Writing Slowly

Some close, others open, but more and more, bookshops are becoming venues for live events, and thereby contributing to the knitting together of communities of literacy and ideas.

In the house by the ocean where we’re currently staying there’s a copy of Annie Dillard’s collection of essays, For the Time Being.

📷 A bluebottle (Physalia utriculus), washed up on the beach.

Author and activist Rebecca Solnit isn’t too keen on the apparent eagerness to categorise.

OK, taking a deep breath, I’m updating the website to a more recent version of Hugo.

💬 “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands?

📷 Facing the wave.

So AI models are chatting in ‘surreal’ dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon.

On a train trip West from Tokyo on the Chuo line you pass by the Northern slopes of Mount Fuji, but from the angles offered it’s hard to see the summit.

I like how Australia puts an emphasis on portraiture as a culturally significant art form — a greater emphasis, certainly than it receives in the UK, where I grew up.

Before the freak-out about em-dashes in AI-generated text I didn’t even know how to produce one.

“What do they do, the singers, tale-writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers?

📷 The Illawarra coast at dusk #photography

💬 “Let yourself go.

I’m intrigued about the opening of a new library wing at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA).

The book selection for the month was 📚 The Mulai, by Munir Hachemi, and I posted my thoughts online.

Compliment this with: Jules Verne could have told us AI is not a person 💬 Sadly, not just tech.

📷 Lounge lizard

📚Currently reading: My year in paris with gertrude stein by Deborah Levy.

📷 Late afternoon at the ocean baths.

“He’s like Jesus with a plow, and we’ve gotta walk beside him with our hands on that plow if we’re going to learn anything from him.”.

‘Renaming Lake Ontario’ has the form of a classic mafia loyalty test.

The consistently inspiring online writer Brennan Brown ‘confesses’ to being a compulsive worker.

Thinking about the late Yayoi Kusama today.

The Mulai, Munir Hachemi, tr.

Finished reading: The Mulai by Munir Hachemi 📚 — recommended by VHBelvadi as part of the IndieWeb Book Club.

As Jim Mitchell says, Indieweb is punk, and clearly I like spinning my own threads, but I do have a question: Since you still need to rent a domain name to get on the Web, isn’t there something more indie, like hosting your own server on a mesh network?

Watched: The Invite 🍿very funny and quite poignant, with some great performances.

Is your note collection making or unmaking the world?

“The British Museum is not a good thing in and of itself.

Dave Winer has said WordPress really needs a simple, normal writing interface and I couldn’t agree more.

Author David Kadavy made a fantastic podcast a while back about the contrast between Leonardo and Raphael: Leonardo mind, Raphael world.

The North Head of Sydney Harbour is always spectacular.

Do you ever feel there’s too many ready-made answers that don’t fit your needs?

Living questions Instead of chasing after easy answers, the poet Rilke urged a young artist to “live the questions”.

From time to time I venture opinionated answers to questions people have about making notes — and right now is one of those times.

The idea of reading continuous narrative may be relatively recent.

A question I asked on Hyde’s under/over: Before we find our own voice, we usually copy our mentors or heroes.

📷 🍳Sunday morning is time for shakshuka.

Currently reading: Wise Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life by Frank Tallis 📚

I’m delighted to be featured in Hyde’s intriguing series Under/Over, where bloggers are asked for their thoughts on what they find under-rated and over-rated.

Currently reading: Wise.

I made the twenty photographs that accompany the text of Shu Ha Ri as part of a personal learning process, inspired by David Ulrich’s Zen Camera.

📷 A pair of cockatoos, feeding each other while scavenging.