online: 10 april 2011 modified: 24, 25, 30 march, 6, 10 april 2011 24 march 2011 what's timely?
seven sisters ponds
...by one of seven ponds... now cleared of tall reeds and other overgrowth (so-called) as are the others...
...but (for the moment accepting the concept of overgrowth)... what in my work and life is so?... what calls for cutting down... repair... or replanting... or opening to others... in the midst of spring... and the annual cycle... or the cycle of each life... and of mine presently so full and perhaps congested... much unread... or unknown... and how can i or it be renewed, revived, or even completed (with decreasing energy?)... how, how, it's beyond me...
...a wood pigeon coos and i hear a robin nearby and an aircraft above now fading into the background sounds of motor traffic and suddenly a bumble bee approaches my left ear and then turns back and merges too with the ambient noise, or sound... and now the wood pigeon again burbles and ceases... while the waterfall of traffic sound (as john cage described it) continues at the edge of my attention while i ponder the question of trimming or gardening my part in a digital wilderness?...
...aha... the words begin to speak on their own as i cease to ask and become merely a conduit... (as thought and digital hand-writing start to flow and to suggest a direction that i didn't anticipate)...
...i look up from the writing and notice a notice tied to the branches of a tree at the edge of the water; DANGER ICE KILLS KEEP OFF which reminds me that everything is dangerous but also can be pleasant or inspiring or otherwise enhancing or enchanting in life as this is in the post iron-age change* to what's flexible and all-pervasive and open to all as was life prehistoric (perhaps)...
...now i'm remembering the duck that before i began writing took off nearly vertically from the water surface with a flurry of wings and paddle-like feet like an ornithopter-turned-helicopter but subtler and yet more violent a change than any man-made aircraft so far can encompass... (link to 'a duck
flying'** which preceded this diary as bronze age preceded iron and my dislike of iron preceded this?...
...now, having sat still for perhaps 50 minutes, i begin to hear other bird sounds: a regular double chirp of a bird i don't recognise... and the splash of a water bird descending to the water surface beyond the bushes before me...
...dusk is now evident and fingers grow cold in cloudless cold air as this part of the planet is unclouded and radiates its heat into the cosmos..
...so what's timely this moment?...
...that is not to be answered in the abstract but into and out of each detail of this process or venture...
18:15
still on this seat i pause to read back in the way that no bird or leaf or still water could contemplate... lacking altogether (we think) any record observable... or means to observe it...
...i think the answer is obvious: simply trust and continue this process... and life in itself never absent though often forgotten!...
...walking back along west-facing lanes along the east side of the valley in which lies a straight Roman road from Londinium to Mona (or London to Anglesey)... a route that is followed by subsequent travel-ways of canal and railway and motorway (and now i believe by glass-fibre-optic phone lines)... i was aware of the Romans particularly as those who ended or extended the iron age until (in the last century or so) it has turned from stone road to waterway to iron rail to greatly widened and straightened high speed road that is also carrying alongside the electronic messages and pictures and sounds that may soon put a limit to travel and turn every place into hub from which life can be lived both locally and globally and even with approach to the whole as a unity that's all-present...
...and the words flow as easily or ceaselessly as eating or drinking or breathing or speaking or, yes, even writing by everyone... with all good or all bad at the mercy of any of us... (and these words are not mere truth nor mere fiction but a multi-type record left open to be interpreted by anyone)... oh no!
* remembered from Melvyn Bragg's radio programme in our time this thursday morning on BBC radio 4 in which he and experts discussed the iron age and how it emerged from the ages of stone and then bronze...
** the piece called a duck flying which appeared 16 years before the digital dairy but anticipated its topic and form
...
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