Three beautiful things last weekend

The unusual radiant grace of a fifteen month old boy who drinks in each new experience through enormous eyes and seems to consider every possibility in each moment with calm concentration and quiet wonder.

The ecstatic expressions of people in a packed bar dancing themselves closer to exhaustion whilst they sang the ancient anthem of their village’s fiesta.

The look of astonishment and delight on the faces of a young Spanish couple whose car was stuck in the snow as night began to fall when a stout party turned his car around near the top of a mountain pass and came back to help them push it out.

3BT from the last week

An undulating hillside of newly cultivated yellow soil, framed at the top with dark straggling pines, is so evenly drilled-and-tilled that it flashes past the corner of the trucker’s eye like braided hair.

The wind rips great flurries of orange and yellow beech leaves that swirl across my dazzling sunlit path as I drive on a straight street towards a brisk and unhappy looking young man with harmoniously dark red hair who seems too pre-occupied to be aware of his moment of solitary beauty.

On a darker morning, the massive mast of a cedar tree is almost black behind veils of driven rain whilst the busy silhouette of a great woodpecker methodically rat-a-tats an upward dance from base towards crown.

three beautiful things

i wave one hand at a portugese colleague across the yard and place the finger tips of the other hand behind my ear whilst rolling my eyes towards the nearby railway viaduct ... a faraway steam train can be heard labouring up the slope towards wandsworth road from the yards besides the grosvenor bridge near battersea power station ... and then the billowing white plume of steam appears on high like a volcano in motion, followed by a momentary glimpse of the locomotive and some pullman carriages which instantly vanish again behind high warehouses

curtains of windswept drizzle sweeping across a luscious clearing in a wood whilst the sycamore leaves are fringed with raindrops

a brief text from the loved one at dawn which lists the appetizing menu for this evening's meal

3BT w/e 3rd November 2007

First in London on Wednesday, and then in Sussex on Friday, billowing plumes of sunlit steam, their pulsating transit indicating the passage of unseen steam locomotives.

Before dawn, as my truck slowly trundles away from the pumps at the Texaco petrol station on the A3 by Putney cemetery, an “African” cleaning lady emerges through the automatic doors, hands spread wide and arms at right-angles to her body. On the left hand she carries a sweeping brush and a dustpan, on the right she carries a mop and a bucket, upon her head she balances a large roll of blue paper towels, like a tall hat. Her wide hips seem to move in an exaggerated counterbalancing dance rotation that keeps the head moving in a smooth straight line … and as she catches my delighted smile& mimed applause, she laughs out loud.

In Tate Britain which opens late on Fridays, two deep-green patinated & polished bronze discs by Barbara Hepworth in a glass case, seen by me for the first time, standing parallel but slightly offset on a square plinth, ( Discs in Echelon, 1935 ) each with a soft curved edge at the bottom that gently transforms into a sharper but not-quite-cutting edge at the top. As I stare at their subtle symmetries and nubile polish, I remember with some delight having passed her in the doorway of the same gallery some forty years ago; a tiny, vital, strong-looking woman with a large flat forehead & a quick purposeful stride.