Sleepers A Poem by Nick Trombley m o t i o n l e s s m o t i o n l s e s m o t i o n s l e s m o t i o s n l e s m o t i s o n l e s m o t s i o n l e s m o s t i o n l e s m s o t i o n l e s s m o t i o n l e s s o m t i o n l e s s o m t i n o l e s s o m t n i o l e s s o m n t i o l e s s o m n t o i l e s s o m n o t i l e s s o m n o t l i e s s o m n o l t i e s s o m n o l i t e s Concrete poetry sleepeuphony
Because we have to sleep Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself. "It's the oasis," said the camel driver. "Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked. "Because we have to sleep." Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist sleep
To carve a volume into the void of darkness The nocturnal sound is a reminder of human solitude and mortality, and it makes one conscious of the entire slumbering city. Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of dripping water in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear in the darkness becomes a cavity sculpted directly in the interior of the mind. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses sounddarknesssleepsolitude
Traced in the summer skies Yes, it was the hour when, a long time ago, I was perfectly content. What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day…as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent. Albert Camus, The Stranger sleepcrime
The Thing-deadline calculus Now, I understand deadlines. I understand that the plane will take off whether or not I’m on it, or the importance of beating the holiday retail rush, or that "the show must go on". It is perfectly clear to me how people use timekeeping technology to coordinate social activity. It’s actually quite remarkable when you step back and look at it. But, over the years, I have observed that there is a difference between those examples and the ones around the delivery of Things, which tend to be completely arbitrary. When you wrap an arbitrarily complex endeavor up in a neat launch date, the goal seems to be more about coercing the people beneath you to absorb the overhead of all the details you left out—that or sweating it yourself. As a tool for coordinating human activity, I have come to believe that the Thing-deadline calculus is, considering more sophisticated alternatives, unnecessarily crude. Dorian Taylor, On the "Building" of Software and Websites Deadlines are bullshitNever enough timeDriving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake planningproducts