January 2012
2 posts
“A poem is like a heavy weight that the poet has carried to the roof bit by bit....”
– Paul Valéry
2 tags
December 2011
1 post
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“Sartre pointed out that the trouble with narrative is that it secretly begins at...”
– A. Martin in book review for the Independent
November 2011
1 post
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
“We need to test radically different things. We don’t know what works. Destroy...”
– Behind the scenes: A/B testing part 3: Finalé - (37signals)
'Neil illusions'
Allan Neil in New Scientist, 1971, via (1→2→3)
July 2011
1 post
“English people are rather frank and direct in manner. To express their emotions,...”
– Peilei Chen (‘A Cognitive Study of “Happiness” Metaphors in English and Chinese Idioms’)
June 2011
1 post
3 tags
“Destiny can be directed… one does not need to remain in bondage to the...”
– Anaïs Nin
May 2011
2 posts
1 tag
gairaigo + wasai-eigo from French
アベック (abekku), ‘romantic couple’, from avec (‘with’) ロマン (roman), ‘novel’, ‘something that rouses one’s dreams / longings’, from roman ズボン (zubon), ‘trousers’, from jupon (‘petticoat’, i.e. related to jupe, ‘skirt’) [zubon are worn under an uwagi, and sometimes under a hakama] シュークリーム (shūkurīmu),...
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April 2011
7 posts
2 tags
coincidental post three on time
DP: Every sentence written in English contains some anxiety about time. I’d love to write a poem that was Time-Free. Is that possible?
RZ: Why? Is this particular to English?
DA: I don’t think English is necessarily the only language in which time is embedded in the verbs. But I know that in Mandarin it’s easy to make a sentence that doesn’t tell you at what time things happened. And I wish that...
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“Discourse is not life; its time is not yours.”
– Michel Foucault
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Andrée-Anne Dupuis-Bourret
I’ve fallen instantly head-over-heels in love with the phrase ‘sculptural printworks’. Craft paper, screenprinted, and folded. (via Printeresting, who made a studio visit & photographed it)
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“To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost...”
– Kathryn Schulz
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“The bluesman makes an assertion, then revises it, restating it. The repetition...”
– Douglas Kearney
March 2011
22 posts
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Ólöf Arnalds: “Innundir skinni”
3 tags
fridayreads:
a. Quantum theory: a very short introduction (John Polkinghorne) ⇒ b. Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) ⇒ c. The places that scare you (Pema Chödrön) ⇒
all started, finished, wanting notes. All burrowing into my brain in different ways. I finished Pema’s last night in a few hours, lucky with knowledge. No essays today, sorry; not firing on all cylinders. And that’s okay.
2 tags
'Today I wrote nothing'
Perfect for a day beginning with returning to 750words.com:
April 11, 1937
“Enough of laziness and doing nothing! Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol’s advice, write down that today there’s nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.”
— Daniil Kharms,...
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meditation: a quick post
Out of the countless little passing sparks of thought-forms in a sitting, some catch, because of their evocations. They light a little longer than thoughts about, say, kettles. So even in my entirely secular practice, in the last week or two I’ve seen:
a golden Buddha a long, grey-stone cathedral nave Medicine Buddha.
It’s not mysterious, but it is comforting. And: each has been...
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“Just as language evolved with increasing specificity, breaking further and...”
– From Fanny Howe’s essay “Bewilderment” (via erininthebay)
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What else could a decision be but the product of a combination of the present state of being, fashioned by the past, and the environment that a person finds themself in? From at least Hume onwards, many philosophers have understood that the only meaningful sense of free will is action free from coercion or force, not action exempt from the causal necessity of the physical world. To that debate,...
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Laurie Kang
via oioiaiai
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“I say this with fervent emotion, which is what I use when I don’t have...”
– Night life: this is your brain on dreams (New Scientist)
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“We develop behavior patterns and emotional coping mechanisms to cover up the...”
– Gabor Mate (posted by steve-kim)
1000reasonsnottostartmakingart: ‘So, how to make sense of it all? How to work to unravel your own true self?’
*
psst…
Been researching on this today. I think these specific words get us off on the wrong tack, though Mate is pushing in the right...
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“It is not what we do that has the greatest impact but who we are being as we do...”
– Gabor Mate (via steve-kim)
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Clint Fulkerson, etchings
via field & sea
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solving, unsolving
Unsolving the City: An Interview with China Miéville Geoff Manaugh BLDGBLOG
(….)
Novelists have an endless drive to aestheticize and to complicate. I know there’s a very strong tradition—a tradition in which I write, myself—about the decoding of the city. Thomas de Quincey, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Iain Sinclair—that type-thing. The idea that, if you draw the right...
5 tags
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the uncanny body
Anxiety as Atavism Dylan Trigg Side Effects
(….)
From the wilderness of prehistoric Africa to the aisles of urban supermarkets, the human’s “phylogenetically endowed” (Freud) anxieties materializes as remnants of a lost world. All that has (largely) changed from the Stone Age is the objective absence of danger: what remains in place is the body’s attunement to threat, its ...
3 tags
“All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do...”
– Stevie Smith
February 2011
4 posts
2 tags
fridayreads:
Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective (Mark Epstein) ⇒
Very different to the first time I read it, several years ago. Still mid-book at the moment, so things might change.
This was the book - or at least, I’d thought it was - which introduced me to Buddhist conceptions of mind, and exactly what anatta (no-self) means. The whole, coherent...
?
Podcasts or downloadable radio/audio/lectures on
science
mathematics
please?
I’ll recirculate responses as a post here, but the principal reason is I’m not well & need comfort, and this is what works best in the late dark nights. Thank you.
PS the more complex/involved the better; I’m fairly well read.
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fridayreads:
Whether you’re reading one book or five—or just the back of your cereal box—FridayReads wants to know.
Living Yogācāra (Tagawa Shun’ei, tr. Charles Muller) ⇒
A version of basic Buddhist theories on consciousness, in brief. “… Tagawa Shun’ei makes sense of [Yogacara’s] seeming unwieldiness. He shows what the Yogacara masters are talking about are, in many...
4 tags
Jon Day et al.
by Jon Day, an interiors photographer (mostly) scenes by Laurence Pasquier (a-c), Louisa Green for Refined (d-g), unknown (h-i)
via Tea for Joy
January 2011
3 posts
4 tags
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language instruction adventures, five
from oncelosthorizon / boomspeed
Hey! Haluu!
That’s good. Ajunngilaq.
I understand. Paasingilakkit.
Could you repeat that? Uteqqissinnaaviuk?
I’d like a double room. Marluuttariamikpiumavunga.
Does anyone here speak English? Tuluttoorsinnaasoqarpa?
from Omniglot
This gentleman/lady will pay for everything Uuma Angutip/Arnap tamaasa akilissavai
Would you like to dance with me?...
2 tags
anthroprogramming
Thought it was just me who gets silly when writing PHP. Then found this in some of Wordpress’s post code:
foreach ( $children as $key => $child ) $kids[$child->ID] =& $children[$key]; if ( $output == OBJECT ) { return $kids; } elseif ( $output == ARRAY_A ) { foreach ( (array) $kids as $kid ) $weeuns[$kid->ID] =...
December 2010
5 posts
4 tags
sumardagurinn fyrsti
The First Day of Summer (sumardagurinn fyrsti) is an annual public holiday in Iceland held on the first Thursday after April 18. In former times, the Icelanders used the Old Norse calendar which divided the year into only two seasons, winter and summer. Although the climate in late April cannot be considered to be summer-like, after the long winter, Icelanders still celebrate this first day of...
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Balthus
Throughout his career, Balthus rejected the usual conventions of the art world. He insisted that his paintings should be seen and not read about, and he resisted any attempts made to build a biographical profile. A telegram sent to the Tate Gallery as it prepared for its 1968 retrospective of his works read:
“NO BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS. BEGIN: BALTHUS IS A PAINTER OF WHOM NOTHING IS...
3 tags
A LINE IS A LINE FOR ALL THAT
Andrew Graham-Dixon: Tell me why this is a drawing. Why is it a drawing and not a text?
Lawrence Weiner: Oh, using text for drawing is no problem. It tells you something. But drawing is explicit. Drawing is not implicit; there’s nothing hidden in a drawing. When you draw for people, you’re drawing something to tell them: it’s a message.
This is obviously drawn. And the...