Mobile: On

The car cut through the mobile phone masts, where once there was countryside, and the sun slapped on the fields with a kind of old pal heartiness. At one point by a junction we saw a jay in one of the trees and as the cars pulled away again I thought about the car crash the other night involving the police van, and the small article I read today in which it was stated that nine people had been injured that night, three of them seriously. Now I am in the office of the artist's brother, an amateur pilot, with whom we are now staying for a few days. In fact I am typing as quietly as possible as the artist and our daughter are trying to sleep in the next door bedroom. The artist is still unwell, but her spirit has not flagged entirely. Being away from her work does not help. But she is with her family and that must be important otherwise she would not have made it such a central theme these past eight years in her work. Mind you, sickness - the other present theme - has never featured in her work. Not if you exclude the three toy bears with their knotted and worn faces that she once did and which now belongs as a triptych to a collection across the ocean I believe. No, I had never seen so many mobile phone masts as I did this morning. Portals to so much dead language. Relay systems for neuroses or idlenesses. I can hear our own relay system of coughs in the other room. At least we are mobile.