“The essence of commitment is making a decision. The Latin root for decision is to ‘cut away from,’ as in an incision. When you commit to something, you are cutting away all your other possibilities, all your other options.”
In June 1983, Alexander Grothendieck sits down to write the preface to a mathematical manuscript called Pursuing Stacks . He is concerned by what he sees as a tacit disdain for the more “feminine side” of mathematics (which is related to what I’m calling the solitary creative state) in favor of the “hammer and chisel” of the finished theorem. By el... See more
sounds like zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance lol
-The most ubiquitous threat most of us encounter day-to-day is invalidation. Invalidation = communication that conveys you are bad or wrong. Even if we are logical people, our body processes this like "you should not exist." It takes a strong sense of self and skill in emotional regulation to remain stable when someone is invalidating us.
“It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.”
It is a disaster not to be found, a total disaster to not be able to connect with others because we were too preoccupied with ourselves. The whole reason for ironic detachment is to build a protective wall between oneself and the world. We think we’re building a wall, but we’re really holl... See more
I must pause to say a word about my statement "There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are." I first wrote the sentence some years ago and it has been widely quoted. One day I was looking through a mail order gift catalogue and it included some small ornamental bronze plaques with brief sayings on the... See more
In The Poetics of Space , Gaston Bachelard argued that “intimate immensity” emerges in places that balance shelter and horizon. Suburbs invert this. Their immensity is vast but inert — horizons without revelation, shelter without intimacy. Taliesin West’s drafting studio, with its pitched roof and open sides, attempts to bridge this divide. But whe... See more