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Desire Paths
Real Walks to Nonreal Places
By (author)
Roy Bayfield
Genres:
Performance art, Walking, hiking, trekking
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Synopsis
Unpromisingly for a walking book Desire Pathsbegins on a hospital gurney as the author prepares for open heart surgery. Thereafter, it dances back and forth in place and time between an array of obscurely connected walks that Roy has undertaken over the years.
Among the books many characters and diversions are Wetherspoons, Capt. Picard, the Navy Cut sailor, the buried Spirit of Brighton, Wendy Craig, Harrods, Buddhisms Six Realms of Desire, Things to Do...tourist brochures, Argleton redux, the abyss, strip-lynchets, punk residues, Milton Keynes, multiple identities and an inkling of what the future may hold for thoughtful walkers.
Each chapter starts with a quote from Phil Smith href="http: //www.triarchypress.net/mythogeogeography.html">Mythogeography, specifically from the Legend; given in that book; legend; as in a set of definitions of symbols used on maps to define landscape features. Roy uses these symbols to organise the book.
The main body of each chapter is an account of a walking journey he has done. These are not chronological: structuring the book around the mythogeography Legend has (dis)organised the walks into a sequence that wanders in and out of time.
Towards the end of each chapter, Roy reflects on a Landscape Feature that corresponds to the Legend exploring the workability (or playability) of mythogeographical concepts and illustrating how they have manifested in his own walking.
Finally, theJump Over the Back Fencenotes in each chapter suggest further actual walks which readers could make. New & Used
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What Reviewers Are Saying
"Roy Bayfield rises from the dead and re-discovers walking as a way of life. Desire Paths is another fine mythogeographical grimoire." - Gareth E. Rees (Author: Marshland) "Roy Bayfield really walks in Desire Paths. But not only does he really walk, we accompany him on these "real walks to nonreal places..". we drift with him through the personal and three-dimensional landscape of his voyages in the physical, spiritual, virtual and human realms. His book is for both those already involved in urban walking and for the novice. For those who are new to it, its format is especially designed to open your eyes to the features of the landscape, and at the same time provide you with experimental walking exercises." - Dr Tina Richardson (Editor: Walking Inside Out) "Welcome to the world transformed as possibility. Where the smell of bread from a bakery demolished decades earlier still lingers in the air. Where Princess Diana lives as a lipstick smear on a Harrods wineglass. What is real (or seen) is 'intercut' with the unseen (but not unreal) so as to create new realities of seeing. Ultimately, these Desire Paths converge beautifully in a book that mythogeographically maps the moments of a life, searching restlessly restlessly for what might appear at any given turn, on any given road." - James Byrne (Author: Everything Broken Up Dances)