• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Manchester to Rome 2022

  • ManRom22
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

jean-jacques rousseau

Ramblings

June 3, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Jame Joyce thought that ‘Thought is the thought of thought’ or so he wrote in Ulysses which he started in 1914, at the beginning of The Great War, when people forgot to think and petty jealousies among Imperial cousins killed millions.

Rabindranath Tagore, while on a US tour in 1916, wrote that ‘You who live under the delusion that you are free, are every day sacrificing your freedom and humanity to this fetish of nationalism, living in the dense poisonous atmosphere of world-wide suspicion and greed and panic.’

  • James Joyce
  • Rabindranath Tagore
Writers in St Stephens Green, Dublin © Simon Robinson 2016
[Read more…] about Ramblings

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, Covid-19, guantanamo, inequality, james baldwin, jean-jacques rousseau, pankaj mishra, photos, sculpture

Finite Eternity

May 10, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

We once came across a Bourgeois spider, lurking in the old turbine hall of the then new Tate Modern. Maman fascinated and appalled me in equal measure. My scientific self enjoyed the majesty of the vision that re-created her, triumphantly huge in steel. My male, meritocratic self had visions of limited purposes, sacrifice and cannibalism. And yet Maman spoke to me of the fight for life and a guarantee of a future borne in her egg sac, much as when Yeats wrote of rebellion and nationhood in Easter 1916, ‘A terrible beauty is born.’

[Read more…] about Finite Eternity

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, bruce nauman, edvard grieg, erik satie, jean-jacques rousseau, louise bourgeois, music, pablo picasso, piccadilly, poetry, rose finn-kelcey, tate britain, Tate Modern, vincent van gogh, warren mailley-smith, wb yeats, william blake

Future Imperfect

April 25, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

You may have noticed the spine of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist in a recent photo I posted. There’s a line in it that advises that ‘The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.’ And with such confirmation I feel encouraged to meld it with an Anne Lamott aphorism that’s infected the web: ‘Every thing that happened to you is yours; people should have behaved better.’

Are these observations deserving of reflection and expression? They certainly contributed to my rereading an older walking commentary blog to see if I’m repeating themes close to my heart and of course, create an opportunity to steal from myself. Which led me down some old paths this morning and a return to a personal favourite theme which is that one’s point of view depends on the view point. Mountain tops become islands if you are looking down from a peak above a cloud filled valley.

[Read more…] about Future Imperfect

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: albert einstein, anne lamott, austin kleon, booklink, brian cox, david moore, georges lemaïtre, jean-jacques rousseau, mark o'connell, mary robinson, Maslow, pankaj mishra, tim flannery, walking

In Praise of Walking

March 1, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

1 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 3°C Partly Cloudy – Co. Longford, Ireland

It’s March 1st. I’m reading ‘In Praise of Walking‘ by Shane O’Mara. A gift from my wife, I put off reading it until about a month before the next big walk.

In the first few pages he reminded me that French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs”.

Rousseau must have given up walking sometime before 1778, long after he’d famously written on inequality and social contracts. He was a big influencer. French Revolution big. The Terror.

[Read more…] about In Praise of Walking

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, Covid-19, jean-jacques rousseau, Maslow, walking

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe


Recent Comments

  • Lia Mills on Gallery: 25 2020 moments
  • Simon Robinson on Yachts, Leaks and Bacteria
  • Felicity McCartan on Yachts, Leaks and Bacteria
  • Felicity Mc on Celebrate Minor Mundanity
  • Liz on Yachts, Leaks and Bacteria

Categories

  • Anchoritism
  • Fake Memoir
  • ManRom2021
  • Uncategorized

Tags

ahmet altan albert einstein astronomy bbc birds bird watching booklink brian greene burma cancer colum mccann computing Covid-19 dog dun laoghaire fabhappy fitbit flowers food gardening geology geophysics hans rosling inequality irish times lia mills london movies nobel prize pandemic PEN international photo photography photos poetry popular rugby sahara simonscarves the guardian travel tv ungrievable volcano walking

Recent Posts

  • Not Just Another Book
  • Full Circles
  • Strange Memory Links
  • Enduring Decisive Moments
  • Renaming These Islands

Archives

  • January 2021 (16)
  • December 2020 (31)
  • November 2020 (30)
  • October 2020 (31)
  • September 2020 (30)
  • August 2020 (31)
  • July 2020 (31)
  • June 2020 (30)
  • May 2020 (31)
  • April 2020 (30)
  • March 2020 (31)

Footer

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
  • ManRom22
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Subscribe


Copyright © 2021 · Revolution Pro on Genesis Framework