online: 12 april 2015
modified: 12 april 2015
7 april 2015 an evening in spring in arcadia
...cool air... mist over distant horizons... extending upward to pale
blue and pink and bluish cloud... a classic scene of arcadian
landscape... with occasional dogs and children and their
keepers... and atmosphere of constructed peace and plenty... a utopian
suburb... a unity of urban cottages on twisty roads midst trees and
churches (no pubs, few shops, a social centre and parking spaces for
many cars)... and even an outdoor theatre in a wood... (now that i too
inhabit this arcadia no need for me to strive or struggle... to
improve... but just enjoy this more spacious prototype of much
suburbia... that i used to dislike)...
...the aim's to live in unity and flow... free to attend to fields and
skies... the city forest... and to other people... not as limitations
but as joys and marvellous...
...i could go on... though having already experienced many such walks
and picnics beneath clouds... which now turn bluish red and move behind
the trees... still bare... though surely now it's spring...
...deep pulse of distant sounds of trains and aircraft and of cars...
...describing this reminds me of recent thoughts re utopia not as fixed
destination but as liberty to change... to see and hear and feel and
think of all that (if one strives) becomes lost... unnoticed... and
invisible...
...and now it's getting dark... the lights are on... and i am glad i
came today (fleeing literary cares) to write these words... self-chosen by the
sights and sounds and memories of automatic writing... in the forest...
...returning now to long-pondered daffodil 102 (re radical design) that
calls me to rethink my lifework... or to let it go as it is... while keeping the
centre empty of fearful concerns...or conscious purposes imposed...
...now nearly dark... the sound of a duck croaking within a few metres
from where i am sitting (though we are about 50 metres from the nearest
pond)... while i get ready to return home...
...i remember that i have to be back for a food delivery in an hour or
less... so this arcadian moment ends as i hurry through the garden
suburb... (but there have been hundreds of such moments in this diary
already... and i hope there will be more)...
...when i get back i find that the delivery person is from Romania and
has studied mechanical engineering (as I did long ago)... and he tells
me he has worked on car engine design...
...i mentioned that my book Design Methods was translated into Romanian
in 1975... at which he told me how easy Romanian is to pronounce...
being nearly phonetic... but he did not reply when i said it had been
censored... at the end of chapter 5... a section against both
instrumentalism (using others as tools) and romanticism (making flexible
ideas into fixed realities)...
...'methodology should not be a fixed track to a fixed destination but a
conversation about everything that could be made to happen'
( a quite often quoted sentence... from page 73... though now i doubt
that 'made to happen'... for chance processes keep calling me to adapt
to and to enjoy... the accidental)...
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