It seems to be one of those days which flicker into existence, events occurring at a distance. The hills are still there, but the colours diluted, the sounds and shapes familiar but observed rather than participated in. My cup in various stages of being emptied I watch the the morning, spent in progress which could only aspire towards the term glacial, slow, plodding too easily distracted. Setting out, a walk towards lunch, through grey streets, almost everybody carrying umbrellas, waiting for the rain. Returning to the flat under ominous clouds, sprinkles of light rain with occasional expansion into showers, sky darkening above the strengthening wind bearing a damp chill upon its breath.

The afternoon spent reading, shrouded in music, the day adrift beyond the window a filmstrip unspooling, old and grainy images, flurries of thoughts drifting through odd combinations of memory and contemplation. The avoidance of politics, mostly successful but not quite. Reading of facades wearing thin, lurking predatory natures beginning to surface once again: that sense of exceptionalism which is defined under idiocy spreading, while refuge is sought within the flimsy application of history as it never occurred.



The leaders of the crowd

They must to keep their certainty accuse
All that are different of a base intent;
Pull down established honour; hawk for news
Whatever their loose phantasy invent
And murmur it with bated breath, as though
The abounding gutter had been Helicon
Or calumny a song. How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student’s lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no Solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.

W.B. Yeats
(from Michael Robartes and the dancer, 1921)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDEhroSN_w