online: 16 february 2011 modified: 2, 3, 15, 16 february 2011 31 january 2011 a springlike afternoon
with prospects of traffic automation
...walked here from the hairdresser feeling tired but better groomed... and still contemplating my by now ancient thoughts about a traffic utopia that never happened... it has another chance of being understood and perhaps realised in the writing* i'm sending off today to California to be part of a book of thoughts about the car of the future...
...but just now i'm at the edge of the forest renewing myself in good circumstances... and in knowing of good people in many places...
...pausing to breathe a spontaneous deep breath of the air of north west London... and looking as ever towards Wales and the west coast of Europe... towards the ocean and gulf stream from which warmer air is (as always) expected... though its dynamic stability now seems to be changing...
...the evening sky is pink and yellow and pale blue... and simply naming these colours seems to recreate them in the actions of writing and reading...
...and as the words come through my finger to a touch screen i notice that they are not only the thoughts i came with but newer ones partly composed by these surroundings and given unity and purpose by the process of letting memories and local happenings combine in these almost spontaneous shapings of writings that i do not plan...
...clinking sounds now as someone closes the gate of a nearby public park... and sounds of unsolved city traffic problems that i've been contemplating and writing about for fifty years during which automation could have happened... and it might still...
...the ever present obstacle is the lack of shared imagination and responsibility that such a scheme could provoke and which can give it form...
...now a warm and comfortable bus comes by and stops... someone getting on before me starts to sit but changes her mind and then offers me the seat (which i gladly accept)... *'a traffic utopia that never happened' is part of a writing called the car of the future: drawn from memory that is to appear in a book called The Car in 2035, to be published in California by Metropolis Books (details when available... see earlier printed versions here)...
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