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beyond a crumpled ridge above the town, a gravel-drive Shambhala of made-it and moneyed dons, merchants and the odd, lucky scribe. There are views to the spires in the valleys off this grand caldera, but no whine and grate from the river of cars on the A34, the woods here are quiet. I’m left alone to tramp the track, fore-imagining my what-might-be, those painted gates swinging open, a hand and glass outstretched, the secret rooms and glances mine to own. But I’m a veteran dreamer and these are only fond memories of what hope is, the magic trick we play on ourselves, looking away as the hand moves the cup. I know the cavalry’s not coming, the passing freighter won’t get the radio message, these gates won’t glide open by chance. But the mud and the oaks and the hours to come are all mine.

and experience is a work of imagination, turned and reviewed, all a-flicker and ungraspable. It changes even as you examine it, what seems solid is not. Walking the London park and cloud-gazing, I wonder if the greatest truth is all contained in that fleeting flash of self-forgetting and ecstasy, all other truths consequent and ancillary to it, though still infused with the same strand of stardust magic. And could this whole swirling universe be wrapped within the big-bang ecstasy flash, from the dinosaurs to the Romans, all spent in a few galactic seconds? Life is chaos and light. And then we’re walking back for coffee and I’m happy and done-wondering. It’s so simple. Just pass your time with the people you love.

from the charlatan rich, pink brick Victorian Gothic of the North Oxford estate. Gone the whispering leaves the houses and the Astons leer through, but the meadow’s rose afterglow is brighter still.

a belt of stuck stars and comets in the rush hour mirk.

comes over on the Brize Norton run, splitting the boundless winter sky with noise and its white wake. I wait with the bikes, staring up at the lofty gape and the cloud line. Skyships, starships, landships. Restless on the blue.

finds me pacing, and the tree still bare and hunter green as it stood in forest formation. December flashes by, out of my grip. And too many jobs to do before the calm, the quiet, the fragile feast.

into a map, almost feel the air rushing on your skin as your eyes sweep over the far-flung oceans, the capes and blank passages wrinkled with crevasses. After reading Verne’s tale of Fogg’s mad dash last month I found a map that gives a pastel palette to time’s arrow, a calendar planner for the age of steamships and railway track. More days ticking by, more distant and exotic the lands in my imagination. And I began crafting my own time chart, with different shades to show the thirty years it took me to reach South America, the stretches of illness and idleness, lack of funds or will, the chance meetings and diversions that have governed all my weeks and months and journeys across this flat grid Earth. All the ports never visited. And the most dazzling, lurid shades reserved for the island dots and jagged coasts I still aim to paint before I kick out.

I went riding, foraging for dinner amid the early evening throng. I’ve been reading Spengler, looking for the answers, but the world’s changing so fast the arguments are all blurred and in flux. I should read further but every book I pick up seems to describe a moment that’s already spun away into a half-remembered, stylized past. I must read – and write – faster, race to keep up. Or quit the sprint completely, give up on the terrifying nowness detail of data world, return to daydreaming and wondering and losing myself in stories and fleeting, magical glimpses of the shy sublime.

dash over the Meadow, to the call of air horns and a leaf-whirling blow. Keep running and laughing, never stop.

anonymous oak doors and mossy alleyways. I know these streets well but not the arcane spaces. I’m still at work, fashioning my grappling hooks.