FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE

From “Infinite Exchange” by Geoff Manaugh, found in full on David Masel’s website, reprinted from Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime, Steidl, 2013 (and originally discovered via Jacob Remes).

In a 2011 paper on the medical effects of scurvy, author Jason C. Anthony offers a remarkable detail about human bodies and the long-term presence of wounds. “Without vitamin C,” Anthony writes, “we cannot produce collagen, an essential component of bones, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissues. Collagen binds our wounds, but that binding is replaced continually throughout our lives. Thus in advanced scurvy”—reached when the body has gone too long without vitamin C—“old wounds long thought healed will magically, painfully reappear.”1

Given the right—or, as it were, exactly wrong—nutritional circumstances, even a person’s oldest injuries never really go away. In a sense, there is no such thing as healing. From paper cuts to surgical scars, our bodies are mere catalogs of wounds: imperfectly locked doors quietly waiting, sooner or later, to spring back open.

 

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE

From Less by Andrew Sean Greer.

“What was it like to live with genius?

Like living alone.

Like living alone with a tiger.

Everything had to be sacrificed for the work. Plans had to be canceled, meals had to be delayed; liquor had to be bought, as soon as possible, or else all poured into the sink. Money had to be rationed or spent lavishly, changing daily. The sleep schedule was the poet’s to make, and it was as often late nights as it was early mornings. The habit was the demon pet in the house; the habit, the habit, the habit; the morning coffee and books and poetry, the silence until noon. Could he be tempted by a morning stroll? He could, he always could; it was the only addiction where the sufferer longed for anything but the desired; but a morning walk meant work undone, and suffering, suffering, suffering. Keep the habit, help the habit; lay out the coffee and poetry; keep the silence; smile when he walked sulkily out of his office to the bathroom. Taking nothing personally. And did you sometimes leave an art book around with a thought that it would be the key to his mind? And did you sometimes put on music that might unlock the doubt and fear?

Did you love it, the rain dance every day? Only when it rained.”

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE

From The Idiot by Elif Batuman.

“I wrote a research paper about the Turkish suffix -miş. I learned from a book about comparative linguistics that it was called the inferential or evidential tense, and that similar structures existed in the languages of Estonia and Tibet. The Turkish inferential tense, I read, was used in various forms associated with oral transmission and hearsay: fairy tales, epics, jokes, and gossip. I recognized that this was true, but had never consciously grouped those forms together or tried to articulate what they had in common. In fact it was really hard to articulate what they had in common, even though it was easy to follow the rule. One of the most common uses of the Turkish inferential, the book said, was in speaking to children. This, too, I remembered: “What seems to have happened to the doll?” The inferential tense allowed the speaker to assume the wonder and ignorance that children live in—that state when every piece of knowledge is basically hearsay. There were things about -miş that I liked: it had a kind of built-in bewilderment, it was automatically funny. At the same time, it was a curse, condemning you to the awareness that everything you said was potentially encroaching on someone else’s experience, that your own subjectivity was booby-trapped and set you up to have conflicting stories with others. It compromised and transformed everything you said. It actually changed what verb tense you used. And you couldn’t escape. There was no way to go through life, in Turkish or any other language, making only factual statements about direct observations. You were forced to use -miş, just by the human condition—just by existing in relation to other people.”

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR

From A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra.

“I don’t understand.”

Deshi shook her head. Her romantic advice was worth a foreigner’s ransom, and here she was, giving it freely to a girl who couldn’t appreciate the hard-earned wisdom. “Just stay away from oncologists, okay?” she said, and led the girl to the waiting room. “If you just remember that, you’ll spare yourself the worst of it. Now, why don’t you get your notebook out and draw something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Where would you most want to be right now?”

“My home,” she said. She thought the word meant only the four walls and roof that held her, but it spread out, filled in, Akhmed, the village, her parents, the forest, everything that wasn’t here. “A week ago.”

“And I’d rather be right here forty years ago, when they first offered me the job. I’d wag my finger right in the head nurse’s face and say, no, no, you won’t trick me, and I’d walk right out those doors.”

“It’s stupid. There are maps to show you how to get to the place where you want to be but no maps that show you how to get to the time when you want to be.”

“Why don’t you draw that map?”

“Only if you let me play on the fourth floor.”

“Child, if there was such a map, there would still be a fourth floor. Start drawing.”

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO

From “These things I know for sure,” by Andrea Zittel (via Jocelyn Glei).

2. Surfaces that are “easy to clean” also show dirt more. In reality a surface that camouflages dirt is much more practical than one that is easy to clean.

…

7. Ambiguity in visual design ultimately leads to a greater variety of functions than designs that are functionally fixed.

…

11. Things that we think are liberating can ultimately become restrictive, and things that we initially think are controlling can sometimes give us a sense of comfort and security.

12. Ideas seem to gestate best in a void—when that void is filled, it is more difficult to access them. In our consumption-driven society, almost all voids are filled, blocking moments of greater clarity and creativity. Things that block voids are called “avoids.”

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY

Ai Wei Wei answers the Proust Questionnaire.

What is your favorite journey? My favorite journey is a journey which you walk alone but at the same time you know somebody is waiting for you at the end. It’s the perfect journey—it doesn’t matter how difficult, how dark, or how protracted, as long as you believe there is someone waiting for you there. That makes a journey different. Our life has no purpose unless we believe there is someone waiting there.

…

What do you consider your greatest achievement? I never did anything unforgivable. Whatever I did can be forgiven.

FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT

Originally written on Twitter, now saved here:

I think it’s kind of out of fashion to talk about discipline—creative, ethical, athletic, intellectual. It’s the kind of thing you can write off as an internalized productivity myth—a bad capitalist habit. But the people I admire most have an awful lot of it. It runs so deep.

There’s something about intentionally cultivating your ability to do the hard thing. These people will tell you that their goodness is only by practice—that it is difficult, not intrinsic. They make commitments to their better selves, and hold their lesser selves accountable.

The people I know like this are a bit quirky. They wake up early, stay up late. They have obsessive spreadsheets to track their runs. They paint every day. They are meticulous in their work. They have habits. They accomplish incredible things, they resist incredible pressure.

They do the difficult-right thing, routinely. They climb literal and figurative mountains. They drag their ass to the lab, the studio, the dojo not because they always want to be there, but because showing up serves their higher purpose.

And because they want to be the kind of person that shows up.

Coaches, like dads, have favourite sayings. “Discipline is all you have when motivation runs out.” “You can’t fake practice.” “Sit in your discomfort.” These are probably as close as I’ll ever get to personal mantra.

And maybe this is why I often feel at odds with the corporate take-it-easy dogma of “self care,” which can feel individualistic, indulgent, almost narcissistic. Like it’s selling you something.

(Of course it can be so much deeper and important—but this tendency is undeniable).

Because there’s also something very radical about looking inside, finding what wild thing it is that you are intrinsically motivated to do, and then doing it. Challenge isn’t inconsistent with self care. It’s the dimension of self care that is self-actualizing, that is self-work.

I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this except to say that I admire these things in other people, and wish there was a richer conversation in public life about what makes them—without getting written off as a misguided Protestant work ethic or latent self-loathing.

FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN

From Erik Spiekermann, via Jocelyn K. Glei.

Question:
The meticulousness of typographic work seems to require an obsessive attention to detail. Would you describe your work in typography as an obsession and, if so, why does this particular discipline require this level of engagement?

Wrong question. Every craft requires attention to detail. Whether you’re building a bicycle, an engine, a table, a song, a typeface or a page: the details are not the details, they make the design. Concepts don’t have to be pixel-perfect, and even the fussiest project starts with a rough sketch. But building something that will be used by other people, be they drivers, riders, readers, listeners – users everywhere, it needs to be built as well as can be. Unless you are obsessed by what you’re doing, you will not be doing it well enough. Typography appears to require a lot of detail, but so does music, cooking, carpentry, not to mention brain surgery. Sometimes only the experts know the difference, but if you want to be an expert at what you’re making, you will only be happy with the result when you’ve given it everything you have.

I strongly believe that the attention someone gives to what he or she makes is reflected in the end result, whether it is obvious or not. Inherent quality is part of absolute quality and without it things will appear shoddy. The users may not know why, but they always sense it.