one thing that strikes me is that ‘peace with the particular’ is almost inextricable from the question of how do I love my neighbour.
ie. until I can find the divine in the one human who has happened to land next to me, the particular face of the transcendent beyond reflected in this specific image-bearer I will not be able to tolerate the specificity of my own existence, or find peace in becoming myself in harmony with rather than in competition versus every other. And vice versa.

To be fully present and attentive to what is happening transforms the Now into a myriad of dynamic opportunities, with perhaps a thousand more avenues of life embedded in it than any Project has ever succeeded in manufacturing - with the added bonus that they are not restricted to the limit of a single person’s own effort and imagination. The only drawback is that it is no longer possible to say ‘I have done this.’

what do you seek?

what do you seek?

what do you seek?

what do you seek?

‘Towards the end of 2003 a ferris wheel from Paris was re-erected in the centre of Birmingham but the French audio commentary had not been removed, and for several weeks the public viewed the English cityscape whilst being told to look out for Parisian landmarks.

What happens if you overlap a map of Moscow on your own city? What do you find where the Kremlin should be? Look for references to Russia. Stop in bars and drink vodka.

What about Baghdad?…

Or fictional spaces? (Narnia, streets in soap operas, etc.)

Take guidebooks from one place and use them in another. Exchange maps with friends from other cities.’

*** 

‘Mis-Guides’ are a devon-ish art meets tour guide meets philosophy meets urban geography project… using ‘walking (and, more generally, touring) as a critical tool to investigate and destabilize essentialized notions of place and landscape.’
A bit different from the surrealist flâneur who wanders about dreaming in the city and thinking about perception, this kind of book (which i haven't read yet) is more grappling with the question, 'how can we creatively inhabit the spaces we live in, in our time'...? which leads to a kind of shared non-linear mapping/navigational tool 'guided by the practice of mytho-geography, which places the fictional, fanciful, fragile and personal on equal terms with 'factual', municipal history. Author and walker become partners in ascribing significance to place.’

I like it.
The book includes suggestions/results of exploring a city with children, pretending the city is underwater/a mountain… ideas for disrupting a mindless commuter route, making the most of opportunities furnished by roadworks… Think there's lots of scope here, for our own wandering, dreaming in our own spaces/places...

Read more on the book's site , or there are a whole array of other interesting projects/experiments here ...

Some things some wise people have been teaching me:

fear can be a powerful kind of optical illusion which at times prevents us from seeing one another at all
you can only be loved to the degree that you are known
our judgements and fear-laden expectations of people limit us even more than they limit them

and

if you desire to see more life; invitation, welcome, rumour-whispering, tour-guiding and gardening are better practice than any effort to bring about change - not least because you will unquestionably find more than you were able to seek
(although whether we alter how we seek according to what we do find is another question altogether).

In consequence, summarily, and by the way, the winds here have wrenched so many spider-rooted gnarled oaks out of the ground they have broken up the old earth and there are rooves smashed in, cables snapped and fences strewn along the wayside - if the weather was a woman she would of course be arrested but as it is I feel that she expresses almost on our behalf something we cannot.