Post-canícula promenade
The howling of the village dogs has calmed down over the past week, due to the passing of the canícula (named for the dog star, Sirius, and its associated theme of mad dogs/midday sun, hence also ‘dog… Read More
The Black Lake of Antonio Machado
El ojo que ves no es ojo porqué tú le veas es ojo porqué te ve. The eye you see is not an eye because you see it but because it sees you. This morning,… Read More
Walter Benjamin at Portbou
Yesterday an excursion to Portbou and a picnic on a nearby beach to celebrate the birthday of our dear friend Juliette. As usual our large and straggling international party effectively turned a section of the beach into an… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- My New British Passport: Made in France, Printed in PolandI never asked for a new passport, but last month I received a demand from the Passport Office to renew my old one. This came as a surprise, since the passport is (was) valid until March 2022, but... Read More
- Contagious Fictions: Love in the Time of CholeraI never fully appreciated Love in the Time of Cholera when it first appeared, back in the 1980s. I was still in thrall to the García Márquez of One Hundred Years of Solitude,and while acknowledging the meticulous skill... Read More
- Contagious Fictions: tracing truths in Saramago’s BlindnessDuring the opening weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic many of us tuned in every evening to hear the latest statistics of the newly infected and the dead. As the figures mounted, this morbid need to know became a... Read More
- Journal of the Plague Year (iii)Reading over the third set of entries, from May, the events described already appear distant, dreamlike, as though they happened in an adjacent or parallel world. Did Trump really suggest we inject ourselves with detergent? It seems... Read More
- Journal of the Plague Year (ii)Continuing with my journal entries over the first three months of COVID-19, here are two entries for the month of April. During this period the roads around the city were gloriously silent, and many more birds appeared... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
