Bracken harvest

On Barton Common
They always remind me of weetabix.

Spent most of the day doing some sorting. It seems endless. I shut my eyes and put clothes aside to take to the clothes bank, then made a start on paperwork, got bogged down in diaries, photos, letters. It’s hard to know how ruthless to be. I’m still surrounded by paintings. Just a process of successive sifting. It feels like geological sedimentation and seems to take a lifetime. It finally stopped raining at 4ish so I went out for a couple of hours to get some air. I had the whole common to myself.

The Layers - Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.