What really counts

It matters little where you were born, and to whom, and how you were educated. What really counts is your awareness of being aware. Consciousness, metaconsciousness, observation; sensitivity to the sights and sounds and smells around you. Absorbing the qualia of existence. Consciously being. And being curious. Needing to know why there's something rather than nothing; what is the purpose of existence; where it's all heading – and why. The Great Unfolding that you and I are a part of. 

Live – observe – learn – seek... and testify.

Read broadly and discuss; adapt and adopt, find your own path, neither follow nor seek to lead but walk alongside your fellows, sharing observations, experience, insights and moments of awareness.

Memory, familiarity and preference – clues to consciousness before. Before this time. Can you recall the experience of emerging from the oceans onto a sunny beach? Lobefins, trilobites, dry land with giant horsetail ferns and the sky filled with dragonflies with three-foot wingspans. Walking on all fours. Eventually learning to walk upright and understanding the advantage that conferred in the Savannah. Biological evolution – its purpose, its teleology – lies in spiritual evolution, as our souls (or consciousnesses) connect ethereally with the flow of the Universe. Life after life after life.

What about the ego? Does that count, or is consciousness all? One can't dismiss the ego. If I am to be honest, my ego also plays a part in my blogging. I care about who reads my posts, and what they think of it. I'd be dishonest if I were to say that my ego has no part in my creativity.

********

Below: upon my way I came across tracks of wild boar – several individuals. I followed the tracks along the sandy farm track until they disappeared – through this gap in the chain-link fence. Evidently a long-established route for local wildlife (I daresay it's also used by hares too). But should the farmer patch up the fence, what will the boars do then? Burrow under and enlarge the hole through frequency and numbers?

Determination. Life will find a way. DNA.

This time four years ago:
Pfizered for the second time
[I didn't have a third jab. Would it have spared me from Covid, which I caught two and half years later? Or would I have had a more mild form of it – it wasn't that bad anyway, neither severe nor acute nor respiratory in nature – just long and tiresome.]

This time six years ago:
Another railway bridge over Puławska is replaced

This time 11 years ago:
Thoughts about life occasioned by the birth of kittens

This time 13 years ago:
Waiting for the footbridge on Puławska

This time 14 years ago:
Lost in the wonder of it all

This time 15 years ago:
Bicycle review

This time 16 years ago:
A Celebration of the Garden

Campaign for Real Motoring

Since Moni moved to Prague, I've been looking after her Nissan Micra. Built in 2005, its first owner was the mother of a classmate from Moni's school, from whom she bought it in 2020. Living in Warsaw, Moni didn't put many miles on the clock, and since leaving it with me in December 2023, the car is used minimally. One round trip a week to Lidl in Warka, about 40km. As of this morning, 143,106 kilometres on the clock (88,921 miles), of which I did about 3,200 km over the past 12 months. This means I need to fill the car up at the petrol station four or five times a year, once every 750 km.

Electric front windows (rear windows are hand-wound) is the only concession to modern motoring to be found in the car. No air-con, manual gear change, old-school radio. Ah! It does have keyless locking (what happens when the battery expires? Then you prise off the cover of the door handle, and put the key in the lock...)

My social-media feeds bombard me with ads for new cars. But I will not buy a new car. Now, let's consider what would happen if eight billion people were to suddenly say that 1.5 billion cars is enough for our planet and would stop buying new cars. If Europeans were to say that 260 million cars is more than enough for the European Union (of 450 million people). There'd be enough cars to keep us all motoring for a long, long time. Those existing cars could keep going for decades (just look at Cuba). Their value would go up as supplies of new cars begin to run dry. Scrapyards would empty as parts get cannibalised to keep existing cars roadworthy. Job losses in the factories would be replaced by new jobs in remanufacturing.

I don't need a car that's a stuffed full of electronics, with touchscreens, maps and other gizmos that beep. I need a speedometer, odometer/trip meter, petrol gauge and indicator lights. Even a rev counter is optional. Mirrors and seats – manually adjustable. Manual gear change (or course). A simple, basic car with an emphasis on sustainability – extreme long life, modular design so elements that wear out can be easily swapped.

The Micra passed its MOT last summer but with a note of caution that rust is beginning to take hold of the undersides; so 2,000zł-worth of welding had that sorted out. I'd rather keep piling money into an old car than buy a new one. 

Car aesthetics are immensely important to me. The way cars look influence the visual appeal of the built landscape. They are as important as architecture. But a question for myself: do I simply like old cars because they remind me of my childhood? Or was car design intrinsically better in the 1960s than it is today? Safety is important; how much of today's automotive aesthetic is the result ot safety considerations (crash-proof cages, bonnets shaped to minimise injuries to pedestrians etc) and how much is that 'creased-tin' look that car makers consider to be in vogue?

This is what I like. On my way from Kraków Główny yesterday to the Schindler's Factory museum, I passed a superb collection of historic Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the shopping mall by the station. These included replicas of the first Benz motorcycle and car, pre-WW1 Benzes, interwar cars (including the only small, rear-engined Mercedes-Benz, and postwar classics. Don't know whether my favourite was the 'gullwing' 300SL or the 'pagoda' 230 SL (below). Could I see myself owning one and driving to Warka to do the weekly shopping? "Jeez, what a waste of machinery!"

I'm not a mechanic; can't find my way around a screwdriver; under my ownership, entropy would take hold; things would fail, bits would break – and rust never sleeps. I don't dream of owning a classic car, but I do waste an inordinate amount of time ogling CarandClassic.com looking at them and simply imagining what it would be like to own one. It's the same with toy cars. Corgi, Dinky and Matchbox – from my childhood – remembering the qualia of playing with them, opening their little doors, tipping forward the little seats... But while I get the Corgi Club newsletter and read excitedly about the new releases of 1960s toys, complete with replica boxes, perfectly made, I know that actually getting one would disappoint and would not bring back those exact qualia memories. I can conjure them up in my mind better. Same with a classic car. I can smell the interior of a classic British car of the 1950s and 1960s. I can perfectly picture the engine bay under the bonnet, the exact shade of green of a BMC cylinder head, the air filter in black (with rust colouration), and hear the sound of a Morris Minor changing down from third gear to second.

And at the wheel of the Nissan Micra, I can be driving anything I imagine. Sedately. Taking it easy for all the sinners on the roads. Like the chap in the black SUV who overtook me at 90+ km/h in a 50km/h zone with double white lines in the middle of the road today. Below: my 1932 Deuce Coupe, my 1949 Dodge Power Wagon, my 1953 Chevrolet Thriftmaster 1⁄2-ton truck, my 1956 Oldsmobile 88. As I drive from Chynów to Warka through Wygodne, Michalczew and Gośniewice. Orchards, crossroads, warehouses, electricity cables stretched above the road, the two-lane blacktop ahead of me, it's all in the mind.

The automotive industry has lost its way. A good time to turn from making ego-boxes for the insecure to building armoured fighting vehicles to boost Europe's defences in an age of Putin and Trump.

This time last year:
Gdynia

This time two years ago:
Covid is over; what did we learn?
[Covid finally caught up with me seven months later]

This time three years ago:

How does a 'better tomorrow' look?

This time four years ago:
Blossom time in Jakubowizna

This time five years ago:

Apple-blossom time in Jakubowizna

This time six years ago:
Busy doing nothin'

This time 11 years ago:
Springtime pictorial

This time 12 years ago:
Kitten time!

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw-Centrum to Jeziorki by train with super-wide lens

This time 14 years ago:
Loose Lips Sink Ships - part II

This time 15 years ago:
Jeziorki in the infra red 
[Photos by the late Rysiek Szydło]

This time 16 years ago:
Some rain, at last!

Generalists and specialists in an age of attention deficit

It's getting harder and harder for us humans to concentrate for any length of time. The number of distractions surrounding us grows at an exponential pace. Attention is the new oil – businesses want to capture and monetise your attention. While scrolling through cat videos is a pleasant enough way to pass the time, is it making the most of our human potential? Are we doomed to graze on digitised mush, rather than to achieve mastery of a given specialisation?

If I have mastered one thing, it's writing and editing in the English language to a competent degree. Something that large language model AI is mastering very quickly. But I cannot mend clothes, fix a broken drainpipe, attach a display cabinet to a wall or dig a fence post. And it's too late to learn.

We are bombarded by stimuli. My email inboxes have multiple items jostling for my immediate attention. 'Read this!' 'Click here!' 'This is important!' 'Hey! There's someone on the internet who's wrong! He needs correcting! "the Ford Cortina was originally the Ford Consul Cortina before the 1964 facelift that saw a full-width grille replacing separate elliptical sidelights!" And here's my generalist's problem. My knowledge is broad and superficial rather than deep and practical. My only real skill is knowing lots of rules about grammar and punctuation what have you. Not particularly valuable in a survivalist scenario.

How long can I focus for? How long before I click on the Facebook icon? What can I do to increase the time dedicated to a single task?

My to-do list is the cornerstone of my day. Writing it all down. Prioritising stuff. Whittling down that which needs to be done from that which it would be nice to do. (Is cleaning really that important in the great scheme of things? Number one of the seven things to do today, it's the only one without a tick beside it. Cleaning can wait.) Three business-related calls, one potential member, emails that need writing, an article to edit, a small local shopping trip folded into my walk...

Tomorrow I set off to Kraków, to deliver my mother's wartime suitcase and collection of exercise books from school (SMO, Palestine, 1942-45). One thing amazes me about them is the total focus. No graffiti, no doodles, no jokes in the margins (i.e. entirely unlike my school exercise books). Heads-down no-nonsense studying. Intense concentration. Diligence. She was a long way from home, with horrors behind her and nothing but uncertainty ahead. What to do? Just get on with it. Study hard. Commit stuff to memory if it can't be explained and understood. 

Did it come in handy? If anything, the mindset and the work ethic did. Ending up in postwar Britain with no money, no family wealth to fall back on and precious little English, she did the right thing – learnt a specialised skill (comptometer operator) and worked at that until she retired. Not an interesting or glamorous job, but it was a skill that few people had. Quickly and accurately entering large columns of figures (pounds, shillings and pence) into a mechanical calculator and totting up the revenues of the businesses she worked for. Early on in her career, before her ten-year maternity break, she was earning more than my father as a junior civil engineer. Both parents established themselves materially as specialists, with a skill that was hard to acquire and few possessed. 

My father's speciality was soil mechanics. His job was to calculate the structural loads of buildings, bridges and embankments on the ground on which they stood. The responsibility for getting it right was huge (One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, the UK's tallest skyscraper from 1991 to 2012, stands on the foundations, 222 piles, driven 23m into the riverbed, that he had designed).

My parents wanted me to go into sciences or engineering. My O-levels (physics, chemistry and biology) were intended to set me in that direction. But I chose another path; so for A-levels, I did English, French and history, going to university to become an arch-generalist (Comparative American Studies, soft stuff), though topped off with a postgrad diploma in journalism (at last a trade, a skill).

Today's world, is so full of bright, noisy, distracting things, all jostling for young people's attention as they decide what they want to do with their lives, what they want to study, and once studying, distracting them further. Scroll on down, young fellows, scroll on down until you reach the very last video on TikTok.

Inherited wealth will allow more and more young people to choose what paths they want to follow, rather than chase the money doing hard things. With AI about to usher in an age of leisure, how many will follow the specialist's path, and how many will stay a generalist?

This time two years ago:
AI, metacognition and artificial consciousness
(Two years on, the jury is still out. I watched Joscha Bach on IAI last night stating absolutely that artificial consciousness is around the corner, because consciousness is computational, while Nobel Prize winner Sir Roger Penrose is equally sure that consciousness is not computational. I ask Gemini AI this question and the state-of-the-art reply, 8 May 2025 is: "There isn't a definitive scientific consensus yet, but there are compelling arguments on both sides".)

This time nine years ago:
Baletowa Blues

This time 11 years ago:
Two rainbows

This time 12 years ago:
Dandelions in bloom

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw's city centre - a deli-free zone

This time 14 years ago:
Patching up the holes

This time 16 years ago:
In search of the sublime aesthetic

This time 18 years ago:
Flying in from the Faroes

A month on from my heart attack

 A real milestone passed – was it that big a step? Am I well or not well? I feel OK... Schrodinger's health – I continue to be simultaneously healthy and unhealthy until a doctor peeks inside and collapses the wave function into one or the other. But what if it's neither black nor white but somewhere along a continuum?

A threshold has been crossed; life will never be the same. I had always considered myself a healthy individual until a month ago; as of now, I can no longer do that.

I'm taking the following medication, something I've never, ever, done before in my life; never taken more than the occasional aspirin for a hangover. So that's a clear before/after step. It's a new discipline; I have added it into my regular exercise/diet monitoring, with a new sheet attached to my Excel file.

The pharmacological barrage looks like this.

First thing in the morning:

• IPP 20mg: reduces the amount of stomach acids produced; to be taken on an empty stomach* before the onslaught of the pills that go with breakfast...

With breakfast:

• Acard 75mg: essentially aspirin, an over-the-counter low-dose form of aspirin to thin the blood. A side effect I've noticed is that scratches that bleed release slightly more blood.
• Efient 10mg: taken together with aspirin to reduce the risk of clot formation in the arteries, prescribed after insertion of stents. 
• Beto 50 ZK: a beta-blocker which leads to a decrease in heart rate, the strength of heart-muscle contraction and blood pressure.
• Forxiga 10mg: a sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor which works in the kidneys to prevent the reabsorption of glucose into the blood, removing excess glucose from the body through urine, lowering blood sugar levels. Intended to decrease risk of death due to cardiovascular problems or kidney failure.

Around lunchtime:

• Inspra 25mg: One of two drugs to reduce blood pressure. Works by by blocking the effects of the hormone aldosterone, which can help lower blood pressure and reduce strain on the heart.

In the evening:

• Roswera 40mg: a statin aimed at lowering high levels of LDL ('bad') cholesterol, total cholesterol and triglycerides, and to increase HDL ('good') cholesterol, thus reducing risk of heart attack and stroke. The blood test in hospital showed my LDL cholesterol was 151 mg/dl, when the level for a person at risk of heart attack should aim for below 55 mg/dl. Now, that's a target for me to reach!
• Tritace 5mg: another drug to lower blood pressure; intended to manage symptoms of heart failure when the heart is not pumping effectively, reducing risk of heart attack or stroke. It improves survival rates in people who have had a heart attack and have signs of heart failure. The active ingredient is ramipril, an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor. (My mother took ramipril daily from her first heart attack in August 1986 up to her death in November 2015).

I presume that prescribing this battery of pills is standard operating procedure for a patient (I never considered myself one of those before!) following a heart attack. To what extent has this been customised to my unique biology, or is the prescription the same in all cases?

I familiarised myself about this octet of drugs I'm taking (Google Gemini AI is excellent for this type of question – no danger of it making shit up, just a snappy summary of what's important). Side effects? Other than blood taking minimally longer to clot on a cut or scratch – nothing that I've detected for now.

Am I tethered to all this stuff for life? We shall see – I have an appointment with a cardiologist within the next fortnight. My first question to them will be: do I have to keep taking all of these? Can I cut the dose of some or all of them, depending on indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and general wellbeing? Can I alter the prognosis through exercise and diet – and the power of positive thinking?

Exercises: I am still walking my 12,200+ paces a day. I try not to stray too far from home in case of emergency; two short laps rather than one long one typically. I have dropped pull-ups and push-ups; these do create a strain on the heart. Plank, back extensions, sit-ups and squats I continue with; weights now focus on maintaining flexibility in my spine rather than on the rotator cuffs; I intend to trade down to smaller weights (3kg rather than 5kg).

Diet: I have stopped adding salt to my food, either when cooking or from the salt cellar. I am limiting my cheese intake, going for lower-fat cheeses such as cottage cheese or Feta, rather than those high in saturated fats (the ones I like best, such as Cheddar and Parmesan). Out goes Chorizo (sadly). To be enjoyed once in a while, rather than an omnipresent staple in my shopping basket and fridge. Alcohol intake has been nicely under control for some years now (below the NHS safe limit since 2021)

No longer can I fill in a form or answer a questionnaire and say with a clear conscience that I'm not taking any medication. My medical history until a month ago was exemplary. Never had any health issues before. And now this... Will I be able to get travel insurance?

Psychologically, I have crossed a threshold, from carefree middle age (though one in which I did look after myself) to what can only now be described as early old age. Now I must really look after myself!

The most important thing is a) not to feel sorry for oneself (which I don't) and b) get on with it. But c) don't go at it too hard. 

* 'on an empty stomach' – six syllables, 'na czczo' – two syllables; a rare instance where Polish beats English in terms of the whole brevity thing

This time three years ago:
Park+Ride for Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
Decimalisation and determination

This time seven years ago:
God, an Englishman, orders his Eden thus:

This time ten years ago:
I buy a Nikon Coolpix A

This time 11 years ago:
More about the Ladder of Authority

This time 12 years ago:
By bike, south of Warsaw

This time 14 years ago:
Functionalist architecture in Warsaw

This time 15 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'to bully'?

This time 16 years ago:
Making plans

This time 17 years ago:
The setting sun stirs my soul

This time 18 years ago:
Rain ends the drought

In town and around

Below: tram stop outside Rondo ONZ 1 tower. Modern public transport serving modern offices. A safe, clean, modern, reasonably priced city. Though peeking into an estate agent's window, I'm shocked at what's happened to house prices over the past ten years. From 2002 to 2014, hardly any movement, then a London-style explosion.

Below: Rondo ONZ 1 tower from across the road. All this was brand new not so very long ago; today the centre of gravity of Warsaw's business district is shifting westward towards Wola.

Below: one of my favourite thoroughfares in Warsaw, just around the corner from my office, ul. Świętokrzyska. Across the road from the Palace of Culture. And here's one my favourite shops in Warsaw, Voltarex, a shop selling high-end kitchen equipment. I pop in to buy a stainless-steel vegetable steamer insert for my pan; from now on, steamed broccoli, steamed asparagus, steamed runner beans, healthier and tastier than boiled veg. It's the end of April, and the restaurants have their pavement tables out, creating a wonderfully Mediterranean atmosphere. The long weekend is just beginning...

Below: ulica Grzybowska as it intersects aleja Jana Pawła II, shortly after sunset. The old 1990s Atrium International plaza has been demolished; the crane stands where the 34-story Upper One building will shortly emerge. My father spent his earliest years around here; on his last visit to Warsaw in 2019, he was delighted by how modern Warsaw has emerged from the rubble of Nazi occupation.

Warsaw might have moved forward dramatically, but here and there are signs of past ways of thinking. This one, for example, by a block of flats off Grzybowska, reeking linguistically of Tsarist-communist bureaucratic formalism. "Forbids one from leaving uncleanlinesses by the chute, key to the abovementioned space finds itself in the porter's kiosk". Note use of the agentless passive.

Below: back home in Jakubowizna, flags are out for 3 May, Poland's national day, remembering the world's second (after the USA) and Europe's first written constitution (1791).

Below: shimmering in a heat haze, Warsaw's skyline as seen from ul. Kinetyczna ('Kinetic Street'), on the south side of Warsaw airport.

Below: out by Warsaw Okęcie airport –a US Army Beechcraft C-12F Huron shortly after take off. (This is the basic transport aircraft, rather than the RC-12 Guardrail signals intelligence platform, which I see from time to time on FlightRadar24.com flying around the Baltic.)

Below: a Gulfstream G600 business jet belonging to the Bank of Utah (!) taking off from Okęcie.

Below: SP-LIM, a LOT Polish Airlines Embraer EJ170 in retro livery, passing the radio tower at the airport's edge....

...and this time in focus... 'Flying you since 1929'. 

This time three years ago:
Return to the Konstancin-Jeziorna sidings

This time six years ago:
A review of the second part of Hillier's Betjeman biog.

This time seven years ago:
New roads and rails

This time eight years ago:
The Gold Train shoot - lessons learned

This time 11 years ago:
Digbeth, Birmingham 5

This time 12 years ago:
Still months away from the opening of the S2/S79 

This time 13 years ago: 
Looking at progress along the S79  

This time 14 years ago:
Snow on 3 May

This time 15 years ago:
Two Polands

This time 16 years ago:
A delightful weekend in the country

This time 17 years ago:
The dismantling of the Rampa

This time 16 years ago:
Flag day

A May Day reverie

I knew what I wanted to do as soon as I'd finished breakfast – take myself out to the edge of the forest by Dąbrowa Duża, and chill. How to get there? On foot. Walking – the only way to get about locally.  I am an observing sentience, moving myself across the face of the earth.  The day – perfect. And feldalkohol; I'd take two 0.33l bottles of Pilsner Urquell, suitably chilled, in my rucksack. In a mere 40 minutes, I was there. Last time I was here was in late November, when early snow covered the ground. 

Birdsong, dogs barking in the distance, and jet airliners overhead. Across the fields, three or four houses, sheds, people getting on with their gardening. 

Before sitting down, I check the ground for ants. They seem to be everywhere. I find one tree with fewer ants than most, under which I place myself, tucking the bottoms of my trouser legs into my socks – this does the trick. Along the margin of between the forest and the field, a narrow strip covered with pine cones and dead needles. A young deer scampers off.

I crack the bottle top off the first beer. The taste brings back memories; hoppy and sharp, but only 4.4%. I find myself drifting off into a reverie, the flavour of this morning's dream returning. Butterflies, pale green, chase each other above the young wheat. The chirping of crickets.

Almost imperceptibly, a milky film of cloud beings to move across the sky, sliding in from north-west to south-east. A distant vapour trail from an airliner passes overhead. From Italy to Estonia.

Noisier jets to the west, inbound to land at Warsaw Okęcie airport. Motorcycles – unmistakably V-twin engines – good luck with those on sandy dirt-tracks! I am getting hungry. It's been a while such lunch, a good one (roast duck, potatoes, leek and tomatoes); two small beers in my rucksack but no snacks with me. A leaf flutters down to the ground, solitary and golden, it has clung on the oak since last autumn. Birds now, but no song – common woodpigeons (Columba palumbus) coo while pheasants trumpet. And that small speck in the sky; is that an insect hovering over the wheatfield, or is it a more distant kestrel hovering over the forest?

{{ A maypole in Merrie England }}

Across the field a man returns to his green shed with an empty watering can. I guess he is quarter of a kilometre away. The milky clouds have evaporated as the shadows swing round and begin to lengthen.

The beers have been supped back; the reverie has passed. Ants, pants, and a need to dance. Below: look at the image closely; I can see at least 15 red wood ants (Formica rufa). They were not here when I sat down!

Time to move on. "Where's he at?" "Sittin' over there". Time to go, take my empties; "take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints." I walk back through Dąbrowa Duża and through the village of Jakubowizna. The observing consciousness continues to move on across the face of the earth.

This time last year:
Prague, Central Europe

This time two years ago:
Under azure, Jakubowizna

This time three years ago: 
Łady roadworks

This time four years:
S7 extension works

This time five years ago:

Back to the działka after eight weeks locked down

This time six years ago:

Vol 2. of Bevis's Betjeman biography

This time seven years ago:
New roads and rails

This time eight years ago:
The Gold Train shoot - lessons learned

This time nine years ago:
The Network vs The Hierarchy in politics

This time ten years ago:
45 years under one roof

This time 11 years ago:
Digbeth, Birmingham 5

This time 12 years ago:
Still months away from the opening of the S2/S79 

This time 13 years ago: 
Looking at progress along the S79  

This time 15 years ago:
Two Polands

This time 16 years ago:
A delightful weekend in the country

This time 17 years ago:
The dismantling of the Rampa

This time 18 years ago:
Flag day

The Thought Inside: get it out!

Expressing oneself is part of our human condition. We live, we feel, we experience, we put two and two together. We observe, we question, we notice, we think; the details fall into place. It clicks. Reality takes on an ever-sharper focus as we gain deeper and deeper insights. What's the meaning of existence? It's taking shape! I'd want to share an idea with others; that thought inside, getting it out is vital! Get it out! Say it! Write it! Sing it! Play it! Paint it! Sculpt it! Express it! Having your own voice, one of eight billion voices around today, one of the 117 billion Homo sapiens that have ever existed, is what it is to be human.

So what's stopping you? A great many factors... 

Most often – memory; lost in the tumult of day-to-day concerns, that Great Thought often gets crowded out by more mundane ones, trampled on, forgotten. When you get it (or when it gets you!) – don't lose it. Notice it; savour it; roll it around your mind – and then, most importantly, capture it. In writing in your notebook, or digitally with your phone's voice-recorder app. Below: getting it down – so important. Prompted to Imagen 3.0

But another significant 'what's stopping you' is doubt; "what for?" "For whom?" "Why?" "Is this thought at all useful to anyone else?" "Is it practical?" "Is it applicable to one and all, or only to myself?" "Aren't there too many thoughts out there already?" "It's probably already been thought before by someone before me, and written in some book I've not read." And fear – fear of mockery – or even worse, fear that your precious thought will just be ignored, overlooked. You may think the thought, once out, has the power to go viral. No – that's not the point.  And once those doubts and fears dilute the thought, you underestimate its value; you belittle its power. And once it's gone, forgotten, well, you say to yourself, it couldn't have been of any value anyway. "I'd have remembered it had it really been good." 

But would you? 

I'm often surprised when going back over my old blog posts just how good some of those thoughts actually were, and how glad I am that I managed to capture them and publish them here. Looking back, I can mull them over, and from them, life takes on purpose and direction.

If anything, my problem is not having enough of these deep, insight-laden thoughts. Noticing that sometimes they're more frequent, whilst at other times they're hardly there all, crowded out. Or simply they're not present in an empty mind. As Zen Buddhism points out, wu hsin (no-mind) is a state to be aimed for. But I actively want insights. I want revelation. I want understanding. I pray for it. But it comes when it wants to come. And when it does come, I have to be ready to catch it, define it, refine it, and share it. Don't lose it. Don't let that stray thought pass. It may speak of the intuition that comes from non-local Consciousness.

This time two years ago:
Spring magic 

This time six years ago:
Building work almost done on the działka

This time seven year:
Karczunkowska's closed again

This time eight years ago:
Little suitcase in the attic
[End of next week, it's off to Schindler's Factory in Kraków to take part in a year-long exhibition there]

This time nine years ago:
What I read each week.

This time 11 years ago:
Defending Poland, contributing to NATO

This time 13 years ago:
Balloon over Warsaw 

This time 15 years ago:
Happiness, Polish-style

This time 16 years ago:
And watch the river flow...

Full blossom

This is it! The peak of the apple and cherry blossom, coinciding with a day of perfect clarity of sky. Time to snap the fruit trees in flower, the glory of the neighbourhood!

Below: where the orchard ends and the forest begins.

Below: a young male deer between rows of apple trees bedecked in blossom. Note the dandelions in a line along the grass. Today and yesterday I spotted several deer and a similar number of hares. 

Below: a trio of hares between the trees, near Gaj Żelechowski yesterday. And a propos of wildlife, I cannot ignore the birdsong; blackbirds, blue tits and the Eurasian black cap (Sylvia atricapilla, kapturka). Most beautiful and complex at this time of year.

Below: even the commercial orchards, neat rows of apple trees under hailstone-proof netting, are blooming. This one is in Adamów Rososki. Overhead, an Emirates airliner is on its way from Stockholm to Dubai.

Below: not every fruit tree is in blossom this year. These biennial-bearing cherry trees that are not tended the year round bear fruit (and indeed flowers) much less profusely every second year. My apple trees, which produced a bumper crop last autumn, are showing no blossom this year.

Although the sky was perfectly clear from dawn to dusk, it was rather a cool day, with the top temperature not exceeding 18°C, and a night-time low of just 1°C forecast. It's like the Ice Saints have come early! Tomorrow will also be an optimal day for viewing the apple blossom of Chynów and district. Unlikely to last until next weekend. The cold means the scent is not as entrancing as it was on warmer days, when the head swims in the perfumed air.

This time 13 years ago:
Testing the Boris Bike

This time 14 year:
Corruption: reasons to be cheerful

This time 16 years ago:
Bicycle shakedown day

This time 17 years ago:
Jeziorki in full bloom