Algis Tamosaitis
@algis
Writer of Japan or Die
Algis Tamosaitis
japanordie.beehiiv.com
“I knew I was getting somewhere when I began losing interest in the beginnings and the ends of things.”
-Sarah Manguso
“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be,” said Cary Grant, “until finally I became that person. Or he became me.”
Pico Iyer • A Beginner's Guide to Japan
“I want everything quiet and simple. For me: walking barefoot, sitting still, reading, listening to stories, and now and then telling some myself. Eating fruit, drinking milk, longing to create, but with patience and many insights.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Lou Salomé witten c. March 1904
Bullshit, unlike lying, works by making you unconcerned with whether speech is true or false. The bullshitter, like the sophists of antiquity, does not appeal to any measure of truth outside of the needs of the moment. Instead, he tries to capture your attention with the catchiness of his claim and how much it provokes something inside of you: some
... See moreJohn Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, • Awakening From the Meaning Crisis
Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.
Pico Iyer • A Beginner's Guide to Japan
Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time. HENRY BESTON
A.C. Grayling • The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to life
So far as we know, animals do not live in constant anxiety about sickness and death, as we do, because they live in the present. Nevertheless, they will fight when in hunger or when attacked. We must, however, be careful of taking animals as models of “perfectly natural” behavior.
