“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—
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:
🌊 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
πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει, σημεῖον δ᾽ ἡ τῶν αἰσθήσεων ἀγάπησις, καὶ μάλιστα τῆς ὄψεως. All humans by nature desire to know, and a sign of this is our love of the senses, especially sight. — Aristotle, Metaphysics 980a21–24 Ens et verum convertuntur. Being and truth are convertible. — Thomas
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Rousseau 🌆 Trinidad: Beauty, Piety, and the Invention of the Secular Trinidad dazzles at first sight. Its cobbled streets glint in the Caribbean sun, pastel façades lean into each other like old friends, and the towers of Santa Ana and the
“The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so… What was once a light cloak has become an iron cage.” — Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 🌲 Heddal: The Whisper of Enchantment The stave church at Heddal rises like a ship turned
🐚 The Pearl of Exile Cienfuegos calls itself the Pearl of the South. At first the name feels ornamental, another Caribbean flourish. Yet walking its boulevards, I felt the presence of someone beside me. Helen, Camus’s Helen: symbol of proportion and beauty seemed to wander these streets, her shadow falling
“The city… does not tell its past, it contains it like the lines of a hand.” — Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities 🌆 Two Visions of the City The first thing you notice in Havana is the weight of the sun. It presses on the stone, bleaching pastel walls into chalk, making colours