marginalia

When I relinquish all thought of the self as is and cultivate the gaze of pure objectivity, then for the first time, as a figure in a painting, I attain a beautiful harmony with the natural phenomena around me.  The instant I revert to thoughts of my distress at the falling rain and the weariness of my legs, I lose my place in the world of the poem or painting.

—Natsume Soseki, from Kusamakura
    Picture from My Neighbor Totoro

“When he heard that Sanshiro was going to school forty hours a week, his eyes popped. “You idiot! Do you think it would ‘satisfy’ you to eat what they serve at your rooming house ten times a day?”
“What should I do?” Sanshiro pleaded.
“Ride the streetcar,” Yojiro said.
Sanshiro tried to find Yojiro’s hidden meaning, without success.
“You mean a real streetcar?” he asked.
Yojiro laughed uncontrollably. “Get on the streetcar and ride around Tokyo ten or fifteen times. After a while it will just happen by itself- you will become satisfied.
“Why?”
“Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you’re lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it’s the first step, and the easiest.”

—Sanshiro, Natsume Soseki