Part I — The Theory of Cultural Memory Beyond text Reception studies have long been concerned with texts: how they are read, cited, reworked, inherited. Yet Jan Assmann insists that memory is not only textual. It is institutional, spatial, material. Cultural memory depends on the external supports that societies create to
Bellinzona is a city written in stone. The three castles: Castelgrande, Montebello, and Sasso Corbaro stand like sentinels above the valley, their profiles marking the convergence of Alpine passes and Italian plains. They are not merely picturesque ruins. They are commands carved into rock. A wall dictates movement, a tower
🤲 Prologue: Back in Europe After months in Japan, I arrived in Vicenza and felt the weight of Europe return to me. Shadows here fell hard against stone, after months of light diffused through paper walls. Facades did not breathe or bow; they stood square and certain of their outlines. In
“The meaning of life is that it stops.” — Franz Kafka I went to Nikkō in November. The air was sharp, the cedar-lined avenues hushed, and the last of the maple leaves lay in the courtyards like a scatter of old gold. The lanterns that line the approach to Tōshōgū Shrine
🕍 A Painted Cosmos From the street, the Scrovegni Chapel is unremarkable: a plain brick box beside the ruins of Padua’s Roman arena. But stepping inside is to cross a threshold into another order of time. The air cools, silence thickens, and the walls blaze with colour. Giotto has transformed
“What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” — 2 Corinthians 4:18 Doha shimmers. From the air it looks almost imagined; a set piece of glass and sea, a place written in light and budget. You descend into a mirage that holds. Towers rise as if to
A Manual of Letting Go “Memory is repetition with a difference… a wheel that turns, returns, and turns again.” — Simon Critchley, Memory Theatre 🤜Prologue: A Chosen Unravelling I knew this would be my final excursion in Japan. That knowledge pressed gently on the edges of everything: the packing, the planning,
“Exile is not a matter of choice; it is an enforced state of being.” — Edward Said 🌊 Not Quite, Never Fully There are places on maps that refuse to be located. Places that do not belong to the nations that name them. Okinawa is one of them. Or more precisely: Uchinaa.
“A walk is always in the form of a question.” — Jacques Derrida, Right of Inspection “A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images… In the end, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus I believe there is a silence that predates speech, and a knowing that precedes thought. In Aokigahara, I came close to both: not as metaphors, but as difficulties. They call it the Sea of Trees. I did
“Every fulfilled wish is the beginning of a new disillusionment.” — Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf 🥾 The Ascent of Desire I climbed Fuji to conquer it. Not to reflect. Not to find myself. Not to breathe the sacred air of Japan’s highest peak. I climbed it because I wanted it done: another
“It is not enough to think the divine. One must also summon it.” — Proclus, Theologia Platonica 🪆 A Stillness That Is Not Empty I have stood before countless images. The plaster saints of childhood, radiant and idealised. The Wounded Virgin of Valladolid, the Vulnerata, cradled in the scarred arms of Spanish