Dancing in Odessa

Of course, I signed up. So now I have two races scheduled for 2022, first Northumberland Ultra 58 km in February and then Chiltern Wonderland 50 miles (80 km) in September. With a bit of luck, I might even get Elin to join me for the latter.

For tonight, I picked up a collection of poems that Gabriel recommended, Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa. 

“Where days bend and straighten

in a city that belongs to no nation

but all the nations of wind”

Oddly enough, a glass of nero d'avola, not from Sicily, but South Australia. It is anyone’s guess when Australia will open for tourists again, at least without a quarantine requirement. As the pandemic grinds on, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand the logic behind all these travel bans, especially as delta is now the dominant variant everywhere. While new variants may perhaps emerge in the future, for now it seems reasonable to just open up the world for vaccinated travellers and accept that Covid is here to stay. But nationalist logic obviously works in its own funny ways.