Interesting is a non-word

In this scene from Matt Ross’s movie Captain Fantastic, Viggo Mortensen’s character tells his daughter that interesting is a non word, and that she was supposed to avoid it and be more specific. This idea stuck …

One can't write directly about the soul

I’m listening to Maria Popova of Brain Pickings in conversation with Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast. Popova shares that, according to Virginia Woolf’s diary, one cannot observe the soul directly—because …

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 …

Why go down the rabbit hole

Jenny Odell writes in How to Do Nothing: So why go down the rabbit hole? First and most basically, it is enjoyable. Curiosity, something we know most of all from childhood, is a forward-driving force that derives …

More than human world

I read this term in Ways of Being by James Bridle. It was coined by American ecologist and philosopher David Abram, and refers to a way of thinking that seeks to override our human tendency to separate ourselves …

Life and art are entangled

I am listening to Alva Noë 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 …

Time is memory

I am reading The Unreality of Memory by Elisa Gabbert, and in the essay titled “The Unreality of Time,” she writes about Henry Bergson’s concept of time. Apparently, Albert Einstein famously said “there is no …

Years of searching for meaning revealed in a minute

I’m reading Natalie Goldberg’s book Three Simple Lines, in which she describes her visit to Japan as she traces the footsteps of haiku master Basho. Along with her travel companions, she meets Harada and his son, …

Preintellectual reality

In his book Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig argues that what he calls quality is preintellectual reality. He states that there is a time gap between subjective perception and …

The interdependence of all things

In his book The Web of Meaning, Jeremy Lent talks about the interdependence of things and quotes Buddhist teacher and activist Thich Nhat Hanh. I looked up Nhat Hanh and was mesmerized with this passage from his …

Anchoring information to knowledge

Back in 2004, I designed an app called Musicmap. It helped with finding new albums based on the ones you already liked. As you explored the network of albums, they would neatly arrange themselves on the screen …

Printing articles as A5 booklets

I find it difficult to read long articles on a screen. One alternative I’ve grown to enjoy is printing them as small A5 booklets and carrying them in my backpack. This is super easy on iOS, but with the right …

The more he saw the more he saw there was to see

At the end of the 40th anniversary edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the correspondence between Pirsig and his editor is included. In it, Pirsig tells the editor that the book is finished. That …

He was born to look at the world in awe

I am reading Lüzumsuz Adam and in this story called İp Meselesi, Sait Faik Abasıyanık is describing a man—who, I believe, is himself—who is unfit for any job, doesn’t even know where to begin. O, dünyaya hayretle …

What do you want to capture

I am reading How I Take Photographs by Daido Moriyama, and he says something that I myself am not sure how to answer. Emphasis mine: I see so many young people—I guess they’re photography students—with cameras in …

Pleasure in looking

I am watching a YouTube video about how Monet chased an "envelope". I haven’t heard this word used in this context before. Brian T. Martin, the creator of the video, describes it as the air, the light, or the …

Leibniz’s monad concept

I am reading Didik Didik Freud by Serol Teber and Şenol Ayla and they referred to Tevfik Fikret’s lifestyle as “monadlaşmış” (monadic), describing the concept of monad as: Monad, ünlü filozof Leibniz’in bulduğu …

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 …

Neurons that fire together wire together

I came across this idea while learning about associations and memory. It suggests that the more we use certain pathways in the brain, the stronger they become. I like thinking of associations between ideas in the …

Perception is a construct

I've been reading the book The Idea of the Brain by Matthew Cobb. In the chapter titled "Inhibition," he explains how in the late 19th century we understood that the act of seeing is not merely capturing whatever …