Ambulate

Craig Mod is a hero I have only recently discovered, a man who has sublimated many of the interests we share into a coherent life. He is an independent thinker and doer, the sort of man who not only picks up Japanese on his own, but then, experiencing the great cost of a US university education, researches, applies for and attends Waseda University in Tokyo without aid. That takes guts. I first encountered Mod through the podcast of another positive influence on my travels and writing life, the excellent Alastair Humphreys, author of Microadventures , who had Mod on his podcast, Living Adventurously . More on Humphreys, a brilliant man, some other time. A sidenote: I encountered Mod just at the end of a truly intense bout of work - think fifteen to sixteen hour days with writing and exercise crammed in to the space I’d normally be asleep. I both love and hate the emotional and intellectual tenderising and hyper-sensitivity that comes with long periods of intense work. I often find t...

 Exploring the stories we write upon the places we walk These walking entries raise a simple question: what form does this writing take? Is it a personal diary? A travelogue? A series of reviews? Nature writing? Does it matter? The answer, I believe, comes through the last question. It doesn’t matter. Form can be important. I sometimes like to know what I am reading. I write and publish short fiction in addition to this blog. I have tried - and mostly failed - to write novels, at least in published form. I love poetry, that most formal of forms, though I don’t profess to write it. But I love the formless, the genre-shifting too. Sometimes, just as when I walk, if I have a vague sense of my direction, I like to wander off the path or take that branch off a trail I’ve never used before, to revel in novelty and the unknown. Take Geoff Dyer , a writer I’ve read for a long time and had the pleasure of listening to, as he discussed his photography book, The Ongoing Moment . He has an e...

  Heroes: one magnificent moustache unites two outlooks  I have posted before on the wonders of karate, making an allusion in that lengthy diatribe to Johnny Karate, the alter-ego of Andy Dwyer, the loveable manchild of Parks and Recreation . I arrived at that show late, as I often do with trends. I am stubbornly independent. If a trend lionises something, I’ll frequently ignore it, only to sniff at it later when the crowds die down. I often rue the time I’ve let pass before something great enters my life. So it was with Parks and Rec. The show is damn funny but it manages that funniness while being kind. It skewers pretension and knee-jerk conservatism, certainly but so too it pokes fun at progressive do-gooders of my ilk. The product of Greg Daniels and Mike Schur, the show ran for seven seasons from 2009-2015. Among its many fine characters, I love the administrative nerdery and earnestness of the main character, Leslie Knope. But it’s her boss, Ron Swanson, and Nick Offerm...

Johnny Karate How learning karate in my forties changed how I move around the world Johnny Karate - and his sensible older brother Jonathan Karate - are the alter egos of Andy Dwyer , loveable manchild of Parks and Recreation , one of my favourite television shows.  The character is a children’s television show host, there to teach kids about how to be observant of their surroundings and to live safely, while heaping in doses of lunacy and ninja fun.  It looks like, inadvertently, I have become my own, less lunatic version of Johnny Karate, a sport that has changed my own patterns of movement and way of moving around the world for the better. Spoiler alert: no wooden planks and very few consenting adults were hurt in the making of this post. But what the adventure of karate has taught me is a lesson that all teachers should learn, the humility to pick up a good skill, that good teaching “ occurs when teachers see learning through the eyes of students and help them become their...