neil cummings

the enthusiast has the same relationship to capital as the gift to the commodity

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walk

Sunday 20th November, on my way to the Critical Practice Walk and Talk at the Royal Observatory. The walk (we were to meet at at 1pm) started at the Prime Meridian, Longitude 0° Latitude 51° 28' 38 N........ even if it rained. The walk was entitled from Science to Culture........

Anyway, on my way there I stood stunned before the gates of heaven in Mile End, and the walk unfolded through banks of fog pierced by sparkling winter sun, like in a Turner painting. Beautiful.

See Man on a Plate

summer holiday

New Year

Enjoy the New Year, hope to see you in 2010!

Best Wishes
Neil

Ruta del Norte

In the summer of 2009 I walked for a month as a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. I walked the Rutal del Norte which was used by pilgrims when the Muslim pressence - until the 15th century - made travel along the Camino Francés too difficult and dangerous. Much of the route follows the line of the old Roman road, the Via Agrippa which threads its way along a ribbon of land between the mountains of the Picos de Europa to the south, and the sea to the north.

Beauty

Pilgrim

In the summer of 2008 I walked as a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela. I started at St Jean de Pied a Port in France, walked over the Pyrenees and then for a month west across Spain to Santiago. In fact, I walked on to Finisterre - the end of the earth.

People have been walking this route for over 1,000 years. Its an astonishing intersection of beautiful landscape, amazing architecture, great wine and food but best of all, lovely fellow pilgrims.

Man on a Plate

Winter sun. Just past the lunar equinox. Slack tides. I walk along the Thames path into town to buy On Grammatology by Jacques Derrida. Lost the previous copy.

In front of the old Billingsgate fish market I clamber down on to the foreshore. Combing through the pebblebricks, gravel, shells, bones, pieces of clay pipe, fossils, plastic detritus and ceramic bits-and-pieces.

Notice a distinctive drift of cobalt blue Willow Pattern shards. Squat, sift and see a fragment with an image. I pick-it-up to inspect. In China there's a man on a river foreshore. I'm in a Borges story.