Category: Cities
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Zürich in winter: 2025
Monday The first night in Zürich. The flight wasn’t bad; was thinking about small things going wrong while traveling, after reading someone who claims that such things are ruinous but one forgets them. I don’t really agree: for some people, at some times, yes, but… And, finally in my hotel room, I break a glass…
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Zürich 2.24
NCL-AMS-ZUR A brief trip to Zürich, just five days, to teach a seminar at the Institut. I really don’t travel much these days, do I?… dusting a suitcase, running through the list I made years ago when I was studying so I wouldn’t forget important things… First of all, airport security in Newcastle has been…
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Crossing
Crossing from one year to the next…. This year has been one of separations and endings. In fact, more than ever in my life, I've made many breaks – but without having to do so, and at my own speed. As I am someone who has, many times, suddenly leapt or been driven from one…
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A bit vague, not lost
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by
Anniversary of this blog… sixteen years. A few days ago, really, on Saturday, but this is close enough. No, the blog doesn't feel dead to me, I'm still here for it, and it for me. I retired from the university in February; moved the books of my office to storage; and now keep talking about…
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Summer’s day
I am a bit tired today – a mistake in minor medications, a mildly bad night… and, as so often, I only realized at about five or six a.m. what the obvious mistake must have been, and why my guts were churning as a result. Not terrible. A bit exasperating. And two different friends, eager…
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Ancient history
I'm in a casual, student-y restaurant in August: which means it's fairly empty. The big, friendly black cook looks at me inquiringly – I'll stick with this cider (yes, it's fruit-flavored, shut up you) and won't have dinner for another half hour or so. I'm finally working on that proposal for the shorter of the…
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14:23 10-3-18
14:23 = 2:23 pm 10 March 2018 = Saturday … Having left M. with a hug at the station (one of those hugs between men that always make me wonder, in a flash, whether non-gay locals find this unusual, but then I always decide not to care), I turn and walk – not, as I…
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Links
The six-hour essay exam is about to end: I am in the small, coolly organised office at the top of the building, looking down across the garden to the lake. I have eaten my lunch at the table to my left, gone through my bottle of tea and had a bit of coffee, dozed at…
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Fifth Continent, part deux
[A week in Cape Town, South Africa, at the end of July 2017… continued from part 1. Yes, I did take a long time to finish writing this!….] ••• On Tuesday morning we are good and organised tourists: or really Amanda is, and I follow her, still coughing a bit. We are going to see…
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A different three in the morning
'Three in the morning' has shown up in several of my published papers around AIDS since the mid-1990s. It generally refers to the same nexus of memory, feeling, implications: a quality of being in a hospital room, an anonymous room that could be anywhere, in the middle of the night; lights are very low but…
Paul Attinello 