online: 25 october 2015
modified: 25 october 2015

25 october 2015 flying free at Whitestone Pond


sunny autumn day... sitting beside a stone-rimmed pond... in gentle breeze... a single bird (perhaps a tern) is floating on the slightly rippled water surface...

...when i look up i see it's flying again... and patrolling the pond at a fixed height... and now it hovers a little before it plunges onto the surface... and dives and resurfaces with something in its mouth... then it flies again and lands on the paving a few metres from where i am sitting... then it swallows whatever was swelling its neck... and flies away...

...the air's now still and the water surface smooth... no sign of the tern... a magpie flies low over the water and perches on the gently inclined granite rim that encircles Whitestone Pond... to me this turns it into a stone and water sculpture... with reeds and birds...

...and now the magpie has flown away...

...the pond is encircled by cars... at present stationary... the unanswered question of where and why they come and go together... (the traffic of the world) ... this day and every day... with or without the tern... and mostly without protest at predictable delay... for which we cannot see the reason... though it is our own presence... that causes traffic jams...

...and then... though i see the cybernetic folly of adding myself to a traffic jam... i cross the unmoving stream... and get into a stationary bus... that will take me somewhere else... but without the cybernetic joy of autonomous traffic automation... (or indeed of flying free as is the tern... or any bird or human animal if free of centralised control)






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