online: 2 september 2005
modified: 2, 3 september 2004

1 september 2005 a change of direction


20:36 Pond 2. 90% of its is covered with algae - it looks like smooth green ice on which one might walk or skate - there is not a ripple in its surface. It's sensitive to temperature - a drop of about 5C can cause most of it to retreat. I wonder if it is here because of global warming - i don't remember it spreading over so much of the surface before the last year or two (i've been walking by these ponds for more than 10 years). Yes, it seems that many things are changing for the worse and i'm not used to this!

Elek seat... no blackberries (or very few this year), the leaves seem half decayed already and the fruits are much smaller and less juicy... what's the matter - is it that i was away when they were at their best, or is it another sign of climate change?... someone with a garden said that everything is much earlier this year.

I was brought up to expect progress, continuous improvement, and now, in various ways, that phase of human evolution may be over. I can't help thinking that the negative character of popular culture these days (dystopias in place of utopias, etc) is a reflection of this, a bad time for materialists... Perhaps now is the time to look for quality in place of quantity, to be better people, not more... having 'chosen the meaning of being numerous'* we are now reaching the geographic limits of that enormous growth in population...

...so are we now obliged to 'choose the meaning of being good' (or at least 'better than we were')?

I think so!



*this phrase is from a long poem by George Oppen: Of Being Numerous, New Directions Books, New york 1968.

I quoted it in the essay 'now we are numerous' in designing designing, adt press/Phaidon Press, London 1991, pages 29, 30 and 34.




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