14 Apr Coniferous forests

Lying on the ground I look up into fairytales and remember walking through (so distant now) coniferous forests. One in Stirling, one in Heidelberg. In Stirling I walked with a guide. The stories were about Braveheart, William Wallace. The places were real, but the statue was just Mel Gibson. The forest in Heidelberg ended in two empty abandoned spaces. 1. A long abandoned Nazi amphitheater, steps crumbling, and carelessly covered in weeds, but with astounding amplification intact. And 2. Short steep stairs into a tomb. The tomb was for long dead monks. I don’t remember the date etched into the stone but I think it was 11^th Century. 1042? 1092? Reading up on both these places – they’re both important ancient Celtic sites. Maybe there’s something in this. The places I remember most clearly for their own presence maybe have this in common. Dun Aonghasa in Ireland and sites on the Isle of Skye. I think the Celts chose places with views. Places on the edges of worlds. Expansive views out and over the valleys, the rivers, the seas. Or maybe they were the places that were left, that they were banished to. We’re house hunting at the minute and James just commented that I only look at houses on the high side of the street, always looking out. Is this like choosing to sit in the back corner of a restaurant? Is that why this view into a tree feels so suffocating?

All these things from one window and projected on and seeping from a tree I don’t really like. Each iteration of a story plays out in the branches, comes back to me, is swirled around and re-projected on the tree, played over its needles. The tree has infiltrated my loungeroom. The soaking cones (the process of an abandoned ink) have formed a thick sticky resin, sweet and headachy. Seed pods have exploded all over my table in soft fur like tufts. I’ve made drawings of the details of their exploding, using their own surfaces dipped in ink made from the needles, along with a pen and paint. The tree as material, subject, medium. But even with all this it’s still not about the tree. It’s still a Rorschach test. What can I see in this place? How does this make me feel? Why? How? Can this be replicated? Does it lose a little each time I try? Does it gain a little?