online: 9 september 2006
modified: 9 september 2006

8 september 2006 something happened


16:10 ...a glade between tall beeches and oaks, and a few sycamores... i've just heard something fall - was it an early acorn?... no, i don't think so, i can't see any acorns on the oak above me... but i keep hearing small objects falling on the dry ground...and now i see where one dropped - it's a short piece of dry twig about 3cm long and 1cm diameter... how did it break off? i can't see or hear birds above me... and the wind is not strong today... could it be a squirrel?

...and now i hear a woman's voice laughing and laughing in the distance... an unusual sound on this part of the earth and perhaps never to be heard anywhere else in the cosmos... (for each of our actions is unique, is it not?)

action, dear you, no more thought without action!

and the action i performed was to put on the pullover that was in my bag and to open the internet and everyone on a page selected by chance... and subsequent pages...

after reading that forgotten writing i felt restored, perhaps by the freedom i was given to write in that book whatever came... or perhaps by the great pleasure of reading and thinking and writing here and now, out of doors, amidst trees, gentle wind, and mild sunshine...

and i am also restored by the text itself, for example:

...it is not impossible, only difficult, to revise one's way of speaking and writing and it is that effort that is needed now, I believe, in teaching ourselves how to live and to communicate in this world of supernatural change, or supersocial.

'Supernatural change', what do I mean by that? Well, I do not mean anything outside the laws of nature, so called. I was looking for a phrase with which to describe the artificial nature of machines (remembering that we, as the people who make them, are natural animals, capable of mechanising nature, and hence ourselves). And I was looking for a phrase which can also imply that the tempo of mechanisation is not matched to the rhythms of the human body and so in this sense it is supernatural and so we get stressed or left behind by what we have created.

And 'supersocial'? Let it speak for itself. This is the first time I've used it in this way and I've yet to discover what it means, or what we mean by it.

pages 130 and 131



next day:
...and now, after several hundred entries like this in the digital diary, i am still surprised that each description, each tiny event in this forest, is so different from the others... that the world in its details is more unique than we reckon, when we think of it abstractly, as soil, or as wood, or as path, or as cloud, or as leaf, or blade of grass... and each insect, each human, each worldview...!





(these pages are designed to be read with the window set to two-thirds of the screen width)

what's new

atlas

homepage

daffodil email newsletter

© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 john chris jones

You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you respect the copyright of quotations.

If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj at publicwriting.net