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 …

Bir hayal yakalayabilmek için bakmaktaydım

Sait Faik Abasıyanık’ın Semaver adlı kitabını okuyorum. Şehri Unutan Adam adlı hikayesinde şöyle bir paragraf dikkatimi çekti. Akşam oluyordu. Köşe başındaki tütüncüye uğradım. Güneş, satılmamış edebiyat …

Smelling as time travel

I underlined this part in Kaveh Akbar’s book Martyr! about how Orkideh could smell lavender to travel to any other point in his life. I used to walk with a sprig of lavender in my pocket—smelling it, I could go to …

The carrier bag theory in Prey

I watched Prey by Dan Trachtenberg the other night. I am not particularly keen on Predator sequels, but this one seemed promising: raw untouched nature, a Native American setting, and strong reviews. Right before …

Writing as image making

While browsing Meg Miller's Are.na page, I was immediately drawn in by the title of her top channel: Shimmer Around the Edges: Writing as Image-making From the channel introduction, it seems Miller also noticed …

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 …

Posting a memory forward to a distant future

I am reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, and in the book Patricia tells her botany students (emphasis mine): “Billions of years ago, a single, fluke, self-copying cell learned how to turn a barren ball of …

Going back to stone

I am watching a short video on Isamu Noguchi by SFMoMA and I particularly found his remarks on the limitations of the industry relevant. If you want to live and work in an industrialized situation, you have to use …

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 …

True material of knowledge is meaning

I am listening to Maria Popova of Brain Pickings talk with Krista Tippett on her On Being podcast. Popova states that true material of knowledge is meaning and meaning is opposite of trivial. The only thing that …

The trap the world has become

I am reading The Art of the Novel, where Milan Kundera, in conversation with Christian Salmon, is asked to explain what he means by the term “trap” as used in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the …

Sauron and von Neumann

I am reading The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut. In his description of von Neumann (Johnny), in the chapter narrated by Oskar Morgenstern, Morgenstern reminisces about how they got to work on game theory, how it was …

The “we-ness” of being an octopus

I’m reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, and there’s a section where he writes about Tibetan Maintenance Drones, the degree of independence built into them, and what it feels like to command them. You …

Hockney’s wandering eye photos

I started reading Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing. I bought this book a while ago. I was browsing the book at Dussmann, opened a random page which happened to be page 96 and Odell was talking about David …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Contests of civilization

I am reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and I was fascinated by the stories that describe how, during the time of European settlement in the Americas, white settlers who had …

A good conversation

In episode #51 of The Knowledge Project, Celeste Headlee (opera singer, radio journalist, public speaker, author) says that a good conversation is like a game of catch: You can’t throw more than you catch. It’s a …

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, …