Walking Commentary
Manchester to Rome 2022
Everyone’s calendars are relative to a starting point. It’s been a year since I started this journal so it’s Journalday 365 today. Trekkies might date it as 74628 despite the fictitious origins. Then again, Star Trek on TV (74628) isn’t on the same calendar as the game played as Star Trek Online (47634). Parallax takes many forms.
‘I can type because there are proteins that help me do it.’ That’s what I wrote several days ago. Then I took you on a journey that included workstations, screensavers and medical research. What I didn’t do was explain why I was writing about proteins in the first place. And I never mentioned actin nor myosin.
‘… proteins are a marvel of efficient organization over emotional compromise and social politics.’
Chapbook or photozine? I wish I’d thought of calling them the former before I started publishing photozines. And I wish we’d thought to set up Bracket Books Ireland long before now. Either way, we intend to fail better next time.
Garden went into the post-office yesterday. It’s the second book, the February edition, for the current subscribers. I’d anticipated the pandemic-slowed postal services would make local deliveries on March 1st. It seems that nothing is predictable and miraculously, some arrived today.
I admitted here recently that I had aspired to kayak around Ireland. A week later, Michael Viney had an article in the Irish Times that caused me to acquire a story of an actual journey around Ireland by Kayak. The secret sauce.
Five things happened today that made this day very different.
1) I’d never known anything about ecclesiastical court sessions until today.
2) My latest photozine arrived back from the printers.
3) I received and read At The Water’s Edge Two Boats.
4) I went hunting magnolias with a member of the tree society as my guide.
5) I lost my phone and it was recovered in the post office.
Posting every day has become a ritual though not on a schedule like breakfast or bedtime. It’s something I do in between those two daily milestones and have been doing for almost a year. I really would have preferred to walk from a milestone in Manchester to end at the start of the Via Appia in Rome. More significantly, like you, I wish none of us were in the middle of a two year pandemic.
