Oaxaca
What does Oaxaca hold in store for me? According to Mesoamerican tradition, which pays homage to Ometeotl, God of Duality, paradise has already been granted to the human race, but to accede to it personal effort is required…. Read More
John Berger and symmetries
Following the death on the 2nd January of John Berger, a favourite writer and an inspirational human being, I was led to read (or re-read, if the annotations in pencil were truly in my hand, even if my… Read More
Angry in Piraeus
Flicking back through old photographs, I find one taken while returning from an evening out with friends in Istanbul, and passing some wooden-fronted houses in a twisting street, near the shore, that seemed to belong entirely to a world… Read More
The other side of the other
In my last post I mentioned that perennial companion and source of consternation, the other, the doppelganger, the one who walks beside us, both ourselves and not ourselves. I cited the introduction from Orhan Pamuk’s memoir of… Read More
The other who walks alongside us
On the radio this morning the Turkish writer Elif Shafak prepares me for a journey. I am listening to Istanbul, she says, and we share the sounds of the city, which dissolve, eventually into water. ‘Everything in… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- The Open RoadThe sun is never so beautiful as on a day when you take to the open road. For several months, during my travels on foot around southern Europe at the tail end of the 1980s, I carried with... Read More
- A tight knot of mermerosityWhen we set out, just past Castell Dinas, we pass a dog driving a tractor. Or so it seems. The shadow of Bruno the dog is long. We see him everywhere. Every morning when I first go downstairs... Read More
- The Olchon Valley and Walter LollardThe Olchon Valley, which I only discovered recently, is a place that feels as though it shouldn’t exist. It is almost the definition of somewhere lost to the world; undiscovered, little known even to those who walk its... Read More
- Flight of the IsardI filmed this isard, or chamois, a couple of summers ago while hiking above Coma de Vaca, in the Pyrenees. I came across the clip on my computer this morning and thought I would post it. It felt... Read More
- Bruno’s last picnic (part 2)When we had finished our meal, I covered the embers of the fire with tranches of muddy turf, trod them down. We returned to the car. The lane winds down the narrow valley for six miles, between wooded... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
Ricardo Blanco's Blog 