Seagulls, mosaic street art, just outside Kensington Gardens in Brighton - which is one of my favourite streets. I have been reading Milan Kundera's essay, 'Getting Into the Soul of Things,' for a piece I am researching and I worry about such terms as, 'soul' for there will be many disagreements on its meaning and relevance in different cultures and religions. And indeed, yesterday I was also reading Emily Dickinson's poem, Heaven Has Different Signs to Me, and they way we cannot pin meaning down, even though we try:
Heaven" has different Signs—to me—
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place—
And when again, at Dawn,
And yesterday I saw the first notes in the autumnal sky, like annotations, minims, crotchets and quavers, beamed notes with sharps and flats and compound time signatures, and the fleeting signs of not yet murmuring starlings gather near the ghost of the West Pier. And I always wondered what that murmuring meant. Whatever it is, I will be looking out for them at dusk as the sun drops down over Shoreham power station, far to the west of the pier, where as Dickinson says,
The Orchard, when the Sun is on—
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make—
Some Carnivals of Clouds—
The Rapture of a finished Day—
Returning to the West—
All these—remind us of the place
That Men call "paradise"—
Itself be fairer—we suppose—
But how Ourself, shall be
Adorned, for a Superior Grace—
Not yet, our eyes can see—
Sometimes, I think that Noon
Is but a symbol of the Place—
And when again, at Dawn,
And yesterday I saw the first notes in the autumnal sky, like annotations, minims, crotchets and quavers, beamed notes with sharps and flats and compound time signatures, and the fleeting signs of not yet murmuring starlings gather near the ghost of the West Pier. And I always wondered what that murmuring meant. Whatever it is, I will be looking out for them at dusk as the sun drops down over Shoreham power station, far to the west of the pier, where as Dickinson says,
The Orchard, when the Sun is on—
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make—
Some Carnivals of Clouds—
The Rapture of a finished Day—
Returning to the West—
All these—remind us of the place
That Men call "paradise"—
Itself be fairer—we suppose—
But how Ourself, shall be
Adorned, for a Superior Grace—
Not yet, our eyes can see—
