Our most amazing ability is the ability to ignore.
As we grow, we learn not by multiplying connections in the brain, but by losing them.
We combine our expectations and biases with our perceptions,
which are themselves fictions created by our brains
simplifying and organizing multiple chaotic inputs.
Thus we create a thin veneer of simplicity and predictability
over terrifyingly unmanageable chaos
and call it reality.
If you think about it,
thinking has a paradoxical quality to it.
It is a process of creating patterns and reducing complexity.
Too much complexity is random noise – it is ugly and makes us think.
We think.
We create elegant patterns.
We create structure.
But too much structure is fundamentally boring –
for there is nothing to think about!
There is nothing silly or capricious about nonsense.
Nonsense is a way of expanding our language.
To create a coherent description of reality, we have to use a precise language
which, by definition, limits our description by its grammar and vocabulary.
But reality bleeds through the edges, frightening and fascinating,
creating chaos and, at the same time, the opportunity to expand our language
and – therefore – our world.
I love train journeys, especially at night.
Lights, lights, lights – they conceal details and smudge shapes,
they fill my eyes – imprecise, beautiful, meaningless…
And the wind – its motion is the same,
it blows the lights through the night and away,
it fills my ears with noise and my skin with sensation –
indistinct, but directional…
It blows the stars out of the sky and memories out of my mind,
and I feel so light without the excess weight…
The wind of time…
it distorts the present,
creating a chain of illusions:
in time, but not quite the right time
and not quite the right way…
in memory and perception –
but not quite mine…
it blows clean through me and leaves shadows –
the shadows of burned-out candles…
