Yesterday, invited a dinner party in London, I decided to walk. The first part of my several hour walk followed the river, along the Thames Walk.<\/p>\n
But then I turned inland, and found myself far away from the tourist parts. I passed by the sorts of shops, markets and casual hangouts you see in real life, far from the somewhat constructed fantasy of London that tourists often see.<\/p>\n
I can best describe it as the London equivalent of neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Equivalent, but definitely not the same.<\/p>\n
For example, at one point on my journey I encountered a gray fox. We both stopped, the fox looked at me, I looked at the fox, and then we each went on our way. As far as I know, there are no gray foxes in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
There is something about the sights, sounds and smells of everyday life that sets it apart, that gives it a special place in our experience. No matter how advanced virtual reality becomes, I don’t think we will ever want to give up on the simple quotidian pleasures of picking up something at the market or sharing a beer down at the local pub.<\/p>\n
And that’s a very good thing. We should never take for granted the wonderful and glorious immersiveness of the ordinary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday, invited a dinner party in London, I decided to walk. The first part of my several hour walk followed the river, along the Thames Walk. But then I turned inland, and found myself far away from the tourist parts. I passed by the sorts of shops, markets and casual hangouts you see in real … Continue reading “The glorious immersiveness of the ordinary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21505"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21513,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21505\/revisions\/21513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}