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• A handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness

  I read Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, and it was when Pirsig explained Phaedrus' perspective on the world that I saw my own situation reflected in the book. I read this book at a …

• Hidden subconscious and fleeting thoughts behind Antonia Showering's painting

  I am watching Antonia Showering's interview video on YouTube. She is describing her painting process, and it closely resembles what I have repeatedly heard about other artists' works: shimmering thoughts from the …

• 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 …

• 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 …

• Samia Halaby: drawing with the principles of nature

  I am watching Samia Halaby on YouTube. The video is posted by Tate. The artist is talking about her abstract paintings and says: I had taken a very strong step into abstraction by just questioning. The difference …

• 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 …

• The shimmering

  Several months ago, while reading Joan Didion’s essay Why I Write, I was surprised to read how certain images “shimmer around the edges” for her. She writes that she has these images in her mind—where the figure …