Other things

.
.
http://www.otherother.org/2010/05/travelling-and-some-finer-points/
.
.
http://www.otherother.org/2010/05/on-why-i-am-here/
.
.

There is a small section of double-yellow lines along Oxford Road, just in front of where the Mathematics building used to be, where some leaves...

There is a small section of double-yellow lines along Oxford Road, just in front of where the Mathematics building used to be, where some leaves were trapped between road and roller while the paint was being applied.

And it's beautiful.

And it's that kind of knowledge that tells me what home should feel like.

When I have guests and they ask me what there is to see in Manchester I take them there.

We will be approaching the place and I'm all 'Here it comes' and 'Get ready!' and they are looking about them for a sign, for a flashing light, for a pointing arrow, for something larger than anything.

And then I point to the ground.

I'm jumping about now, reeling off stories about how I once did a double-take while riding my bicycle. About how I stopped and got off, lifted my bike up and onto the pavement. About how I came back and turned around and knelt down with my camera. About how I walked the length of these imprints of leaves, photographing each one in turn.

I point out my favourite.

I ask what they think, if they have ever seen anything as perfect as these.

And some of them do enjoy it, although some of them look at me strangely and ask the way to the museum.

I think that's how I know who my friends are. Or who they will be. I like the kind of people who appreciate the coincidental timing of the double-yellow lines being repainted and the falling of leaves.





...

look constantly

It is too easy to begin a text with the word 'I'. It is too easy to be looking constantly and killing minutes as if they meant nothing. It is too easy to be breaking life into smaller and smaller percentages until you are left with time in its most useless form; abstract pieces that are too soon over, that are too soon replaced by the next. It is too easy to land yourself with no reason. It is too easy to forget, to distract, to obsess. It is too easy to launch yourself into that charming future, with all its promise and possibility, with all its unending size and unexplored space. It is too easy to launch yourself into a dimension in which you hold no weight. It is too easy to run with your head three paces ahead of your frail shape (it is impossible). It is too easy to live one-hundred and seventy three centimetres above the ground (we are impossible), with a face in low clouds, advancing toward the future, breaking off (like time), breaking up (like people), becoming small and useless like human bodies when they start to shrink.




...