online: 26 january 2005 modified: 5 february 2005
26 january 2005 this is the world among other things


13:35 ...outdoor cafe - highly flavoured mulligatawny soup in winter sunshine... perhaps the same robin with blue feathers each side of its chest came to stand on the table about 60cm from my left arm... i froze all muscles (except those that were chewing a mouthful of bread) and it stayed, warbling quietly to me in its little chest, for about a minute... and then it flew away... later it returned for a few moments.

It's quite warm here - out of the northeast wind. The sky is clear except for some small wispy clouds at about 5 thousand feet that are both forming and evaporating at their edges... and at about 30 thousand feet there are a few streaks of mare's tail...

...a robin, this time with a white feather amongst the blue ones on each side of its chest... it comes within 30cm of my hands so as to peck at discarded fragments of butter...

...looking round at the people eating here today i see them as being more restrained, and duller, than all those so much livelier people whom i enjoyed being with at the webdesign conference... this new occupation seems not to induce professional restraint or narrowness - if so it could be a good omen... (for, to me, professional rigidity seems to be the main barrier to solving world problems)

the robin is back, closer than ever. It does not fly away when i move my arms... I see now that its belly is covered with white feathers - is it some kind of mongrel? (hybrid vigour is supposed to be the antidote to evolutionary collapse)

now to continue walking.



On Parliament Hill there were about six young men standing in a row wearing grey hoods and grinning in the cold wind as they watched a young man resembling Elvis Presley but less energetic who was speaking a never-ending speech-poem, or rap, into a mobile film camera operated by the man who appeared to be the film maker. Behind the man rapping was a friendly man in a hood, and with a chalk white face, who was continuously and mildly wrestling with him... Everyone was smiling or laughing.

Two young women and a man i spoke to said yes it's a promo of something and gave me the address of the website of the Grimeylimeys... which says among other things that they are a music group from Camden Town 'where the trees don't grow'...

...young men, young men, is this your future in embryo... and where then is the robin red-blue-and-white-breast, and the sun, and the other stars, and life without work, and global global everything... this could be the answer...

...at first glance this is not at all what i usually write about here but today i feel all-inclusive and i like this pretended male aggro performance and all that i see and hear... clack-clack-clack say the keys ever so quietly as i add this paragraph at the desktop amid memories of polite restaurant and warm sun and cold wind and mild laughter... and this is the world among other things.




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