online:2 Septembr 2008 modified: 14, 15 August, 2 September 2008 14 August 2008 something lovely
a change of direction
...here i am... re-reading literature by and about Geoffrey Chaucer and responding to a practical exhortation:
whatever needs to be done - just go ahead and do it!
[said by the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, USA, on BBC radio 4, 14 August 2008]
...at first came the thought that the world and its design need to be improved - but then i realised that it may be changing spontaneously as swiftly as it can (automation is happening and so is electronic living, are they not?)... so cease trying to hasten such things... and relax!
[although briefly described, this is a vast change in my thought and aspirations - a complete change of life, so i think]
...so i then set out immediately for a walk, much relieved, and inspired, and taking with me a brief biography* of Geoffrey Chaucer
[*George Kane, Chaucer, Oxford University Press, 1984]
and with the memory of a rune for this action - Rune 12 upright:
something lovely emerges from the depths
most excellent and apposite text and oracle, both selected by chance...
...i pause to eat some wholemeal bread and to drink some plain water...
...and now the air is cool and still... as i sit here beneath the oak that shades the first seat around the tumulus with its inscribed names of John Rees (my childhood friend) and Violet Jones (one of our teachers) [we lived only five houses apart...]...
...around the horizon are pink clouds in the sunset, some of them cumulus, while the sky above is pale blue beyond the oak leaves...
...i pause again to re-grasp this changed direction:
...the upcurrent beneath a large cumulus to the north-east is now intense pink as if the sky were painted by Claude Lorrain (though this painting is more blue than pink)
...now i am interrupted by a semi-intelligent black-haired Retriever who brings a long and heavy tree branch (about 1.5 metres long and about 8cm diameter) in its mouth and puts it down about two metres from where i am sitting... it's owner waits for some minutes while it keeps failing to pick it up again (at first it tries to grasp the branch at one end but eventually it re-grasps it near the middle and is able to run with the heavy object balanced on each side of its mouth)...
...are these metaphors for what i (or we) might be doing...
...as parts of the whole?...
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