December 29th 2009

    There can be few experiences less memorable than a parade of photographs from someone else.  "This is me on a beach in Corfu."   "This is me enjoying a sandwich by the 'Elephants Have Right Of way' sign."   "This is me beside the Great Pyramid at Giza."  "This is me riding a camel at Hawksbay."

     "Where is Hawksbay?"  you ask in that polite way.   "A little west of Karachi,"  I reply,  and on I'll go until eyes glaze and yawning is un-drowned.   So perhaps wrong to become preoccupied with  the morning habits of a young Barred Owl.   Wrong to reiterate his presence with constant and blurred images of him flying to or sitting in the Summer Tanager's dying Sycamore tree.

    And serenade to death is hardly a joyous preoccupation for the temporal being I believe I am.  Nor can my own obscure interpretation of death's consequences upon the social, inspire much more than an "uh!"    But I persist.  I see the Barred owl's head as something I would like to pat.   I imagine it would be soft.   I see him responding with a sort of purr.   And sometimes I contemplate death as Foucault  may have done in his search for insight into why we are.  

    No accident that Summer Tanager's are post-structural in their conversation.  No accident to watch Crows chase our young Barred Owl from  the Summer Tanager's tree.  No accident to pattern thoughts amongst these events, then give these thoughts a quality of monotone that falls so far short of entertainment for others.

    Then when I ask why, the answer is only sometimes obscured by the objects that lie beyond 'creative is'.   Which absolutely gives me a title to those adjectives that resonant amongst glazed eyes and un-drowned yawns.   Yet how truly dull we would become in a world without others.  How dreadful a place it would be.

     So best for me to be polite.  Try hard to understand the quality of - "This is me throwing stones at an adulterer."   "This is me in my suicide vest."  "This is me piloting Enola Gay."   "This is me at Pirbright Barracks before I lost my legs."

tim candler

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