Kindof ran the idea of a huge increase in the number of seagulls recently past 2 or 3 workmates to day. One out of 3 said that they too had noticed greater seagull activity lately. Bristol happens to be a coastal city I admit, but why so many seagulls for fuck's sake? The office is on a square adjacent to the inner city ( St. Pauls). Sat on a bench, seagulls fucking about above ground nearby (birds reckon that flying is so clever), I said, "one of them is gonna shit pretty soon." .... Git - bullseye right on my crown chakra. Me, I sticks up for the dudes in feathers, why treat me like all the other dumb critters? Not to mention miles of road kill over in Wales last weekend. Wish the fuck that I could read into it, but nature reveals its secrets in its own time only. Stupid birds - get a fucking life - show me your counselling skills and your awesome public monuments. You fly so high and swoop so low, Timothy Leary. But what about us humans? Fit for recycling? Lost the plot? Actually saving our asses? Yeh - we're saving our asses, putting our soul power to the karmic wheel. Almost like Man U scoring a couple in the dying seconds (dreadful analogy.)

Z.

Yer 'tis gurt Bristle our boy's handle's gurt Banksy.

We sez our hero's from France: "Banksy is French." True there is cartoonist technique straight out of the Bande Dessine. True that Banksy's episodic allusions are frequently risque.

Lucky for me I walk staight down Stokes Croft in Banksy heartland with time to admire all the graffiti episodes rising on the Banksy bande dessine tradition.

All along the boundary of the Free St. Pauls citizenship workshop.

Obviously the publicists and commentators whisper out of earshot, in Bristol, the rising of the tribe is the next agenda, the next party, the next thing of free beauty. Free Banksy! Free Bristol!

Z.

Now and then my brain alights on a fragrant bloom of my own inner peace. I submit the truth of the smokey quartz gem that encapsulates the harmony of death and beauty. That gem? Because the combination of death and beauty has a characteristic of sepia opaqueness that is crystalized and hard just as if the truth is set in stone.

Had I an animal spirit, mine should be a stag. One of the images I most dwell on in paintings, it's the painting of the stag in the verdant forest, where I substitute "stag" for "artist" staring back triumphantly at the monad viewing the painting. The viewer is alone with the stag which symbolises his unique soul. For the same reason I pay special attention to Stephan Mallarme's Apres-midi d'un Faune.

I must say that death is the epitome of beauty, because and when it clarifies the boundaries of everything. Doesn't death stop a mountain from increasing in size? Death must put a limit on the height of trees, also on the hardness of rocks and stones.

Crucially, the most beautiful choses, are the choses that come close to death but I don't know why or how, but I should like to know. Great art, great lives and exceptional people know these things.

Probably Schopenhauer wrote all about it. Probably.

Z