31 may 2001 20:43:
in the thoughts of each one of us
Second pond, on way my back to the station after a late evening walk - after failing to complete daffodil 3 today - and perhaps I won't be able to mail it tomorrow?
After a frustrating day of trying to do two things at once I'm happy now to have reverted to one-at-a-time. And to have completed this rest from that struggle.
At last a slight smile.
I breathe in, and pause, and look about me. And I button my coat as the wind's become northerly and I can feel my chest getting cold. But it's a nice evening. Quite still.
...I sat here intending to combine my customary noting of physical circumstance with the writing of daffodil. Why not complete it here beneath trees and sky as the recently arrived goose chicks swim past - they are now reduced from five to three, or is it to two? - I can't see clearly in the fading light
... So I'm waiting now for an idea of what's appropriate to both digital diary and daffodil:
A fish jumps to catch an insect as I squash a very tiny one (about half a millimetre long) without thinking. It was nearly impossible to brush it off my hand without killing it. Is that an excuse? I have no wish to eat it.
I'd like this daffodil to be the means and the medium of connecting the elements of softopia as well as being a signal of the arrival of new ones at my website.
I think of the many people who walk here each day by the water ... and I wish that this little message to friends known and unknown becomes the path they take when and if they wish to share these thoughts. That is all - it's very simple - it's out of my control!
And now, before it gets too dark to see I pause to read what I've written ... is it nonsense?
Having read it I realise that no more is needed than to say welcome to whoever reads daffodil ... and for myself to enjoy writing it (which I am - if I may say so!)
Time to get up and walk on...
In the train, a few minutes later:
I realise that the connecting of the parts of any diverse writing (such as now exist on my website) is not a task for the one who writes it - it is simply the thought of each reader!
...and as I edit this I remember that Charles Olson wrote 'I think God is merely the act of taking thought'
(in 'Charles Olson: The Special View of History', edited and with an introduction by Ann Charters, Oyez, Berkeley 1970, pages 39-40)