The picket fence There was a fence with spaces you could look through if you wanted to. An architect who saw this thing stood there one summer evening. Took out the spaces with great care and built a castle in the air. The fence was utterly dumbfounded, each post stood there with nothing round it. Christian Morgenstern, The Art of Looking Sideways www.andrew.cmu.edu spacearchitectureabsurdity
Kokoro A Novel by Natsume Sōseki www.penguinrandomhouse.com Vibrations in the airThat delicate and complex instrumentThe great soundless whirl of darknessUnderfootNot them he despised+2 More zenabsurdity
Don Quixote A Novel by Miguel de Cervantes www.amazon.com A distant fireWhen life is overStoriesArtificeDeceivers and deceptions+1 More absurdity
Essayer To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called "essais." He was doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out. Paul Graham, The Age of the Essay www.paulgraham.com What this site is