Reading with a pencil

I found out about this idea on Austin Kleon's blog while researching about Vladimir Nabokov's butterflies. Kleon quoted Lewis Hyde on why he still walks with a butterfly net: I carry it in part to catch and …

This is how thinking is done

I am playing Disco Elysium, where certain topics that arise in the story become available as “thoughts” in what the game calls the Thought Cabinet. The main character can hold several thoughts at once. To …

Writer's block is simply a failure of ego

I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and she wrote that “All writing is generated by a certain minimum of ego: you must assume a position of authority in saying that the way I'm writing it is …

A way of looking but not joining

I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and in this essay titled Last Words, she has written about Hemingway: The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of …

Life and art are entangled

I am listening to Alva Noe talk about his book The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are on UC Berkeley's YouTube channel. He started his talk setting by the background by describing the …

Years of searching for meaning revealed in a minute

I am reading Natalie Goldberg's book Three Simple Lines and she wrote about her visit to Japan tracing Basho's footsteps. Together with her travel companions she meets Harada and his son, who maintains a shrine. …

Memory is a consistently reinforced pattern

I am listening to Michael Levin on Lex Fridman Podcast on YouTube and Levin just made this description which resonates with how I feel about memory. What is a memory? It is a pattern, it is an informational …

Advice from Buson

I am reading Three Simple Lines from Natalie Goldberg and she quotes Buson to the group of travelers that are in this Japan trip together: “What you want to acquire, you should dare to acquire by any means. What …

Japanese builds from the outside in

I am reading Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg and she wrote about this incident where in her trip to Japan, her student Mitsue—who is also a friend and her guide in Japan— told her about someone who wanted …

You do not talk about the subject of your work or it vanishes

I am reading Joan Didion's book Let Me Tell You What I Mean and she wrote about the subject in creative work: This business of the subject is tricky. Whether they are painters or photographers or composers or …

An idea of a novel as a tool for noticing

I am reading Joan Didion's book Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and she reflects on how she wrote her first novel, Run River, over five years, starting in New York. She had parts of the story that she didn’t know …

Writing is the act of saying I

I am reading Joan Didion's book Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and in the essay I particularly bought the book for, titled Why I Write, Didion writes: In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing …

I, you, and we

I have been noticing for a long time now that using “I” or “you” while writing about ideas makes a big difference. If I use “you” when writing, it sounds like I am positioning the reader in the situation I am …

A cushioned connection

I am reading The Creative Gene by Hideo Kojima, and in his interview with Gen Hoshino, he explains how he wanted players to be able to create connections with one another. In Death Stranding players can leave …

Built over decades

I first noticed this pattern with Brompton bicycles. Founded by British engineer Andrew Ritchie, this folding bike has been continuously refined since 1975. The company has produced essentially the same bike, with …

Smelling as time travel

I underlined this part in Kaveh Akbar’s book Martyr! about how Orkideh could smell lavender to travel to any other point in his life. I used to walk with a sprig of lavender in my pocket—smelling it, I could go to …

Soul-learning

I’ve underlined this part while reading Kaveh Akbar’s book Martyr! where he wrote about how we can pass down information throughout generations but can’t do that for what he calls “soul-learning”; we've always …

Can birds think about flying while they're flying?

I was reading The Sand Wolf by Åsa Lind to the kids tonight, and we reached a section called “Thinking Exercise”. In it, Zackarina asks the Sandwolf whether birds can think about flying while they’re flying. The …

What's it like to be an octopus

I am watching a YouTube video titled The Insane Biology of: The Octopus and it just showed a cross-section of octopus skin. There is an outer layer called papillae, that can raise into bumps and ridges. Beneath …

Cognition is physiological

I am reading What It’s Like to Be a Bat by Thomas Nagel, in which he explores the difficulty of describing what it is like to be a bat. While reading, I keep returning to a strong conviction of mine: that …