“New Shapes Of Reality”

4.4. 2010


I have been reading this strange book called "New Shapes of Reality". It's a book I picked up under the arches down by the canal that feeds into the River Lea just past the Anchor and Hope pub opposite Walthamstow Marshes. It is at the bottom of the Hill from where I live. Just down the hill from Springfield Park. There's a small market that sets up in this patch of land most Sundays and has been selling off equipment, books mops and clocks associated with a now defunct art college where a Scottish man, one of the stall-holders and a former student at the College, seems to have a line-in to the entire contents as well as the structural fittings of this institution- now gradually unwinding in individual purchases.

There is even a length of plastic piping- part of the plumbing system- being sold off, as well as countless microscopes- I put my finger under one of them and it comes out as a translucent pink blur-, potters wheels, refrigerators, Kilns, a high-powered electric saw that the Scottish man tells me he has hidden under a blanket because he will only sell it to a specialist who knows how to handle it and already has a buyer in mind. And that book; "New Shapes of Reality" in the old bashed up blue cover. Turning the hard-back out on to my palm, I read the date of publication as 1968. The Author is Michael Jordon and the small-print reads "Aspects of A.N Whitehead's Philosophy". I get the book together with one of a number of large plastic Clocks. I have already bought one of these clocks before. I really like the tick- it is not invisible but it is unobtrusive and somehow comforting- a regulated sound to which one is drawn to add one's own counter-rhythm. I buy it for a Complementary Clinic where I sometimes work and where I have had to remove the clock several times because of its invasive tick.

There is a small fire burning in a barbecue grate at the side of the market around which a group of men stand with their arms outstretched. Their hands are spread towards the flames. It was the smell of the fire that drew me towards the market in the first place. As I pass back out to where my bike is tethered to the Metal railings, just past one of the newly completed canal developments that stretch all the way along the canal from here to Stratford, Site of the Olympic Park, one of the men turns and glares at me. I dump the purchases in the front basket, turn outwards to take in the Marshes; the train; running towards a more distant bridge, unchain the bike and bactrack towards the pub.