15 July 2001 the old world and the new


19:16: A heron gliding in still air, flapping its broad wings only once every five seconds, say ten times a minute. Beneath it I can see the sunlit towers of the City from this seat beneath a fir tree on a calm evening in July. The blackberries are already green. These are sentences. The small clouds are moving slowly to the east and the returning aeroplanes are flying slowly to the west as they descend to Heath Row. The tall grasses are ripe and yellow. No not yellow, pale fawn...

And now, between trees, I see several military helicopters, some with rotors at either end, flying low to the west... and now they return towards the heath. This is a sight I've seen only once in ten years...

...I stopped writing to look as two more helicopters flew north within a few hundred feet of where I am. One of them had two rotors like gunship and the other carried missiles. What are they doing - the military in this country usually keeps out of sight?...


Today I've been inactive - I hope it is because something's incubating (some other kind of writing) but I feel that it's not yet taking the right form. I've been feeling rather miserable for days.

More helicopters. And a light brown dog comes right up to me - I think it's a retriever, the kind of dog I like best.

...as I walked away from the heath I decided to add what I've written - it's the beginning of a theory, and also of a fiction, to do with old and new:


newold ...is the name of the unnamed something else! (See the internet and everyonepages 29 to 33.)

You can also call it oldnew, or oldknew...


'This little word is a gateway between past and future... No, not a gate but a process, or a different way of proceeding... for there are no longer any walls, just semi-permeable membranes (as they say of skin and other such surfaces)...'

Listening to that voice from another dimension I find myself widening the scope of this diary. It is not to be limited to what I write with the digital pen - I am writing this at a keyboard. And I am reacting not only to physical circumstance but also to imagined voices.

The voice that is speaking now of newold is a new one to me but I hope that it will become a familiar one as its process becomes evident.

There is no need for your presumptions, says the voice, all you need do is to write what I say and leave it to the readers to think their own thoughts. I am going to discuss the relation of past to future, and of future to past, and I hope without interruption - for this is a theory of continuity.

Not quite able to accept that command, the caretaker notes his surprise and waits for the voice to continue.

Thank you, says the voice, now listen to what I am saying...

But nothing more is heard. The integration's not ready.