online: 28 august 2002

28 august 2002 here and now


19:50: An evening in late summer - cool wind, darkening sky, distant drum, few people about in this part of the planet, here comes a woman with two dogs - one big one small - all three walk slowly and confidently as if this is their land, which I suppose it is.

Several more people running in the dusk in different directions. An aeroplane with its landing lights on flies directly overhead. I am surrounded by tall fuchsia wild flowers that grow in many parts of the heath but I don't know what they are called. They are growing around the tumulus...

...writing this is dispelling negative thoughts of having little incentive to go on or to stay or to do more than keep alive - but writing this enlivens the moment and now I feel myself again.

Yes life is sweet (brother*) if you react to each moment and do not allow abstract thoughts to take the place of reality... and now I can hear the first calls of an owl.... I look round into the dusk beneath the trees and realise that soon it will be too dark to write.... I decide to walk on - towards the sounds of the owls...



* George Borrow, in Lavengro, J M Dent & Sons, London, (and E P Dutton, New York) 1906, page 160.

George Borrow tells Mr Jasper Petulengro that he wishes to die.

'...A Romany Chal would wish to live forever!'

'In sickness, Jasper?'

'There's the sun and the stars, brother.'

'In blindness, Jasper?'

'There's the wind on the heath brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live forever. Dosta, we'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother!'

(Also quoted on page 125 of the internet and everyone)





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© 2002 john chris jones

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