@work

Reading an article about Vivienne Westwood, I was struck by how some people do what they love for work and become very, very rich. Other people hate their job and earn a normal wage. 

don't look back

The past is a strange kind of possession. My past is mine - it belongs to me and no one else. But I have no ability to change it. I can't change even the smallest detail. While I was experiencing it, I had control over some things. Now I have no control over anything in my past. But through my memory, I have access to it.

The meaning of things changes according to the context. As I go through life and grow physically and have different experiences, it puts the events in my memory in a different context. So, does that change the meaning of events? It does, but the question is whether, and if so how, my memories remain factual. 

I find that, especially unpleasant experiences or thoughts, take on a different meaning later. I look back on difficult and painful experiences with a kind of fondness. 

tim tam and who part two

I tried another one of the Jatz Tim Tams today, because I thought, now that I know it's supposed to taste like it does and it's not expired or poisoned, I might like it more, and I did. 

particles and waves

Harold Bloom's thesis is that no literary creation is truly original. All writers revise what other writers have written. He posits a series of six revisionary 'ratios' whereby this revision process takes place. Each of the ratios is based on a different trope. Tropes are like figures of speech - ways of conveying meaning by expressing things that aren't literally true. The most well-known tropes are similes and metaphors.

Tropes are the fundamental building blocks of all communication. Even that sentence contains the trope of metaphor because tropes are not really building blocks at all. And 'that sentence contains' is another trope because a sentence can't literally contain anything.

Irony is another trope. The word 'literally' is one of the most ironic words, because when something is strictly and objectively true, we say it is 'literally' true. So, the literal and the literary are opposites.

Consider a story, any story. When a character in a story says that something about that story is true, it's ironic (whether or not the writer is deliberately being ironic) because, of course, it's not true because it's happening in a story. But it's still true in some sense because in the world of the story it's true.  Irony works because of the quantum nature of reality. Contradictory conditions can both exist. It happens more than you realize. We think, that can't possibly be right, only because our limited intelligence can't comprehend it.

recognizence

‘A few anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right.’

                   - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Spiritual Laws

Your soul knows what it's doing when it draws your attention to things. It recognizes itself. There is an exquisite tension between difference and sameness when you perceive something of yourself in another person or in a book or a place. 

agency

The beauty of writing for me is that I don't know where it will go - it's a creative process. But, at the same time, I'm in control of what I write. When so much in life feels like it is out of control, here is a space where we can have control.

interesting

I like things that I understand to some extent but I'm aware that there is so much more that I don't understand. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, 'That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.' Likewise, the things I fully understand hold little interest for me.

In the same way, questions are often more interesting than answers. Answers are the end of the matter. They put an end to enquiry. And problems aren't the bad things we often think they are. Problems are central to life. Problems and challenges make us who we are.

It's weakness that makes things interesting. Imagine the 'perfect' painter who could paint things that look like a photo. That would be impressive, but their work wouldn't be beautiful. But as soon as there is a struggle or faltering - some expression of frailty or strangeness, within the work, it becomes interesting; it strikes a chord.