Standing still, on the road

The evening is a muggy and mellow one so I sat out "on the stoop" for a while - I only came in because the light is fading. Birds dart down the street in a flurry of excitement, demonstrating their X-Wing Fighter acrobatics, and then the quiet returns. Reading The Road to Oxiana, immediately captivated, hungry to continue. Thrilled by a recap of Bruce Chatwins introduction. When I look up from reading, my head was still in motion, like a victim of the guilotine.

Chatwin is all about exposure, a confrontation with an oblique and elemental form of poetic experience, the staccato-fire of the traveller-narrator. Exposed to his words, drawn from his own experiences (in this instance 60’s Afganistan), my soul aloft on a stream of warm air - a perfume as potent as any opiate to be found in Persia. He captures things that fly past the shutter of the photographer, escape the mannered brushstroke of the painter, or the zealous gaze of the missionary.

First entry for a while, but I’ve got no energy for a summary of recent events. The forecast 'warm' summer weather has, at last, arrived, and arrived in a big way. Like a Martian torch of fire, it ripped its way through the city streets, all day and long into the night, for the last 4 days. I’m feeling paradically stodgy and free. I feel abreast of, and aghast at, the events (and non-events) at hand. I'm contrastingly happy with what pained me, and dejected about that which seemed more reliable just one or two months ago. I’ve not thought about contextualising this observation, but the prevailing heatwave seems more than appropriate.

The world feels larger than usual... but I’m home, happy, and relatively content with a vicarious indulgence in a third-party travelogue, and all my windows are open…