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 modern infrastructural ideal The form and possibility of the "modern infrastructural ideal" is increasingly under threat, as cracks (sometimes literal ones) show up in our bridges, our highways, our airports, and the nets of our social welfare systems. For these and other reasons, broken world thinking asserts that breakdown, dissolution, and change, rather than innovation, development, or design as conventionally practices and thought about are the key themes and problems facing new media and technology scholarship today. Attached to this, however, comes a second and more hopeful approach: namely, a deep wonder and appreciation for the ongoing activities by which stability (such as it is) is maintained, the subtle arts of repair by which rich and robust lives are sustained against the weight of centrifugal odds, and how sociotechnical forms and infrastructures, large and small, get not only broken but restored, one not-so-metaphoric brick at a time. Steven J. Jackson, Rethinking Repair How Buildings Learn infrastructurehope