Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I think you should enjoy seeing Robert Fisk at work in ‘This Is Not A Movie’. I don’t know where you might see it but like today’s newspapers, it’ll probably be on a digital screen. We watched it on Amazon Prime so I know that’s one source.
There’s a maple tree by our front door. It goes orange most years and this year, it’s more orange than it has been for years. I thought I’d collect a leaf a day in November and build a picture if I keep adding them, one leaf at time, to a pile on the glass of my desktop scanner.
279:409:4 ‘He was afraid she might have a scar.’
A ten year old daughter has her whole life ahead of her. This most human of fears resonated with me. But this is The Holy Land and she is already dead.
319:301:1 ‘Smadar’s face was left perfectly intact.’
A thirteen year old daughter has no life ahead of her. This most awful of human observations upset me. How can anyone call this place the Holy Land?
Apeirogon by Colum McCann is an exposition that will haunt me for the rest of my life. That’s a good thing in the same way that Primo Levi’s If This is a Man was a good thing too. I wonder if what makes a good real-life horror story work is an absence of self pity?
[Read more…] about Rank Ambiguity PersistsThere’s a small collection I like to keep beside the bed, things to dip into when the news of the world depresses me. One of the items is My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir (2014); a depressing yet brave collection. These are stories about a soldier from a family of soldiering trying to hold onto his humanity. Brian Turner has written a lot about his PTSD without really addressing it directly. I’m very pleased that we have his signature on the copy beside me.
