bombs in bottles
I'm groping my way toward articulating a Significant Thought. Something something the unitary online identity and our susceptibility to technofeudalist control. This post is not about that.
Here are some smaller things rattling around in my brain that need to get out of my way so I can think.
One of my students was Astounded! In the Library yesterday. They asked where I kept our copy of Alex Haley's Roots. I walked straight to the book.
Student asked, "Do you know where every book in this library is?"
I said "Yes. But no. But yes."
Yes, as in "everything is catalogued and shelved, so I can lay my hands on anything we have." No, as in "I do not have the precise shelf location of all 3,000+ titles memorized." But yes, as in "I can visualize where nearly anything is without needing the catalog."
Of course I can. I spend eight hours a day here.
I am magic.
The Marginalian, "3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever"
The Marginalian's latest post talks about "three kinds of loneliness":
the past-oriented loneliness of missing what once was and never again will be, the future-oriented loneliness of longing for what could be but has not come to pass, and ... “the profound loneliness of being close to God."
So...past, future, and present (because what is the present, if not the transient intersecting with the eternal?).
Stop. That is too many lonelinesses. Put some back.
--