There was a situation that ended in violence and a group drew up battle lines and loyalties but they had been doing that all evening. For me violence is a failure now. Someone has tried to provoke me and succeeded. I have contended. I have not had sufficient self regard to hold on to myself in a situation. To face another person's prejudice. I have implicitly accepted their viewpoint and fallen for the bait. Accepted their prejudice. We return to choosing to be a victim. That is why in violence I have failed. My image of myself as not been strong enough to withstand criticism. There is something very strange that makes me worry about Peter now. I am calm. I am nearly as calm as I have been. And still for a moment there is a feeling of worry about Peter. I wrote an essay about the Caribbean and most it was written for Nigel to look at because I think he might understand it. But I went out and he wasn't there so I came back again. People have to be what they are and so I have problems with people who are intolerant. Is that what they have to be is or that a way to change. Perhaps it is to ask them why it is intolerance. Perhaps if people are free of the ties there is no insecurity and so no fear and so no intolerance. I'm not sure but it is all confusing.
I would like to say start at the beginning but I'm not sure where that is. Perhaps you start where you are. The past is all gone away anyway and is nothing so. Start when you are.
There is always far too much looking to the future and living in expectation. And never enough that is now and living in the present.
Mark who I haven't met for five years had come to look around and he had come down to collect some rhododendrons for somebody. And he had his girlfriend with him and they were both very good company. It was very easy to like them both and almost they acted together as one. It was very nice. It was mostly nice to talk to someone else who charged and measured what they wanted from life in much the same way it was nice. Also it was nice to talk to somebody about plants without it all having to be very apologetic and saying always to cover over the gaps in what was mostly ignorance and other people. It was nice to talk to confidence. And later I wondered what they had made of me. But I think they come rapidly to accept it as it is. Almost most of all I would have liked to hear the way of conversation in them in the car to return. But then I saw the car and so I know they will accept easily. It was very nice and relaxing and exactly so. I was not sorry I had stopped potting for their benefit.
And no sooner had I restarted than I stopped to write the essay in time and it is perhaps not so well spaced as I would like but it is only time for one attempt so it is as it is this time.
Anyway as it stops the telephone rings about a letter that didn't arrive a week or more ago so it took a long time for the information. And right in the middle dressed entirely in bright pink a very strange sight was a person. Now Pat has become more and more all in pink to match. And once she was simple to see in the street as usual and now she is certainly much more. All this allows for me to have spent Saturday looking for a Euphorbia as a gift to somebody who is going to die of AIDS. In the shops it wasn't possible so I spoke to nobody being in with Rob so I telephoned Pat who had given it to Ian who I visited and finally got what I wanted from Ian who lives in a nice flat over the stables. So Pat had come to see what there was to understand and I had no time so she went away again. I would like to know if she had spoken to Ian first I would not be at all surprised but now I will not know. Still it had that feel of looking for news only just being passed down the chain. These are the complex webs of information people create when there are asked for a favour because I did not give any information other than it was needed.
We have a long discussion about conservation and snowdrops being dug in the wild and sold. To me if it is wrong it is wrong to patronise this in any way. A dirty act will soil all those who are involved. To other people it seems that they are already dug so it is better to plant them than they die. To see the individuals, not the effect on populations. So either you can have valuing every individual or so only the group status. It depends. Here to me to value the individual in that way is to sacrifice the group. That is how it is in me, but clearly not in everybody. And in the post a newsletter as an editorial comment hidden in a list of plants telling only one side of the story. It seemed to me to be quite unfair to use this for one side only. And then it may be because it was not my side represented and perhaps if I had written it I would only put one side. But it does seem to say this is not an individual choice it is not right. Surely they see they have to take responsibility for their own actions. It is not enough to say it is for others to legislate first no need for us to care about anything. You are the demand that is filled after. You are the cause of that destruction. You have to accept responsibility for that. I was not at all surprised by the way the group split. But now I have less regard for the person who wrote the newsletter. I was saddened by this that it should happen. And then immediately the telephone rang from someone who was very angry that such a foolish and selfish thing should still be published and it was nice to hear a voice that cared. And perhaps then the polarisation caused gave all a chance to choose again. And what is the solution. Well the solution seems to be to try with the generation that is still open to get them to see the world honestly as it is and how to change it. And in the end the other generations will die.