Self

Before attaining enlightenment,
mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers.

At the moment of enlightenment,
mountains are no longer mountains,
nor are rivers rivers.

After attaining enlightenment,
mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers.

I’ve built this little backyard to my website, because every website should have a garden, a backyard, a basement, or any other wild space. Treated with lovely care it grows various experiments in a natural, playful, hypertext way.

Ping Practice is a method for developing a practice of unblocking yourself.

You can think of the method a bit like using a pause button or a camera...

When you notice yourself resonating with or resisting something, the method invites you to name what's giving rise to that sensation and then letting it go.

No categorizing or sensemaking. In these tiny moments, you’re simply creating a breadcrumb for your future self.

...A ping can take on any form: word, phrase, title, rhyme, name, lyric, quote, place, color, texture, melody, idea, feeling, etc.

The most important thing about Pings – and what differentiates them from other thoughts – is that a Ping is language that moves you, "clicks," or otherwise causes you to feel something in your body.

You are likely encountering a Ping if the movement or attraction you sense seems intuitive, automatic, reflexive, and happens without thinking...as if what you are encountering relates to something latent within you.

to re-enchant the egg feels powerful at this moment. today more than ever, we need its patient, protected optimism.

for me, “egg” is most importantly a metaphor for nurturing structures we provide others and sometimes ourselves. it’s not always easy to create our own eggs, or self-nurturing containers. studying eggs helps us create better ones in the future. others might call it a support structure, as édouard tweeted, “more often than not, the most meaningful human activity boils down to providing support structures for one another.”

if there is anything specific i learned from curating my collection of eggs and sharing these thoughts and anecdotes on them, it’s that the word “honor” is important to me. as i mentioned, i have this theory that when artists use eggs in their work, often they are simply honoring them. in other words, they are shining a light on the egg somehow: so that we can see it anew, as if for the first time.

I hate my past and that of others. I hate resignation, patience, professional heroism and all the obligatory nice feelings. I also hate decorative arts, folklore, advertising, the voices of announcers, aerodynamics, boy scouts, the smell of naphtha, the news and drunk people.

I like subversive humor, freckles, knees, women's long hair, the dream of young children in freedom, a young girl running in the street.
I wish for living, impossible and chimerical love.
I dread knowing exactly my limits.

A book about a decade of walking. It's where I’ve tried to distill why it is that I walk so much: Walking as a way to become who I wanted to become but didn’t know how to. Walking as a way to reflect on where it is that we come from. And walking as a way to bear witness to a certain grace visible only when you’re bored out of your skull, when you’ve been walking for weeks on end, and when you think you should just pack it up and go home. There, at that point of exhaustion, appears a little thing — a hello, the smallest gesture, something that becomes, yes, almost supernatural, spiritual in a way that is impossible to recognize amid the average day-to-day routine. Something you can only see in that elevated rhythm of the walk.

This is a book of those moments.

Dead simple, drag & drop websites for anything.

Websites don’t have to be so cookie cutter. Try it out — tap Edit in the bottom right, then tap anything on this page.

Throughout his career, Wilson often answered fan mail and outside requests for his time with this form postcard:

Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to: Read manuscripts, write books and articles to order, write forewords or introductions, make statements for publicity purposes, do any kind of editorial work, judge literary contests, give interviews, conduct educational courses, deliver lectures, give talks or make speeches, broadcast or appear on television, take part in writers' congresses, answer questionnaires, contribute to or take part in symposiums or 'panels' of any kind, contribute manuscripts for sales, donate copies of his books to libraries, autograph books for strangers, allow his name to be used on letterheads, supply personal information about himself, supply photographs of himself, supply opinions on literary or other subjects.

Let me argue that the actual dawn of user interface design first happened when computer designers finally noticed, not just that end users had functioning minds, but that a better understanding of how those minds worked could completely shift the paradigm of interaction.

• laying out information spatially seems to work well for me for divergent thinking - putting ideas next to each other, recombining them, rich media and text intermixed on the same infinite canvas
• keeping in mind Thinking by Writing ideas, canvas for thinking should probably be a very personal thing
  • all my attempts so far, to share the work in progress canvases have failed - they seem to be too close to my internal concept map for them to be useful to anyone else in the spatial form

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

[John Whitehouse's personal site] is like a home in that it’s a collection of many things which are unified only by the person who collected them. I feel as if someone is giving me a tour of their apartment: I’m looking at the papers on his desk, the notes stuck to his fridge, an album of butterfly photos taken by his brother, and so on. Sure, he probably tidied up before I arrived, and he’s choosing what to show me. But nonetheless, entering the space has given me a rich portrait of its occupant. As far as I could find, John doesn’t have a formal “about” page, but he doesn’t need one: I see him far more clearly through the relationships and activities he’s chosen to share.

...I’m talking about this, of course, because I’d like to use “home” as the operative analogy for my own website.

What gives me anxiety is, what if there is a “nodal point” out there for me that I will never come across? What if “the one” is a piece of information that I will never get a chance to give my attention to?

...Before [a conversation Lauren Schwulst and I had with Damon Zucconi], I had this idea that if this is your body, and this is everything that is out in the world, then this collection of nodal points that changed your trajectory is “actually you.” Or at the very least, it’s the sum of those points that represent a unique perspective that is a reflection of you.

The nice part about this idea is thinking about the idea of “you” or your identity being out in the world. That the boundary between “you“ and the things that you love becomes blurry. The not nice thing is that it essentially is the same thing as saying “you are your interests” which feels superficial and reductive.

After this conversation with Damon I started thinking that it’s not the points that are the key part, it’s the line between you and the points. It’s the fact that you recognized the thing that is important, not the thing itself. It’s your radar.

...I like the idea of a person moving through “nodal points” propelled by an innate desire. I also like the idea of foregrounding agency from the perspective of the user or viewer or consumer. People often think about making work as if the person on the other side will have no choice but to enjoy it if the work is “good” enough, but it’s nice to think about the practice of viewing or consuming as an art form in itself. That understanding and honing your own perspective and how you see the world can be as active as making work is. I’m starting to see that understanding one’s own personal radar can take a lifetime.

Where I stand now is, if this is your body and these are all the nodal points in your life, “you” are “here.” Your radar is you. Not the things you focus on, but the orientation, the internal ruleset, your magnetism towards things, the natural intuition that you’ve had your whole life. The “desire lines” are you.

“You” are “here.”

Of course, décor is not instant, not flat. It is produced as reactions to one’s interests and personal version of The World, and is also - at its best – the result of time passing and EVOLVING desires and things being accumulated to fill the emotional and practical needs of the time / a time.

Every day, I get to look back and see what has changed (and what hasn’t). And some days, like today, I get to re-live some important moment and see if/how I’ve grown from it.

Truth be told, I don’t remember who gave me my first worry stone. I do remember I was quite young, my hand holding theirs as we walked alongside a creek…or maybe we were near the small freshwater spring near my grandparents’ farm? I’m not sure any more. But I do remember I was asked to hold out my hand, and then the person I was walking with — I have a sneaking suspicion it was my grandmother, but I’m not sure — placed a flat little stone in my palm. It had a comfortable, warm, calming weight in my hand as I turned it over and over, gray and white and gray again.

It was a few years before I realized that worry stones had a name, that they were borrowed from cultures other and older than mine. Heck, it’s been more than a few years since I’ve even held one. But in the last few weeks, before and after launching the redesign, I’ve kept working away at this website, much as I’d distractedly run my fingers over a smooth, flat stone.

Yehudi Menuhin, a great violinist, marked up a score for Bach's Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin. Penciled annotations show real-time performance strategies. To outsiders, insider markups appear chaotic and cryptic, but these personal annotations are for Menuhin's eyes, the only eyes that matter. All can learn from this useful workaday grid strategy: a relevant and intense data layer can become a coherent substrate scaffold upon which to overlay additional information. Maps do this all day long.

What if all the world's inside of your head
Just creations of your own?
Your devils and your gods all the living and the dead
And you're really all alone
You can live in this illusion
You can choose to believe
You keep looking but you can't find the woods
While you're hiding in the trees

What if everything around you
Isn't quite as it seems
What if all the world you used to know
Is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection
Is that all you want it to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks
Would you find yourself — find yourself afraid to see?

In the midst of uncertainty, I found myself fluctuating between states of chaos and order, wondering how to find balance in such a tumultuous time. I found solace in gathering principles and philosophies that centered around tending to oneself. They reminded me that peace is not the absence of disorder, but rather a state of being which needs to be meditated on and refined upon. Peace is the companion that guides us through difficult times.

...Tending to oneself is a virtue, and it requires consistent action, surrender to outcome, and a commitment to presentness. With this understanding at the forefront, I was able to invite in a new sense of peace, clarity, and serenity. I started using the practices, quotes, and ways of thinking that I came across to piece together a framework to guide me in refining and reflecting upon my own ways of introspection.

I always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in. It didn't need to be big; it didn't even need to be beautiful – it just needed to be mine.

I became what I was meant to be. I built myself a life. I built myself a house.

I enjoy gardening the most when it aligns with my broader philosophy of life, so I thought readers might like to see that philosophy and see how I apply it to gardening. These principles are in random order, just as they are applied in life. Sometimes my focus is on having fun, other times I'm focused on planning, still other times I just want to kick back and chat to my friends and neighbours.

Introduction / Pareto principle / Balance / Fun / Working for happiness / Family / Purpose / Order / Planning / Flexibility / Variety / Strategic Resilience / Motivation / Sustainability / Invest to save / Kaizen / Kindness / Giving back / Experimentation / Learning

@soleio: making a note-taking app is the software designer’s version of homebrewing beer or releasing an EP

[I] had a conversation with a software engineer the other day and she said that making your own todo app and notes app is something everyone should do, since they are such personal tools. I thought that’s a really interesting way to look at it and it kind of explains why there is no one good note-taking app.

I sometimes like to use the term "weave the web" to describe people who publish on their personal website. While web-themed, "weave the web" speaks only to one aspect of the web: its interconnectivity. Internet gardening evokes thoughts of the other side of the web: where you are on your own land, cultivating the thoughts on your mind. Letting ideas grow.

For if you will looke upon the Cabinet of your Eyes, you shall find that it is but a small thing, and that it hath nothing in it worth seeing; and therefore it is no great matter whether you looke at it or no. But if you will looke upon the Cabinet of your Soul, you shall find that it is a great thing, and that it hath much in it worth seeing; and therefore it is a great matter whether you looke at it or no.

It’s such an eternal cognitive location, night driving.

Different thoughts come when you access that state.

Like writing PowerPoint in hotel lobbies.

...I think you access something other and special when you escape time, escape selfhood, whether that’s driving in the dark or sitting in a hotel lobby or walking, that’s another one.

It does a disservice to this cognitive state to believe that it can be found only with psychedelics or meditation or whatever, whereas there are mundane apertures too.

Every person I've ever worked for has become a very good friend because I deal directly with the person. You make something, you sell it, they enjoy it, and I start a whole new cycle again. So each piece I make is a renewal of my life, really, and I feel that way very strongly. And a little bit of me goes with each piece that I make.

Back in 2019, I started collecting all kinds of metrics about my life. Every single day for the last 3 years I tracked over 100 different data types - ranging from fitness & nutrition to social life, computer usage and weather.

Naturally after I started collecting this data, I wanted to visualize what I was learning, so I created this page

Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of this person or business. For short, people just call it an “about page”.

Most websites have a link that says “contact”. It goes to a page that tells you how to contact this person or business. For short, people just call it a “contact page”.

So a website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life. For short, we call it a “now page”.

The sunflower was the symbol of the day. In my opening remarks, I reflected on its meaning: In the language of flowers, sunflowers represent loyalty and adoration; they turn their heads to face the sun. It is also the national flower of Ukraine, and with its yellow petals and dark center, it is reminiscent of an eclipse, symbolizing both the end and the beginning of an era.

As I entered the film school, I realized something that had never occurred to me about sunflowers: they are heavy. I had been thinking about sunflowers metaphorically, and neglected them as literal, physical flowers. It was an ironic moment; in my conversations with the speakers, I had asked them to talk in first-person. I didn't want concepts or abstractions: I wanted figurative paintings of their lived experience.

...I wonder if sunflowers feel lonely; they might not even notice each other standing in a field of flowers. They are too busy trying to see and be seen by the sun. Chasing the light, not unlike how we chase visibility, failing to recognize those around us, and those absent. This publication is both for those who I met at the film school and those who weren't there, because you are also part of the network. Naive Yearly is not just one thing: one offline event, one group of people. It's also the newsletter, and the community around it, and these pieces, and anyone who engages with them. It spreads and erodes. Just like the internet, which is also multiple: productive, extractive, colonial, monolithic, capitalistic, but it is also full of poetry, wonder and care.

I'm happy it happened, and that the adapted talks are published here on Are.na. It is the site that opened my eyes to the wildflower fields outside of the walled gardens and reconnected me with hundreds of people with a similar love for the web.

Even before the pandemic, American culture was embracing numbness as an antidote for the overload of digital capitalism. But is it a real escape — or another trap?

There are moments when it feels as though the universe is trying to send you a message, the vibration of a particular wavelength driving a possibly justified paranoia. Signs of a culture-wide quest for self-obliteration appeared everywhere in the time after my first float. I walked by an exercise studio whose sandwich board commanded me to “Log out. Shut down. Do yoga.” REI marketed a garment that “Feels like nothing. And that means everything.” In a January 2020 column about omnipresent noise-canceling headphones and the desire to block out our surroundings with constant sound, The Economist argued, “The shared world is increasingly intolerable.”

When introducing myself, I am always clear that, most of the time, I am either busy, or trying to be busy. Everything to me is work, everything that makes me proud of myself is work, everything in my future will, hopefully, be more work. The entire concept of retiring to me is madness. I never want to stop working.

This is often mistaken as an unhealthy obsession with work, which is not entirely true. I am not torturing myself every day for 10 hours just so I can prove myself, I’m doing exactly what I want to do.

Certain things are only visible at certain frame rates. At certain times. In certain rooms. You found me, and I found myself. We became us. We became white foam when Cronos attacked his father. An airborne seed. A plastic bag. A parachute. A capsule. A file. A metaphor. A vocabulary. A thread. An environment. A contamination. A mantra we repeat to ourselves like the evening prayer I recited with my mother before sleep. A reminder of days, lunar cycles and Earth’s orbit around the sun. A practice expanding what the web is and can be. A web. A living web. All in plural.

I've been thinking a lot about the type of software I want to build and use. I spend so much of my screen time using large feature-heavy software, which are one-size-fits-none at best or outright hostile. I'm left frustrated, distracted, and wanting something better.

I write lots of mini software projects as a hobby, and a couple have been successful. By success I don't mean that other people use them, but instead that I keep using them. Or that my toddlers played with a couple mini games I built, which taught them to use a keyboard and mouse. These are not things I'd ever put on my resume or claim as examples of good code, but I'm oddly satisfied each time I build one.

...Building software for yourself that you'll actually enjoy using is an adventure in self-discovery. You'll learn a little more about what motivates you and how your brain works. Starting with something small like a to-do list helps you focus on your personal user-stories instead of getting caught up building complicated internals.

Here’s our view of what a photograph is. The way we like to think of it is that it’s a personal celebration of something that really, actually happened. 

Whether that’s a simple thing like a fancy cup of coffee that’s got some cool design on it, all the way through to my kid’s first steps, or my parents’ last breath, It’s something that really happened. It’s something that is a marker in my life, and it’s something that deserves to be celebrated.

And that is why when we think about evolving in the camera, we also rooted it very heavily in tradition. Photography is not a new thing. It’s been around for 198 years. People seem to like it.

“You know you can just teach yourself, right? You don’t need a course.”

She stopped mid-step on the gravel path.

Later that day, Johanna biked up to the university library and packed a bag full of books picked semi-randomly from the shelves of education history. Then she sat down to read. She read every spare minute for a year, two years, three ...

I find these transitions lovely. Somebody notices a limitation in themselves, something they lack or have misunderstood, something they need to learn or unlearn—and then they learn it, and discover, on the other side, a richer world. For Johanna, her blindspot was a lack of understanding of herself and her agency. But these hidden limitations can take many forms. It can be a skill you lack; a lacuna of knowledge; an attitude that is coming between you and the things that you value; a needless constraint; a fear. Often they have the character of doors hiding in plain sight: obvious once you see them, but quite possible to walk straight past for years (or a lifetime).

A capsule wardrobe is a thoughtfully curated collection of clothing that emphasises quality over quantity. It's about streamlining your wardrobe to a selection of versatile pieces that you truly enjoy and wear regularly. The idea isn’t to limit your options, but to create a more intentional and cohesive wardrobe that reflects your personal style and lifestyle needs. Each item in a capsule wardrobe is chosen for its functionality, comfort, and the ability to mix and match, making getting dressed not just simpler, but a genuine pleasure. It’s about breaking free from the endless cycle of fast and on-trend fashion and embracing a more sustainable, personalised approach to what we wear every day.

To have a personal website is, presently, an act of rebellion. It is a statement. You are saying: I want to define my experience on the web. I'll let you in on an open secret: Big tech companies aren't the only ones who get to decide how we share ideas on the web. The web is yours. You can put up a website where you share whatever it is that you want to share with others.

Kristin Lucas' Refresh was a performance initially staged in 2007. Lucas filed to legally change her name from "Kristin Sue Lucas" to "Kristin Sue Lucas" as a way to 'refresh' her self. She appeared in front of a judge in California to petition her case.

In a way the very undidactic nature of my Grundkurs is a reaction to that fascinatingly unbearable set of instructions on how to design square and circular pillars, square and circular houses, square and circular squares, square and circular cities. While I cannot subscribe to the idea of a wholesale theory of architecture, starting with pillars and ending with regional planning, I do admire Krier's courage and I have certainly been inspired by the narrative potential of his sketches. Probably also the deliberately ugly, punk tone of some of my drawings is a reaction to Krier's, although I shouldn't blame others for the way I draw, as I don't know how to do it any differently.

There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.

And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation. So we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to us.

A mirror-tool is an implement that invites us to think about ourselves. There are two kinds of mirror-tools. These are the replicant and the robot.

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve gradually come to the realization that…pain and hurt is a necessary part of life. If you think about it, it’s precisely because people are different from others that they’re able to create their own independent selves. Take me as an example. It’s precisely my ability to detect some aspects of a scene that other people can’t, to feel differently than others and choose words that differ from theirs, that’s allowed me to write stories that are mine alone. And because of this we have the extraordinary situation in which quite a few people read what I’ve written. So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

If you have vanquished your selfhood, coolness will rise even from the fire.

Rituals are feedback loops we construct to construct ourselves. Our impulses are fast and transient, but rituals are slow and recurrent. We change, our context changes, our rituals remain the same. Rituals are long-term memory in our https://subconscious.substack.com/p/the-knowledge-ecology. They act as a kind of scaffold around which we can grow. We participate in rituals to bend the long arc of the self.