Embedded Patterns

"No pattern is an isolated entity.

Each pattern can exist in the world

only to the extent that is

supported by other patterns:

the larger patterns in

which it is embedded,

the patterns of the same

size that surround it,

and the smaller patterns

which are embedded in it. "

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - )

'Silent' = 'Listen'

"The word 'listen'

contains the same letters

as the word 'silent'."

- Alfred Brendel (1931 - )

Hush of Silence

"Listen closely... 

the eternal hush of silence

goes on and on throughout all this,

and has been going on,

and will go on and on.

This is because the world

is nothing but a dream

and is just thought of

 and the everlasting eternity

pays no attention to it."

- Jack Kerouac (1922 - 1969)

Hardly Noticeable

"If you will stay close to nature,

to its simplicity,

to the small things hardly noticeable,

those things can unexpectedly

become great and immeasurable."

- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Letters to a Young Poet

Crepuscular Cryptographs

"One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified an mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe — and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives — is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)

Perception of the Infinite

"Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?"

- René Descartes (1596 - 1650)

The Usayable

"...trust yourself and your instincts; even if you go wrong in your judgement, the natural growth of your inner life will gradually, over time, lead you to other insights. Allow your verdicts their own quiet untroubled development which like all progress must come from deep within and cannot be forced or accelerated. Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work."

-  Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Letters to a Young Poet