Folio — Il cerchio che non si chiude

The water in the mill-race today moved as it always moves, and yet I watched it an hour as though I had never seen water. Perché? Perhaps because the hand that cannot draw what the eye sees must look longer, must hold the image by force of attention where once the chalk would have taken it instantly — the small vortex at the left stone, the way the surface folds inward without breaking, the green that is not one green but seven, and beneath them all something darker that is not color but depth made visible. I have written before that water is the vehicle of nature. I did not know then — or knew and forgot — that it is also a mirror held at the wrong angle, showing not your face but the sky behind your head, and the clouds moving there, and the light already changing before you have finished seeing what the light was.