digital garden

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”

Ritual prevents the ordinary from dissolving into invisibility. If you light a candle at dinner, the meal becomes an event. If you walk at the same time each day, it becomes more than exercise. Anthropologists will tell you that rituals function as technologies of attention: certain ordinary acts aren’t trivial, they’re the architecture of meaning.

There is a relevant concept from Alexander Technique that I love, “faulty sensory appreciation,” which I learned about from Michael Ashcroft. The concept is that habitual tension distorts your sensory impressions—rigid stillness via bodily tension starts to feel like “good posture,” whereas relaxed uprightness feels strange, to the extent you might... See more

Like plants turning toward the sun, we lean into subtle flattery.

What differentiates someone who paints every day in private, and someone who paints every day and posts about it on Instagram? Nothing besides the act of practicing their craft in public- and that’s not what defines the act.