online: 8 june 2013 modified: 8, 18 june 2013 8 june 2013 starting again
at the 39 steps
...looking at the ferns that are quickly growing taller after rain and in much warmer weather... and remembering the many things there are to recall as well as see and hear... i listen to a bird song that keeps stopping and starting... and. the sound an aircraft out of sight from the city forest... while i continue to rest on this seat that is in (perhaps tragic and joyous) memory of
'Joanie, who left in 1998,
from Jack, who arrived in the same year.'
with a sense of continuity that to me is encouraging (perhaps as Buddhism in practice) and as good a text as any for this little sermon in the woods today...
...stopping again... out of the now prevailing north east wind of this wintry summer... i try to put into writing the sight of a tiny insect on my sleeve... it is slightly larger than a flea but has narrow wings that quiver at 5 or 10 oscillations a second... and as i try to focus in a closer look it suddenly vanishes in a flea-like jump but using wings and not legs... or perhaps both...
...and now i'm sitting to write this beneath the leaves and branches of a large beech tree that are dipping down towards the topmost leaves of a nettle field that has grown here in few weeks since its mowing down to zero in the winter... that's altering our experience of the British seasons... which until recently have been kept relatively warm by the winds from the Gulf Stream... that i fear is beginning to lessen perhaps vanish... with big effects but quite slowly... for without the warm wet south-west wind the climate of north west Europe could resemble that of Newfoundland... with snow and ice the year long... for it's the same latitude as the UK as we call it... in this period when the 'nation state' is becoming part of something else...
'civil enforcement officer'
a good name for a new function... (stitched onto the epaulettes of a
parking attendant)... but
'a parking attendant is a parking attendant'
...he says when i remark on his new title... but it is also a beginning of the life beyond selfishness... or life regulated by planetary law... that could save us from collective mistakes or global tragedies... so let's stop making fun of 'political correctness'... and listen to Confucius who apparently advised us (when in social difficulty or uncertainty?) to 'rectify the names'... (and to clarify the law?)
...the phrase 'rectify the names' appears in The Analects of Confucius, Book 13, Verse 3 (James R. Ware, translated in 1980).
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