured so many thoughts, so many memories, love, anger, tragedy, laughter. One thinks of a town from which these people were from. Towns in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia. One thinks of Vienna and it’s almost as if within that small grave, in that small hole in the ground the whole of that city has been poured. For every city, every place is defined by the people who lived there. So in many respects these are graves not only for people but for places.

Part 1

A vessel, translucent, whose surface is revealed by distortions, reflections and engravings. There is an opening at the top about 2cm in diameter and here the thickness of the vessel can be seen as being about 5mm.

The base of the vessel is not round but oval with flattened sides. The base is solid and about 1cm thick within which one can see tiny imperfections where the light is gathered.

Light from bulbs above, inside the display cabinet, grows around the neck and shoulders of the vessel revealing a dimple in the surface on the right. From the base of the neck (which is itself about 2.5cm in height) the pattern of the engraving on the front of the bottle begins, comprising feather-like curlicues, dots, dashes and small fine strokes. They form a kind of border, within which the words Thos Brown, Nenthead, 1769 have been engraved.

The lettering of the name is somewhat irregular and not central, as if the engraver was expecting an ‘e’ at the end of Brown. There is a space after the ‘n’ into which part of the pattern of the border has extended and part of which has since been scratched or worn away.

On the sides are engravings of birds. That on the right can only be seen properly whilst looking through the front of the vessel. On the back the engraved figure of a man can be seen with a rifle, standing on a patch of ground next to a tree. Looking at the figure whilst bending down slightly, one can again see small imperfections in the surface of the glass.

Within the glass are colours, reflected from the fabric of the display stand behind; blues and golds as well as the dark grey of the glass ledge on which the vessel is standing. There’s also the reflected light of a dish on the shelf below.

Even without touching the bottle appears heavy.

Part 2

Looking at the glass and its ‘time-life’ I see the bright glow of its beginning – a molten bulb of glass. I can hear the noise of the place in which it was made, the heat and other ambient sounds. Who made it? What were they thinking at the time?

There is a real sense of movement at the beginning; an urgency – a far cry from the static object sitting in the display case before me. One gets a sense of the physical process of its creation, the heat and the sweat. The molten glass needs to be shaped, partly through being blown – and while it’s in this state, the glass blower blows, turning the glass and shaping it until the form is fixed. This object then becomes the preserved breath of its maker. Cold and fragile.

The glass cools and loses its glow and colour, taking its shape from the borrowed light and reflections of that which surrounds it. What has been seen over the centuries, reflected and distorted through its surface? The interior of the workshop? Thomas Brown’s house? Back then, the light of an ordinary day in 1769 would have lent the vessel its shape. Today, mainly the glow of the electric lights reveal its form to visitors.

Next the bottle would be engraved. A conversation takes place between the engraver and whoever commissioned the engraving. Who was Thomas Brown? Is he the figure on the back of the glass? The engraver takes a note of the name. Did he make a mistake? Did he think it should be spelt Browne with an ‘e’. When would he have realised? Perhaps it’s not a mistake at all, just the way he did it.

The vessel would have been held in the engraver’s hand, its shape felt by him as he worked to write the letters. I can only guess at how it feels, through the engraver and the person who commissioned it, and finally the man himself. One can almost see his smile as he receives it. What was it commemorating? He would have felt its shape in his hands – the glass blower’s breath. He would have felt its temperature, its texture. What else did he feel at that moment? How did his clothes feel on his back? What did he see through the glass surface of the vessel? The floor? The faces of his friends? The walls and windows? The light of a day long since vanished like the glass blower, the engraver and Thomas Brown himself.

Part 3 & 4

The bottle is always borrowing from that by which it’s surrounded; gathering light in order to make itself visible.
It bends, distorts and refracts the present – gravity bending the light from a distant star.
Hot, molten, fluid becomes cold, fragile, solid.
Flesh becomes brittle.
The influence on the present day of a breath exhaled 250 years ago.
Exhale. Inhale.
A bubble.
An imperfection in the air, where time rather than light is gathered and held.
The past in the present.

This a transcript of my notes as they were written during the observation.

Part 1

This is a large area of grass with a large number of different trees at various stages of maturity. The traffic can be heard coming from the left and behind me some voices in the grounds of a large house, separated from the park by iron railings. The sound of the wind blowing through the trees is always apparent even though there is little wind today. The sound of birds too can be heard particularly in the grounds behind me.

The entrance to the park was through railings on the park’s NW side. The path runs down and around the perimeter of the park. Some of the trees have plaques planted beneath in memory of those who’ve died.

The path down which I’m walking cuts across a slope which runs down from the east (the house and grounds side) to the west. There are a number of seats alongside the path facing west into the centre of the park. There is the sense that there us kittle really to divide the grounds to the east and the park, save for the grass which on the slope to my left (east) has been allowed to grow. There are a number of weeds, daisies and shrubs.

The path turns to the south and runs alongside a busy road. The path runs between trees, the SW past another entrance to the park and an old stone building. The building has a kind of vestibule in the middle with a window at the SE end. There is some graffiti here such as ‘Don’t forget us’ written in felt-tip on the frosted glass. A sign reading ‘Ladies’ in the shape of an arrow points SE in the direction I am walking.

A few yards on more buildings are revealed, built around a small courtyard. These buildings look much older. On the western facade of one of them is a wooden sign on which the words ‘staff only’ have been written. A sign next to them reveal that the former toilets and dairy are to be sold off.

The side of the building is in part covered by ivy and the whole building almost looks to be sliding into the ground. The green paint of the windows is the same shade of green as the ivy.

The path slopes down. A man jogging runs up beside me. The trees are constantly chattering while the traffic flows up and down to my left.

Towards the bottom of the slope is another building standing behind a tall hedge on my left.

Past the small building, there is a large set of blue painted iron gates leading out onto the busy road. Either side of the gate, on two ornate posts are old-fashioned lamps.

Straight ahead, heading slightly SW is a gravel path which snakes away in a kind of elongated ‘S’ shape. To my right, heading in an almost westerly direction, the concrete path continues. Along this path there are fewer trees, but looking to my left, I can see that the gravel path is bordered on either side by a number of mature trees. Heading north along the path, I can see another road to my left.

On my right hand side are two mature horse chestnut trees. The leaves on one are speckled with rust coloured patches.

It is just past this tree, beyond the reach of its shadow, that to my right, towards the east, I can see how the ground undulates. This sense of undulation as I approach the second of the mature trees which again I think is a horse chestnut with rust/yellow coloured patches on the leaves. I’m not aware visually of a slop but I can feel that I am climbing.

Again to my right, just past the mature trees, I am aware of the undulating ground, though not quite as before.

Two large purple trees grab my attention along with the mature tree see just behind through the gap. This view feels very much as though it belongs to a garden.

To my left is the minaret of the Islamic centre. On my right a group of four saplings.

The purple trees cascade to my right and turning back to the path, it seems almost incongruous in these surroundings. Behind me, about ten yards, a gravel path leads NW towards the Islamic Centre. To my right the undulations become more pronounced. Besides another collection of brick buildings , these undulations are especially pronounced, particularly on the left hand side of the path.

A little further on, on the right hand side of the path there is a concentration of foliage in the shadow of a large mature tree. On the other side the ground seems to slop up back towards the house.

To my left the slope is increasingly pronounced running down towards a long stretch of flatter ground. From this area, which borders a footpath behind a line of railings, there is another profusion of weeds such as stinging nettles and doc leaves.

–

Back in the park, through the same gate, there is the sense of everything ‘sliding’ towards the west (at this point) – or towards the ‘city centre’. The same rumble of traffic – the same sound of the leaves blowing in the wind.

Where the path forks, I’m instinctively taken down the right-hand path, i.e. down the slope. A helicopter whirs overhead.

At the point in the path where I saw the ‘view’ of the two mature purple trees I leave and head towards them. In front of the left hand tree I can see three undulations – very shallow, but of equal size running east to west.

Walking between the two purple trees the feeling in the park at this spot is completely different. I notice too a ‘pattern’ of two more purple of copper trees ahead and a more mature tree – an oak – in the centre.

Walking between the trees, one of the undulations I saw before is clearly evident. It seems to peter out within about ten yards. There are a number of lumps and bumps at this point which are hard to pinpoint.

By the ‘top-left’ copper tree is a distinct depression.

Turning down it, one again finds the shallow humps which extend towards the house at the top of the area.

Returning to the gape between the purple trees, I feel a definite ‘step down’ into the hollow between two bumps. I decide to walk the route again.

Between the trees, I pick up a ridge on the right hand side and follow it towards the right-hand tree at the back. By the tree I find a ditch cutting across, leading towards a group of trees around which a large number of weeds, nettles etc. are growing. Standing beneath the tree and facing SW, I can see more of the ridge and furrows. Turning to face SE I see the ‘ditch’ running off which I decide to follow and notice that this ‘ditch’ seems to join up with another patch of dense undergrowth which I’ve already recorded.

Walking along it, between the patches of undergrowth, I’m made aware of how different the park feels – certainly compared with walking between the purple trees towards the house. There is it seems a correlation between this and the direction of the ridge and furrow, and the direction of the ditch and the path which I mentioned earlier.

As I walk from this undergrowth towards the path, I feel another dip running alongside the path on its SW side.

Part 2

The ‘natural’ direction of this place follows the direction from the windows of the house behind me to the city in the near distance. The trees in the grounds of the house and those in the park suggest the area was once joined – the railings running across it follow the ‘unnatural’ direction already mentioned. One can easily imagine the house, the full extent of its grounds with the views over the city.

Rolling back the time life of this area, the nettles and weeds disappear – the saplings are removed and the trees begin to slowly reduce in size. The sound of voices and of laughter behind me might well have been heard in the years before and the sound of traffic would certainly be absent. For a time at least it would have been altogether much quieter.

The trees shrink, the house disappears and the view across the city is clear. Sitting on the bench as I am – facing the city – there is the sense that this a place of views- of looking out. Behind the windows of the great house, those who lived and worked within would have once looked out across the city. Without trees, one is left with a ground which undulates in ridges and furrows one way and a few lines which cut across. They are almost like scars, gouged out of the ground.

This ‘natural direction’ is persistent and one day, the concrete parth which cuts across the park, along with the railings will disappear. People walk along them today just as people once walked along the ridges which lie across the grass.

The ridges and furrows one can imagine being created over a great period of time. As people walked up and down, the view was still there – how did it change.

I look at the dedication plaque in front of me. I wind back time – the person to whom it is dedicated lives again and is then nothing. The tree beneath which it is planted disappears. Appearing. Disappearing.

The plaque is dedicated to a certain individual, but in the ground, one gets the sense of the lives of many individuals. The milky sun above would have shone on them just as it does on me.

Leaving the bench I return to the spot between the five trees.

Looking back between the trees towards the city centre, I can see clearly the spire of St. Mary’s. Removing the trees, the whole city would have been visible.

Parts 3 and 4

Looking down towards the city, out from the city towards the house. The area is about looking out and being looked at. It is about looking and moving – up and down, over and over. It’s a place of directions, ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’; peaceful and less-so. A place in thrall to the city below.

Further Notes

Notes written the day after initial observation of the park.

Like a piece of paper or fabric, the area we know today as Headington Hill Park has a grain. This became apparent in the first instance at a point along the concrete path where, looking to my left, between two large purple/copper trees I saw a view which seemed to ‘belong’ to the a time when the park was a garden. Looking back up the path, the path itself felt incongruous. Leaving it and walking towards the gap between the trees my body felt different – my movement felt ‘freer’.

In front of the trees I could see the mediaeval ridge and furrow very clearly and beyond the trees I followed a furrow and noticed a long depression cutting across it, running in the same direction as the upper part of the path. Walking along it felt very different to walking up the ridge towards the house – just as tearing a piece of paper against the grain feels much different to tearing it with the grain.

Thinking about the ridge and furrow – one can imagine the area when it was ploughed with all the turned earth. It would have looked quite uniform in its appearance. Then as crops began to grow, a patchwork would have developed.

During the Civil War, this land would have been taken over my siegeworks. This movement up and down would have been cut off by the movement across it; which eventually would have carried on again after the war, eventually changing (as the area became a garden) from physical movement up and down, to lines of sight, up and down.

Part 1

Standing at the end of the garden, a gnarled trunk, deep grooves in the pale brown, in place almost grey, bark. The trunk is full of swellings near the ground. On the ‘front’ as I look at it, there is a hollow, a small hole a few inches across, with thick smoothed sides – above it on the left hand side, a branch sticks out at an angle of about 40 degrees. A few leaves remain on younger branches around it – this older branch ends after approximately two feet. From the newer branch hangs a wooden structure, small with wire sides (meshed). Above that and above the old, short branch is another wooden structure – a bird box on the side of which the grain is clearly visible.

The trunk bulges out towards the hollow and narrows again just above it, from where it rises up a few feet and then splits into two main branches. That which grows out to the left grows at an angle of about 40 degrees, almost parallel with the old branch below. There it turns up, as if it has been cut, moving at an angle of about 50 degrees. From here it splits into two further branches and from there too numerous to count. The other main branch (on the right) splits into five branches one of which has been cut short. On the trunk, growing from amidst the swellings are shoots of leaves. A yellow wire is wrapped around the trunk, running over the smooth edge of the hollow, hanging down to then disappear some four feet below, behind the tree.

There are many apples in the tree and looking around the base of the tree, a circumference approximately 50% bigger than the circumference of the canopy are a number of fallers; some whole, some smashed, some cut in half.

The leaves are green and shaped like stretched ovals, pointed at the tips. There are few leaves on the ground and only the tips of a few branches are bare. The canopy of the tree itself is quite spare, and is as much made from the colour of the sky as the colour of its leaves and branches. The branches move a little and the leaves are agitated, moving a little like rattles. There is a sound, as the leaves move, a rustling. The colour of the leaves differs depending on where they are in relation to the light, some are bright green, others are dark and almost the colour of the branches.

The apples hang above the ground, each with a dark patch in the middle. I can see more evidence of pruning in the branches.

Part 2

It’s difficult to say how old this tree is, but it’s easy to see how it came to be here. Around its base are numerous apples, inside each of which is the potential for more trees. It is hard to imagine, that this tall, robust, warty tree was once a hidden seed inside a piece of fruit – an apple, but somehow, an apple seed came to rest in the soil at this place and began to grow. At that time, one imagines that many of the houses around here would not have been here at all. The sounds would be completely different – I am struck as I write this by the sound of an electric saw, a distant aeroplane and the rumble of traffic – sounds which when this tree was a germinating seed in the ground would never have existed. I can hear the sounds of other trees stirred by the wind and know that such a sound would have been evident at that time, whenever that time was. This old tree then is very unlikely. How did that seed from which it grew come to rest here? There are no apple trees in the immediate vicinity that I can see, although they they might have been cut down in the intervening time – evidence of cutting on the tree observed shows that that is not at all impossible. Perhaps the seed was deposited there by an animal? What animals eat fruit? How far did the seed come, what is the physical connection between this tree and one elsewhere – or a space elsewhere where once the tree grew? As the tree grew from out the ground the chances of it developing must have been small – was it grown intentionally? By someone who lived in the area? Was this a garden back then? Or part of the countryside? Did people walk by here and pick the apples? Those which had fallen? When did the first apples begin to grow? After how many years?

How does a tree grow? Water and sunlight. I can see the ground around it into which it has sunk its roots and know that the ground has supported it for generations. But its being here tells me of the constancy of the world – the sun and the rain. I can through the sun and the rain, through the tree, know of a time and of certainty of that time even though I myself was nothing, not even as likely as the fallers from the young tree. Did people sit under its canopy if then it was not part of a garden. When was it enclosed? How were the definitions of the garden’s space defined? When?

What of the future? The branches will continue to grow, the apples will continue to grow and to fall. People will cut the branches who are not yet even as realised as the apple which has just this second fallen to the ground a few feet in front of me. The apple which has come to rest will be collected along with all the others – its flesh will be cooked once the skin is removed and the cores put in the compost – or into the rubbish, where the core itself will rot away and the seeds inside might have the chance to grow. Where will these seeds end up and should the seeds grow and the tree mature to become like the tree is today, then where will it stand, what will the world around it look like? Who will sit beneath its branches and who will even consider, as they sit beneath the branches in the shade that I saw the apple fall from which it would eventually spring? By that time, no doubt, I will be as hidden from the earth as I will be from their thoughts.

And what of this tree? Will it grow fatter and taller? Will the houses remain standing or will it outlive or outgrow the garden fence in which it has been kept/contained? One thing is for sure. The sun will rise and set, and the rain will still fall. The smaller trees in the neighboring gardens might have matured along with those in the grounds of the school behind. The vegetation of the garden might grow and in hundreds of years time, nothing might remain of the place in which I am sitting – place being the garden. Even the tree might one day wither and die. Its trunk become hollow. Perhaps it will be cut and its stump left exposed – and the rings counted by children who will point at a ring and wonder what year it was was – some time way back when. Some time, now.

Part 3

A movement pushing down and flowing upward . A movement which is sinking into the ground, pushing, seeking. Something moves back up through the trunk out into the branches. It reaches up. It reaches down and reaches up, it is pulling and pushing at the same time, collapsing and expanding, breathing. It’s a spring, a squeezebox, but one so slow we cannot see it move. The leaves are the feint sound of this movement. Up and down. Circular. The ground beneath; reaching towards where others have sprung.

All around the base are the tightly packed coils waiting to be sprung; each one a tiny clock, wound ready, a clock so small but its seconds are long, its minutes like hours and its hours stretched to cover the distance of a year.

Part 4

I breathe. Slowly. In and out. And with each breath expelled I reach towards the sky, I reach further than the tips of the smallest leaves by which I am covered. I extend further down in the cold, wet ground. I am only half seen, I am mostly invisible. I am never still. You cannot tell, but I am in a constant state of flux, moving up towards the sky, down deeper into the soil and out. I am never the same size. I am growing all the time, pushing myself through the leaves and the fruit, pushing through the fruit until they fall. And once on the ground I wait. I can feel just where I am in all my pieces. I am a set of contrasts. I am old yet new, older than you yet younger than you, yet even my youngest parts know far more than you’ll ever know, even my fruits will outlives you.

The ground is cold, yet I am warm. I can feel the heat from the sun towards which I stretch and unfurl even these parts I did not know I had and inside I am warm. The wind moves me, it gives me a voice. I do not creak and crack because I am forced to do so – I am talking. My leaves do not rattle or whisper because they are young, small and are easily moved by the breeze – it’s because I am talking.

I am never in one place, although it might appear that I am fixed. I am in many places at one and the same time. I am many years passed and many years in the future in a coil which slowly unwinds and unravels itself – the most complex mechanism of any clock you’ve seen. Idle hours spent beneath me pass in an instant. My memories are beyond your comprehension, I blink only in winter and when I open my eyes again, the world is already new.