Prohledání hexadecimálu (text k stejnojmenné výstavě)

Veškerá data, s kterými počítač nakládá, se v podstatě skládají z cifer. Přesněji řečeno tato data existují ve formě, kde se dvě cifry binární soustavy (1 a 0) vyjadřují fyzicky, například zónami s různou polarizací na magnetickém mediu jako pevném disku nebo oblastmi s relativně vyšším, respektive nižším napětím v paměti RAM. Počítač operuje s dvojkovou čili binární soustavou z důvodu její konstrukční vhodnosti. Proto i každý soubor, který lze na počítači otevřít, se také skládá v podstatě jen z binárních čísel čili kontrastních zón. Mnohociferná binární čísla jsou však pro člověka nepřehledná a dlouhá, a proto se při programování počítačů binární čísla a kódy často vyjadřují pomoci jejich přepisu do hexadecimálních čísel, kde je počet cifer mnohem menší. Hexadecimální číselná soustava je základu 16 a v ní se čísla zapisují pomocí číslic 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a 9 a písmen A, B, C, D, E a F, přičemž písmena A–F reprezentují cifry s hodnotou 10–15, takže číslo 109 v nám familiární desítkové soustavě by se v hexadecimální vyjádřilo takto: 6D, podle stejného pozičního principu, na kterém je založena nám známější decimální/desítková soustava, jenže tu pozice reprezentují násobky mocnin 16ti, a ne jak je tomu v posledně zmíněném systému 10ti.

Pro náhled do hexadecimálního kódu, tj. do binárního základního kódu počítačových souborů reprezentovaného přehlednějšími hexadecimálními čísly, používáme jeden z mnoha dostupných editorů hexadecimálního kódu. Když v takovém editoru otevřeme obrazový soubor, typicky uvidíme něco takového jako v obrazu dole (Obr. 1.). Nalevo jsou data vyjádřena v hexadecimální soustavě, napravo jsou to tatáž data vyjádřena v kódu ASCII, jenž slouží jako základní způsob, jak v počítači (který „rozumí“ jen číslům) reprezentovat písmenka pomoci číslic, které jsou základem jakýchkoliv počítačových dat. Soubor, který máme otevřený v editoru je obrázek ve formátu JFIF (s koncovkou .jpeg). JFIF je protokol vyjadřující složení a interpretaci obrázku v tomto formátu, který je obecněji znám spíš pod označením JPEG.

První část tohoto typu souboru se nazývá hlavička a zahrnuje informace o velikosti, rozměrech, rozlišení a barvách. Soudě podle vlastní zkušenosti, zásahem do této části souboru vzniká nepoužitelný „poškozený“ soubor. V hlavičce našeho obrázku lze například vyčíst, že soubor je typu JFIF. Výraz „Ducky“ mimochodem znamená, že obrázek byl uložen v programu Adobe Photoshop, což podle určitých zdrojů vzniklo tím, že někteří z programátorů téhle firmy jsou „posedlí gumovými kachničkami1“. V každém souboru tohoto formátu následuje po hlavičce a několika jiných prvcích, které se týkají technických parametrů formátu, hexadecimální číslo FFDA (červeně obkrouženo v obrazu dole), které označuje začátek vlastních obrazových dat. Od tohoto místa můžeme rovněž do souboru zasahovat, aniž bychom pravděpodobně učinili soubor nečitelným. Překopírováním, posouváním a smazáním úseků kódu se dá pak docílit nečekaných změn ve vzhledu obrázků. Označený kus kódu (a mohl by být libovolně dlouhý nebo krátký) bychom mohli třeba zkopírovat a vložit jinam, nebo smazat a tím docílit různých efektů, a to postupně mnohem divočejších. Po mnoha takových mazáních, zkopírování a přidání dat bychom docílili zcela „rozloženého obrazu“ nebo takového, kde už nevidíme nic z původního námětu.

U některých obrázků jsem nechal vytisknout i původní obrázek, z něhož vznikl, u jiných jsem vytiskl jen pozměněný následný obraz, jehož hexadecimální kód jsem pozměnil. Jako ukázku svého procesu jsem vytiskl data dvou souborů v hexadecimální formě, kde je označeno, co jsem změnil (smazal a přidal) a vystavuji je spolu s původním obrázkem i tím, který vznikl změnou. Soubor obrázků, které zde vystavuji, jsou vytištěné na kapu a jsou na prodej.

Obr. 1.

1 http://www.networkworld.com/article/2323045/software/feedback-on-ducky-and-defeating-didtheyreadit.html

Ryan O'Rourke: Prohledání hexadecimálu. 22.10. - 22.11.2014

Klub 29, Sv Anežky České 29, Pardubice

www.divadlo29.cz/klub

Vernisáž: středa 22.10.2014 v 19.00

Since I have never got around to showing them anywhere else I present a selection of manipulated photographs. For a long time this has been one of my artistic outlets and arenas of experimentation, in which I have pleasurably dabbled and which continues to inform my painting.

Rubescence

Sitting in a pleasantly textured seat, being driven in a bus across the south of England late last winter, I witnessed a phenomenon which I am going to call rubescence, from the Latin ruber or "red" since I can not remember any other word for it and the words "crepuscule" or "gloaming", though almost fitting, denote rather the twilight that occurs when the sun is only a bit below the line of the horizon. This phenomenon I saw consisted of skies awash in warm colours of dim rain hazed flames, apricot-skins, lemon oils, driven through by trays of clouds: dove-breast and seal-skin greys; warm colours I would not have expected during the day, but would have found natural only around dawn and the setting of the sun. There was a redness, a russet tone to this autumnal light for long hours at both ends of the day. Here, in this place and time, it looked at though they extend much further into the day than I would usually have seen further south. And indeed, in Prague the time during which the sky is rubescent is shorter and the light more white and brighter, less shaded and muffled during the day even in winter. In terms of feeling or atmosphere, of compositions of colors, local light and colour schemes seem to differ considerably between various geographic locations and seasons. There was a feeling as if light was coming trough frost or frosted glass, as if the lightscape, the arena where the lucency congealed was a rubbery new type of ever so slightly non-translucent glass, or a strong light-filled mist of smooth, though mutedly dramatic, cool flavour with a hint of almost passionate storminess; a surprising combination of lemon coloured bottle-glass and flat, powder-compact seagull-grays. Even though I was not so much further to the north, the difference in the type or qualities of the light or one could even say of the light-scape was noticeably, strikingly different to the environment of light of cities lying further south over the horizon, over the curved flank of the earth. I think the differences in qualities, colors, textures of skies and light in different places must probably depend on a number of factors - but in any case one real differentiating factor seems to be the angle at which light is received from the sun at the time and place in question.

I have noticed in the past that the one can witness a great variety of types of skies and related phenomena. The sky seems to have different qualities and parameters in different places - I saw this for example in Sweden. There the late summer sky seemed very upwardly deep, stacked with a scattering of fleshy-looking, looming clouds at a great multitude of levels. It was like looking upwards into a metallic, blue tunnel, or the what I imagine may be the tower-like architecture of a microchip. One pale violet cloud hovered, stacked above other lone clouds, going upwards into the gold-glowing blueness, hard and electric, between them. This was a markedly upwards-dimensioned flock of cloud; it was strange since I hadn't remembered the same phenomenon seen so strikingly: this phenomenon of stacking of similar clouds not only on one level, but on many layers. I came to the conclusion by and by that the sky, for all its apparent simplicity, has a structure which, though lapidary, is quite capable of a surprising variety of form; a shifting air-scape, cloud-encrusted, formed of fluid fluxes of air, crusts and floats of cloud. It strikes me as amazing that something we think of being simple, is actually, like most things, quite differentiated and complicated. Yes, even though it is is translucent or practically transparent, which only means it lets light through, that doesn't mean the air is not something real and material, and having definite qualities too. Also dawns and sunsets have different colors and the sun, in its setting and rising, is accompanied by different phenomena such as blushes of color and difference formations of cloud for reasons I don't quite understand.

In any case, this yellowness of the sky in England, these warm bands of color, like the orange smoky light in dying coals, which would fade away deep in the day, towards noon, and fade in again in the afternoon, got me questioning. I wondered why this phenomenon should exist and one reason I have found which may, at least partially (for phenomena can be complicated things) explain it quite nicely is Rayleigh scattering: "Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere causes diffuse sky radiation, which is the reason for the blue color of the sky and the yellow tone of the sun itself (Wikipedia: Rayleigh Scattering)".

What this involves, if I understand it that is, is the greater tendency of higher-energy wavelengths (in our case we perceive these as blue or violet or purplish colors) of light to scatter off the molecules that make up air. Light, presumably in the form of what we think of as photons, coming from the sun enters the atmosphere of Earth and gradually during its swift journey encounters a denser and denser medium, that is: more and more molecules of various gases. These gases, for some reason I don't yet quite understand, have the quality of scattering higher frequency light (in other words, in this case, this is blue light) in the visual range. I assume the other colours continue on their more or less direct journey through the atmosphere - this maybe why we see the sun as yellow. We see our star through a tunnel in the atmosphere and this tunnel is filled with yellow light, that is, white light containing many frequencies minus a portion of the higher frequencies, blue and violet ones, which are scattered to the sides into that which we call "the sky". In other words the photons, I imagine, come more or less directly from the sun, and depending on their energy and frequency, different things happen with them on their way through the atmosphere. Blue light scatters, that means it changes direction, and the photon gets ping-ponged on what I can assume to be a complex path through the atmosphere until penetrating down to the level where it can fall into our eyes and so be registered. Actually, since interactions of atoms with photons, as far as I can tell, involve absorbing the original photon and, as the case may be, shooting out another with a different or same frequency, I am not sure that it is always the original photon (at least in the sense of not having interacted (come in and out of an atom)) which originated in, or on the sun somewhere, that reaches our eye. We are in fact under a huge, vast sweep, a gentle cosmic waterfall, of cascading photons and that is why, it seems to me, the sky is filled with white or blue-white light. That is why there is light all around us and from all parts of the sky, why the sky glows: because the blue light gets spread or scatters in all directions through the gases of the air before they enter our eyes, if eventually they do that, since plenty of photons of course don't and I guess they are either absorbed by materials or reflected off them (and going out into space again.... that is what astronauts looking at our blue planet see), giving rise to an incredibly complex "soup" of photons, a three-dimensional photonic environment, photon-soaked, in which we move, and from which our eyes pick information about these photons and what they have been through on their way, what they, or those photons that stimulated their arising, have met; different maps and spreads and distributions of photons or light energy (or even we might say "luminous matter" if we consider photons or light to have a material aspect), which we perceive as the colors of all the things around us. If we didn't have an atmosphere there would probably be no color to the sky. Then it would be like being on the moon - the sun would look white in a black sky, light would fall directly towards the surface of the planet and the would be only be either bright light, and otherwise dark shadow. This is not the case here on earth: there are many gradations of shadow, there is a sort of light "in the air" which gets around things; one needs to shade off light very directly and well in order to get a very deep shadow in the daylight. However, judging as far as I can without any deeper or professional knowledge in the matter by photos of the moon's surface, the light-environment there is much more a matter of sharp contrast: in essence limited to highly defined zones of light or dark with no or little gradation in between. So on Earth, surrounded as we are by an environment which scatters light, it is as if we are on the surface of a dark marble - the earth - inside a layer of milky glass - the atmosphere - that scatters light around inside its volume. Rayleigh scattering can also, as I shortly mentioned before, be used to explain why the sun is yellowish: by the time its light reaches our eyes, most of the blue and violet photons are "leached out" of the stream of light coming in the direct line of sight from the sun's globe (from where it was about 8 minutes ago?). So what is left is the red, orange and yellow and green light, plus the remainder of other frequencies or photons at higher frequencies and so the image of the sun, in the form in which it reaches our eyes, appears yellowish. The same principle can be applied to explaining the red and orange colors of the sky and sun at dawn and sunset - because when we perceive the sun to be at the horizon, its light has to pass through more of the atmosphere ( the trajectory of the light we see coming closer to the sky's "flat" component, roughly parallel to earth's surface, rather than its vertical axis, which we look up when gazing at the top of the sky).

But what about the purple or violet clouds that typically hang around the line of the horizon in the direction of the setting sun? Why do they emit this color? This is something I have not manged to figure out any theory about.

However, even though realizing this, for some time I couldn't understand why length of the interval of pink or late light would differ as one went northwards. However when one draws up the situation of the Earth in relation to the Sun, an answer seems to present itself.

 In the above diagram, which shows the globe and two light trajectories coming from the sun, we have can imagine a person (a) standing on a point on the globe (the inner circle) surrounded by the atmosphere, whose outer boundary is marked symbolically by the outer circle . When the Sun is above him, or nearly so, at or around noon, the light has a shorter trajectory through the atmosphere, as shown by the vertical line (v), and when on the horizon, it has a long trajectory (s), as shown by the horizontal line. Analogously, we can imagine the person at (b) to be standing near the equator and the person at (a) to be farther north. It is imediately visible that at the northern position the light goes through a longer trajectory (s) through the atmosphere than the shorter one (e) sunlight takes to reach the eyes of the more southern observer (b).

Since in the northern hemisphere the angle to the sun is greater in winter than in more southern localities (and this is borne out by the fact that the diurnal arc of the sun, its journey through the sky during the day stays closer to the horizon in the winter the further north one goes), light coming from the sun looses most of its blue light (at least in the direction directly between the sun and the viewer) on the way. And there you have the solution: the sun is lower, the atmosphere at the level its light passes to the beholder is thicker, and so the light is redder or warmer, with less blue in the image of the sun (and theoretically more blue in the sky around I guess), when it arrives in our eyes after its comparatively longer journey in comparison to its summer journey, or indeed than it would take in southern skies. What makes the difference in this case, and why English light is redder than more southern light, is that the horizon there is at a greater angle towards the sun's ecliptic, that is, to the equatorial plane than cuts it symbolically into two hemispheres.

So in the picture below, you have a stylized earth where the night side is blue.

So in other words, if the theory I have in playing, hashed up is true, there is not only a band of  rubescence, that is, orange and red skies on the eastern and western leading lines of day, ie: what we would usually call dawn and sunset. The band of rubescence actually has a circular form and goes all around the cone of light coming from the sun. The earth being roughly spherical after all and so it is logical that its "section" of the light cone or, more accurately, light-sphere coming from the sun has a circular form. So it follows that on the northern and southern edges of this circle of illumination, which the sun casts upon the earth, there is also rubescence - in fact, that all around this ring there lies a band of rubescence.

Interestingly, and this is quite pivotal in the case we are discussing, since it brings with it a kind of geographical asymmetry, this ring comes closer to the equator on the northern side due to the tilt of the Earth, explaining quite well why yellow, rubescent skies should be so prevalent for so long during the day in England, which in fact is not so very northerly.

In the above picture, which is very much out of scale, so that the exaggeration may serve to make the situation clearer, we are seeing the earth from the direction the sun's light is streaming from. It is some time during the winter of the northern year. The line bisecting the circle horizontally is meant to be the equator. I think that the band of rubescence in the northern part of its circle will be wider, at least in winter, when the earth´s tilt brings the more northern points further away from the sun, because the tilt of the earth away from the sunlight cone's plane will be greater there. From space this band will probably not be visible, because it is not a reflective phenomenon, it is visible only from below, or maybe from the side. One needs to see it from the back, from our perspective, from behind the shield of the atmosphere, because it is formed in the atmosphere, for there the blue photons are leached out and spread into the sky away from their direct line from the sun.

Above, to give an example, are represented two cities, one an imaginary green dot, and one a red. The earth is spinning, the cities moving, they form lines in the diagram above, moving through zones of the illuminatory cone of the sun, that is: through night, crepuscule, rubescence and then day, or however one wants to characterize or categorize these changes and the same again in the evening. The more northern city goes through a thicker band of rubescence at both ends of the day and doesn't go through much of the central "daylight" circle at all,  moving only through its northerly zone, in fact, whereas the more southern city goes through a more moderate and slimmer ribbon of rubescence and a long region of daylight, coloured white in the above diagram.

Birds flying in groups around the office


I usually see, when I am at work in the morning and paying attention to what is going on outside the window, or just happen to be gazing out of it, a group of birds flying in roughly circular patterns around the office building.


Now it is near nine in the morning and there they appear, the birds of nine o'clock: winging, scintillating, wings fluctuating, seemingly a bit like sine curves; curve-like wings, over the far off and whitish fields.

And again at 9:07, winging high in the distant sky in a shifting collection, some birds a bit up and some a bit down; they look so free, an image of freedom? How do they feel? Have they it solved, do they need nothing, are they free? Do they have a yearning, not just the yearning for sky (for that is their world), but a yearning for something else, beyond, now for them impossible, or something inexpressible?

9:21 : here again and closer, gone quickly now, after looking like small speckles as if peppered on the light-filled yellowed clouds on the Simpsons' light blue sky over the left side of the warehouse; gone now, lost to sight, anyway.

9:22 and nine 9:23: another and another smaller group pass?

Ten fourten; sweeping above like a squadron of bats into the blue blue air. Very swift they are.

Something older from this year's spring from Parukářka Park.

Above, the blue; around, the succulent, undeveloped green of spring, small leaves and buds, so firm, delicate and yet strong, untrammeled like the multi-foliate hearts of lettuces; around, the brilliant light and between, the almost neon-fluorescing leaves scattered in veils and pompom-growths on trees; a pure choir of still-winter trees, bare silver branches adding a purity and seriousness, a lovely contrast to the filled with vibrant and good and warming life growth of those trees that had sped to meet the uncoming spring more eagerly or quickly than the rest.

I lay in the grass, my head comfortably against the concrete of some sort of low, oblongular ventilation shaft of what I assume, from what I have heard, is some kind of bunker under the park. From the shaft  one could smell a delightful musty smell, a deep, earthy nostrilant from the comfortable bowels of the shelter, but only if one sticks one's nose practically right up to the grille. Lying in the grass, your nozzles would be lullabied only by the rough friendliness of the concrete and spring, the cleanness of grass and earth and air, ba*breathed out by the park.

So, I was lying here, lookin' (kong) at the changeful light on the robust, lapidary, yet tender, spring-shoot leaves of a tree above me. Mostly the light filtered from above, from a hard, firm and blue sky.  A delicious green-yellow translucence through the leaves marked them out in their delicacy, outlining their veins and ridges, illuminating them with rich colour, almost flash-like. The sky and the leaves were both so sonorous and chromatic, so bright and more over of the same quality of light-bursting brightness that, where the edges of both met they sort of fused together, giving rise to something that caused in me the impression of a kind of dividing, raised ridge between sky-edge and leaf-edge, as when two plates of gold rise to form a holy-seeming suture of awe-inspiring, electric power, two iridescent metals touch and their kiss causes a brighter frill of gold, magical, electric, a purified, more-than-they hem or suture.

Twice I saw dogs rolling in the grass, something I had never seen them do before. They got down own their back and with legs comically, stiffly held above, they rolled for all they were worth, grinning with lopsided, floppy jowls. And when they had got up and punctiliously, with an air of preemptive embarrassment following their bosses, they must have found they couldn't bear the thought of not having just one more roll and down they went again, almost chortling in delight (as I imagine), rubbing their hard, whip like, backs in the grass and earth. Were they doing it out of the satisfaction of it being spring, of feeling earth and smelling grass?

As I was lying there, soaking up the wide blue flank of sky and those particularly bright, poignant leaves, I suddenly felt a ripple, a surge, the impression of a parting of waters, of the invasion of a lover's kiss, and into the bright blue sea of the sky there surged the straight white, foam-leashing arrow of a plane, high and small and ever so sharp, twinkling in the white, rarefied light. It was spectacular and beautiful. The impression given was totally physical; I could feel the parted foam, as if the blue goddess's foamy lips had been parted.

*ba is a prefix meaning that a metaphor is being used more metaphorically than usual, the park was not really breathing strictu sensu, but poetically, which is understood anyway I guess.

Miles and miles of flimsy veil-like, diagonal, perfectly slanted and spaced slashes of frosting, so friendly and so friendlyly blue coloured.   condensed packed water, so beautiful
  riding high over light coloured innerlitlike (like! only like?) sky, light filled early weraly morning sky, I don’t know even if the sky sun is up, but somewhere behind hills or buildings it probably is, oh yes, brother, this is it.

Light trep ida tion of rain out the wind ow. It has been rain ing, how long I do not know, I have been look ing at the comp uter, but then I saw it, a trembling little need led silver move ment, silver frott age rap id move ing in the air outside bet ween the wind ow and the opp osite store house, dark gray, light sil ver, slivers so thin slim down dash diag onal.

Diag onal dash of rain, so many tons (? (Does it make sense to ask how much at all, beyond poetic convention and use?)) of water fall ing sp read out in long rinn els of drip drop fast dash dash flows, strai ght tremble ing on the flow, grey firm curt ain of large tonn age rain, flutt ered by turbu lence, begg ining the race amongst the clouds, long fall down mil es of air to be earth drink, drop melt diss olve into loam amongst foam of other fall ing drops, same nejtš ure.

Czech English Alphabet Poem without W.

ejbísídýíefdží ejčajdžejkejelemen oupíkjůestýjů víexuajzedd.

The grass

There is some frost in the garden
- of paradise?
- of delight?
- just so?

Alphabet poem

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.

Five letter recombo poem.

Howpr ivele dged I amtos eethe fresh unsee nunsu ngmor ningq uickc hangi ngpom elopa thway samon sgtth eicys hoals ofclo udupo ntheh orizo nunse ensol itary purew ander ersdr iftso ffast movin gclou dsobe autif ulfor their unobs erved hushr ush. Tosom ewher eandt odiss oluti onand atone nessN otthi nking justo bserv ingen joyin gRoll ingth rough thesk iesov erthe floor ofthe world.

Šestipísmenková překombobásnička.

Jakpri vilego vanýse cítímb ýtževi dímčer stvéne opěvov anésko roniký mnepoz orovan éjítr orychl esemění cíúzké stézky letade lbarvy kantal upůmez ihejny mrakůu obzoru Nespat řeníos amělíc estova telétá hnoudá ljakop osouva jícíse mráček

Birdssunshyfiresidewaysmoving slurofsmoke

Leeing left a lisp o smoko
ina day of cloudsslipslitfire
o

o
birdbird bird lispbirdbirdbirdbirds shoot rocket like
past iron windows of firmkitchen
and the sun is bornagain in the heatyellowlit between chaiseslonguesofmistcompactedchinese clouds.

Vynořil o, vyšnočil o se z t my, nebo je to tma? Opravdu tmou?

Niebyto nievidno ještě nie
ješte ale tam sem z temné matrice
matk děloha
prostor inter těl selénéně mdle
za v okol v
protkano pod-tkáno podlest
popichovává matrici
oviněno oviněno zrním
dílem jej
březost v údolích
mlha lha mokra
težká mlha
syká všterbine nepodajný podajný kámen
lokna m lhy
loď
jenom pár mole kulů.

Fragile visions between sleep and waking

Recently I was coming back from Budapest in the train and being tired, having not slept much over a few days, I fell again into a state of being on the edge of an unclear dream, or a state of semi-slumber in the haze near the unguarded gate of sleep. It was as if I had fallen into the state that is the background of dream, the white, warm matrix of the sleeper´s world, though at first there was not much there I noticed in the form of imagery. There were thoughts, a muffled murmur of processes, things I find hard to define. I don't maybe remeber it in all that great detail. Then, though, I begin to see pictures in my mind, against the white vibrating substrate of my mind or, at least, of the visual system. They were clear, relatively abstract pictures. This capacity is something I have only developed recently, or at least recently noticed or began to make use of. This state I found quite pleasant, with a strange warmth in my body and wrapped in the comfort of sleep's borderlands, my power to keep from slumber´s edge coming and going, the tide of night lapping on my disappearing body. Yet was I still in contact with the outside world, though sinking into some other landscape or character of state. And I did not struggle against it. It had a feeling of soft cotton wool to it.

Considering these pictures, I came to the conclusion that I could observe three stages of this kind of imagination, at least at this time and in this instance. Maybe in the future and in other contexts it could be different. I tried to describe or categorise them and made the following system:  the first stage I really noticed was when I observed these pictures in this woolly, warm half-dream state. Since I am used to thinking about collecting things from what I see to use in my painting, I also was quite eager to see if these could serve this purpose to some extent. When I concentrated on them, or intended to use them for this purpose, they seemed to some extent to disintegrate. I perceived it as maybe being that some of the “filling” between the lines feel out. Then it was hard to reconstruct the original complete form, though much of the feeling associated with it was still present,. Then when I thought about painting it, and considered the problems associated with this, and considered how it would look on canvas, the image was transformed in some way again, and had less of the original concept in it, though not all had gone out of it.

Here are rough sketches of what I observed. I think they looked something like this, but of course the differences, considering the state or inner environment they were couched in, considering the way of access, makes it difficult to know what exactly the drawings retain of them, though when I look at them, I seem to remember the images I observed then. They are more like an echo, an echo obeying the rules of paper and pen, not necessary those of this state near to sleep. They are like fragments, like flotsam and jetsam of the mind, both the sketches and the images that made me make them, but that is quite interesting. It makes them exotic, like something seen where one did not expect it.

The top image at first seemed like vertical structure of peculiarly shaped flecks with grey-scale graduated colour but either immediately or after a little while was associated with the idea of a cliff or rock formation with a big light colored circle, maybe a sun or moon or planet emerging from behind it.

In the second was a flag very much like the flag of Bretagne, and in the background a dome reminiscent of the parliament in Budapest.

Trip to Černá Rokle

In the week, when it was sunny, I went to Černá Rokle (the "Black Gulley") near the small sleepy village of Kosoř not far from Radotín. As it turned out, it was a series of cliffs raised above a forest path; a dark wall of layered rock when seen from a distance but radiantly pale from up close. It could be an old quarry, taken over by the pale, light-filled pine trees and looked like something out of an old Western movie, saturated with bright white, high-pitched light, which had a clean almost antiseptic feel around it, tinged by a certain mystery. Around the fragmented boulders lay cream gravel; loose, cascade-nervous rocks. Sun-drenched pine trees stood at tension-filled distances on a scene yet only hinting at resin-fragrance (exuding what was like very faint menthol or a subliminal, rather exciting ozonic whisper). The pines were of that type with the roundish, rayed tufts of long needles. All of this exciting scene was redolent of aloness.I fantasised that I might be alone with the light and a single mosquito. If one is a bit careful, one can zig-zag up the cliff or rather a steep slope, and one comes up near Kosoř in a sort of thicket of dry whitish grass near a large brown field, soft as fecundity.

 

To get to the gulley in the first place, I walked from Radotín, taking the Zderaszká road up from town into the hills. You walk on the hot sidewalk by the road and after a few turns and kilometres find yourself on a shoulder above town. Going a little further you can see, on the right side of the road, a little grass-overgrown path going up into the woods. I decided to take it into the hills because the road was blazing and made far too concretely of asphalt to satisfy my spring-hunger properly; and as I found out, I would be well rewarded.

At first the path rises steeply for a couple of metres into pleasant woods, then you pass a small hut in a wide paddock or clearing, all green with delicious soft grass now, and then comes a forest graveyard, with only a couple of graves in one corner and the rest an somewhat down-at-heel fallow land. The one person whom I met during this part of the trip was here: he was an oldish man, loping along towards the graveyard, or maybe he was in some way involved with the chestnut horses grazing behind a screen of willows and firs next to the graveyard. He looked at me a little probingly, with narrowed eyes, or was I imagining it?

Here you come across a barrier across the road, which has a sign saying "Private Property", but also paradoxically enough a sign with the text "Pro pěší", which means "For Pedestrians", nailed to a tree just before it. I think the private sign refers to the graveyard or the stud farm  or ranch or whatever it is behind those trees. In any case it seemed possible to go ahead.

After a while of moving through the forest, all the brown trees forming a sort of festive, high canopy, you come to an unusual structure in the forest. It is a sort of horseshoe-shaped vale with steep sides covered in dry leaves and with one of those improbably shaped and lovely hills in the middle. The shape is like a bell, or a sort of mulch-covered illustration of a three dimensional parabola or other precise geometric concept. I know of another such hill near Karlík, which is near to Mořinka, though that one is much larger, this one is very small indeed, tiny even, one could say. Maybe this bell-shaped hill is quite typical for the Czech countryside, another related type can be found in abundance in the mountains of the České Středohoří (which seems to be called the Central Bohemian Uplands in English, that's the range between roughly Lovosice in the South and Ústí in the North).

There is a pleasantly spaced overgrowth of beech trees, so it looks a little like one is very small and walking through a giant scalp of thick straight, airy hair. This gives the forest a mixture of shade, cool and refreshing as water, and a light like the light of amber, or of church windows.

At this bell-shaped hill, the path splits towards the right and the left. The left seems a dead end but is interesting in its own right. Taking the right, you pass past a patterned black, green and magenta silk scarf someone has tied to a tree and into a trackless, lovely waste of a forest. This is pure nature, where the hills are languid and curvaceous like some sort of solidified waves. Walking over the leaves, you slide over troughs and over curved flanks. All around the long gray slender trees rest easy, their zebra-shadows patterning the floor of the forest in a patter of wavy lines and the endless foam of dried leaves crinkles underfoot. And all is clear and clean, so clean and alone; no-one is maybe within three kilometres of you on a good day.

I lay down there near the edge of the forest, in a deep dip in the topography, its wall behind me, the open field beyond, my body cushioned on the loam and the flimsy leaves, with flies pleasantly delecting some minute tit-bits on my arms, the almost scentless, clean smell of the forest was all around, the slight, nursing tang of the earth under my head, the sun filtering in through trees, which, it seems to me, is one of the most pleasant forms of getting your sun.

After lying there for a while the quiet hush of the forest, that sound without much sound transformed into secretive exclamations - the humming of an early bee, keeping away from me, interested in other things, my shifting in the leaves, the rush of the sun baking the air on the field, the alarm of a hawk, his strange, lonesome, beautiful cry. Though I can't remember its sound properly, I can remember something of its singing through me, like a totem, clear and profound like ice water, and seemingly wise. I set off, with the reward of the hawk's call, and the slight regret at not having seen him; man's maybe pretentious regret at the gulf between him and the animals, which he sees, rightly or wrongly, as purer than himself. Then one can walk further, across the humps and valleys of the forest but here already the soon-to-be-grain-bursting fields and the white spring sky and a pleasant, oblongish farm building on the horizon are visible from within the comfortable cover of trees.

The field here at the edge of the woods is soft and has the colour of milk chocolate and a texture comparable to heavy sand, so it is quite hard to walk on, and for this reason I walked along the line where the forest grasses and trees join with the field. In this way you come to a path leading left, amongst bushes, with a sort of very thick, leafy hedge on either side, and this leads directly up to the edge of the village of Kosoř with its bus-stop baking in the sunlight by a lovely large old buff-coloured ramshackle  building which may have been a barn, stable or storehouse.

If here at the barn you take a right turn, passing it and going through the village, you will see a yellow restaurant just after the barn and a board with information about the local sights, and then come to a kind of dip in the road, a crossing of the ways, a tight conglomeration of buildings, soon a red fence, and if one then veers off right here one will find a another little fast-dipping path going down into lush forest and following a stream of water. If you follow this, after a short while you come to Černá Rokle, which is to the left of the path. It flashes out white from between the trees.