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
Their wrongness is somehow more immediate In general, a successful design, which Alexander terms a good fit between form and context, can be declared only when we can detect no more [points that conform to the standard against which we judge]. It is "departures from the norm which stand out in our minds, rather than the norm itself. Their wrongness is somehow more immediate than the rightness." Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things Notes on the Synthesis of Form