online: 1 december 2009 modified: 1 december 2009 25 november 2009 winter afternoon: thinking of india
pond 2
...bare trees against sunlit water.... cold wind from the west... all eight of this year's cygnets are still surviving here with their parent birds (often they do not survive)... few people even on Parliament Hill... and one man is flying a tractor kite, the kind that is popular here now...
...the sun is disappearing into what seems like the edge of a cloudless sky... but our knowledge that the sky has no edge overrides this most vivid and objective impression....
...already it is getting dark and the few birds i can now see on the pond look black against the still shining water surface...
...i suppose this writing is both literature and science... but both terms are misleading... for as literature it may seem clumsy or repetitive... and as science it is informed only by frail memories, not up-to-date scientific journals... but as a connective activity bringing together many things that exist in one place... and as a writing that is interesting in itself... this string of letters words and phrases (seldom sentences) may suffice... and for me it's all i can do at this time and in this place and mental circumstance... which I enjoy...
... i am writing with one icy finger of my right hand... as i hold the handheld in my left hand that is warm and gloved... the forest here is getting darker and darker... and everything is seen as silhouette... it's 16:40 and already almost night ... the cone of darkness is creeping over the earth from the east as the sun creeps equally slowly to the west... into the fleeting day...
...today i am thinking of India... specifically a design institute at Ahmedabad and the report by Charles and Ray Eames which set it going in the 1960s... and now i'm asked (as work or play) to record some words to be replayed at a conference there before they decide how to begin four more such institutes...
...so from this dark and icy situation i prepare these thoughts and words for a warmer climate, not beset as we are in northern peninsulas and islands of Europe and Asia with the hard ethic of the north and with it an idealism... which perhaps is at last to end?...
...i'm almost fully in the dark now and common sense tells me to rise and walk to indoor light and warmth in which to complete these thoughts in better circumstance...
i look up and see an aircraft (with landing light switched on) and just behind me is the half moon about to be hidden by a tree... yes i look up again and it's gone.... and i go too... towards the west... the lifelong direction of my thoughts.... except perhaps that India has been a lifelong interest also...
...a few minutes later.... in a cafe light and warm... i remember the questions of my friend Professor Ranjan who has asked me to write a curtain raiser for this conference... i decide here and now to read into a video camera these words and then to speak my thoughts in answer to his questions... hoping that this little writing will raise some curtains in our minds... the curtains that still separate us, as designers... from ourselves as users and as ordinary people... with whom in future the pleasures and priviledge of designing will i think be shared... it could be shared with everyone...
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