What marks your path?

May 16

Written By Andrea Hiott

What books and places and relations have been your WayMarkers? with A. A. Kostas

A walk with Chris McCandless, C.S. Lewis, Robert Pirsig, Thomas Merton, D.T. Suzuki & a Christian mystic

What are your Way-Markers?

…noticing is what shifts the path.

👇 scroll down for links to the books Kostas discusses

Andrea Hiott has a conversation with A.A. Kostas, a Singapore-based lawyer and writer behind the Substack Waymarkers, blending poetry, fiction, and essays. They discuss how moving through different places shaped his writing and his interest in avoiding simplistic binaries through discernment—first identifying what kind of decision is in front of you—using hiking metaphors of many paths versus a narrow ridge, or the ridge versus ‘anything goes’.

Kostas cites Into the Wild as a cautionary waymarker about seeking truth without rejecting human connection, and describes a Cradle Mountain hike where his wife had to find her own route.

They explore how technology reinforces binary thinking, why poetry and music hold meanings beneath prose, and the value of humility from engaging Western and Eastern traditions (including Merton and Suzuki). Mentioning various waymakers from C.S. Lewis to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenace to The Gentle Art of Tramping and the Cloud of Unknowing, Andrea and Alex explore what it means to be a writer, why noticing what we are moving through is key, the potentials of care and uncomfortable attention, the importance of embodied presence, and Alex’s experience of fatherhood as immediate responsibility and obligation where love grows and churns the soil.

“...Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what is your special quest in life and whither you should go...

You live on manna vouchsafed to you daily, miraculously. You stretch out arms for hidden gifts, you yearn towards the moonbeams and the stars, you listen with new ears to bird's songs and the murmurs of trees and streams....

From day to day you keep your log, your day-book of the soul, and you may think at first that it is a mere record of travel and of facts; but something else will be entering into it, poetry, the new poetry of your life, and it will be evident to a seeing eye that you are gradually becoming an artist in life, you are learning the gentle art of tramping, and it is giving you an artist's joy in creation.” ― Stephen Graham

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

02:21 Becoming a Writer

03:51 Growing Up Everywhere

05:15 What Is Way Markers

07:12 Pilgrimage and Substack

10:29 Into the Wild Lessons

14:29 Beyond Binary Thinking

18:49 Cradle Mountain Metaphor

22:36 Discernment and Ridge Lines

25:20 Tech Shapes Our Minds

27:00 Why Braid Genres

31:04 Music and Poetry Under Language

34:12 Law as Applied Philosophy

37:41 Zen Meets Catholic Mysticism

43:00 Humility and Unknowing

46:48 Craving Oneness Safely

48:19 Mystical Moments Explained

50:20 Flow State With Meaning

51:00 Desire Points to God

52:25 You Cant Conjure Awe

56:14 Care In Writing

58:36 Audience Capture Trap

59:27 Pamphlets Off The Internet

01:02:40 Love Is Uncomfortable

01:17:58 Fellow Travelers And Faith

01:24:28 Humor Holds Paradox

01:28:34 Fatherhood And Obligation

01:32:18 Closing Reflections