The Hills of Ruarwe #5

In my mind I traced out the composition onto the paper: the saw and its two operatives, the rectangular frame; and in the foreground a tin mug on a tree stump. Within the ellipse of the lip of the mug, lay another ellipse traced by the line of the water inside. The ellipses were at out of kilter with each other; the mug being tilted due to the unevenness of the surface it was resting on, and the water tilted in opposition to redefined the level. These dissonant, elliptical rhythms were echoed in the concentric growth rings on the face of the tree stump. The background was pale, sandy-brown earth, bleached by the glare of the sun, with the village where we stopped to get water on the way up, marked out in subtle monochrome shades, like a Japanese ink drawing.