Sunday, November 3, 2013 — “I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don’t believe I deserved my friends.” — Walt Whitman

I don’t put much of my pri­vate social life into this site, but in this case “a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words.” I have been friends with Fil­ip Marek for a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry. Despite our liv­ing on dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, we have man­aged to see each oth­er fair­ly often — most recent­ly in Spain. We first came to know each oth­er through Filip’s involve­ment in the Czech Rev­o­lu­tion, and the friend­ship was sub­se­quent­ly built up from a series of shared adven­tures (in places as dis­parate as Crete and the shores of the Arc­tic Ocean) and shared intel­lec­tu­al inter­ests. We make a rather Cer­van­tean team. I am a lit­tle man, while Fil­ip is a tall, mus­cu­lar giant. This pic­ture, recent­ly tak­en* in the sort of place Fil­ip can often be found, is so evoca­tive that I could not resist putting it up here.

Filip Marek Oct 2013-1

*Fil­ip has just informed me that it was tak­en two days ago, in Switzerland

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