“The sculptor does not add beauty, but pares away the superfluous. So the soul too must strip away all excess.” — Plotinus, Enneads I.6.9 We come to towns like Takayama hoping for something essential. Wooden lattice, rain-worn cedar, a quiet path between shrine and shutter. But something has settled
🌒 I. Plotinus and the Lamp of the Soul There are stories that refuse to settle, stories that hover between illumination and shadow. The myth of Psyche and Cupid is one of them. Each time I return to it, I sense not a tale about disobedience but a meditation on the
“All real living is meeting.” Martin Buber, I and Thou “Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination.” Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times The Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov feels less like a burial ground than a memory made visible. Graves rise and
"What is in nature unconsciously is in spirit consciously.” — F. W. J. Schelling “Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature.” — G. W. F. Hegel In Gujo Hachiman, nothing strives. And yet, nothing is left undone. The castle here is not proud. It does not dominate the mountain. It
“There is a certain sacred image (agalma) buried in the soul, and it is for the sake of this that all our efforts are made.” — Plato, Symposium Not all beauty declares itself. In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima speaks of the agalma : a sacred form, hidden inside the outer casing of
“The monkey is the most perfect animal, and the most nearly resembling man.” — Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary There is a peculiar kind of disillusionment that can only occur when reality too closely resembles caricature. At Jigokudani, the famous “snow monkeys” of Nagano are touted as contemplative bathers, half-monks, half-mascots—soaking in
Θαλῆς δὲ τῶν τοιούτων ἔν τινι λέγεται τὴν ἀρχὴν εἶναι τὸ ὕδωρ, διὸ καὶ τὴν γῆν ἐπ᾽ ὕδατος ἐφάνησεν ἐπικαθήμενον. “Thales, one of the first of this kind, is said to have declared that the principle of all things is water, and for this reason he claimed that the earth
Baddesley Clinton, Bergson, and the Ghost of Mercy “The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future.” — Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory “The sense of death is most in apprehension.” — Measure for Measure, II.i 🕰️ Pure and Habit Memory Henri Bergson wrote that memory divides in
“The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us…” — Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way 🪞 The Unseen Frame I went to South Korea and failed to see it. Not because I was not looking, but because I was measuring. Having lived in Japan
The first thing Viñales gives you is colour: a soil so red it stains your shoes, your hands, even the air itself. It is not the soft loam of Europe, gentle and forgiving, nor the volcanic black of Japan, sharp and fertile. It is a harsher red, iron-rich, insistent: a
🌊 Matter and Mind in the Morning The sea greets me first in Shizuoka. From Shimizu harbour, gulls circle low as fishing boats return, the air woven of salt, diesel, and faint tea drifting from inland hills. Armstrong cuts against the romance: the mind is the brain, nothing more. Awe and
“A house is not just a place to live, but a place to keep the memories of life.”—Haruki Murakami Gasshō-zukuri (合掌造り) means “constructed like hands in prayer.” The phrase itself feels reverent, almost devotional. These thatched farmhouses, with their steep, triangular roofs and broad shoulders, are not aesthetic gestures