3 February 2014

La faune bouge, tandis que la flore se déplie à l'oeil....Le végétal est une analyse en acte, une dialectique originale dans l'espace. Progression par division de l'acte précédent. L'expression des animaux est orale, ou mimée par gestes qui s'effacent les uns les autres. L'expression des végétaux est écrite, une fois pour toutes. Pas moyen d'y revenir, repentirs impossibles: pour se corriger, il faut ajouter... Chacun de leurs gestes laisse non pas seulement une trace comme il en est de l'homme et de ses écrits, il laisse une présence, une naissance irrémeédiable, et non détachée e'eux.

Animals move while plants unfold before our eyes....Plants are an analysis in process, an original dialectic in space, progressing by the division of the preceding act. Animal expression is oral, or mimed by gestures that erase one another. The plant expression is written, once and for all. ... Each of their gestures not only leaves a trace, just as humans do in writing, it leaves a presence, an irreversible birth inseparable from themselves.

6.42

looking west: between the masses of orange and grey cloud are blue patches, something like [looking up in[to] a cupola. the bare trees of loughborough junction stand in front of the cupola in distinct ways: the lime has thin divided tapering branchlets and the weight of the upright stems thins gradually as they approach the upper and outer areas of the crown. there is a black mass in the middle which is a nest. the ash is barely visible below the black line of the roofs: it has long bare shoots, some with side shoots, covered until near the ends with drooping black clusters which are seed pods. above the ash, but set back and not as high as the limes, the Ailanthus has shorter elements: its stems and shoots constantly change direction and fork, remaining thick and solid right out to the tips. the sense is of [a] plant caught in the act of finding its way up and out through a tactics that is opaque to us.

the days are getting longer. it's still dark in the park just after 6 but more people are coming. you saw a boy running along the top of the park being paced by a car. at the end he turned and ran back. the car cruised slowly containing the driver / trainer, and the boy ran up along the top of the park in one direction, turned around and ran back. how the car managed to turn but it did. whatever it was that was caught that was stopping your left shoulder and your neck from moving, has been partly freed.

Credits / References

Francis Ponge: 'Faune et flore' in Le Parti Pris des Choses. Gallimard, Paris, 1942. Francis Ponge: Selected Poems, edited by Margaret Guiton. Translated by Margaret Guiton, John Montague and C.K. Williams. Faber, London, 1998. p68, 74-76.

Cited in Francis Hallé: In Praise of Plants, (Éloge de la Plante, pour une Nouvelle Biologie), translated by David Lee, Timber Press, Portland, London, 2002. p 107. Italics in the original.