Place < AdamKhan.net

Place-related Parries

July 2009

At Modi’in Mall

There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.

December 2008

Short-circuiting Place-based Longing

If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.

October 2007

Jam and bread, Jam and bread, Jam and bread!

In retrospect, my dog Maddie had a simpler life; the big adventures of uprooting only came in the last year of her life, whereas her offspring Jam has spent over a third of hers here in Italy, with her fixtures — first Maddie and then me — falling away.

August 2007

A Drop in Time

To have a camera back again a personal epoch later feels like a time machine squared. Your chronicling device — itself a time machine of sorts — is suddenly back to what it was years ago, before much was changed, which in itself somewhat returns you to those times.

July 2007

Busy, Busy City

There’s a bridge in London’s St. James’s park where you can see Buckingham Palace at one end of the pond and Whitehall at the other, with the London Eye behind. Whitehall looked less a thumping fast haven for bureaucrats than a fairytale town, with the improbable slowly-moving Eye completing the fantasy.

May 2007

Shite on Brighton

“Like many provincial towns,” the Private Eye reviewer stabs, “Brighton, as depicted in this hacked-together tribute, defines itself more by what it isn’t than by what it is. It’s not London, for one thing.”

April 2007

Too Frou-frou for a Fry-up

A full cooked English breakfast is a naughty treat — not quite junk food but not the sort of thing to eat daily unless work involves cross-country skiing. So when going for a fry-up I like the slumming aspect.

I Like it Here

Brighton lacks the buzz of a global city like London but it is vivacious and though it has its uglinesses it has elegant and even lovely parts.

March 2007

A Passage to Sauna

Am I the only man who enjoys standing up and doing things in the sauna? I do the first few Bikram Yoga poses. Works great in the super heat, but with my towel wrapped around my head to stop my nostrils from burning I think I upset people when bending over.

A Walk to the Station

It’s 4pm. The next train to Lewes is at 4:10pm. The cheap day return ticket, £3.60, rolls out of the machine thanks to a credit card. Then tea from a kiosk. All is well.

February 2007

Rome, Open Shitty

I’m relieved now to have left Rome, though despite a profound lack of click with the place I did what I could to stay, thinking there was some glamour to it.

Reminds Me of Tel Aviv

You get to a stage in life where you are already formed by the past. Thoughts and dilemmas about place are either central questions or a distraction from real issues.

December 2003

Ode to Salame

It’s supposed to be the arsehole of Tel Aviv, Salame Street, running east-west at its southern tip, but it always does me darn good.

Place-related Photos

Latmag does Place

January 2010

Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, Pp. 406-7.

Jacob’s Summary

“ The biblical counterpart of Odysseus, Jacob must solve the fundamental human difficulties illustrated in the pre-Abrahamic chapters of Genesis. ”

August 2003

George Orwell, a letter (the new book referred to is 1984)

You Have to Leave Glasgow about 8am

“ We also have to shoot rabbits when the larder gets low, and grow vegetables, though of course I haven’t been here long enough to get much return from the ground yet, as it was simply a jungle when I got here. With all this you can imagine that I don’t do much work however I have actually begun my new book and hope to have done four or five chapters by the time I come back in October. ”