Sunday, October 26, 2008

installatiion, tree and leaf, onions

Posted by Picasa This installation is to be found on platform one at Tunbridge Station. You walk along the platform beneath the bridge and towards the tunnel at the end of the platform. I am not sure what purpose it serves, though it does suggest a series of fuse boxes. It could of course be a work of art - you can't be sure nowadays, can you?

As I walk through the Grove I ponder the charming suggestion that the shape of a leaf reflects the outline of the tree it comes from. A lime tree confirms the theory. But a maple proves more challenging. The more I look at the tree the more I see the leaf shape in the outline of its branches against the sky. But I could be hallucinating. It seems to work for a beech, and even for a delicate silver birch. But horse, and sweet chestnuts present a problem. And then there are conifers. Do you look at the way the needles bunch on a Scotch pine? Or at the lithe and narrow outline of cypresses and compare them with the shape of the individual shoots?

In the supermarket, some onions fall from my trolley. "Your losing your onions," says a girl in Sainsbury's uniform with a friendly laugh. It sounds like an expression that people use, but I can't quite place it. Am I losing my onions? And then I realize that what I may be losing is not my onions but my marbles.

2 comments:

Roderick Robinson said...

Possibly junction boxes. I feel that the reason for attaching the word "Danger" to them has now changed. By now rust - with consequent disintegration - is what Southern Rail (or whatever) should be worrying about.

Lucy said...

Ah but there's no doubt but that you know your onions!