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
- A Greek taverna filled with mapsWhat is a map, other than the unfolding and laying out of the territory — more accurately, a representation of the territory — through which a person may wish to travel? Rather than indicating merely a physical space... Read More
- Alchemy, alephs and insomnia: origins of The Blue TentThe Blue Tent is released by Parthian as an e-book next Tuesday (20th August). Since the novel has provoked quite a few questions from readers, I thought it might be helpful to publish the text of an email... Read More
- Varieties of Exile: Antonio Machado, Walter Benjamin, and an unknown teenager.‘Once near a border, it is impossible not to be involved, not to want to exorcise or transgress something. Just by being there, the border is an invitation. Come on, it whispers, step across this line. If you... Read More
- The art of lonelinessThe Lonely City is an exquisite meditation on loneliness, but it is also so much more. Laing explores the lives of a handful on American artists who knew loneliness well, and whose work often references that state,... Read More
- Midwinter with HerodotusRyzsard Kapuściński was a Polish writer who spent most of his working life as a roving foreign correspondent for the Polish state news agency (PAP) during the Communist era, but his own writings, in the form of personal... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
