life is not an intellectual endeavour.
nature resists culture, and culture (right now) has an obsession with quantifying/labelling things (step trackers, talking stage vs. dating, etc.).
Even philosophy can be abused. If you treat it as a mere intellectual puzzle, even philosophy can lead you astray. Because what philosophy ought to be for Marcus is the art of life. So it's about living the good life and not just about knowing what the good life is.
I don't remember who, but someone came to Osip Mandelstam, a Soviet poet. He asked Mandelstam what he should be doing because he was a young poet and wanted to learn how to get well.
Mandelstam said, "Don't write anything for ten years. Go out to a mine. Go out into the woods. Just fill yourself."
Being a matchmaker creates a very technical awareness of love and of people that is definitively opposed to the experience of actually being in love. It’s like doing audio engineering for a concert vs screaming your lungs out to the song. I imagine it’s very similar to the experience of running a vintage store vs just being a consumer—you’re not... See more
knowledge invariability affects enjoyment.
To write well all you need to do is develop your mind. If you have thought deeply, nearly everything looks interesting.
Tired of all who come with words, words but no language
I went to the snow-covered island.
—Tomas Tranströmer
I went to the snow-covered island.
—Tomas Tranströmer
With lived experience, and then you can write.
I really wanted to be a writer for all of those years when I was doing those things, but I couldn't have been. I could string sentences together, but they didn't have that sort of light behind them that real writing is supposed to have, which can only, I think, come from lived experience.
Arguing about such things as love, spirit, and soul is like pounding your finger with a rock to understand the sense of touch