online: 6 august 2009 modified: 6 august 2009 27 july 2009 summer evening
looking westward
...in a wood, looking towards the setting sun... a squirrel climbs a tree... i've just picked and eaten blackberries after cheese and rye sandwiches and tap water... glad to be back on the heath after days visiting galleries in the summer heat and attending to things indoors... no one in sight but the trees and a squirrel... and now an exhausted-looking man carrying a bag... i feel something moving on my neck... it's a black and red ladybird which falls on my knee from where i brush it onto the ground....
...after an upgrade this handheld spontaneously begins to offer space for Chinese characters, or ideograms... and now it thinks i am trying to copy-and-paste when i merely want to correct spelling... but soon i find how to avoid these offers of as-yet-unneeded assistance... and i wonder at these simple beginnings of the intelligent environment that will surely ensue... in principle i welcome it though as yet it seems more like annoying gadgetry than sensitive service or coexistence...
...the last seat at the tumulus*... which reminds me to continue my lifework... with some deliberation... but this is it... walking here and writing of whatever happens in and around this city forest... regretting nothing...
from cave dwelling to this... as if we remember it all... much of it being accidental... the prehistory of the ever new?
...when i arrived at the tumulus the air was completely still ... tall grasses were not moving even a millimetre... but now slight gusts of wind cool my skin and soon i will continue walking....
Parliament Hill:
the city is switching on its lights... a new moon (or is it an old one?)... has just become hidden by cloud... this is my first sight of her since the fortieth anniversary (last week) of the first landing**... which is still difficult to imagine when one looks at the moon directly... but what a moment... and now in the sunset... and in the presence of wind above the trees... and between us here and everywhere... is something new, as always, yes and no...
*i take the eight seats that encircle this tumulus as reminders of the decades of my fortunate life so far...
**6 august: as i edit this i remember with regret that today is the anniversary of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and then of Nagasaki...
...the only scientist to resign from the Manhattan Project which produced the first atom bombs was Joseph Rotblatt
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