Leap forward

I bit into the bergamot, that cross between a lime and an orange that is yellow, and the next day the skin round my teeth marks had turned orange. Decidedly strange. Had only ever heard of it before in tea.

The word has a ring of “Bergman” to it, which is German for miner. My mother was a “krankenschwester”.

Now, I'm not an anchorite.

Nor am I shipwrecked – naufragée (je suis navrée…)
Stranded - marooned (macaroon) seranora – serendipity.

mangrove (twas brillig)
mongoose
corrigected.

The crocuses have flowered yellow and spring is on its way and so am I. I walked down to the village feeling extremely light-hearted and fell heavily on the pavement. Pride before a fall.

I broke off a dead geranium stem and was surprised at the distinctive smell.
Poetry is a kind of web of mnemonic devices… I see a dead geranium. The distinctive smell tells me it’s a geranium. This reminds me of TS Eliot’s dead geranium and from there to the rest of Eliot’s poetry –

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

So there. So here. As I am about to write “So what” I hear the music … And I’m surrounded.



I am surrounded by a web of poetry, music, literature. Other people have created harmony, beauty and new combinations of signifiers… And I am grateful for that. There is something reassuring in depth.

Today is February 28th. Tomorrow will be March 1st. What about the people who should have had a birthday on February 29th? There is a slight problem with the seamlessness of our reality. The world is not 100% round. Our systems do not 100% work. We live in an approximation that we mistake for an absolute.