Take one letter

Walking is something I now enjoy, dodgy knees and hips permitting as my walks are generally short, done at at my own pace and with the dog for company.

There have been times, including earlier this year, when I have hardly been able to walk and times when going for a walk seemed more like a forced march, at the end of which I would be in such pain that the only way to finish the last few yards would be to count my paces in lots of 20.

Walking now is an action which by its very repetitious nature – putting one foot in front of the other – allows my mind to wander and in doing so, structure funding bids, draft emails, prepare something to eat, perform all day-to-day tasks … think about my work, think about work I’ve seen, think about new work, make connections.

Re-work:

change, re-organise, re-process, as in this piece which I fished out and worked on again by adding a piece of paper left over from another work.

Strait

1: a archaic : a narrow space or passage

b : a comparatively narrow passageway connecting two large bodies of water —often used in plural but singular in construction

c : isthmus

2: a situation of perplexity or distress —often used in plural<in dire straits>

(from Merriam-Webster)

I went to a brilliant talk by Piero Zanini on the geographical/cultural/anthropoligical meaning of the Strait in Dunkerque yesterday.

I didn’t understand it all but this is what I got from it!

Zanini talked about the Indispensable Strait, which is the name of an actual waterway, but he was also talking about how we need the figure of the strait as metaphor (from Greek meaning carry across and in modern-day Greece buses might have metaphora embossed on their sides), explorers of North America looked for a strait that wasn’t there, convinced that it had to be there: a strait is something that makes the other side seem far away, despite being near; crossing it requires rituals; to build the island of Utopia, a strait had to be created (Thomas More); the strait, between two shores, contains immense potential/possibilities; it is a figure of our anxieties …

Straits are passages, you can cross them and also go along them and they have a narrowest point, a chokepoint, a gate …

Matthew 7:13/14 (King James Version):

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

The opportunity and invitation came out of DAD’s work with Nicolette Picheral and her work “Entre Phare et Shaft/Between Beacon and Shaft”as part of Dunkerque regional capital of culture 2013.

Links:

http://www.parlemot.org/entre-phare-et-shaft.html

http://www.dadonline.eu/node/519

http://www.studio308ltd.co.uk/news/indispensable-s…

Procrastination

or should that be paperwork?

Abstract

as in that which is hard or impossible to represent; a state of mind or an emotional state.