Freedomless freedom The beauty of kasuri is received as a gift. As long as the laws of nature are upheld, the beauty of kasuri remains intact. This demonstrates the curious principle that the artisan is deprived of technical freedom but works in the freedom of nature. In this sense, kasuri can be said to be created in a state of freedomless freedom. Yanagi Sōetsu, The Beauty of Kasuri freedomconstraintsnaturemaking
Technological middle age In the automobile's technological middle age, it is hard, if not impossible, to tune or repair one's own vehicle. Technical standardization of cars has occurred, and with it the elimination of the user's access to the machine itself. At the same time, the infrastructures that once served those who did not use automobiles atrophied and vanished. Some may say they were deliberately starved out. Railways gave way to more and more roadways. And thus a technology that had been perceived to liberate its users began to enslave them. Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology technologyfreedominfrastructure
Why We Build the Wall A Song by Anaïs Mitchell genius.com What do we have that they should want? We have a wall to work upon We have work and they have none And our work is never done And the war is never won The enemy is poverty And the wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free That’s why we build the wall We build the wall to keep us free So that its destruction cannot begin workfreedomcapitalism
The Poetics of Space A Book by Gaston Bachelard www.goodreads.com Poetic drugsThe world itself dreamsThe past of his image upon meIn the world of sunlightRefuges+7 More Modern Man in Search of a Soul125 Best Architecture Books
Poetic drugs In the final chapters Bachelard lets slip (a confession really) how if he "were a psychiatrist," he would recommend a poem by Baudelaire to treat "anguish." His squabble then is not with the purpose but rather the approach of a still-young profession. And of course, why not treat the power of great poems as something akin to "virtual 'drugs'"? Mark Z. Danielewski psychologypoetrypaindrugs
The world itself dreams For Plato and many medieval philosophers, imagination was construed primarily as a mimetic act of mirroring, representing, copying. This approach was often associated with deceit and illusion, with confounding original realities with secondary substitutes. By contrast, for Kant and the romantics—including German idealists and existentialists like Sartre—imagination was hailed as a productive force in its own right, the source of all true meaning and value. Bachelard resisted both extremes. For him, imagination was at once receptive and creative—an acoustic of listening and an art of participation. The two functions, passive and active, were inseparable. The world itself dreams, he said, and we help give it voice. imaginationcreativity
The past of his image upon me The poet does not confer the past of his image upon me, and yet his image immediately takes root in me. The communicability of an unusual image is a fact of great ontological significance. imagespoetry
In the world of sunlight And here we come back to that forgotten, outcast word, the soul. Indeed, the soul possesses an inner light, the light that an inner vision knows and expresses in the world of brilliant colors, in the world of sunlight. soullight
Refuges Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our daydreams. memory
Deprived of all thickness Here space is everything, for time ceases to quicken memory. Memory—what a strange thing it is!—does not record concrete duration, in the Bergsonian sense of the word. We are unable to relive duration that has been destroyed. We can only think of it, in the line of an abstract time that is deprived of all thickness. The finest specimens of fossilized duration concretized as a result of long sojourn, are to be found in and through space. Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space, the sounder they are. time
The odor of raisins What would be the use, for instance, in giving the plan of the room that was really my room, in describing the little room at the end of the garret, in saying that from the window, across the indentations of the roofs, one could see the hill. I alone, in my memories of another century, can open the deep cupboard that still retains for me alone that unique odor, the odor of raisins drying on a wicker tray. The odor of raisins! It is an odor that is beyond description, one that it takes a lot of imagination to smell. But I've already said too much. If I said more, the reader, back in his own room, would not open that unique wardrobe, with its unique smell, which is the signature of intimacy. smellmemory
Oneiric topography If I were the architect of an oneiric house, I should hesitate between a three-story house and one with four. A three-story house, which is the simplest as regards essential height, has a cellar, a ground floor, and an attic; while a four-story house puts a floor between the ground floor and the attic. One floor more, and our dreams become blurred. In the oneiric house, topoanalysis only knows how to count to three or four. architecturedreams
Winter is by far the oldest of the seasons ...and we feel warm because it is cold out-of-doors. seasonsheat
I am the space where I am Je suis l'espace où je suis. This is a great line. But nowhere can it be better appreciated than in a corner. identityspace
My house is diaphanous My house is diaphanous, but it is not made of glass. It is more of the nature of vapor. Its walls contract and expand as I desire.