6 august 2004 possession
20:25 Parliament Hill. Clear sky, The sun's already below the NW horizon. 50 to 70 people here this evening. An obese girl of about 10 is running as if she were not obese - full of unselfconscious liveliness. At this point in August the grass looks old and worn-out and there are plenty of blackberries - I've just gathered enough for a pie or a fruit salad. A church clock strikes 8.30. People of all ages sit and stand to look at the view. It is summertime, he writes, pleased to be stating the obvious. Since reading the notice about creeping thistles as an invasive species I've been seeing them everywhere. There is a patch of them advancing towards this hilltop - 10 more metres and they'll have reached the seating area, 'our property' we may think as we sit here in possession of these seats provided by others in memory of dead people. But surely the earth does not belong to anyone, human being or thistle or legal owner, custodian, police officer or landlord - the cosmos and our modifications of it is a unity, incomprehensible as less. The world is life and life is beyond ownership (of a whole by a part) - unless it is recognised as a temporary fiction (enforced or otherwise)...
I look up at some insects dancing rapidly and irregularly in their mobile airspace above me and I feel cool wind on my neck and ankles... I decide to return to the flat where I 'live', my temporary possession. It's rented... (and 'comfortable' 'convenient' and 'safe', for the moment).
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