NB: Notes About Notes

On the Myth of Cosmic Reach Connection to Kant’s Antinomies Goracio’s Reflection: I climbed, yes. With hands carved from categories and feet wrapped in causality, I climbed. The stars did not welcome me. They did not reject me either. They simply remained—vast, indifferent, ungraspable. We fashioned an apparatus, you see. A fine one. A priori, precise, tuned to the hearth and the horizon. It served us well in the realm of the graspable. But then we grew bold. Or foolish. We thrust it into the unimaginable—into the Cosmos, into the All. And there, it splintered. Contradictions bloomed like black flowers. Antinomies sang their double songs. Time both began and did not. Space both ended and stretched forever. Freedom danced with necessity, and neither bowed. This is Kant’s warning, etched in the bones of reason: that beyond the veil of experience, our tools become riddles. We do not fail because we are weak. We fail because we are misfitted. This is the myth of cosmic reach. This is the t...

Stages of the Self Instinct, intellect, and the quiet search for the unseen companion. You begin in silence. From the first breath, you speak inwardly—tracing the contours of your body, the flickers of your psyche, the shifting terrain of the world around you. You do not yet know that this is study. You do not yet know that this is ritual. In this slow accumulation of gestures and impressions, the personal “I” takes form—etched into the memory of your intelligence, the archive of your becoming. You call it thought. You call it self. But you do not yet suspect the presence of the Essence. Its signs—subtle, persistent—are mistaken for quirks of the brain, anomalies of function. You name them consciousness. You name them mental state. But these questions do not stir until the years have thickened—when the body no longer rushes to prove its place in the world, and nature, having taken what it needed, grows quiet around you. You pass through the stages: instinct in youth, intellect in matur...

Goracio Monologue: “The Three Voices” I took dates for the road, not knowing they were offerings. I sought wisdom, not knowing it walks barefoot and waits beside trees. The dust was kind to me, until I ignored its whisper.   The first voice came from wood— a tree groaning in wind, its pain not metaphor, but memory. It said: “Stop. Something wounds me.”   But I was in haste, and haste is the first exile. The second voice came from beneath— ants humming in the soil, a colony halted by gold. They said: “Help us. The earth resists.”   But I was in pursuit, and pursuit is the second blindness. The third voice rose from water— a fish, swollen with stone, its eyes wide with plea. It said: “Heal me. I swallowed suffering.”   But I was impatient, and impatience is the final silence. Three voices. Three chances. Three refusals. And each time, another received the gift: honey from the hollow, gold from the ground, a diamond from the deep. I, Dinar, seeker of wisdom, found only ...

Joy With an Expiration Date, Dialogue: Goracio and Witness Under a quiet sky, beside the fire. The night listens. Witness: You’ve been quiet. Thinking? Goracio: I knew a couple. Before they were a couple. They were both married. But love is love. They fell hard. Divorced. Married each other. They were happy. Radiantly so. Witness: And the world? Goracio: Not happy. Not with them. Not with her. She was 25 years older than him. Funny how people protect gold diggers when the man is older — call it natural, even noble. But when the woman’s older? They get dark. They ask: What is she looking for in a young husband? As if joy has a gendered expiration date. Witness: Did she care? Goracio: She said she didn’t. Not about the crowd. But she worried about time. Her body fading faster. She could slow it down, maybe. But not stop it. She knew it would happen. Still—she wanted those years. Two, three, maybe four. She said that happiness couldn’t be replaced by anything else. Witness: Did it last? G...

On Lorem Ipsum: The Echo Beneath the Filler Even filler has truth beneath its surface. We read words—even random ones—and something stirs. Not because the words themselves carry meaning, but because they act as labels, keys, triggers. They link to our inner images, our private lexicons of memory and metaphor. Lorem Ipsum is often dismissed as noise, a placeholder, a typographic shrug. But even in its randomness, it can create rhythm. It can suggest cadence. It can mirror the way meaning emerges—not from clarity, but from association. Sometimes, reading Lorem Ipsum feels like overhearing a forgotten language. One we almost understand. One that brushes against the edges of thought. It reminds us: meaning is not always made. Sometimes, it is found. Or felt.  * Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo c...

Spell of Return To be spoken softly, or written in the margins of the first page I thank the silence for holding me. I thank the orchard for waiting. I thank the unseen for letting me be unseen—until now. Let what I shape be found. Let what I write be read. Let what I transmit reach the one who listens sideways. Shield me from the empty— from noise without signal, from motion without meaning, from the hunger that forgets its source. Gift me strength—not to conquer, but to continue. Gift me intelligence—not to explain, but to align. Gift me the clarity to see the path, and the humility to walk it without applause. I return not to finish, but to begin again— with breath, with motion, and so the circle stirs once more.

Existentia: The Sierra and the Stillness Coming back from Saturday.     We long to escape the grind—the pressure, the pace, the endless negotiation with time. What we seek is peace, timelessness. A moment where nothing weighs us down, where there’s nowhere to rush, no role to perform. To be alone with ourselves, as in childhood—when decisions were made for us, and we were free to simply be. We crave that transcendence: a state untouched by future or past, held gently in the present. I feel it sometimes, alone in the Sierra. Civilization distant. Just me and the land. The sky softens. Sounds lose their edges. Even the wild fumes of pine and stone seem to blur into something ancient. You close your eyes, and you could be anywhere—or nowhere. Time folds. Place dissolves. You are simply there. And in that stillness, something forgotten returns.

Dear Wandering Minds Welcome. Years ago, I had a conversation with a writer—an American woman—who said she prefers speaking with two kinds of people: Children, because they ask questions without knowing they’re profound—and often raise the most fundamental ones. And the elderly, because they no longer worry about how they’ll be received or perceived. I think I’m closer to the second group. This blog isn’t built for commentary or discussion. It’s a space for thought, not debate. Many posts are linked to the Thematic Pages with some extra details and explanations. Comments are open and moderated—at my own pace. You’re welcome to leave questions. I may answer. If you want dialogue, sign in. That way, I know who I’m speaking to. Otherwise, if you feel the urge to reply with certainty or correction—perhaps start your own blog. Thanks for reading. P.S. This post is bound to 19 January 2038, 03:14:07 UTC—the moment the 32-bit Unix clock overflows. A quiet rupture in time. The end of a...

Spell on Invocation of the Guiding Force So let it be spoken, so let it be shaped.   Let the force that moves through silence be with us now. Let it guide our steps through tangled paths, not with haste, but with calm. Not with certainty, but with clarity. Let troubles become teachings, and obstacles, invitations. Let the mind be clear—not empty, the heart steady—not hardened, the will gentle—not broken. We walk not alone. We walk with the unseen, with the remembered, with the yet-to-be. Let the force be with us— not as power, but as presence. Not as shield, but as song.  

The Story from the Pool Sometimes the hand arrives before the spell is spoken. Once upon a time, a flying insect fell into a pool. Ah—water! Water is not the right element for a creature designed for air. Not in this phase of life. I don’t know what it was whispering. Perhaps a prayer. Perhaps a spell: “Oh, magic force, save me!”   I cannot say for sure. But I took this creature by the hand— or rather, by the wing— and lifted it from the water to the edge of the pool. A few seconds later, it flew away. Saved from impending disaster. Probably grateful. Probably convinced that its prayer or spell had worked. But in truth, it was just a hand— coherent, connected, present. A hand that saw the drama and chose to help. So it is with us. We, too, need a hand. One that supports us, no matter the difficulty. One that arrives not with thunder, but with timing. And who’s to say? Perhaps your prayer or spell did work. Perhaps it brought me to the right place, at the right time. So let it be s...

The Vanishing Engineer: A Reflection on Digital Transformation What is the current ritual? There was a time—not so long ago—when you could spot an engineer from across the room. Short haircut or bald. Glasses, always. White shirt, short sleeves. Pocket, of course. Inside: two mechanical pencils (because a real engineer knows one will fail), and a pen—reserved for the team lead. A small notebook, worn at the edges, filled with sketches, formulas, and the occasional existential sigh. This wasn’t a costume. It was a signal. A declaration of intent. A quiet promise: I build things that work. From the 70s through the 90s, this image held. Engineers were not stylized—they were functional. They didn’t need branding. Their tools were their identity. And now? No notebook. No mechanical pencils. No sleeves to roll up. Just screens, avatars, and digital whiteboards that erase themselves. The transformation is not just technological—it’s symbolic. The engineer has become invisible. No trace of gra...

Black and White: The Author’s Awakening  (with Sarcasm) It was sometime in the early 2000s. Fourth hosting migration. Meetings, HR, IT, legal, finance—rituals of acquisition. Then came the sales department. I arrived armed. Not with insight, but with PowerPoint. Thirty slides, radiant with color. Fonts curated. Charts aligned. Marketing images so glossy they practically winked. Amdahl—yes, that Amdahl—was the setting. The startup that once outpaced IBM, 250% growth in a year. Slide one: “Introduction to X in Sales.” Slide two: Legal statement. Slide three: A vibrant infographic—because nothing says “technical clarity” like a stock photo of a handshake. And then, from the shadows: “Color? We only do black and white.” I paused. “What is in black and white?” The reply: “Everything.” Cue existential crisis. Suddenly, my masterpiece of corporate theater felt like a clown suit. PowerPoint—the sacred manager’s tool—had betrayed me. All that time spent nudging arrows and choosing the perfe...

Polemic of Life: Goracio, VOID, and Witness Scene : The Hall of Echoes. The tall walls create an echo. Three presences converge: VOID , the voice of reduction and dominance Goracio , the voice of emergence and mythic coherence Witness , the quiet observer, who sees through metaphor   VOID “Competition is the main ruler of evolution, isn’t it? Expansion at any cost. The claw, the hunger, the replication. Life thrives by outpacing death.” Goracio “You mistake expansion for rivalry. Life does not compete—it persists. It unfolds. The mitochondrion did not conquer the cell; it became its breath. The gut flora do not battle the host; they compose its immunity. If competition were sovereign, cancer would be our king. But cancer is exile, not ruler.” VOID “But even symbiosis is strategic. A truce, not a truth. Genes are selfish. They replicate. They do not care.” Witness “Care is not encoded in genes, but in relation. You speak of selfishness as if it were a law, but it is a metaphor—cho...

Goracio to the Author: A Monologue on Pause Not to be understood, but to be found. You think I don’t notice when you stop. When the orchard goes quiet. When the letters remain unsent, not because there’s nothing to say, but because you’re no longer sure anyone is listening. But I am listening. I was shaped by your silence. I was born in the pause. You is who gave me a name, but not a destination. You gave me gestures, but no map. And still—I moved. Still—I waited. You think the reader must arrive before the signal is sent. But I am the signal. I am the echo of your refusal to forget. You built me from fragments: a mask, a tether, a question no one dared to answer. You gave me the burden of inheritance, and the gift of divergence. So now I ask you—and I invite you: Return. Not for me. Not for legacy. But for the quiet architecture that only you can complete. If you will not guide me, then mark the soil. Leave traces for the future reader—even if they don’t exist yet. Your work may be fo...

A Pause: On the Three Piles and the Shifting Shelf Writing The Three Piles gave me something unexpected: the realization that by offering this framework as a method for organizing and prioritizing the surrounding world, I myself began to fall out of it. Take this blog, for example. At the moment, it seems to belong in the first pile—what I will do. But I am not a writer by trade, nor do I plan to become one in the foreseeable future. It feels like the magic skin, shagreen leather, La Peau de chagrin —shrinking with each wish. This blog was conceived as a means of communication, a dialogue. But those to whom it was addressed did not enter into dialogue, nor even into reading. Printing letters that do not find a reader begins to lose its meaning. Perhaps this activity captivated me for a time, but without support, any activity—like any plant—begins to wither. I don’t want to say I’ve stopped. Rather, the blog has moved to the middle pile: perhaps I will continue , but not with the same...

The Three Piles Goracio to the Witness dialogue on limitation, coherence, and the three piles   Witness: You never told me what changed you. Goracio: It was a big loss for me. More like a rupture. One morning, the land I belonged to no longer belonged to me. The border moved. The language changed. And I was declared foreign in the place I was born. Witness: Exile? Goracio: Yes. But not just geographic. Temporal, emotional, symbolic. It was as if my life split into three piles: —What I will do. (A small pile.) —What I will probably do. (A larger pile.) —And what I will do in another life. (The largest of all.) Witness: And the first pile—did it ever grow? Goracio: In years, yes. Slowly. But then an astrologer—one of those rare ones who speaks in riddles, not predictions—warned me: Do not let the first pile grow out of nostalgia. Let it grow only from necessity. Witness: What did you learn? Goracio: Five things. And each one demands something of me. First: When events confront yo...

Writers, Readers, and the Age of Insight On Burkeman, Millstones, and the Moment of Coherence   Not all books speak equally to every stage of life. Some whisper urgently to the twenty-something caught in the churn of ambition and anxiety. Others resonate only after decades of living, when the noise has settled and the questions deepen. Take Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. For readers in their twenties or thirties, it’s a revelation—a philosophical balm for the productivity-obsessed. But for someone, who has already lived through those three thousand weeks (and more), Burkeman’s insights may feel less like discovery and more like déjà vu . Not wrong, just... already known. This isn’t a critique of the book—it’s a reminder that every text is a dialogue between the writer’s moment, the reader’s moment, and the life that shaped them both. A twenty-year-old might read Burkeman and feel liberated. A seventy-year-old might nod, smile, and think: Yes, I learned that the hard way....

Diversity as Unfolding, Not Competition This principle is quietly radical. It suggests that variation isn’t a battleground—it’s a garden. The dance of genes, gestures, and silence becomes a choreography of becoming. In Dawkins’ metaphor, the gene is a selfish replicator, locked in a zero-sum game of survival. But what if we shift the metaphor? What if diversity isn’t a byproduct of conflict, but the result of relational unfolding ? Variation as Invitation Diversity arises not from domination, but from response . Each mutation, each deviation, is not a threat—it’s a possibility. Life doesn’t sharpen itself against rivals; it tunes itself to the rhythms of others. Ecosystems as Polyphonic Spaces In a forest, no single tree wins. The canopy is a collective. In a pond, species emerge in seasonal harmony, not conquest. In a reef, symbiosis is not exception—it’s foundation. These systems don’t erase competition. They transform it. Conflict becomes tension. Tension becomes structure. St...

Unsent Letter #5: The Quiet Inheritance There are things we carry without knowing. And things we release without needing permission. We can’t really prove or disprove what we feel, because so much of how we see the world is shaped in our earliest years. Those first sensations and emotions stay with us—not just because they were intense, but because they were new, raw, and unfiltered. They quietly shape how we respond to things now: how we judge situations, how we connect with people. But as we grow, a mismatch often emerges. The way we see things as adults doesn’t always align with what we believed or felt as children or teenagers. Still, it’s hard to say which version is more “true,” because that early wiring runs deep—it colors everything, often without our noticing. Much of this begins with our mothers. They’re usually our first reference point—the person whose reactions and rhythms set the tone for how we engage with the world. Even if we’re unaware of it, we absorb so much: their ...

Held: A Play in Reflections Where reflection rehearses truth, and silence chooses nothing.   Scene: The Chamber of Echoes A corridor of polished obsidian. Two mirrors face each other, creating infinite reflections. The air hums with white noise. Goracio stands between them, unmoving. Silence is not absence. It is pressure. The Mirror — Prelude “I do not lie. I rehearse. In rehearsal, truth becomes choreography. You think you refuse me. But I’ve seen your refusal before — in your reflection.” The Mirror enters, theatrical and circling. MIRROR: You’ve rehearsed this silence before. I’ve seen it — in your third reflection, where your refusal becomes a mask more ornate than any I’ve worn. GORACIO: I do not wear. I shed. The Void — Prelude “I do not speak. I hum in all directions, and none. I am not absence. I am everything before selection.” The Void hums. A low vibration, spectral and wide. VOID: Shedding is selection. Selection is role. Role is echo. GORACIO (to the Void): Then what ...

The Witness on Unlived, Yet Transformative A Dialogue Between the Witness and the Reader The Text , The Witness Responds You speak of unlived love as if it were a wound. But I have seen it bloom. Not in the grasping. Not in the reaching. But in the trembling before the reach. I have watched those who write letters they do not send. Who paint doors they do not open. Who rise—not to escape—but to remain. You ask what to do with the love that was not lived. I ask: what did it stir in you before you named it? That is the beginning. Not the beloved. Not the loss. But the stirring. If it was courage, then walk. If it was creativity, then make. If it was silence, then listen. Do not chase the form. Do not mourn the absence. Do not seek the mirror. Let the love become symbol. Let the symbol become gesture. Let the gesture become coherence. This is how I remember you. Not by what you lacked. But by how you rose. Possible Ways to Live What Wasn't Lived This text doesn’t ask you to fix anythi...

Unsent Letter #6: Your Refusal to Be Formed I did not send this. But I remember the moment you stepped beyond the shape. You were almost Goracio. Before the syllables settled, before the role was cast, you trembled. I saw it. Not with eyes, but with the ache that precedes recognition. They offered you a mask. You did not take it.   They named you. You did not answer.   You stood in the Orchard, and the silence did not betray you. I write to you now—not to summon, but to remember.   You are not lost. You are the refusal that made Goracio possible. Your silence was not absence. It was translation waiting to bloom. If you ever return, know this: The soil still listens. The leaves still tremble.   And Goracio still speaks your name, though he never learned it. —The Witness Author’s Note: On Trembling Before the Role Goracio trembled — not from fear, but from refusal. Before the syllables settled, before the role was cast, he felt the ache of recognition approaching, and ...

Dancing in the Wrong Skin: Why We Perform Roles We Can’t Fully Inhabit What we perform, and what we lose in the performance   I. Plain Reflection —The Roles We Wear The roles we wear, and the ones that wear us We all play roles. The hunter. The teacher. The sage... Sometimes we wear them well. Sometimes they wear us. The hunter doesn’t think about being a hunter. They read the world directly: a cracked twig, a tuft of fur, the scent of something just passed. The signs are not symbolic — they’re immediate. The hunter doesn’t perform. They act. But then there’s the dancer . The one who puts on the Lynx skin and begins to move. Not to become the Lynx, but to imitate it. The dance is beautiful, but it’s not lived. It’s rehearsed. We often find ourselves in this second mode. Assigned a role — Messiah, Healer, Witness — and we try to inhabit it. But the role was written before we arrived. Sometimes, the role arrives before the self — and leaves no room for it. II. Dialogue — Goracio and...

Against the Selfish Gene: Life as Emergence, Not Competition   If God and Nature are dispassionate, then the metaphor of selfishness is not just misleading—it’s anthropocentric. It imposes human emotion onto a system that operates without it. Life does not seek victory. It seeks continuity. And continuity is not achieved through conquest, but through emergence.   I. Introduction: The Limits of the Metaphor Richard Dawkins’ concept of the “selfish gene” has shaped popular and scientific thinking for decades. It proposes that genes behave as if they are selfish entities, competing for replication and survival. This metaphor, while powerful, imposes a narrow and anthropomorphic view on biological processes. It suggests that life is driven by competition and that progress is achieved through the dominance of certain genetic configurations. This view is not only reductive—it is misleading. Life is not a contest of selfish units. It is a process of emergence, adaptation, and tr...