My journey back from Hebden Bridge this past Monday was eventful. I had risen early for me, at 6:15 am, in time to get to the train station catch the 07:08 for Manchester. This part of the journey went well. I hurried from Manchester Victoria station to Manchester Piccadilly station and was just in time…
The Journey In My Head
In 1931, probably in November, Bernardo Soares daydreamed during ‘the journey between Cascais and Lisbon’. He said I went to Cascais in order to pay the tax on a house my boss Vasques owns in Estoril. I looked forward eagerly to the trip, an hour there and an hour back, a chance to watch…
Alphonse Daudet & The Phenomenology Of Pain
Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), novelist, playwright, and journalist, contracted syphilis at the age of 17 years, shortly after arriving in Paris in 1857. Syphilis was the HIV of the 19th century. Literary men such as Baudelaire, Flaubert and Maupassant were all afflicted and syphilis was central to Ibsen’s Ghosts and of peripheral importance in Doll’s…
Continue reading ➞ Alphonse Daudet & The Phenomenology Of Pain
Brazilians in Lagos
Candido Esan da Rocha was the richest man in Lagos when I was a boy. I lie! When my mother was a girl. He was reputed to own a horse drawn carriage that took him across "Gada" (sic) bridge. It was always unclear whether "Gada" was a corruption of "Carter" or "Girder". Candido lived at…
Chekhov in Siberia
In 1890 Anton Chekhov set off for Sakhalin to conduct a census of the prison and exile population of the island. He was 30 years old at the time and was already suffering from tuberculosis. His letters and the publication of The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin remain compelling documents of the trip, even…
Heaven’s mirror
God placed danger and the abyss in the sea. But he also made it heaven's mirror Fernando Pessoa Twelve months this past summer we returned to Veni Mange. Alas this time, no Nadela. Nonetheless it was another memorable evening. Joe joined us before going to watch…
Country visit
This particular afternoon we went with L to visit M and her husband R who live at K Heights. They've lived there for 20 years doing up a house but the house building was still in progress after 2 decades. It was not the nicest day to be visiting anyone. It was grey, miserable and…
Hemingway’s Paris
In Paris, we usually stay at Hotel RASPAIL, on Bd Raspail. It is next door to Restaurant Haute Mer, an excellent seafood place at the corner of Bd Raspail and Bd Montparnasse. It is a thriving area that boasts Le Dome, another seafood place, La Coupole, La Rotonde, etc. We have been staying at Hotel…
Congo Square
Congo Square. Just north of the French Quarter in New Orleans, on the other side of Rampart Street, within the Louis Armstrong Park, in the Trème district, is this sacred space that the American Indians had used for centuries for their religious gatherings but taken over by Africans on Sundays during slavery. It remains…
Heroism in Hombre: Elmore Leonard
The hero of Elmore Leonard’s Hombre John Russell is a resolute figure who passes from mortality to legendary status in no time at all. When we first meet John Russell we learn that he is at least a quarter Indian and that he has the ways of the Apache. For some one so young,…
MindReadings 