‘Non facit martyrem poena, sed causa.‘ ‘It is not the punishment that makes the martyr, but the cause’ Augustine, Sermon 307 St Albans does not shout. It does not arrange itself for reverence. It lives in weather, stone, and the ordinary rhythm of an English town. Yet here, a man
“Genuine repetition is recollected forward.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Repetition Six months after my first encounter with Qatar’s glittering coast, I returned. This time, I turned away from Doha’s vertical gleam and drove into the north and west, where the desert meets the sea without spectacle. I told myself this
“The rose is without why. It blooms because it blooms. It cares not for itself, asks not if it is seen.” — Angelus Silesius, Der Cherubinische Wandersmann I.289 🌾 I. Hokkaido’s Refusal to Explain There is a different stillness in Hokkaido. Not the composed silence of Honshu’s gardens, measured
“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
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
“Morality is just a sign language of the affects.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil There are moments when travel ceases to be movement and becomes instruction. You do not merely see a country; you begin to feel how it has formed its people, its stone, even its silences. China
“The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it.” — Tōno Monogatari, Preface 📖 Two Books of the Forest In 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Their aim was not simply to entertain, but to preserve. Germany at the time was not
“Consciousness sleeps in minerals, dreams in plants, wakes up in animals, and becomes self-aware in humans.” — Rumi 🌌 The Sky Was Too Blue The sky over Hiroshima was a cloudy blue. Not the gentle, reverent blue of mourning, but a flat, hazy indifference: a sky being scrubbed of memory. It hung
In Japan, the year isn’t measured only by months or temperature shifts. It moves with the flowers; not just cherry blossoms, but dozens more, each whispering a quiet change. The Japanese calendar, once divided into 24 solar terms and then into 72 micro-seasons (七十二候), is a reminder that life