Geoff Nicholson's Blog, page 49

THE HOLLYWOOD RAMBLER

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 147 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mi3suTQQGD..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="562" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mi3suTQQGD..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you write a blog titled The Hollywood Walker, then there’s some pressure on you to do a fair bit of walking in Hollywood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And I give in to that pressure, honestly I do; I walk in Hollywood all the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But the thing is, and it’s a thing that I’m sure worries a lot of writers and bloggers, and certainly diarists, you get to the stage of thinking, “Is there any point doing if you can’t write about it?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-83jRH28Gwh..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-83jRH28Gwh..." width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The answer of course is yes: If a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing for its own sake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>However obsessive a writer you are, not every thought and deed needs to be set down or described in words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>That’s because not every thought and deed is necessarily of interest to others. (I know some writers feel differently about this.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-syliFXF4tK..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-syliFXF4tK..." width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is, in any case, a dual aspect to walking, at least the kind I do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Partly you do it for its own sake, and partly you do it because you’re inquisitive, and you like observing and exploring, which is all part of the writerly function, though you don’t have to be any kind of writer in order to be inquisitive, and enjoy observing and exploring.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DmfuWELfX_..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DmfuWELfX_..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And this being a digital age, if you have a camera with you when you walk, then you tend to photograph what you see. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, this can be a problem: are you going for a walk or are you going on a photographic expedition?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And more than that, does taking photographs get in the way of a good walk?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Simple answer: sometimes yes, sometimes no.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, after that throat-clearing, scattered above and below are some of things I saw, noted and photographed on recent Hollywood walks, and which I think might be of some interest to other people.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rrhxnYSY4c..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rrhxnYSY4c..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have been known to complain about the essential monotony of Los Angeles skies, but it’s been raining here lately and there have been some spectacular opportunities for cloud spotters, so no complaints from me at the moment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-88hsTjfzv5..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-88hsTjfzv5..." width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Under those less than sheltering skies most of us continue to be troubled, one way or another, about the election results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A few pro-Hillary signs remain, though I wonder if these signs are a bit like Christmas decorations – how long should they stay before you take them down?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>If you leave them up too long don’t they bring bad luck? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KPdEuGhUiH..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KPdEuGhUiH..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The fauna, of course, doesn’t even know we have a new president-elect, and the deer in particular are thriving:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-29LgySCxw3..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-29LgySCxw3..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the flora is doing less well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Is this the world’s saddest cycad?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FayU3Fu8TQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FayU3Fu8TQ..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Elsewhere in the ‘hood, they’re continuing to install new water pipes and that includes replacing fire hydrants, which gives rise to certain small-scale, Christo-esque effects:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3VfC3RVQNB..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3VfC3RVQNB..." width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The boys' activities still gives rise to inscrutable markings on the ground:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lVYz2N-e_L..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lVYz2N-e_L..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And this has recently appeared, which I think has nothing to do with the water company,and is far cleverer and more ambitious than most things you see painted on the sidewalk:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Jsb1vDT5E..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Jsb1vDT5E..." width="640" /></a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Meanwhile, the L.A. version of autumn gives us an inadvertent touch of Andy Goldsworthy:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-au1VqlkaMo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-au1VqlkaMo..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In other places the sidewalks do battle with tree roots – the roots are winning - which definitely doesn’t make it any easier to walk:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tKuAE-KYa_..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-tKuAE-KYa_..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But you see, some people love our sidewalks so much they feel right at home sleeping on them, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in front of a pedestrian crossing, right by a board directing you to an open house for what is most likely a million dollar property (feel the irony!):</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BLwuPZeytW..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BLwuPZeytW..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are no doubt places in the world where citizens would either accidentally or, more likely, deliberately walk on a person lying on the sidewalk in front of a pedestrian crossing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Not here, though. There was also perhaps a slight feeling that maybe somebody was actually making a movie, and filming the guy with hidden cameras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This is Hollywood after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

ONE WISE GUY

I’ve been reading some short stories by Damon Runyon.  I’d read some of his work before, but not much, and I think Runyon is one of those authors who suffers because people think they know all about him even if they’ve never read a word: blame Guys and Dolls.

Anyway, as I continue to read my Runyon, I find that he often talks about people “walking up and down.”  And sometimes he obviously means this in a perfectly literal way, and sometimes he seems to mean it in some specialized or metaphoric way that I don’t always understand.
Sometimes it seems to mean going about your business, or it can mean stepping out with a woman.  Sometimes it seems to mean being free – as in you’re walking up and down as opposed to being in jail.  But then there are times when I just don’t know what it means.  See this, from the story “The Brain Goes Home:”“He is maybe forty years old, give or take a couple of years, and he is commencing to get a little bunchy about the middle, what with sitting down at card-tables so much and never taking any exercise outside of walking guys such as me up and down in front of Mindy's for a few hours every night.”  What exactly does it mean to walk up and down in those circumstances?


Elsewhere in Runyon, walking may be a poetic and melancholy activity.  This is from “The Lily of St Pierre:”“When a guy has a battle with his doll, such as his sweetheart, or even his ever-loving wife, he certainly feels burnt up inside himself, and can scarcely think of anything much. In fact, I know guys who are carrying the torch to walk ten miles and never know they go an inch. It is surprising how much ground a guy can cover just walking around and about, wondering if his doll is out with some other guy.”



       And of course Runyon, and his narrator, are interested in the way the “dolls” walk as well.  This is from “The Brakeman's Daughter:”“Well, besides black hair, this doll has a complexion like I do not know what, and little feet and ankles, and a way of walking that is very pleasant to behold. Personally, I always take a gander at a doll’s feet and ankles before I start handicapping her, because the way I look at it, the feet and ankles are the big tell in the matter of class.”

       Most of Runyon’s characters do most of their walking in New York, although there are plenty of exceptions.  Runyon himself seems to have been more of a sitter than a walker, planting himself at Lindy’s Deli and keeping his eyes and ears open. “I am the sedentary champion of the city,” he wrote. “In order to learn anything of importance, I must remain seated. Why I am the best is that I can last an entire day without causing a chair to squeak.”
Finally Runyon the man became very much like a Runyon character.  He has a wife out in the suburbs, but he fell for “a down-on-her-luck Spanish countess from Madrid named Patrice, who was, of course, actually an up-on-her-heels Mexican dancer from Tampico. She was twenty-six years younger than he was, and seems to have led him quite a life.”  That’s Adam Gopnik writing about Runyon in the New Yorker, where he also quotes Jimmy Breslin on the matter.  Patrice “sat with him about as long as the form chart for these things indicated that she would.”  Her full name was Patrice Amati del Grande, and she left him in the final year of his life when he was dying from throat cancer.  Maybe it would have been better if they’d done a little more uncomplicated walking up and down together.

WALKING, DRINKING, WRITING

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 147 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> --> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OSaySUK1PF..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="488" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OSaySUK1PF..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you’re walking in San Francisco, more or less in the Union Square area, there’s a reasonable chance that you’ll walk past Burritt Street, just off Bush Street, and if you keep your eyes peeled you’ll see this plaque:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UueF50YxsU..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="474" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UueF50YxsU..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a real plaque commemorating a fictional murder that takes place in Dashiell Hammett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Maltese Falcon</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Is it the only plaque of its kind in the world?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I assume not, though I don’t believe I’ve ever seen or heard of another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now, not so very far from Burritt Street (</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">inside The Mystic Hotel – yes, it’s really called that) </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">you’ll find </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">the Burritt Room and Tavern, which claims to be “heavily influenced by film noir.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-E06MuXQE7Y..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-E06MuXQE7Y..." width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not sure that Dashiell Hammett or any of his characters would have had much time for </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">the </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Burritt Room’s</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> craft cocktail menu, and gawd knows what he’d have made of the cocktail dedicated to Lemmy of Motorhead, the Ace of Spades:­ </span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Jack Daniel's Old No. 7, Smith + Cross, Wormwood, Complimentary Cigar Bitters

.” </span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Nah, I don’t know what “complimentary cigar bitters” are either and I wasn’t motivated to find out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M62bSXxaYT..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M62bSXxaYT..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Anyway, one of my companions had something called Snake Eyes “</span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Gin, Pear Liqueur, Cactus Syrup, Absinthe, Lemon, Seltzer” (</span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">that's it on the left, below)</span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">which was declared to be a girly drink, without any bang for your buck whatsoever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It was a “girl” who said this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But the martini was perfectly serviceable<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">.  </span></span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jQusAR5QXu..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jQusAR5QXu..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And you know me, whenever I wander the streets of San Francisco, even when not slightly bagged, I always seem to see a thousand and one martini signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This one, I think is, possibly the least promising I’ve ever seen:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7swEtxr1do..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7swEtxr1do..." width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This one is certainly among the best I’ve ever seen, although the place is a dive (in a good way) and I dare anybody to go in there and ask to see their craft cocktail list.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-546x1avvd0..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-546x1avvd0..." width="536" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dashiell Hammett by all accounts was a bad drunk, insulting people, falling down in the gutter, and as far as I can see he wasn’t all that much of a walker (though there are certainly walking tours of Hammett’s San Francisco).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>However, I did just find a couple of anecdotes, one about drunkenness, one about walking, in Diane Johnson’s </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dashiell Hammett</i>: <i>A Life</i>.</span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LOvEsCEG8n..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LOvEsCEG8n..." width="420" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">According to Hannah Weinstein (a political activist, film producer, and one of Lillian Hellman’s best friends) Hammett was once in a restaurant with her in Chicago, and was giving the waiter a hard time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>When the waiter asked what he wanted to order he replied, “How do we know till we’ve tried what you have?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And then he ordered everything on the menu.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>“I could have died of shame,” said Weinstein.</span></div><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cCQciTKn2d..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cCQciTKn2d..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dorothy Nebel (wife of the author Frederick Nebel) tells the story of Hammett and a group of his drinking pals in a bar in New York discussing the “the indifference of New Yorkers.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>“Someone said he could probably walk down the street naked and no one would turn to look.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Well, Hammett didn’t try that, but he did reckon that nobody would notice if he walked down the street with an open umbrellas on what was then a beautiful clear evening. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not the severest test, I’d have thought, but anyway he and his pal Fred walked from from the bar, up Lexington to 42nd Street over to Fifth and back to the bar “and not a single person turned to stare.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8ocs9OAil7..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8ocs9OAil7..." width="410" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 31.5pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Actually I’m not sure whether this is a mark of indifference or respect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The typical New Yorker would surely be thinking, “Hey pal if you want to walk under an umbrella when it’s not raining you go ahead, it’s nobody’s business but yours.” Though of course he wouldn’t say it aloud.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In San Francisco it might be different, though I suppose the picture below actually shows a parasol.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">            </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RhDnpK3qlM..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RhDnpK3qlM..." width="425" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dashiell Hammett had a comparatively short career as a writer of fiction – five novels published between 1929 and 1934, although he wrote a lot of short stories that were repackaged in various forms, not least the Dell “map back” editions: nice pulp covers on the front and maps on the back so you could, if you chose, walk the route taken by Hammett’s characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There’ll be plenty of places to stop for a drink, too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zZcKRnUGQu..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zZcKRnUGQu..." width="424" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T5nm-542Ue..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T5nm-542Ue..." width="418" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

WALKING WITH WOMEN

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073711037 9 0 511 0;} @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 147 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Futura; panose-1:2 11 6 2 2 2 4 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-2147483545 0 0 0 507 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-link:"Header Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 3.0in right 6.0in; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well it did seem a slightly improbable thing, didn’t it, that you’d be walking in the woods somewhere near the </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">town of Chappaqua in upstate New York,</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> a couple of days after the election, and suddenly you’d find Hillary and Bill Clinton also walking there?</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--9duQfqBDI..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--9duQfqBDI..." width="492" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s what </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Margot Gerster said happened to her,</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> and I have no good reason to doubt her, although the claims that this was some kind of PR stunt are, I think, understandable.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Gerster wrote on her Facebook page, “</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">'I've been feeling so heartbroken since yesterday's election and decided what better way to relax than take my girls hiking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">'So I decided to take them to one of favorite places in Chappaqua. We were the only ones there and it was so beautiful and relaxing. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“As we were leaving, I heard a bit of rustling coming towards me and as I stepped into the clearing there she was, Hillary Clinton and Bill with their dogs doing exactly the same thing as I was. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking Phoebe with me to vote for her. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“She hugged me and thanked me and we exchanged some sweet pleasantries and then I let them continue their walk.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well what else would you do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But still, a couple of matters arise. First,</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> it must be said that Hillary Clinton is looking surprising cheerful given recent events, and although we do know that walking is very good for depression, I still don’t think I’d be looking quite that sunny immediately after my presidential campaign had floundered on the treacherous rocks of Trumpism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I also wonder who took the picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Was it Bill?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Or was it a bodyguard?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I imagine that even in the woods near Chappaqua, the Clintons travel with a pretty serious security detail.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q51BMx0lb1..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q51BMx0lb1..." width="424" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a lot in the press lately about women walking, not least the book<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>by Lauren Elkin<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Flâneuse</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The book isn’t published yet in the United States and I’m too mean to buy a hardback copy from England but I’ll get it soon, no doubt.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The author’s website says,</span><i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Flâneuse</span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> is a cultural history of women writers and artists who have found personal freedom as well as inspiration by engaging with cities on foot, and includes chapters on Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Sophie Calle, and Agnès Varda, among others.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The London Evening Standard says,</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“l</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">arded with examples.” </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GXyZWK7UM3..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GXyZWK7UM3..." width="265" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We all know that women face certain, let’s call them <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">challenges</i>, when out walking, especially while walking alone, although walking alone doesn't necessarily solve much.  And in one of those odd, serendipitous moments I happened to be reading a piece in the book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies, </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Francis Wheen’s collected journalism from 1991-2001, in which he discusses <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who’s Who</i> and Debrett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">People of Today</i>, and has great fun noting people’s “recreations.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1sH8c3zMf3..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1sH8c3zMf3..." width="260" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As someone who has a nodding acquaintanceship with a certain kind of literary “fame,” I wasn’t entirely surprised to find I’d had some small dealings with a couple of the people he mentions in the article, both of them in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who’s Who</i>, both of them<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>women, both of them apparently walkers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c2nziO7_VG..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c2nziO7_VG..." width="634" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One is Emma Tennant, that's her above, who simply listed “walking around” as a recreation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It so happens I was once in the frame to write a short story for a collection she was editing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I don’t think it ever appeared, or if it did I certainly wasn’t in it, but she invited me to her house in Notting Hill for discussions and whisky, and she and I certainly walked the length of her hall, once in each direction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rather more fun is Deborah Moggach – and nobody has ever denied that Deborah Moggach is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lot </i>of fun – and she lists one of recreations as “walking around London looking into people’s windows.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Well yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Who doesn’t do that given half a chance?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But how many admit it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L00xPINMS-..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L00xPINMS-..." width="390" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ms. Moggach and I have definitely walked some short distances on the streets of London together, but we never found anybody’s window to look into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Shame.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A long time ago I had a friend, Patrick, who was at Cambridge University at the same time as Prince Charles, in the early 1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>On one occasion in the early hours of the morning Patrick was walking home from some bacchanal and turned a corner and there heading towards him was Charles, also walking home from some other bacchanal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>They didn’t speak (much less exchange sweet pleasantries) but they acknowledged each other’s existence and the prince gave a shrug and a small jerk of the head indicating a man walking some twenty feet behind him: a bodyguard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He looked deeply and suitably embarrassed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BdMduGeYgR..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BdMduGeYgR..." width="580" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is pretty much the only positive story I’ve ever heard about Charles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And I just found the picture below, taken in 1970 apparently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There’s the prince walking with Lord Mounbatten, and behind him are couple of royal subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>That’s how young men <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">looked </i>in 1970.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Nobody has ever accused Charles of trying to appear like a man of the people.  Maybe he needed a woman to walk with.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RkSHQlIsPj..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RkSHQlIsPj..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

HOPEFUL, RIGHT

And, on the day that the United States of America elects a new president, here’s a photograph taken in London last month at Liverpool Street Station: walkers going about their business as a familiar image and message looms overhead.
[image error]
[image error]

THE SHRUGGED ATLAS

<!-- </style> Here's a new article/essay/book review that appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is at least somewhat about walking.  I kept thinking we'd come up with a better title than "The Shrugged Atlas," but as you see, we didn't.<br />*<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">THE SHRUGGED ATLAS </span><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">BY </span><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">GEOFF NICHOLSON</span><br /><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JIP8WPhUt3..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="392" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JIP8WPhUt3..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“LIKE ALL MEN of the Library, I have traveled in my youth.” And some of us, no longer by any measure in our youth, are trying to keep up the good work, even as we wonder just how good it actually is.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The opening quotation, of course, is from the Borges story “The Library of Babel,” which famously imagines an infinite library containing every book that has ever been or ever could be written. It must, I suppose, therefore contain atlases and books of maps, though presumably not maps printed as single sheets.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">How did Borges feel about maps? Well, he did publish a book titled <i>Atlas</i>, a kind of travel book, first published in 1984 in Spanish, translated into English a year later, and written “in collaboration with María Kodama,” his second wife. There they are together in the picture above.  It consists of 40 or so short pieces, mostly prose, though a few are poetry, describing places he’s visited around the world, along with some of the people he’s met on his travels. The titles include “The Temple of Poseidon,” “Robert Graves at Deya,” “The Desert,” and (perhaps inevitably) “The Labyrinth.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There are photographs in the book, but no maps, and in the prologue Borges writes, “Each and every man is a discoverer. He begins by discovering bitterness, saltiness, concavity, smoothness, harshness, the seven colors of the rainbow and the twenty-some letters of the alphabet; he goes on to visages, maps, animals and stars.” That strikes me as a curious order for discovering things. I’d have thought maps came well after animals and stars, though only a fool would argue with Borges.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There’s also a piece in the book titled “Iceland” in which he writes, “I was, as always, in the middle of that clear haze visible to the eyes of the blind.” And if there seems to be something richly, perversely symbolic in the notion of a blind librarian, a blind cartographer raises the symbolic stakes even higher. Not that unimpaired vision is any guarantee of knowing where you are.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">¤</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cOwuOtEwJG..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cOwuOtEwJG..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I was walking through East Ham in London, heading for Itchycoo Park with my fellow scribe, flâneur, and chronicler of the engagingly retro and off-kilter: Travis Elborough. You might think he was a good man to have on such an expedition, being the author last year of <i>A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution</i> and now <i>Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the World’s Most Unusual Corners</i>, 51 short essays on the globe’s more wayward places, with maps by Alan Horsfield. Even so, we were lost.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I’d printed off a map from Google, and Elborough had his cell phone, but we kept going astray. We were never completely and utterly lost, but much of the time we weren’t quite sure where we were or where we should be. We knew where we wanted to go but, map or no map, we couldn’t always see how to get there. Consequently, we found ourselves in various dead ends, and made a series of detours that took us through terra incognita, along streets with names such as Ruskin Avenue and Byron Avenue, and eventually around Shakespeare Crescent.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We told ourselves this meandering was all part of the psychogeographic process, and I don’t think we were entirely deceiving ourselves. In due course we did arrive at the entrance to the park. There was a large, potentially helpful map, but the plastic that covered it had become opaque, hazy, and impossible to see through. Borges might have understood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Itchycoo Park is simultaneously a real, an imaginary, and a contested place; there should perhaps be quotation marks around all those adjectives. Primarily, it’s the title and subject of a great 1967 psychedelic pop song by the Small Faces that has the distinction of being the first song ever to be banned by the BBC because it contained drug references.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt;">What did you do there? — I got high</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt;">What did you feel there? — Well I cried</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt;">But why the tears there? — I’ll tell you why —</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt;">It’s all too beautiful, It’s all too beautiful</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt;">It’s all too beautiful, It’s all too beautiful</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And later in the song Steve Marriott sings, “I feel inclined to blow my mind.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The ban therefore doesn’t seem all that surprising, although the band’s previous single, “Here Come the Nice,” which seems to be entirely about drug dealing and amphetamines, was broadcast to the youth of Britain without demur.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">      In order to get the ban on “Itchycoo Park” lifted, the band’s management claimed it wasn’t a song about drugs at all, but about a patch of land where the band members had played as kids: as if these things were mutually exclusive. But that was enough to get the ban lifted, thereby suggesting that BBC decision-makers were even more hopelessly out of touch than previously imagined.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E_F79zJTcj..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E_F79zJTcj..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">       </span>A number of after-the-fact origin narratives have placed Itchycoo Park in various locations around London, and the itchiness has been attributed to wasps, nettles, or rose hips — the last of these especially itchy if dropped inside somebody’s shirt collar. Elborough and I were visiting Little Ilford Park, one of the prime geographical suspects: the <i>Guardian</i>’s “London Calling: a musical map of the city” unhesitatingly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/mus... style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">says</span></a>that this is the place. It’s a long, thin finger of greenery tucked in beside the North Circular Road, a place with a designerish new adventure playground, a lot of flat open land that looked like it had once been playing fields, a shuttered sports pavilion, a rose garden, and a public toilet that was functional (but with smashed windows).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zJ4iUFBWvl..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zJ4iUFBWvl..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What did we do there? Well we didn’t get high, nor did we find it all too beautiful. Rather, we talked about maps and territories, nostalgia and modernity: which is to say we discussed Elborough’s new book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">¤</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vsLaRy-nuM..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vsLaRy-nuM..." width="460" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This <i>Atlas of Improbable Places</i> joins a small but growing number of what we might call alternative or perhaps “indie” travel guides, maybe anti-travel guides, postmodern Baedekers for those wearied by (or too hip for) the conventional itineraries. The genre includes <i>Unruly Spaces </i>(2004) by Alastair Bonnett, subtitled “Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies” and Tom Lutz’s <i>And the Monkey Learned Nothing </i>and <i>Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World</i>, both published this year, subtitled “Dispatches from a Life in Transit” and “Wandering the Globe from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar.” (Full disclosure: Lutz, as you may well know, is the editor of <i>LARB</i>, and also, as you may well not know, the editor of this piece [<i>I have no idea what he is getting at here, Ed.</i>]). There’s also the recent <i>Atlas Obscura </i>(2016), “An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders” — yes, a lot of subtitling seems to be required in these matters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OBCxnW97Y1..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OBCxnW97Y1..." width="430" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">All these books display a fascination with ambiguous or edgy or potentially dangerous places: ruins (industrial rather than classical), deranged architectural follies, environments created by outsider artists, underground or utopian or lost cities, abandoned prisons, bunkers, theme parks, relics of the Space Age and the Cold War; examples of all these appear in Elborough’s book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">     He writes about some places that will be familiar to Angelenos, such as Slab City and the Hearst Castle, but he ventures much further afield to the Aral Sea tucked between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which has dried up to become the Aralkum Desert, to Wittenoom, a town in Western Australia caked in blue asbestos, that was closed down and removed from official maps, though it’s easy enough to find on Google. I was especially taken with his account of the “illicit tunnels” of Moose Jaw, Canada, which manages to join the dots between Walter Benjamin, Chinese immigrant laborers turned bootleggers, and J.G Ballard.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Inevitably, there’s some overlap in these alt-tourist volumes, though less than you might think. The <i>Atlas Obscura</i>, being partly crowd-sourced online, contains by far the greatest number of sites, and Elborough admits that it came as a shock, and maybe a threat, when he went into a store looking for his own book and found that volume instead; thick, lavishly illustrated with photographic images, full of bells and whistles, sidebars, directions, details, opening times, and whatnot. It’s a good book. You can understand his anxiety, but I’m sure there’s a readership for both. Elborough’s is by far the more serious, literary, and essayistic, and also the one with the better maps.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">¤</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This urge to travel to ever more outlying and freakish destinations is not hard to fathom. We’ve read Marc Augé’s <i>Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity </i>(1995), so we’re familiar with the idea that the world has become a series of homogenized, globalized, interchangeable spaces. However, as Elborough says in his introduction, “claims about the growing, soul-crushing similarity of places can be overstated […] Thankfully, the world continues to be a dizzyingly diverse place. Our appetite for the unusual and the out of the ordinary has, if anything, only been heightened by new technology, the scanning and sharing of fresh information and imagery themselves a spur to further travel and post-industrialization changing the kinds of places we find intriguing, beautiful or worthy of cursory investigation.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Of course this kind of cataloging involves exclusion as well as selection, creating a new canon, and possibly just a new tourist traps. I asked Elborough if he thought we were heading for some kind of subversive Grand Tour, whereby travelers no longer visit the Uffizi but instead go to look at, say, the ruins of the Teufelsberg spy station in Berlin? And ultimately how subversive is that likely to be anyway?</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Well,” he said, “Grand Tourers were definitely fond of a ruin, hence the presence of Venice and Rome on their itineraries, but I too wonder about just how subversive it might be. It seems to me that just as the Romantics forged a new aesthetic of beauty in the wake of industrialization, we have worked out our own criteria of interest to meet the needs of a post-industrial, digital society.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">     “Addison, when formulating the original idea of the sublime, wrote about the ‘agreeable horror’ of oceans — a description that could equally work for Battleship Island.” (That’s the deserted mining settlement crammed with high rise buildings, off the coast of Japan, seen at its best in the movie <i>Skyfall</i>.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">)</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Elborough continued, “I do wonder sometimes if it might not be time to take a fresh look at, I don’t know, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Eiffel Tower, the absolutely ridiculously over-familiar, just as an exercise. Even I find myself dozing off when I hear the phrases ‘liminal’ or ‘edge lands’ these days … I am often left wondering about the ‘dead centers’ of cities, the bits that only tourists and increasingly only the very wealthy (and their poorly paid minions) really spend any time in.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">”</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">¤</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wmYDQ-70iS..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wmYDQ-70iS..." width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">By now, we’d done a circuit of Little Ilford Park and the place was filling up with people. A lot of children had arrived with their teachers and were playing games. We speculated that they were doing this in a public park because so many British school playing fields had been sold off to property developers. We also noted that large areas of the park had been left to run wild, to let wild flora and fauna have their way, a convenient if dubious conflation of conservationist and cost-cutting interests. No doubt there were nettles, and very possibly wasps and rose hips in the tall grass, but we managed not to get stung.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6pR2G-T4ih..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6pR2G-T4ih..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We were also there to discuss an event that he and I were doing a couple of days later, organized by Elborough, at a place in London called the Horse Hospital, advertised as “an evening of spoken word, discussion, music, performance and short films about urban spaces, London and Los Angeles, sex and food, memory and maps.” It was called with a certain inevitability — “The Map is Not the Territory.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">That had me thinking of Borges again, specifically his one-paragraph story “On Exactitude in Science,” the one in which “the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it,” which of course is a variation on an idea found in Lewis Carroll’s “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“‘It has never been spread out, yet,’ said Mein Herr: ‘the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.’” Here, of course the territory is the map.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p6HSAPmiZO..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="488" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p6HSAPmiZO..." width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And the fact is I’ve always had some trouble with this notion that the map is not the territory. I don’t doubt that it’s true, but does it really need saying? Is there anybody in their right mind who would think otherwise?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, I discover belatedly that the phrase was first used by Alfred Korzybski, a Polish-American “independent scholar” who more or less invented a field of studies called general semantics which doesn’t have much to do with our usual understanding of semantics, and has overtones of self-help and behavioral therapy. His point, hardly a revolutionary one, is that the human perception of reality is not the same as reality itself. The brain is an intermediary, a translator, a cartographer. But that doesn’t make our perceptions irrelevant or redundant. Korzybski writes in <i>Science and Sanity</i> (1933): “A map <i>is not</i> the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a <i>similar structure</i> to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” I’m a little troubled by the notion of “correctness” in a map since it seems to me that all maps involve falsification to a greater or lesser degree, but it’s good to know that the phrase is a <i>metaphor</i>, not just a statement of the blindingly obvious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dsH_QkXBGZ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dsH_QkXBGZ..." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Del Barrett</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, the event went perfectly well. We talked about many things regarding London and Los Angeles, not least the <i>London A to Z</i>, generally a small paperback designed to be carried in the pocket while walking, as opposed to the <i>Thomas Guide</i> obviously designed to be used in a car. I bought a <i>Thomas Guide</i> the day I moved to Los Angeles over a decade ago, and have used it maybe three times. Nevertheless it sits in the back of the car, like a talisman or a security blanket, not that it makes me feel especially secure.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">¤</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uRDYvEG1MW..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uRDYvEG1MW..." width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here’s Beryl Markham writing in <i>West With The Night (</i>1942), a book about her travels in what was then British East Africa, now Kenya. “A map says to you, ‘Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.’ It says, ‘I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.’”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, I wish I had her confidence. Some of us often feel<i> especially </i>alone and lost when we’ve got a map in the palm of our hand. It ought to tell us where we are and how to get to where we want to go, but sometimes it just doesn’t, and that can feel worse than having no map at all. When I was in Tokyo earlier this year, I always carried, and frequently consulted, a printed map, sometimes more than one. Mostly I felt as though I was carrying a superfluous and meaningless piece of paper. Sometimes, admittedly, I also consulted a superfluous and meaningless image on a cell phone screen. It rarely helped.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">It was some consolation that I saw many locals who seemed to be as lost as I was. They stared at the large public maps found on many Tokyo street corners, with just as much confusion as I did. Sometimes they even photographed these maps with their cell phones, so they could carry them away with them. Not that I imagine it did much good.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pZzUxBaabT..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pZzUxBaabT..." width="440" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Recently there has been further consolation from reading a section in Lutz’s <i>And the Monkey Learned Nothing</i>describing his own experiences in Japan. Lutz is indeed a man of the library, in fact a man with an urge to visit every country on Earth, and (just as important) write about them. Here he writes,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">     "People who saw me looking at my map came up to help. As far as I could tell, none of them knew how to read a map. They studied mine, sometimes turning it over or sideways, never able to say where we were. But they went through the motions of being helpful very cheerfully, finally made a guess, and bowing, invariably pointed in the wrong direction."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There is quite a skill, it seems to me, whether you have a map or not, whether you know how to read it or not, in remaining cheerful even when you’re completely lost, and that may be the best way to end up in some improbable places.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br />*</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">You can read it, and much else besdies, at the LARB website here:<br /><br /><a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t..." target="_blank"> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t... class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><br /><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-table-layout-alt: fixed; width: 433px;"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;"><td style="border: none; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 432.9pt;" valign="top" width="433"><br /></td> </tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

I was in the city by the bay and I went to the newly refurbished San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  The thing I really wanted to see was the exhibition by Sohei Nishino titled New Work.  It consisted chiefly of what Nishina calls “Diorama Maps” a kind of photo collage. 

Image - Michael Hoppen Gallery
The method, as I understood it, is that he chooses, or gets a commission to photograph, a city.  He goes there, explores, and takes thousands of pictures.  Much of this exploration is done by walking the streets and most of the photographs are taken at ground level, though some are obviously taken from much higher viewpoints.
Nishina prints off contact sheets, cuts out single frames, and assembles them into a large-scale collages that looks somewhat like a map, somewhat like an aerial view of the city.  These collages are then rephotographed and printed large scale, and this print is the final product.

I didn’t absolutely understand all that before I went, and I found myself just a little disappointed by the size of the works on display in the exhibition.  Having see images like this of Nishina at work, I’d imagined they might be as big as a gallery wall.

Still, it would be churlish to complain that the prints weren’t big enough, so I’m not going to do that.  Like real maps, these works by Nishina allow a dual perspective – you see them from a distance and they give an overall sense of the city but then you need to look closer at all the details.
Image - Michael Hoppen Gallery
Nishina has been making the diorama maps for the best part of fifteen years but lately he’s started a series he calls Day Drawings.  He tracks his own movements via GPS, brings them up on the computer screen, places a piece of paper over the screen and punches holes in the paper tracking his route.  This then becomes a kind of negative.  He shines light through the holes onto a sheet of photographic paper, thereby again forming a sort of map. 
Photograph - Ivan Vartanian
Nishina cites the great artist, walker and mapper Richard Long as an influence (well, how could he not?) and a work by Long titled “Autumn Circle,” 1980 was situated in the museum conveniently close to the Nishina exhibition. Thus:

You may already know that I once had a job guarding a stone circle by Richard Long in the Tate Gallery in London (I was a security guard – long, not very interesting story) and I spent hours on end walking around it.  This was not long after there’d been some controversy about the Tate acquiring Carl Andre’s “Equivalent VIII” otherwise known as the bricks.

People would come up to me as I was pacing around the Long piece and say, “Is this the bricks?” and I’d take great delight in saying, “No it’s the stones.”  How we laughed.

Meanwhile elsewhere in San Francisco, at the Paul Smith store on Geary Street, the window-dressers (do we still call them window-dressers?) were showing a certain disrespect for the printed map – I mean, really.

IT'S ALL TOO BEAUTIFUL

     What other walking adventures did I have to in London?  Well, I went walking in Little Ilford Park in East Ham, which may have been the inspiration for the Small Faces song “Itchycoo Park,” although it may not.  “What did you do there?”  Mostly I discussed map/territory relations and Victorian notions of public good, with Travis Elborough.  More about that later, probably.

I went for a walk along the Regent's Canal from King's Cross, past Gas Holder Park (which surely could be an inspiration for a song), to Camden Lock and beyond.  I was with members of the Royal Photographic Society, who do that kind of thing.

         It was a good walk but I sometimes felt uneasy about the narrowness of the path and the imminent threat of silent but potentially deadly cyclists.  Signs like the one below weren’t really very reassuring.

And in Walthamstow I did see this bit of (I suppose you’d have to call it) street art -

“Not all those who wander are lost,” is a line from Tolkien apparently, though I didn’t know that at the time.  It’s undoubtedly true, although equally I’d say that not all those who are lost do any wandering.

WALKING IN SUNSHINE

 So as you perhaps saw in the previous post I went walking in Dunwich with national treasure Clare Balding for the BBC radio programme “Ramblings.”  And she asked me, the way you do, “So what is psychogeography, Geoff?” and I was ready. I had a bit of paper in my top pocket with Guy Debord’s dreary old definition written on it: "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”       Clare wasn’t much impressed, and I didn’t expect her to be.  I said, as I’ve said before elsewhere, that I think this is just a fancy way of describing what most walkers do all the time without having to be in any way aware of the term psychogeography.  Different views are no doubt possible.
Our radio walk was intentionally “improvisational,” i.e. not very well planned, and we’d already come to a couple of places where we had to make a choice between one path and another.  In each case we’d both immediately agreed which path to take.  And I said that’s kind of how it always is, you get a vibe and you decide to follow it, you choose one way rather than another, and you go the way you like the look of.
And Clare Balding said, and I’m paraphrasing here, yes but isn’t it different for each individual?  Some people would choose one way, some would choose another, implying that there aren’t actually any precise laws at work here, just personal tastes and preferences.  I couldn’t have agreed more.  OK, hold that thought.
I was staying in London, in Highgate with Martin Bax, a very old friend indeed.  Martin’s a bit the worse for wear these days, but he was still able to walk with me to and from the Tube station at the end of the road.  He did it partly as exercise, partly just to get out of the house and partly to be friendly.  It wasn’t a great expedition, maybe 20 minutes round trip, but I was glad to see him still mobile even if he isn’t moving vey fast these days

But here’s a thing: over the years I must have walked between the Tube station and Martin’s house a hundred times or more, but every time I’d done it I always walked on same the same side of the street, the south side, the side  that connects more directly the station entrance.  But now when I walked with Martin he insisted we walk on the other side, the north side, the sunny side of the street.         This didn’t signal any antagonism or ideological difference between Martin and me, but it did suggest that we weren’t responding to any precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment; Martin just liked to be warm.

WALKING WITH TREASURES

Just so you know, I was in England and I walked and talked around Dunwich with national treasure Clare Balding for the radio series Ramblings.  It was good, I think.  I’m told we both came over as likeable, which is not what every writer in the world is looking for, but I’m happy with that.
And since not everything that happens on a walk can be captured by radio; this is me having just found a puffball:


And this is Clare Balding and the producer Lucy Lunt, with the same puffball:


The show’s available as a podcast.  Just click on the link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z728k#play