It’s exam week, so I’m spending a lot of time away from family.
This week has been an emotional roller coaster. I became infamous on Reddit because a student in one of my exams was caught with a button camera, a high-tech piece of equipment for cheating. It felt odd to have everyone (students, friends, and colleagues) smirking and laughing about what they’d seen on Reddit.
In the next exam, we had a student with formulae written on their arms. “Ooops, I forgot to shower” was their explanation. Later on in the same exam, a student ate their cheatsheet. This sort of stuff is comic, but also deeply troubling.
All this has me thinking about the following quote regarding Brother Lawrence:
He said that as far as the miseries and sins he heard of daily in the world, he was so far from wondering at them, that, on the contrary, he was surprised there were not more considering the malice sinners were capable of. For his part, he prayed for them. But knowing that God could remedy the mischief they did when He pleased, he gave himself no further trouble.
This week, I keep thinking about this poem:
Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says everyone of us is a child,
everyone of us is ancient,
everyone of us has a body.
He says everyone of us is frightened.
He says everyone of us has to find
a way to live with fear.He says everything is alive–
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.Peace is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
I even went so far as to dig up an Esperanto version Hokusai Diras from my archived Gmail inbox. That translation will remain hidden from the public until I get permission from the translator to publish it.
I bumped in to Sebastian Malloy writing about (or in the style of?) Richard Brautigan on Bear. The sound of their writing made me feel like Brautigan might be a lesser known Tom Robbins. I got all excited and grabbed a bunch of his books from the library.
My first read was Trout Fishing in America. It didn’t really land for me. The novel was definitely weird and experimental, but it didn’t excite me. Or, like, the weird experimental stuff didn’t feel interesting in 2025. Sure, the novel can talk about itself. Trout Fishing in American can be a wino in a park if it wants to be. I’m going to be plowing my way through War and Peace.
And yet, here is a dashing little poem from Please Plant This Book.
The only hope we have is our
children and the seeds we give them
and the gardens we plant together.
I was utterly surpised to get some positive feedback about this blog from a student. It is amazing to me that anyone benefits from this stuff; I feel encouraged to continue writing.
I submitted a pitch for a short piece for the FYMSiC Newsletter.
I am consistently biking or walking to work.
Last night, I biked home at midnight.
Quiet and eerie.
I’m not sure if this counts as playing in the traditional sense, but I have been playing with the theory of integration in finite terms. I am really excited for my Seminar talk about it next week. It is nice to be learning a new theory and finding good examples scattered in the literature. (Maybe I should blog about it?)
In a world where everything seems to spiral towards negativity, writing becomes more and more important. Writing yourself, mind you: writing that helps to better form and steer thoughts in your mind, cluster them, extract ideas, and persist pleasant personal experiences. Writing as a cure for negativity.
[…] I am here to suggest that you try to stop thinking of documentation as a chore you do for others, and instead think of it as a way to explore your problem space and the space in your head around your intuitions about the problem, so you can shine light into the murkier corners of both. Writing documentation can function as valuable knowledge capture about your problem domain even when you are the only expert about what you are trying to do.
Kiel delikate
la luno
desegnas ombron
de branĉetoj junaj
sur mia kurteno
oratiel delikate
la nuno
revekas nombron
de memoroj lumaj
pri nia kunteno
kora.
Published: Apr 18, 2025 @ 00:15.
Last Modified: Apr 23, 2025 @ 14:34.
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