Strange meeting

An unplanned meeting yesterday midday with Jem Finer at his Centre of the Universe project in the University Park (see here).

A good conversation for half an hour or so, touching on just about everything that is fascinating. His artist's shed a treasure of maps and icons.

Jem's next project features Captain Beefheart played at ultra-slow speed. Time and perception stretched to the limits (he knows the Long Now people).

Later in the day, I sent him contact details for Tom Goreau and Wolf Hilbertz, half jokingly suggesting he create a submerged inverted biorock ziggurat on the equator in the Maldives at the site of ancient astronomical observatories (now erased and denied by the Islamists).

But earlier, walking back from the meeting, I imagined a sculpture I might make: a small helical ziggurat in stone or clay that follows the golden section in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. From the centre at the top, a gentle stream of water.

Hmmm, the garden ornament at the centre of the universe? Well, it beats a gnome.

As I was getting back on my bike at the edge of the park, a large bee flew very close to the sensitive skin on the inner side of my lower fore-arm. I could feel the draft from its wings in the clear, calm air.

This was a good part of a new day.

I went out towards dusk and walked down by the river past Iffley Lock. A group of teenage boys hurled abuse at me ("You dick. You fucking dick...You fucking fucking dick" etc.) and started throwing stones. They were about forty yards away and were very bad shots - or at least it sounded that way as I heard the stones in the bushes behind me and the water in front. I turned round to look at them as I was in the middle of a call to my father in Canada by mobile phone. Never seen them before. I waved and walked on.