online: 3 november 2009 modified: 20 october, 3 november 2009 20 october 2009 in the absence of someone
Welshpool/London
...on a long distance bus... i am able to write on this touch screen despite vibration that inhibits handwriting... (a small but universal interaction of the dynamics of long distance roads, of buses, and of a handheld computers)...
...passing the radio transmitting towers at Rugby... a cluster of about 20, some of which have been broadcasting the BBC's output since the 1920s or 30s... gradually such sights as antennae, power transmission lines and high speed roadways are becoming as much part of the landscape as fields and hedges and trees... not much of it is natural...we just passed under power lines that carry current of several hundred thousand volts... at one time there were safety cables at road crossings in case the live cables were to fall on the road vehicles but experience showed this danger to be slight and the protective cables are gone... to note and consider such elementary phenomena and public learnings such as these is i think valuable (obvious as it may seem) for collective awareness of progress, or it's reverse, is civilisation or conscious evolution in action, over the decades and new centuries...
...the reason for my journey was the death of John Platt, a childhood friend who married my sister... and friend or acquaintance of many people (several hundred attended a service of thanksgiving for his life)... we are sorrowful after his physical departure but his personality or presence is publicly evident in our perhaps inadequate reactions to death... and the connections and affections it reveals...
...and now we are passing the new satellite city of Milton Keynes the centre of the Open University from which i resigned in middle age after finding that my ideas could not be realised even in a so apparently new kind of organisation... and now, towards the end of my life, i am seeking in this and other writings to bridge this gap between me and others, at least as a fiction...
...12 transmission cables cross the road at this point as we approach London... and dozens more power cables run alongside the road... and in the distance there is a single tv transmission tower standing perfectly vertical, and incredibly slender for its height...
...more power lines pass overhead as i think of the sudden absence of John my brother-in-law... and of his interest in the sea (at one time we jointly owned a small sailing boat)... and in military history... and in music... and in good works... and i wonder at the tremendous affection that became evident yesterday at the church service...
all these. things are connected, i am sure, but i doubt if we can understand them as the single reality they surely comprise....
...nearly in London now... the city forest of my recent days, the source of these writings.. things accelerate now we are pass through the suburbs... and as we share in the rush towards the concrete jungle and the rougher life that attracts some of us and repels others...
...as we slow down to join the city traffic i listen to an Indian gentleman who is whistling very quietly inside the bus...
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