I admit the blog I posted on Friday was a little incoherent. Because I don’t think I explained that it was really just a musing over what appears to be a connection between a retreat from the world and reactionary beliefs, and how I feel that I have seen myself wishing to retreat over theContinue reading “Thoughts on ‘Am I becoming more right wing’?”
Category Archives: Writing
Am I becoming more right wing?
…and the shift from a society of aspirational individualism to one of preservationist individualism. Ok, so the title sounds ironic, or even a reference to a Father Ted scene. But it does raise what has been one of my serious concerns over the past year or so: that a series of factors have altered myContinue reading “Am I becoming more right wing?”
I thought it was nostalgia…
…and maybe it is? In Laura Grace Ford’s words (I think?) maybe I am also ‘always yearning for a time that has just eluded us’ as I see images of urban architecture that still existed around the time of the financial crash 15 years ago, but before each subsequent crisis, fracturing and dislocating our graspContinue reading “I thought it was nostalgia…”
Jurassic Park 30 years on: the gates to ‘The End of History’
Of late I’ve more or less accepted that I’m unqualified to write even lazy cultural theory. Much to my frustration, and after realising I was applying for a Phd I couldn’t do, I’ve come to accept that I’ll never get a job in teaching or writing about something that interests me so much. In partContinue reading “Jurassic Park 30 years on: the gates to ‘The End of History’”
1996
I can’t come to terms with the fact it’s 27 years ago. It’s my fault, I guess, for getting stuck in this amber. Although I cannot be held responsible for the formation of the amber itself, I need to accept some responsibility for getting so stuck, and in turn unstuck from the world as itContinue reading “1996”
Meditations on escape
I took these photos over 10 years ago, in inefficient pumps my feet could no longer tolerate – trying, in a repeated fashion, to see how far I could walk it to the horizon on ‘the tops’. Today I’m up there, on the top, walking the very boggy old Yorkshire/Cheshire border, up to ‘Dead EndContinue reading “Meditations on escape”
Out of time/into time
On the first day of trying to make the ascent I didn’t even get out of the car. But there was enough time to stare out the window at the towering blackened slopes of Longdendale. to somehow see my life reflected. A story lyrically chaptered by this ascent – through the leafy foothills, the barrenContinue reading “Out of time/into time”
Escaping the weekend carnage
My experience of Mental illness has been of being stuck in a space with your own thoughts about yourself, self-consumed thoughts, swirling around and around with fluctuating ferocity. The words ‘self-consumed’ will likely produce little sympathy, yet all of my writings, all of my doings have been saying one thing, ‘help, I want to escape this’, overContinue reading “Escaping the weekend carnage”
Submerged utopias of impossible escape
I can’t have been to this specific spot for over 20 years. Possibly not since my doings were still determined by my parents, and before walking up to ‘the Tops’ became more of a wish for transcendence. In my 20s I’d always stick to the roads which cut through this landscape, because I wanted toContinue reading “Submerged utopias of impossible escape”
One day…
I’m back in the same spot, the hills that separate the urban spaces of Yorkshire and the North West. I made a bold admission the night previous: I told social media that I had lived with a mental illness for 20 years. This kind of thing makes my many social masks turn inwards and scowl,Continue reading “One day…”
John B Ledger 