online: 7 june 2013 modified: 6, ?, 24 june 2013 6 june 2013 clear sky and cool wind
at the highest seat and what next
...perfectly clear sky (is that the source of belief that there can be perfection?)... and cool wind (yet again from the north east) that is still failing to make this weather resemble summer... or even spring as we knew it... (is this the first time i've admitted that even seasons can change... and particularly the prevailing wind?)...
...and the presence of this city... stretching out into the distance and surrounding this heathland-turning-into-forest... a gift of new nature... that our ancestors made without plan or intention but through improvisations of things natural (such as bricks made out of heated clay and roofs of slate cut from the oldest of mountains and all the natural stuff that goes to make an electric railway or underground)... i can see the slates as i write (looking downwards at city-village rooftops) (and probably billions of bricks and also masses of glass and steel and concrete that are supporting and enclosing the interiors of cityspace in which many of us spend most of our existence... with windows or curtain walls admitting natural light while electric light is already normal indoors for most of the 24 hours...
...yes to me it's quite wonderful... though often inadequately designed... not capable yet of responding to the unperceived needs and costs and possibilities of everyone alive... yes that is the challenge and what a difference it could make!
...yes i keep writing these little sermons of things natural and artificial not i hope as opposing entities but as complementary ways of thinking that can combine to remake life anew...
...and that this talkativeness in public is perhaps an inheritance from my father a teacher and his father a preacher... all three of of us being known for public speaking... and all three of us i think aware that reality can change according to how it's described... whether in writing or in speech... but in public yes of course... to us all as people not as experts...
...it's quite cool here in the shadows of the tall pine trees around me but an aircraft above me is turning in the sunshine of the stratosphere while the familiar clouds are totally absent... a noisy bird of some kind is loudly cawing in four repetitions of the same note about every ten seconds... while the traffic behind me is barely loud enough to notice...
...looking back at these words responding to whatever takes my attention i rejoice in the variety that comes of life as it is as nature expanding through artifice... (or nature/art ?)
...for the next part of this walk i used the second hand of a watch to determine direction and it selected 26 minutes from the angle of the sun at zero... this has made me walk back on the exact path i came by so i'm enjoying the surprise of a path i know well from one direction but not at all from the other... but after a while mild sciatic pain returns so i try out the remedy of sitting on a camp stool in amongst some tall trees and low bushes... this enforced stop in a place i'd never normally stop at makes me wonder what it's like to be fixed to the ground like a tree...
...my first impression is that it's quite nice to be rooted to one spot... as the rest of life becomes a mystery while one's locality becomes familiar and very well known... but that could well be said also of having chosen house and job... one gets perhaps over-familiar with one's home and job while knowing little of the whole... and i guess the kind of sameness we adapt to in domestic life (or industrial) is much duller than is a fragment of a forest which as a tree one is much more fully in touch with all of it... a strange experiment perhaps but i like to think it's quite profound!
note:
a computer fault persists: it takes the form of deleting say two to five words and substituting others that come perhaps from a hidden 'paste'... does anyone else know of this happening in iCal (an application of the iPod touch)?
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