23 may 2001

three caws from a crow, how to organise my days, waiting for a fiction


20.23 Three caws from a crow above and behind me. A man I know passes and says it's been a nice day. I put on my cap to keep some tiny insects from biting my scalp. I'm sitting by the hockey field. There are some rabbits to my left...

...On the way here I was considering how to organise my days so as to be able to keep up the work of not only writing this diary but of editing it and putting it on line, visiting and sampling my archive of so many years, and making something of what I find... And several other things - but these tiny insects (each perhaps a millimetre long whereas I am about 1700 times longer) are driving me off.

Meta Dachinger, artist - the name on the seat where I'm continuing this...

...and to get here I walked through what is perhaps the finest piece of woodland on the Heath - on level ground under tall beeches. Cathedral-like spaces in all directions - just as peaceful but more subtle than is any space that's been designed. And without message of course - and thank goodness.

...My plan is to devote no more than one to two hours each morning to this necessary work while each evening writing the diary. And perhaps at weekends reading each week's writings and editings (and to continue learning the computer skills that are needed for this to me new way of working - almost online).

But the little insects are stinging my brow and my hands even more so I must move on.

22.15 And now that I'm back, and editing this before it goes online, I realise that the 'to-do list' or some other part of this handheld will serve well to organise and remind me to keep to this new way of allocating my time. For many years I've been using random selections from a list of possible activities to decide what to do next - so this fixed timetable is going to be a big change for me ... if I can do it? Or am I too much of a rabbit?

I notice that I've not yet mentioned my main activity, or purpose: after reading and grasping what I can of the accumulating variety of what gets written here, to sit waiting, probably at set times, for whatever comes as I attempt to write some kind of connective fiction, or myth (or 'parts of the cyberepic' as I called it a few years ago when I first tried to write thus). Some integration of my experience in a form others can share.