Like Moses’s bush,
A fire that burns
Consuming not.

Self-sustaining energy
Inextinguishable flame.*

Sunday. During an interval between the welcome rainfalls, I ran to Llanbadarn Church. There, the plant life framing the gravestones breathed once again; it’s green-hued saturations had broken through the tinder grass, parched like dried tobacco:

There, I gave thanks for prayers returned. There, old questions were posed once again, in whispered words. Answers, realisations, and convictions come far more slowly than they ever did, these days. They’re given, if at all, only when I’ve been readied to receive. The timing is all, sometimes.

Monday. I returned to the opening section of the new composition, armed with the samples that had been generated on Saturday. I’ve still no sense of either how these parts will relate or, therefore, of the whole. This is often the state of affairs at the outset of a piece. I insert and remove, reinsert and remove, insert and move, and move and remove, until a vague sense of something begins to develop. What’s certain is that a resolution will emerge, so long as I keep working at it. Art, in this sense, can be more hopeful than life. We may find ourselves in circumstances wherein there’s little room for manoeuvre. Our options may be either to remove ourselves from the situation or adapt to it.

In the evening, I drew together the items that I’d need for my three-day ‘adventure’ with my elder son.

*For Amy Seed