LENTEN REFLECTION

This, as a coherent whole, only casually observed;
never as yet tried in suffering or succeeding,
held together for an enduring fulfillment,
yet so as if for times to come, out of these scattered things,
something serious and lasting were being planned.

Rilke, ‘Self-Portrait’ (1906)

A new film and a new sonnet:

Here is neither a self-portrait nor a domestic interior but an urban landscape, the latest version of my painting of Mill Lane previewed in our Sensing Spaces film. 

I was walking down Mill Lane yesterday and on the pavement outside our local florist was greeted by these charming flowers which some children had painted in colour chalk. 

Photo by EP

The flowers reminded me that Mill Lane, a name redolent of the old rural hamlet of West End, still has vestiges and echoes of its meadowed past amidst its terraces, shops and modest high-rises – as celebrated in this little film.