...after meandering cautiously from West Heath to this far end of the Heath Extension (fearing that a pulled leg muscle will recur) i am sitting here content, seeking only to enjoy the moment...
...and to inhabit this classic picture of an artificial English village seen across the playing fields and beyond the distant trees... and framing it (as in an 18th century landscape painting) are the leaves and branches of the overhanging oak...
...and now a grey-winged sea bird (is it a tern?)... is flying irregularly, about 5 metres above the grass, looking (i suppose) for something to eat... the way it climbs a little, then glides with sudden twists and turns (perhaps when it spots something on the ground) seems never-ending...
...and now there is a second tern, flying lower than the other, and also occasionally diving to the ground to pick up something edible... i've seen these birds here before... they seems to have forsaken the sea for this extensive grassland which is kept short all the year long...i could sit here for hours, recovering from a day or two of struggle to write
'100-200 words to describe your expertise and research interests'for an academic meeting to which i am invited...
...i'm accustomed to the difficulty of being asked to describe myself in a pretended objectivity, but i dislike it... my only way of doing it is to change the assumptions so that i can write personally and can include activities much wider than what was requested...
...to ask people to describe themselves in academic language is not (i think) a harmless convention but one of the points at which our life becomes mechanised and our humanity is lost...
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© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 john chris jonesIf you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj at publicwriting.net
