Because of the Basic Idea

It was the basic idea that had us rapt. Beyond that, we were not impressed; All of the ways he waved his hands Showing us just how it would work Barely made us budge from our seats. Something about cold made heat, About traveling with the momentum of heat, Something about a new planet A…More

docta ignorantia

How far does my ignorance extend? To the ends? To every end? I might be certain of having a hand, but the certainty is merely a brick in the wall of a building I use as my shelter. I might be certain of having a desire for someone or something, but a desire can be…More

Nevertheless

Nevertheless I have the confidence that life can continue through muck, shit, and what is neither muck nor shit but is instead a recalcitrant stopping-point, a point at which, even if you would not wish to stop, even if you would not dare stop here, you must stop.Nevertheless the company is something fulfilling, the company…More

The Forever of Joy

Sorrow tells us what we want to hear, that the world is small and shall become smaller, that it will shrink even more than it is shrunken now, fold into innumerable wrinkles like a compressed apricot pit, compressed to the size of a mustard grain.  We want to hear it because sadness makes the world…More

A.I. Wondering

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower. Alan Kay We can be sure that everything that encourages our participation on the internet today is somehow contributing to the development and further refining…More

The Breath of Meaninglessness

The breath of meaninglessness comes as easily, as unaccounted for, as graciously as the breath of meaning, both like a breeze across the damp swamp, a breeze that suddenly gives to the stagnant air life, direction, energy.               What else do you want out of this, she asked.  When she said the words it was…More

Cultures of Thought

Each thought, and the cultivation of that thought, has its proper time.  Without cultivation, a thought may visit, may inspire, may suddenly illumine, but chances are it will not form the basis of a culture, a practice, a labor.  Labor not only in the sense of work and craft, the honing of skill and the…More

Zwischen

        For Monica Geers-DahlWe meet and you tell methat you are a visionary.Now the visions plop downfor our inspecting gaze,or like a plaything, for usto play with and fondle,or like a maze to explore,or like a door to enter,or like a trembling child,we have to console herin her shivering, or likea mild breeze we feelcoolly…More

144,000

Before that world ended, our project as some of us called it, we felt the horizon closing in on us at first as some distant foreboding, an event we had calculated, could imagine, make plenty of blockbuster films about, but that seemed so distant as though it could never possibly arrive for us, the safe…More