The progress of the season is indescribable.. Perhaps the sound of the locust expresses the season as well as anything.
Henry David Thoreau: Journal July 5, 1852 [*]
Brown Notebook
23:50 UTC+2 19 June 2023
You go to the potteries at Miravet. it's a long winding road over the mountains and down through fruit orchards to the Ebro. the Ebro at Miravet is wide with sli swirls on the surface slightly glazed with oil. on the rar bank: a kind of bird community in parallel opposite the human town. big bright green cacti in the rocks and soil above the town sprouting out just behind the houses. picturesque / abandoned the town is hard to read. walking out
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across the flat land to the potteries, you are not sure if you will find anything. xxx you a potter tells you how they took over from their uncle. the wheel is there, the buckets of glazes, the peece they are working on. a tile for house with engraved lettering and a sprig of olive. working alone in the large factory, their sister sometimes helps them when she is not working on the land. a large black and white photograph shows their uncle together with their father, assembling a large jar. the large jars for olive oil are constructed in 2 or more sections, each built up from coils. the lower sections are allowed to dry partially, to support the weight of the upper
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sections. to join them requires taking account of the different amounts of shrinkage between the sections with of different moisture levels. you bought a sugar bowl made by that potter for a gift for the person who helped Maija find a place to stay over the summer. you bought an olive oil bottle for sam and mort. p bought them hwhile you and p walked to a pottery nearby. 2 men were cutting communications [cable] 3cm in diameter up a pole in the olive field. it was hot with big drops of rain from time to time. dams up river reduced the water flow and stopped the deposition of sediments. the potter had to buy their clay now, they said. they did not regret hacking the clay out of the river bed [bank] or working in the huge wood fired kiln. signs to calling for the political prisoners to be freed were stencilled on the low walls by the along fields by the river. the potteries had wheels and drying batts adjoining the showrooms. the potters would come out to greet you in their aprons. children and young people were cayaking. on you sat at a table and drank xxxx sparkling water with lemon and ice. there were too many children. there was no possibility of eating. on the way back you stopped at the ecological olive mill on the road to Lledó. the road to Lledó passes through large scale
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animal units – the distinctive low rise buildings and feed feeder silos. the olive mill appeared to be a converted animal unit above the Algars river. you walked to the olive grove. work goes slowly, shifting stones and lumps of old concrete. the fields are greener after the recent rain. you eyes are closing
yesterday you read how Henry David Thoreau went out in a bot to look at water lilies in June 1852.
Last night, as I lay awake, I dreamed of the muddy and weedy river on which I had been paddling, and I seemed to derive some vigour from my day's experience, like the lilies which have their roots at the bottom.
July 2, 1852 Journal p151
Recording with videos outside the music school at Minarvet [Miravet] door spattered with martin dropping, collared doves. voices in the square to one side. bell. 2 farmers came from work and drove a tractor in through the the metal doors.
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[*] THE JOURNAL 1837–1861 by Henry David Thoreau. Ed Damion Searls. New York Review of Books. 2009 p152–153.