Wednesday, 23 November 2016

Reflections on the Wye Valley AONB River Festival 2016

I recently re-read the text I was asked to contribute to this years river festival programme.  The text is indicative of how I was feeling at the time and just goes to show that it's often what we take with us that shapes the landscape we are visiting. It can be found in the digital programme by clicking here.

My thoughts on watery places
Waterways are deeply gouged into the bedrock of our bodies and we are corporeally coupled to their course.  Currents have carved the epidermic earth, scarred the surface of our world and left traces of the trauma.  Arterial streams twist down through the ground, tunnel through topography, squeezing between interstitial hollows; they penetrate, permeate, invade and intervene.  Tidal rivers respire, they shrivel and swell; their contents perpetually influenced by the motions of the moon.  Ultimately the peristaltic pathways of flowing fluid are sucked to the sea where their loads are disposed and their contents are freed.

Quotes
What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt—it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else.  
(Hal Boyle)

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
(Leonardo da Vinci)

My mind shattered
in thousands of fragments
wishes to spend
the whole day on a boat
drifting with the river stream
(Okamoto Kanoko)

Wednesday, 2 November 2016