online: 2 july 2004
modified: 2, 3, 4 july 2004

1 july 2004 particles of something


About 14:10 Station: today I find crop of detached particles ... floating inside my right eye. Some are tiny circles and others are long curvy lines - irritating to vision but beautiful in themselves. They resemble slow-moving tadpoles, or kites with very long tails, or fragments of dusty cobweb. And they move slowly and unpredictably in the periphery of vision if I try to look directly at them... and otherwise they gradually sink down (or the largest ones do).

Heath: thunder to the north and spots of rain - I shelter under the limes... Then I walked under them until the rain stopped, which it did in a few minutes.

The 'Aussie' Jen seat is dry - an oak bough has grown over it. Someone has scratched on it 'this one is for lovers'.

14:38 Downpour... writing under umbrella, the seat beside me is suddenly very wet but I'm dry except for my knees... I decide to sit here until it stops (apart from the one in the brick shelter there'll be no other seat dry enough to sit on)...

14:42 Sun already, and rain has almost stopped though the clouds now look grey and stormy.

This morning, made aware by radio and by memory of an overload of fascinating connective yet contradictory influences* (in my momentary picture of the world) I sought a way to simplify my response to them so that it is both effective** and possible in our present circumstance (despite initial confusion)...

...what emerged was a directive (to 'self/other') to let each action have the range or scope of the astonishing/bewildering whole while attempting to 'keep doing' whatever emerges or ensues - at the most modest scale of this and suchlike writing. And easy, or I won't be able to do it. ... Is this the restart to my education, and everyone's?

A solitary bird sings between showers - and now the sun is clouded over as the wind rises, bringing more rain from the Atlantic...

15:05 Every few minutes the weather changes in this watery island... I like it, this variability...

And now there is stillness...

The nettles and brambles and birches, and oaks, and a large copper beech, stand waiting, (indifferent, I imagine, to sun, rain, wind, as long as water and energy flows within them and around).

Now faint sun, slight wind, some evaporation and a glistening wetness on the leaves. A long branch of bramble slants upwards towards the light - and sways gently in the wind.

15:20 I decide to leave this dry seat and to return. There is much to be done.

15:25 Leaving the "Aussie" Jen seat I look back at the dry place where I sat - a brief trace of all this.


*contradictory influences (provoked by a BBC World Service broadcast):
Invasive species (with new sources of food and without predators) spread quickly... can squeeze out native species... (for instance food aid from South America to Somalia transmitted invasive species that threated Somalia's existing agriculture)... some alien species may not be invasive and may not thrive... these observations may seem to make nonsense of the hates and moralities spoken of re human emigration, asylum seeking, etc...

...in such radio programmes as this a plethora of world problems is revealed... (if problems they are?)... enough to call for huge changes in language, morality, politics, education, government... in fact everything... and this casts doubt on most of our public beliefs and actions... (for instance my vision of 'creative democracy' may have to be rethought)...

...and then a novelist insisted that the physical act of writing (intimately connecting thought and act, pen to brain) 'is what it is all about'...

...and much more: a different set of such revelations is possible from each such broadcast - and we seem to do nothing effectual...?

**effective and possible responses:
Is it possible to find an adequate connective systemic in the act of writing?... how, instead of describing all this, to inventa fiction of people aware of it and able to act effectively... and to combine this complexity/simplicity in the act of writing in amongst it, not in detached study but here and now?




...as I edit this I suddenly see that it can without change become effective fiction if (after writing it) I suppose that fictional characters (Utopia, Numeroso, Unesco and others?) are watching and reading what I write and treat me as one of themselves!... (This sounds like something, or else nothing... and thus a most promising illusion)... I can sleep easy now, the transition is made. The digital diary is more than what it seemed.



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

what's new

homepage

digital diary archive

daffodil email newsletter

© 2002, 2003, 2004 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