Hampstead Heath - seat overlooking second and third ponds. My first electronic note on the Heath.

A jay flew up from grass to tree, almost vertically. Now it's back in the grass - and as I looked down to write it hopped up to a low branch. Tiny insects keep landing on my hands and I blow them away. Another jay joins the first and then they fly away together. As usual.

This is pleasant despite the cold breeze and the sense of not having done much today. It's more than bird watching in that I feel restored as these words and events connect as I look up at the clouds, grey, still and pale gold where sunlight breaks through. I hear a crow cawing and a nearer bird singing and the thump of some amplified bass music from the Easter funfare that is being assembled the other side of the ponds. Just next to me are gorse flowers almost in full bloom and grass that has already grown quite tall and I breathe the cold air quite contentedly, despite feeling that last week's bronchitis has not quite gone. I decide to move on - remembering that 'all things are equally important' (and so 'importance' is imaginary)!

Daniel Brozak* reminded me that I'd said that to him about twenty years ago... please pass me the butter all things are equally important

Later (25 August 2001) I was drawn make a visual poem of 'importance' in the course of which, typing deon for demon, I found welsh meanings of 'deon'


...and then Ursula Huws looked in her Chambers dictionary and found some greek and english meanings:

deontology

d&ontolLGji, noun the science of duty, ethics.

Also noun singular deon'tics.

deon'tic adjective.

deontological (tGlojL) adjective.

deontol'ogist noun.


Greek deon, -ontos neuter present participle of deein to be necessary, to behove, and logos discourse


And now I realise that Deon could be the name of a dutiful character in a fiction of all this, if he is needed!

(clearly Graffiti writing speed is not going to rise much).