answers to questions most have not imagined.

how to feel after seeking four decades answers to human questions most do not yet imagine.

whysoevers

we can not but understand the world and life from within whenever, wherever and whoever we are, especially in trying to imagine our 'whyevers'.

self-knowledge?!

human self-knowledge would recognize the strong tendency of humans to self-deception.

high-heeled souls and cigarette tossers

a subtle sociologist on the streets of Moscow should be able to accurately predict high-heel height by observing only the individual woman's face.
and whether any particular Russian male walking the street smoking will put out his cigarette before tossing the butt in the waste-bin, just toss it away indifferently onto the street, or throw it still burning into the waste.

trapped in a (dis)enchanted castle

the psyche of the born American is like an isolated castle in which each lives trapped, out of which few escape, and from which signals and messages are sent to others trapped in their own castles. (sometimes the messages are to help them out.)

are you telling a story?

while we live we all tell stories to each other...in, about and from our lives. so that we are all more or less able and interesting story-tellers.
but tales of yore, say that when we die we are told, even shown, our own life as a story.
do you want to learn your own story?

the decisive who and why of travel

"been there, done that" is now a kind of abandoned, popular trivialization of human experience, and one which no serious soul could ever seriously say...save perhaps with great regret.
"who" travels and "why" determine the depths or shallows of any "travel experience".

though travail has been organized (Cooked) out of much travel in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, a shallow or trivial "who" with a "why" which is merely entertainment and distraction, or being banally able to brag "been there, done that", will clearly experience little more than its trivial self.

meanwhile, where in the world is not yet flooded with mass tourism?

the lives of pleasure, practicality and contemplation

many people are trying to change the world; fewer are studying to try to understand it. this puts them in very different relations and attitudes to the world and our life. (not to consider those "just enjoying life".)
as far back as Pythagoras there was the distinction of the life of enjoyment, the practical life, and the life of contemplation. "Steppenwolves" distinctly belong to the latter. the malls are filled with others.

nice and comfy

99.99 percent of those who use the word "nice", have no consciousness of the words original meaning, nor how it is thus more deeply true.
and "comfort", once referred to strength(en), not weaken, ease.

Cooked, prepackaged tour(ist)s

it was surely inevitable that someone cook up the package tour, now globally sold. this might not be so confining, were the tourists not also pre-cooked and -packaged.

have a nice depression! : )

life and the world -- and/or your personal life and world -- may seem to have no Meaning...but is that a good enough reason to get depressed?

it is always astonishing to hear how "depression" is spoken about in and by the publicly dominating middle-class mind. it is difficult for a Steppenwolf-type to know where to begin to critique such a presumptuous optimism as so confidently describes "depression" as an illness that is treatable.
if one takes a realistic look at human history in merely the past 100 years, or the scores of world conflicts current today... oh, who needs to get depressed listing all the problems in the world, past, present and future, and how they affect our nations, societies, families, careers, personal lives, mental health...
fyi: there are many aspects of our daily life and world, that fully merit, that well deserve, being depressed about.

and then, what of those poor, unfortunate individuals in history who suffered from some Platonic madness, Renaissance melancholy, Faustian despair, Romantic brooding...who might have done so much better and more with treatment for their depressions. Dante was lost in those damned dark woods; Michelangelo was said to have not only depressions, but a temper. Beethoven could have smiled in spite of his growing deafness. and what of distressed Dostoevsky...he surely would have written such nice stories. and Nietzsche...with his horrid "death of God" news...no wonder he went mad.

being depressed is perhaps one of the most realistic relations to the world as it is, even if we do not accept a contemptus mundi.

travailess travel

reading in The Accelerated Sublime (2002) by C. Bell and J Lyall will fundamentally alter not only any thoughtful person's future travels, but all their past travels as well.

reason to write

considering the rarity of readers here, there is really very little reason to write

mass ahistoria

people live in the current(s) of human history(ies), in their societies' ideas, beliefs, even emotions, but most know neither this nor how.