Sriya Sridhar
@sris
Academic studying privacy and attention, seeking things that make sense and perpetual calm. Lit and poetry are my first loves
Sriya Sridhar
- So the first one is this Japanese novelist, Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay, “In Praise of Shadows.” And this is a very small book, or a very long essay, in which Tanizaki kind of muses on his own taste, and why he designed his house in a certain way, and why he chooses food in a certain way or installs lamps in a certain way. And the point at whic... See more
from Opinion | How to Discover Your Own Taste
- 💭 This poem by Mary Oliver
“The Gardener”
Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I
come to any conclusions?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace?
I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.
Actually, I probably think too much.
Then I step out into the gar... See more - One need not be a radical critic of our society to see that the right to a bit of time each day when one is not for sale has all but vanished. The irony is that the liberal individual was snuffed out neither by fascist Brownshirts nor by Stalinist guards. It was killed off when a new form of capital began to instruct youngsters to do that most libe... See more
- But insofar as I understand it, it’s just as you say—we can only know the world through our own consciousness, our own I. But we also know that everyone else has, everyone is their own I. In a way, there is only one I. It’s a thought that I’ve been turning around in my mind for many years, and every now and then, it strikes me anew. And I see it as... See more
I like the notion that in the struggle to create something—to bring to fruition a project, a work of art, a company, whatever— sometimes the best strategy is slowness.
from On Motivation by are.na
Tillie Olsen wrote: “In the twenty years I bore and reared my children . . . the simplest circumstances for creation did not exist.” It was a physical problem, a time problem; it was also a question of selfhood. “The obligation to be physically attractive and patient and nurturing and docile and sensitive and deferential . . . contradicts and must
... See morefrom The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem by Julie Phillips
- The proper response to this situation, we’re often told today, is to render ourselves indistractible in the face of interruptions: to learn the secrets of “relentless focus”—usually involving meditation, web-blocking apps, expensive noise-canceling headphones, and more meditation—so as to win the attentional struggle once and for all. But this is a... See more
from Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
- Attention is a finite resource, and how we choose to spend our attention online is, in some ways, a direct reflection of where human culture has gone in an era where access to information is basically unlimited. We are very much in our teenage years—that is, we suddenly have all these new capabilities and it’s really easy to just run wild. Bu... See more
from Charles Broskoski on self-discovery that happens upon revisiting things you’ve accumulated over time by Laurel Schwulst
- But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the o... See more
from the scenic route by Jasmine Sun