Posts

Happy Birthday Valentine's Day.

-
At 03:33am he woke without alarm. He thought it was five. It was not. The infection was easing but not gone. He took his antibiotics — the “panty biotics,” as he’d been calling them — along with ibuprofen and paracetamol. Three pieces of Scottish shortbread. He sat by the bay window in the dark. Stars. Silence. Ontology. He moved through wolves in Hungary, boar in Spain, bullocks near Ripon. Through megafauna and Milankovitch cycles. Through object-oriented ontology and its austerity. Through ACIM dismantling ego. Through telos and the absence of it. Through Snowball Earth. Through the idea that nothing exists until it exists. He slept again briefly. By 06:50am the storm had passed. Birdsong. He left 42. Costa’s machine was broken. Orange juice instead. Caffè Nero working. Relief. West began to call. West meant Camino. West meant no sun in the eyes. Before Westgate, there had been The Angel Inn situation days earlier — Andy Stoney intruding, failing to read boundary, launching into int...
Post a Comment
Read more

Recognise is not a trick of the light

-
Recognise is not a trick of light; it’s the subtraction of noise. The city will always offer a brighter answer, the countryside a quieter one. Both are weather. I walk until the labels fall off, until the heat that remains could warm bread. When the spectacle collapses (Ascó), when the husk shows (Flix), when the crowd crowns its own reflection (El Pilar), I return to soles and breath and the low act of service. What persists after that is the ground I call Bas. The rest is rehearsal. I am not collecting truths; I am removing the ones that were handed to me. The city offers answers; I walk until they fall away. What remains after the fall is the ground I can stand on. Call it aporia if you like—the clean emptiness before the next step. My guidance is small and negative: not this carriage, not that street, not that word. When the no is heard, the path appears by inches. Bread, dog, river, dust. Enough. Recognise is not a trick of light; it’s the subtraction of noise. I am not collecting...
Post a Comment
Read more

August 16th Reflections

-
After the shallowness of the dawn the depths of the workday begins. Outside in the breeze: chilling, and in the full sun: warming, I am betwixt man and nature. Better in nature, but never entirely of it. Worse in humanity, yet never completely of it. Coffee and a chapter in the market place. I straddle two realms—concrete and chlorophyll—never fully claimed by either. The market place's coffee steam mingles with the breeze; me transient in both spaces. Workday depths pull, but sunlight offers reprieve. This tension’s a habitat. Not pure nature, not pure human chaos. Just me, sipping, reading, existing in the overlap. That’s enough? Enough isn’t resignation—it’s recognition. I am neither fully wild nor fully tame - is this my strength? The Market Place buzzes, the sun warms, the coffee steams. Here I am, threading through it all without belonging entirely. Is this sovereignty? Or a grand claim? Or the quiet truth of presence...
Post a Comment
Read more

Camino Jacobeo del Ebro: Paso a Paso

-
Part One. Coming up out of Leeds in the mist. Up Through Horsforth towards the flight to Reus. My final pilgrimage of 2025 as the season changes into Autumn. A spectacular Saturday afternoon gestating Leeds at its insidious worst. The entrails of Sunday discharged like afterbirth along Albion Street and Boar Lane. Part of me wants to follow L'Ebro to the Delta and the other me wants to walk with pilgrims westward towards Logroño. *** LBA. Minus the human carnage, it's stunning up here overlooking the runway at Leeds Bradford Airport. Out of the mist and into the azure beyond where my feet keep on keeping on: where I am not being forced into a smaller and smaller box by circumstances: mother, mental health, Lola's aging or Wetherby's hostile pressure. In Leeds Bradford Airport there is a new departure lounge. It's still an airport cluster-fuck, but it's a vast improvement on the restrictive space after Duty Free; it's a meditative space if you can survive the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Paso a Paso.

-
1. Infrared — The Spark Mind(less) Shop, Wetherby. An instant behind the till, under the hum of fluorescent light and the shuffle of small donations. Then she was there — eighty or so, rigid, unblinking. A presence that filled the space and waited for disappearance. She offered one carrier bag as if it were law. Hovered. Every movement of hers a quiet test: will he still exist when I’m done? Then came the line — “Everyone’s on the spectrum.” A sentence that pretends inclusion but flattens difference. I said: “I’m not on the spectrum. I’m infrared.” She blinked, once. “Then you must be warm.” “No,” I said. “I’m moving away.” And I did — one small step. The red wave band of the universe shifting distance. The colour of things receding. The moment passed. The air reset. But something had changed in me — not decision, not plan, just a quiet tilt away from the noise. Infrared. --- Sunday 12th October. 2. Leeds — The Emergence Coming up out of Leeds, the city falls away in folds of mist—the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

French Life Leisure International...

-
1. He started the day with a missed dose and the nervous system’s theatre. Venlafaxine down at 37.5 for weeks, then a slip — and the night turned cinematic: paralysis, spiked in a dark club, the body unable to stir while the mind wrote a reason. He woke with that thin feeling people get after REM has been loud — as if reality is only half-latched. So he did what he always does when the mind runs off: he opened the back patio. Cool air. Blackbird. Strong Lebanese coffee. Not a diagnosis, not a drama — just the world being the world. He thought about taking his blood pressure, then knew better: don’t measure adrenaline and call it truth. Walk Lola first. Let the body settle on its own. Later, sat with his mum, he watched Small Prophets. He enjoyed it, then felt the ending wobble — the show promising alchemy and delivering Erinsborough, humour that landed for him but not for her. His mum didn’t catch the sight gags; she just found it strange. He could feel that quiet loneliness of liking ...
Post a Comment
Read more