{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Posts with \"Personal\" tag on Take on Rules","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/","description":"Posts with \"Personal\" tag on Take on Rules","generator":"Hugo -- gohugo.io","copyright":"Copyright 2026, Jeremy Friesen","language":"en-us","managingEditor":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","webMaster":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","docs":"https:\/\/cyber.harvard.edu\/rss\/rss.html","lastBuildDate":"Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:12:48 -0500","item":[{"title":"Local Library Programming","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2026\/02\/27\/local-library-programming\/","pubDate":"Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:12:48 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2026\/02\/27\/local-library-programming\/","category":["personal","poetry"],"description":"\n        <p>As I understand it, in mid-<time datetime=\"2025\" title=\"2025\">2025<\/time> the topic of personal curriculum started\nemerging on TikTok.  Jenny, then working at a small local library, sought to add\na Personal Curriculum segment to the library programming.  The schedule up until\nthe turn of the year was packed.<\/p>\n<p>So they scheduled a session for January; but due to inclement weather, postponed\nthe inaugural session until <time datetime=\"2026-02-26\" title=\"2026-02-26\">yesterday<\/time>.<\/p>\n<p>There were five attendees with Jenny facilitating.  She introduced the concept\nwith a presentation, a mix of examples and videos, highlighting the breadth of\nwhat others had considered as well as how to write a curriculum:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>topic<\/li>\n<li>learning objectives and tangible outputs<\/li>\n<li>secondary outcomes<\/li>\n<li>potential resources<\/li>\n<li>schedule of activity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jenny emphasized that the topic should be of interest, one in which you have\nsome basic knowledge, and identifying a goal to achieve.  Everything else was in\nsupport of enriching a personal interest.<\/p>\n<p>Jenny gave her example: Color Theory.  With a list of weekly activities.  And a\nfinal outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The others of us shared our ideas:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bassoon reed making<\/li>\n<li>Mushroom foraging<\/li>\n<li>Either ancient history or true crime<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For myself, I came with a list of possibilities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>poetry<\/li>\n<li>standing up a media server<\/li>\n<li>reading chonky books<\/li>\n<li>doodling<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And while we were discussing our topics, I began narrowing mine.  I knew that I\nwanted to avoid technology for my first foray; after all I\u2019m on a computer all\nday.  I looked to my other topics and narrowed poetry to haiku and chonky books\nto <cite data-id=\"works-don-quixote\">Don Quixote<\/cite>; with secondary sources.<\/p>\n<p>We had a great shared conversation, I asked the young patron about their\ninterest in ancient history.  And knowing she was a young mother, made mention\nof Dan Carlin\u2019s <em>Hardcore History<\/em>.  Something she could listen to in those\nmoments between parenting.<\/p>\n<p>As the session wound down I settled on a 4 week exploration of Haiku.  We also\nagreed to meet in 4 weeks to check-in and report back.<\/p>\n<h1 id=\"started-a-personal-curriculum-haiku\">STARTED A Personal Curriculum: Haiku<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Outcome:<\/strong> Assemble a small haiku zine (8 or so)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Secondary Outcomes:<\/strong> Read classic haikus.  Read on writing haiku.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Timeframe:<\/strong> 4 weeks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Throughout:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Write with pen and pencil on paper; one goal is to disconnect from my\ncomputer.<\/li>\n<li>Always carry a pen and paper.<\/li>\n<li>Seek to always carry <cite data-id=\"isbn-1400041287\">Haiku<\/cite> and read from,\ninstead of glancing at my phone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Schedule:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Week 1: Read <a href=\"work:how-to-haiku-a-writers-guide-to-haiku-and-related-forms-by-bruce-ross::author\">\u00abHow to Haiku\u00bb by Bruce Ross<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Week 2: Read introduction and excerpts of <cite data-id=\"isbn-9784805318454\">S\u014dseki Natsume&rsquo;s Collected Haiku<\/cite> translated by Erik R. Lofgren<\/li>\n<li>Week 3: Review past haiku\u2019s written to find samples.<\/li>\n<li>Week 4: Assemble hand-written haiku zine pamphlet, reproduce 20 copies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1 id=\"the-morning-after\">The Morning After<\/h1>\n<p>When we got home from the library, I started reading <cite data-id=\"isbn-9781462916757\">How to Haiku<\/cite>.  I wrote a\nfew in pencil.  We went to bed early, and around 5am <time datetime=\"2026-02-27\" title=\"2026-02-27\">this morning<\/time> I found myself\nwaking, a short poem at the tip of my thought.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> Not some <em>Kubla Kahn<\/em>, just myself parsing out a haiku.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I needed to capture that moment:<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">\nquiet early morn<br \/>\ncommuter cars growl on by<br \/>\nold dog curls on chair<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>From which I found myself awake, and thinking of Don Quixote, and of <cite data-id=\"03083A4E-4FEA-4E30-811D-700CE2EB071A\">Borges and Me<\/cite> by Jay Parini, and of Terry Gilliam; and a dawn readying itself to burst upon a still frozen lake.<\/p>\n<p>My phone rattled, I had a before the dawn text from my father.  <time datetime=\"2026-02-26\" title=\"2026-02-26\">Yesterday<\/time> he had\nsold off his entire wood working setup; he\u2019s moving and downsizing.  His whole\nlife, fixing things has been his identity, and the wood shop his means of\nbecoming.  The morning text being a follow up, saying that he has had to get\ncomfortable with reading during daylight hours.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Serendipity and Verse","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2026\/02\/05\/serendipity-and-verse\/","pubDate":"Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:25:06 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2026\/02\/05\/serendipity-and-verse\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        <p>I\u2019ve been enjoying narrative verse, poetry, myths, and legends.  <time datetime=\"2026-01-11\" title=\"2026-01-11\">Recently<\/time>, I\nfinished <cite data-id=\"isbn-9780763659394\">Yvain<\/cite> by M.T. Anderson.  I felt the thrill of\nstory and primacy of archetype.  I found the artistic style deeply textured and\nenchanting.  It interwove with my reading of <cite data-id=\"A6B3DC34-C462-46BC-8CD7-D89BDC31D6EB\">The Once and Future King<\/cite> and <cite data-id=\"DF694105-1DA3-40C9-9F63-EE9BB0E89D8C\">The Book of Merlyn<\/cite>; adding to my personal Arthurian canon.<\/p>\n<p>While perusing a local independent bookstore, I picked up <cite data-id=\"ISBN-9780316420747\">Fierce Fairytales<\/cite> by Nikita Gill.  <time datetime=\"2026-02-02\" title=\"2026-02-02\">Today<\/time> I started reading, and\nfelt the invocation\u2014an echo of Genesis.  From which Gill offers clusters poems\nrelated to a story; each of those poems digging behind the fairy tale to offer\nperspective of the characters in the story.<\/p>\n<p>Not to absolve the wicked step-mother, but to walk with her on a path\u2014one of\nmyriad\u2014that she traversed in donning that mantle.  Or, more correctly, one in\nwhich the mantle was forced upon her by the systems of oppression: poverty and\nmisogyny.<\/p>\n<p>This lead me to look for additional books by Nikita Gill\u2014I added a few to my\n\u201cshopping list.\u201d  Then I stumbled upon an interview with Gill, and learned of\ntheir collaboration with Anoushka Shankar on <cite>Sister Susannah<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<p>I gave a listen; I very much loved it.  I read more about the song\u2019s origins\n(<a href=\"https:\/\/livewire.thewire.in\/livewire\/sister-susannah-shattering-the-silence-around-abuse\/\">\u2018Sister Susannah\u2019: Shattering the Silence Around Abuse<\/a>).  And then spent time\nlistening to a few other of Anoushka Shankar\u2019s songs.  Now I\u2019m neck deep in\nsitar music; feeling such freshness move through me.  A fresh yet ancient force,\nthat draws upon the ancient echoes I also heard in <cite data-id=\"2CC8C24E-8223-4BE8-B47F-84709D6DB2BF\">Geek Sublime<\/cite> by Vikram Chandra.<\/p>\n<p>Years ago, a friend of mine, now since departed, journeyed to England.  His\ngoal: to see something truly ancient.  He started on a well trod tourist path,\nand at the first destination, he took it in and then asked the locals, \u201cWhere\nmight I find something even more ancient?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They obliged and pointed him down a path.  Upon arrival, he took it in, then\nasked these other locals again where to find the ancient.  And they pointed him\nfurther.  He followed the local memory until he arrived at an ancient forge,\nhere he felt the world of myth touching upon him.<\/p>\n<p>That story hung with me, because of my friend leaning on local memory, one that\ncould continue to point further back in time.<\/p>\n<p>That is what I feel when I read these epics and retellings; most often in verse.\nI feel the author touching on something far older.  And both bringing it forward\nin time and transporting me backwards.<\/p>\n<p>This is the magic of <cite data-id=\"ad1e6319-b4f2-4f00-b94f-1ac0834018ab\">The Hobbit<\/cite>; in which we start in the familiar and\nprosaic, then soon find ourselves on an adventure with fairy tale logic.<\/p>\n<p>It is present in Heaney\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryinternational.com\/en\/poets-poems\/poems\/poem\/103-23607_THE-TOLLUND-MAN\">The Tollund Man<\/a>.  And in a way Rukeyser\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/murielrukeyser.org\/2019\/12\/29\/the-soul-and-body-of-john-brown\/\">The Soul and\nBody of John Brown<\/a>; itself not ancient nor regarding antiquity.  Yet as much a\npart of mythology, due to the complexities and nuance of the titular character.<\/p>\n<p>And then there is Borges; one who writes of myth, riddled with lies most true.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Bolstering Against the Permeating LLM Language","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2026\/01\/07\/bolstering-against-the-permeating-llm-language\/","pubDate":"Wed, 07 Jan 2026 18:46:59 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2026\/01\/07\/bolstering-against-the-permeating-llm-language\/","category":["personal","poetry","responses"],"description":"\n        <p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.henrikkarlsson.xyz\/p\/being-creative-requires-taking-risks\">Being creative requires taking risks<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\nChildren will say stuff that will shock you, because you can see where they are\ncoming from, but it\u2019s just not the thing you say. They\u2019re not yet collapsed. But\nwe are collapsed. We end up revisiting the same thoughts. We end up saying more\nand more of the same stuff, and the learning rates go down.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>This requires further thinking and discussion.  Why?  These last few days I\u2019ve\nbeen actively and assertively deconstructing and mitigating deeply internalized\npatriarchy\u2014staring at a 50th birthday a half-a-year away; feeling the\nreverberations of pivoting from ever darkening days to those of light\u2019s return.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also reading further in the blog post, and fucking hate the permeation of\nsemantics describing <span>Large Language Model<\/span> (<abbr title=\"Large Language Model\">LLM<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cLarge Language Model\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cLarge Language Model\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-LLM\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n phenominon that are then projected onto the act of\nbeing human; I\u2019m not a fucking computer nor mathematical model.<\/p>\n<p>I am a human being, always arriving into a present in which I seek orientation,\nwonder, beauty, poetry, and art.<\/p>\n<p>A present in which I\u2019m busy practicing to write better haiku, <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emacs\">Emacs<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-EMACS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lisp_(programming_language)\">Lisp<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cLisp\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cLisp\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-LISP\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n, love\nnotes to my wife, and read chunky books.<\/p>\n<p>Over the course of the last 9 days, I have watched only a fragment of something\non \u201ctelevision.\u201d  Most everything else I\u2019ve pursued is tactile: a book printed\non paper, dishes in the sink (so many), colored pencils scribbling on paper, and\nmore.  (I have had days of work in which I needed to clicky-clacky on the\nkeyboard to make the code behave).<\/p>\n<p>So, when I read a post in which \u201cthe human\u201d condition is mapped to the language\nof <abbr title=\"Large Language Models\">LLMs<\/abbr>\n, I think \u201cbro, get out, touch some dirt, read an older book of fiction,\nand watch a sunrise.\u201d  We are each, and all, more than that lingual effort to\ncollapse us into an ever simplifying model.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">\nWarmth of mid-winter<br \/>\nI fear you most as herald<br \/>\nOf hell-blasted hate.<br \/>\n<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"The Books of 2025","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/31\/the-books-of-2025\/","pubDate":"Wed, 31 Dec 2025 08:15:42 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/31\/the-books-of-2025\/","category":["personal","reading"],"description":"\n        <p>This year, my partner and I are participating as a team in our local library\nreading \u201cchallenge.\u201d  The goal is for the team to read 100 books.  Thusfar we\u2019ve\nread 150 or so books; me having read about 50 and my partner over a 100.<\/p>\n<p>What have been the stand-out books?  And more importantly, why?  Not all of\nthese are ones that I very much enjoyed (e.g. a 4 out of 4 rating), but they are\nones that stuck with me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite> by Pico Iyer:<\/strong> a flowing memoir of solitude and retreat so as to\nre-e**ngage with the world.  To find energy and capacity in quiet communion\nwith both others and nature.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"817193e6-0ae6-4183-9c1b-87733e8a7eca\">Annihilation<\/cite> by Jeff Vandermeer:<\/strong> we listened to this audiobook throughout\na single day.  And found ourselves wondering what was happening.  The richness\nof language and imagery paired with withheld information drew me in.  Leaving\nme both wondering while also knowing that I won\u2019t find out.  Much like I won\u2019t\nknow how \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201chistory\u201d <em>ends<\/em> .<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9780199567690\">Babbitt<\/cite> by Sinclair Lewis:<\/strong> a book written in the 1920s that seems almost\nimmediately applicable to 2020s; plus this was part of a community read, so I\nhad a fantastic conversation with community members.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781250776297\">Bea Wolf<\/cite> by Zach Weinersmith:<\/strong> I love reading Beowulf, each time a new\ntranslation.  And this one, while not a translation, is instead a retelling\nthat brought me absolute child-like joy.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"fb15e51e-3050-4d09-ab79-f6b6b1f916a8\">Being Peace<\/cite> by Thich Nhat Hanh:<\/strong> it had been years since I read a Thich Nhat\nHanh book, and this was a natural read after <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781644452110\">Black and Female<\/cite> by Tsitsi Dangarembga:<\/strong> these essays hit home the absolute\nvileness of apartheid, as applied in South Africa, but also in the Jim Crow\nera that the present regime is angling to restore and expand.  As an added\nbonus, Dangarembga was the first Zimbabwean author that I\u2019ve read.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"f346e9c4-e904-417f-8c4c-4722727d8dd9\">The City of Saints and Madmen<\/cite> by Jeff VanderMeer:<\/strong> the language and imagery\nof <cite data-id=\"817193e6-0ae6-4183-9c1b-87733e8a7eca\">Annihilation<\/cite> captivated me.  And one day, while waiting for my partner to\nfinish perusing the bookstore we were visiting, I cracked open the\n<cite>Ambergris<\/cite>omnibus, and started reading <cite>Draden, in Love<\/cite>.  And found myself immediately transported into the chaotic streets\nof Ambergris.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite> by Rick Rubin:<\/strong> a book to keep on hand, flip through and\nfind a bit of inspiration.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"87f4018e-a675-44a7-9c95-b1183384affd\">The Dispossessed<\/cite> by Ursula K. Le Guin:<\/strong> a speculative work on how community\ncan move past capitalism, yet also understand that it would be hard to fully\nescape it, while also knowing that governance is invariably a political and\npersonal affair.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"c51d973a-21c0-406e-86cd-c334769cfc59\">The Empusium<\/cite> by Olga Tokarczuk:<\/strong> Tokarczuk writes to expand and enlarge the\npast through which we invariably construct and sustain an ever narrowing view.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"252e3dc9-f174-41fe-a10f-7bcb13f6d0d5\">The Fellowship of the Ring<\/cite> by J.R.R. Tolkien:<\/strong> a\npassion project, in which Phil Dragash narrated and voice acted a production\nof the <cite data-id=\"B716B561-9CFB-4712-B247-848A312BE175\">The Fellowship of the Ring<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"55348AB8-9909-4E68-878A-5458701F87E1\">Freedom is a Constant Struggle<\/cite> by Angela Y. Davis:<\/strong> articulating so clearly\nthat Palestine, the military industrial complex, petro-carceral state feed\ninto each other; and have created the conditions in which we find the United\nStates.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"1779d578-85b3-4c27-881d-a56a4a77dabc\">Hope in the Dark<\/cite> by Rebecca Solnit:<\/strong> I had trepidation about this; it felt as\nthough I might be thinking \u201cOh Sweet Summer Child\u201d of the grim days of yore.\nBut I instead found this collection of essays a timeless reminder that\nunpredictable positive events and situations arise from times of tribulation\nand uncertainty.  Importantly, Solnit provides receipts for past achievements\nand successes that we may have forgotten.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781945492600\">I Who Have Never Known Men<\/cite> by Jacqueline Harpman:<\/strong> a philosophical dystopian\nread in which one invariably will think about purpose and meaning of life.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9780385550369\">James<\/cite> by Percival Everett:<\/strong> a great book in its own right, that\ndelivers a fantastic additional narrative perspective to the events told by\nHuck Finn (himself unreliable).  This book did double duty, rekindling\nmemories of reading <cite data-id=\"8EDAF156-FD70-48D5-8E92-D1C675F2C49A\">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/cite> and seeing Big River.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"C5494904-CE49-4456-8E29-E3F94B72A593\">The Life of Poetry<\/cite> by Muriel Rukeyser:<\/strong> such lyricism and exposure to aspects\nof history and thought lost in our march to forget the lessons of facing and\novercoming fascism.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"1f28328c-be96-453d-a9a8-9b921c39fd8a\">The Little Book of Solitude<\/cite> by Joost Joossen:<\/strong> a collection of\nmini-biographies and quotes that lead me to to Pico Iyer\u2019s <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite>; it was\nalso amongst the first library books I checked out from our local library.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"75095d6c-cbe7-4a38-a6da-549678d4ed5e\">Men Explain Things to Me<\/cite> by Rebecca Solnit:<\/strong> this has been sitting on my\nshelf, partially read, and I sat down to read it.  Solnit always provides a\nreminder of the misogynistic structures and cultural behaviors that course\nthrough the world in which we live.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"b1aaa6b7-baee-4d8f-8a63-94bb8f812777\">Open Socrates<\/cite> by Agnes Callard:<\/strong> as with other philosophy books, this is one\nI\u2019ve added a hefty dose of marginalia.  Considering how to better approach\nlove, death, and politics.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"55a32435-c012-4892-be9a-ac00b5b17204\">Piranesi<\/cite> by Susanna Clarke:<\/strong> this one will sit with me for a very long-time.\nSlow-moving, playing with memory.  I highly recommend reading this in close\nproximity to <cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781945492600\">I Who Have Never Known Men<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"effcc954-310e-4b76-bf18-6919eb075832\">The Player of Games<\/cite> by Iain M. Banks:<\/strong> an interesting bit of speculation on\nhow a complex game can be used to constrain a society, and how the rules and\nlanguage of the game impose upon the society.  And how diversity can be a\nmighty advantage.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"da435b3f-87a2-49bb-802f-acf81815a488\">Prairie Songs<\/cite> by Lauren Friesen:<\/strong> my uncle wrote this, and I learned a\nlittle bit more about him and my family history.  And my uncles poem about\nsurviving polio ending with: \u201cand beside my bed \\ they spun, \\ an iron\ncocoon.\u201d  Goosebumps.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"4b6ca2f0-8e70-40b4-b18e-fe87b643b3e6\">Pranksters vs. Autocrats<\/cite> by Srdja Popovic and Sophia A. McClennen:<\/strong> I have\nrecommended this book to many people looking for hope and action.  Evidence is\nthat humor wins.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"C2F8BF31-362C-4F0D-A4F2-8F6B1927CB1A\">Slowness<\/cite> by Milan Kundera:<\/strong> this was one of my question books, due to its\nquote: \u201cThere is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and\nforgetting.\u201d  I found this book for a reasonable price and read it that\nevening.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"588d8c62-e79a-4ffe-99f3-a73aba315a8e\">Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird<\/cite> by Henry Lien:<\/strong> on a lark I picked this up,\nand it opened my awareness to other narrative structures, ones that I now look\nfor as a change of pace.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"isbn-9781534431003\">This is How You Lose the Time War<\/cite> by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone:<\/strong> Jenny\nborrowed this via inter-library loan; read it and thought I might enjoy it.\nShe was right.  I appreciate the myth building through symbols; the language\nof thread, needle felting, and sleeping beauty (herself a wolf hungry for\nlittle red riding hood).<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"5dd8020b-640b-420d-ae24-84169585038c\">To Fight Against this Age<\/cite> by Rob Riemen:<\/strong> I <cite data-id=\"72C7CC81-C6CD-4ECD-B8AF-EDF939B56094\">Farenheit 451<\/cite>liked the title\nand subtitle, and found a philosophical memoir that reinforced the need for\nhumanism and conversation.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"d334ef0c-4398-479f-ad82-4d8b9e993d2c\">The Trial<\/cite> by Franz Kafka:<\/strong> Having never read much of Kafka, yet knowing the\nfoundational nature of his work, then reading references in <cite data-id=\"5dd8020b-640b-420d-ae24-84169585038c\">To Fight Against this Age<\/cite> and eyeing <cite data-id=\"kafka-on-the-shore-by-haruki-murakami\">Kafka on the Shore<\/cite>, I had to read it.  And I was\nhooked.  Forget Cthulhu, existential dread is mindless bureaucracy.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"isbn-9781250213587\">Upright Women Wanted<\/cite> by Sarah Gailey:<\/strong> not normally something I\u2019d read, but\nthis let the Wild West tropes do quite a bit of work, and then subvert those\ntropes and tell a unique story about resistance.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"BAEA3D15-DA6C-4699-9DCC-3F424B515740\">We<\/cite> by Yevgeny Zamyatin:<\/strong> I love <cite data-id=\"works-1984\">1984<\/cite>, <cite data-id=\"30C81F03-C944-488E-9C81-CFC7E632A95E\">Brave New World<\/cite>, and <cite data-id=\"72C7CC81-C6CD-4ECD-B8AF-EDF939B56094\">Farenheit 451<\/cite>; and <cite data-id=\"BAEA3D15-DA6C-4699-9DCC-3F424B515740\">We<\/cite> is the spiritual ancestor of those stories.  The dystopian\nover-reaching state in which so much energy must be spent to sustain the\nsystems of oppression and coercion.  It felt a bit derivative, but as it came\nbefore, must be viewed with a freshness of thought relative to others.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"95cc0be8-ed94-44c5-a193-696c32426e72\">When No Thing Works<\/cite> by Norma Kaelok\u016b Wong:<\/strong> an important reminder that it is\nnot enough to resist, but to imagine a future in which we are along moving\nalong the path of restoration and restitution.  Naming what that future looks\nlike\u2014in details.  The dishes one brings to celebrations, the evidence of how\nimprovements manifest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then synthesizing all of these things: subvert tropes as this fosters further\nimagination of possibility.  And from there, action becomes possible.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"The Books of 2025","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/31\/the-books-of-2025\/","pubDate":"Wed, 31 Dec 2025 08:12:40 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/31\/the-books-of-2025\/","category":["personal","reading"],"description":"\n        <p>This year, my partner and I are participating as a team in our local library\nreading \u201cchallenge.\u201d  The goal is for the team to read 100 books.  Thusfar we\u2019ve\nread 150 or so books; me having read about 50 and my partner over a 100.<\/p>\n<p>What have been the stand-out books?  And more importantly, why?  Not all of\nthese are ones that I very much enjoyed (e.g. a 4 out of 4 rating), but they are\nones that stuck with me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite> by Pico Iyer:<\/strong> a flowing memoir of solitude and retreat so as to\nre-engage with the world.  To find energy and capacity in quiet communion\nwith both others and nature.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"817193e6-0ae6-4183-9c1b-87733e8a7eca\">Annihilation<\/cite> by Jeff Vandermeer:<\/strong> we listened to this audiobook throughout\na single day.  And found ourselves wondering what was happening.  The richness\nof language and imagery paired with withheld information drew me in.  Leaving\nme both wondering while also knowing that I won\u2019t find out.  Much like I won\u2019t\nknow how \u201cclimate change\u201d or \u201chistory\u201d <em>ends<\/em> .<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9780199567690\">Babbitt<\/cite> by Sinclair Lewis:<\/strong> a book written in the 1920s that seems almost\nimmediately applicable to 2020s; plus this was part of a community read, so I\nhad a fantastic conversation with community members.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781250776297\">Bea Wolf<\/cite> by Zach Weinersmith:<\/strong> I love reading Beowulf, each time a new\ntranslation.  And this one, while not a translation, is instead a retelling\nthat brought me absolute child-like joy.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"fb15e51e-3050-4d09-ab79-f6b6b1f916a8\">Being Peace<\/cite> by Thich Nhat Hanh:<\/strong> it had been years since I read a Thich Nhat\nHanh book, and this was a natural read after <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781644452110\">Black and Female<\/cite> by Tsitsi Dangarembga:<\/strong> these essays hit home the absolute\nvileness of apartheid, as applied in South Africa, but also in the Jim Crow\nera that the present regime is angling to restore and expand.  As an added\nbonus, Dangarembga was the first Zimbabwean author that I\u2019ve read.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"f346e9c4-e904-417f-8c4c-4722727d8dd9\">The City of Saints and Madmen<\/cite> by Jeff VanderMeer:<\/strong> the language and imagery\nof <cite data-id=\"817193e6-0ae6-4183-9c1b-87733e8a7eca\">Annihilation<\/cite> captivated me.  And one day, while waiting for my partner to\nfinish perusing the bookstore we were visiting, I cracked open the\n<cite>Ambergris<\/cite>omnibus, and started reading <cite>Draden, in Love<\/cite>.  And found myself immediately transported into the chaotic streets\nof Ambergris.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite> by Rick Rubin:<\/strong> a book to keep on hand, flip through and\nfind a bit of inspiration.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"87f4018e-a675-44a7-9c95-b1183384affd\">The Dispossessed<\/cite> by Ursula K. Le Guin:<\/strong> a speculative work on how community\ncan move past capitalism, yet also understand that it would be hard to fully\nescape it, while also knowing that governance is invariably a political and\npersonal affair.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"c51d973a-21c0-406e-86cd-c334769cfc59\">The Empusium<\/cite> by Olga Tokarczuk:<\/strong> Tokarczuk writes to expand and enlarge the\npast through which we invariably construct and sustain an ever narrowing view.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"252e3dc9-f174-41fe-a10f-7bcb13f6d0d5\">The Fellowship of the Ring<\/cite> by J.R.R. Tolkien:<\/strong> a\npassion project, in which Phil Dragash narrated and voice acted a production\nof the <cite data-id=\"B716B561-9CFB-4712-B247-848A312BE175\">The Fellowship of the Ring<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"55348AB8-9909-4E68-878A-5458701F87E1\">Freedom is a Constant Struggle<\/cite> by Angela Y. Davis:<\/strong> articulating so clearly\nthat Palestine, the military industrial complex, petro-carceral state feed\ninto each other; and have created the conditions in which we find the United\nStates.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"1779d578-85b3-4c27-881d-a56a4a77dabc\">Hope in the Dark<\/cite> by Rebecca Solnit:<\/strong> I had trepidation about this; it felt as\nthough I might be thinking \u201cOh Sweet Summer Child\u201d of the grim days of yore.\nBut I instead found this collection of essays a timeless reminder that\nunpredictable positive events and situations arise from times of tribulation\nand uncertainty.  Importantly, Solnit provides receipts for past achievements\nand successes that we may have forgotten.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781945492600\">I Who Have Never Known Men<\/cite> by Jacqueline Harpman:<\/strong> a philosophical dystopian\nread in which one invariably will think about purpose and meaning of life.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"ISBN-9780385550369\">James<\/cite> by Percival Everett:<\/strong> a great book in its own right, that\ndelivers a fantastic additional narrative perspective to the events told by\nHuck Finn (himself unreliable).  This book did double duty, rekindling\nmemories of reading <cite data-id=\"8EDAF156-FD70-48D5-8E92-D1C675F2C49A\">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/cite> and seeing Big River.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"C5494904-CE49-4456-8E29-E3F94B72A593\">The Life of Poetry<\/cite> by Muriel Rukeyser:<\/strong> such lyricism and exposure to aspects\nof history and thought lost in our march to forget the lessons of facing and\novercoming fascism.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"1f28328c-be96-453d-a9a8-9b921c39fd8a\">The Little Book of Solitude<\/cite> by Joost Joossen:<\/strong> a collection of\nmini-biographies and quotes that lead me to to Pico Iyer\u2019s <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite>; it was\nalso amongst the first library books I checked out from our local library.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"75095d6c-cbe7-4a38-a6da-549678d4ed5e\">Men Explain Things to Me<\/cite> by Rebecca Solnit:<\/strong> this has been sitting on my\nshelf, partially read, and I sat down to read it.  Solnit always provides a\nreminder of the misogynistic structures and cultural behaviors that course\nthrough the world in which we live.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"b1aaa6b7-baee-4d8f-8a63-94bb8f812777\">Open Socrates<\/cite> by Agnes Callard:<\/strong> as with other philosophy books, this is one\nI\u2019ve added a hefty dose of marginalia.  Considering how to better approach\nlove, death, and politics.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"55a32435-c012-4892-be9a-ac00b5b17204\">Piranesi<\/cite> by Susanna Clarke:<\/strong> this one will sit with me for a very long-time.\nSlow-moving, playing with memory.  I highly recommend reading this in close\nproximity to <cite data-id=\"ISBN-9781945492600\">I Who Have Never Known Men<\/cite>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"effcc954-310e-4b76-bf18-6919eb075832\">The Player of Games<\/cite> by Iain M. Banks:<\/strong> an interesting bit of speculation on\nhow a complex game can be used to constrain a society, and how the rules and\nlanguage of the game impose upon the society.  And how diversity can be a\nmighty advantage.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"da435b3f-87a2-49bb-802f-acf81815a488\">Prairie Songs<\/cite> by Lauren Friesen:<\/strong> my uncle wrote this, and I learned a\nlittle bit more about him and my family history.  And my uncles poem about\nsurviving polio ending with: \u201cand beside my bed \\ they spun, \\ an iron\ncocoon.\u201d  Goosebumps.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"4b6ca2f0-8e70-40b4-b18e-fe87b643b3e6\">Pranksters vs. Autocrats<\/cite> by Srdja Popovic and Sophia A. McClennen:<\/strong> I have\nrecommended this book to many people looking for hope and action.  Evidence is\nthat humor wins.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"C2F8BF31-362C-4F0D-A4F2-8F6B1927CB1A\">Slowness<\/cite> by Milan Kundera:<\/strong> this was one of my question books, due to its\nquote: \u201cThere is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and\nforgetting.\u201d  I found this book for a reasonable price and read it that\nevening.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"588d8c62-e79a-4ffe-99f3-a73aba315a8e\">Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird<\/cite> by Henry Lien:<\/strong> on a lark I picked this up,\nand it opened my awareness to other narrative structures, ones that I now look\nfor as a change of pace.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"isbn-9781534431003\">This is How You Lose the Time War<\/cite> by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone:<\/strong> Jenny\nborrowed this via inter-library loan; read it and thought I might enjoy it.\nShe was right.  I appreciate the myth building through symbols; the language\nof thread, needle felting, and sleeping beauty (herself a wolf hungry for\nlittle red riding hood).<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"5dd8020b-640b-420d-ae24-84169585038c\">To Fight Against this Age<\/cite> by Rob Riemen:<\/strong> I liked the title and subtitle, and\nfound a philosophical memoir that reinforced the need for humanism and\nconversation.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"d334ef0c-4398-479f-ad82-4d8b9e993d2c\">The Trial<\/cite> by Franz Kafka:<\/strong> Having never read much of Kafka, yet knowing the\nfoundational nature of his work, then reading references in <cite data-id=\"5dd8020b-640b-420d-ae24-84169585038c\">To Fight Against this Age<\/cite> and eyeing <cite data-id=\"kafka-on-the-shore-by-haruki-murakami\">Kafka on the Shore<\/cite>, I had to read it.  And I was\nhooked.  Forget Cthulhu, existential dread is mindless bureaucracy.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"isbn-9781250213587\">Upright Women Wanted<\/cite> by Sarah Gailey:<\/strong> not normally something I\u2019d read, but\nthis let the Wild West tropes do quite a bit of work, and then subvert those\ntropes and tell a unique story about resistance.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"BAEA3D15-DA6C-4699-9DCC-3F424B515740\">We<\/cite> by Yevgeny Zamyatin:<\/strong> I love <cite data-id=\"works-1984\">1984<\/cite>, <cite data-id=\"30C81F03-C944-488E-9C81-CFC7E632A95E\">Brave New World<\/cite>, and <cite data-id=\"72C7CC81-C6CD-4ECD-B8AF-EDF939B56094\">Farenheit 451<\/cite>; and <cite data-id=\"BAEA3D15-DA6C-4699-9DCC-3F424B515740\">We<\/cite> is the spiritual ancestor of those stories.  The dystopian\nover-reaching state in which so much energy must be spent to sustain the\nsystems of oppression and coercion.  It felt a bit derivative, but as it came\nbefore, must be viewed with a freshness of thought relative to others.<\/li>\n<li><strong><cite data-id=\"95cc0be8-ed94-44c5-a193-696c32426e72\">When No Thing Works<\/cite> by Norma Kaelok\u016b Wong:<\/strong> an important reminder that it is\nnot enough to resist, but to imagine a future in which we are along moving\nalong the path of restoration and restitution.  Naming what that future looks\nlike\u2014in details.  The dishes one brings to celebrations, the evidence of how\nimprovements manifest.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then synthesizing all of these things: subvert tropes as this fosters further\nimagination of possibility.  And from there, action becomes possible.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Yuletide","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/30\/yuletide\/","pubDate":"Tue, 30 Dec 2025 10:30:07 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/30\/yuletide\/","category":["personal","poetry"],"description":"\n        <blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120354\">\n<p>\nMyth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour\nthrough these holy fissures.  Our stories, our poems, are rips in this\nfabric as well, however slight.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Jay Parini, <cite>Borges and Me<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yule-tide, the twelve days between Winter Solstice and New Year\u2019s Day.  <time datetime=\"2025\" title=\"2025\">This\nyear<\/time> those days coincide with my (paid) time off of work.<\/p>\n<p>I stumbled a bit, thinking what the common weekday name I would give <time datetime=\"2025-12-30\" title=\"2025-12-30\">today<\/time>.  It\nfelt very much like Sunday.  Much as <time datetime=\"2025-12-29\" title=\"2025-12-29\">yesterday<\/time> did.  Perhaps there\u2019s that sense\nof holiness that burns through these yule-lit days.<\/p>\n<p>Not holy as we might conflate with communion and sermons, but in those fissures.\nIn which a true light shines through, that of communal memory and myths\nconstructed around firelight.<\/p>\n<p>I think to those gatherings at Grandma and Grandpa Friesen\u2019s house.  We\u2019d be\nthere together for what felt like several days.  Time made little sense, as the\n15 of us stuffed into that small ranch house in Nebraska.  Laughter tumbling\namidst Low German and English.<\/p>\n<p>The younger cousins and I would play at grandpa\u2019s pool table.  Endless hours in\nthose pre-electronic entertainment console days.  Later I\u2019d learn that it was a\nshoddy thing, warped and uneven.  But in those days, the green felt felt\nenchantingly rich.<\/p>\n<p>In later years, there were those days in which we\u2019d pack up after Christmas and\ndrive to Vermont.  Late nights of laughter as we\u2019d play fishbowl around the\nhearth.  Yule-tide, is for gathering.  For catching glimpses of the sun\u2019s\nreturn.  Sharing in that joy of togetherness, when the world outside, at this\nlatitude at least, is grinding ice and howling wind.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I gather with Jenny and our dogs Lacey and Ollie.  Me writing (poetry and\nLisp, as though there were a difference) and Jenny reading.  Lacey curled up\nbeside Jenny and Ollie wedged into his lounging chair.  We\u2019ll go outside for a\nbit, and stomp through the fresh powder of yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>But Yule-tide is now a fragile thing, at least in these States of America.  Each\nyear, I claim some of my employer benefits: paid time off.  Yet not all of my\nchildren have benefits that provide paid time off.  Others must budget time off\nfor visiting their fractured families.<\/p>\n<p>Where is the sacred?<\/p>\n<p>I want to write \u201csacrificed to the maw of capitalism\u201d, but that is an\nindirection.  Capitalists, lets name them not their system, demand our time and\ntalent to extract and enrich themselves.  The sacred, cultural memories and\nechoes, is something to be shattered, rended, and in their flattening-mind,\nforgotten and\/or perverted.  Replaced with consumption.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">\nYule-tide, yule-tide, a wave of night<br \/>\npassing through mists of time<br \/>\nwaxing toward growing light.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThis yule-tide let pop the cork<br \/>\nand decant drought of warding warmth,<br \/>\nand celebrate family and friends<br \/>\nand home and hearth.<br \/>\n<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"That Time In Between","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/29\/that-time-in-between\/","pubDate":"Mon, 29 Dec 2025 08:27:55 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/12\/29\/that-time-in-between\/","category":["personal","poetry"],"description":"\n        <p class=\"verse\">\nFolly is to name the days between Christmas and New Years.<br \/>\nThere\u2019s hardly enough daytime to warrant such.<br \/>\nInstead, let us embrace these long winter\u2019s night;<br \/>\nWhere story presses against the glass,<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;breath hot, frozen fog forming crystalline lace.<br \/>\nNo logs split nor tallow lit, that once did dance.<br \/>\nInstead, light sits steady and flat,<br \/>\nAnd the only flicker that of picture panes.<br \/>\nThis is a moment when little sense does our time make.<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>I embrace <a href=\"https:\/\/ruk.ca\/content\/romjul\">Romjul<\/a>, that period between Christmas\/Boxing Day and New Year\u2019s Eve.\nFor most of my life, the time between Christmas and New Years has been one of\nholiday.  That is: not working for my employer, but instead spending time with\nfriends (both present and tome-bound).<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"A First Snowfall","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/11\/09\/a-first-snowfall\/","pubDate":"Sun, 09 Nov 2025 08:10:47 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/11\/09\/a-first-snowfall\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        <p>Overnight we received our first snowfall of the seasons, as two inches of heavy\nwet snow arrived.  Trees still shedding their autumnal robes, bow heavier under\ntheir white overcoats.<\/p>\n<p>The two majestic white oaks with whom we share a bit of land carry a heavier\nburden, as they, like many other oaks, cling in modesty to their falling\nclothes, as though knowing that winter is no time for nakedness.<\/p>\n<p>The south-eastern windows view a lake ringed in trees and humble houses; not the\ngilded lake \u201ccottages\u201c of weekenders, but the practical smaller abodes, where\none dwells year round.<\/p>\n<p>The south-western windows view the wooded shoreline, by guess, our house is\namongst the elder on this side of the shore.  I\u2019d imagine the view once looked\ninto a woods; now spotted with neighbors houses\u2014year round homes for most.<\/p>\n<p>This quiet lake has shrunk this year, lacking the replenishing rainfalls.  This\nsnow, doomed to soon melt, will feed and restore a bit.  Yet today, if\npredictions hold, we might see a day\u2019s worth of snow cover, and dropping leaves,\nsurrendering to the weight of coming winter.<\/p>\n<p>As for me?  Beside me rests old Ollie, now 11, content to rest his head on a\npillow we share.  He, like all our dogs, alive and gone, love snow with a\nchildlike joy.<\/p>\n<p>Ollie, a steady companion, whose coat itself we\u2019ve used in a game:\n\u201cWhere\u2019s Ollie?\u201d  In years past, and in prior home, he\u2019d go afield and I\u2019d snap\na photo amidst the snow and ask folks to find Ollie.  A challenging task given\nhis white with a few steel gray and brown spots.<\/p>\n<p>Lacey one day from 4 years old, rests upon a chair.  She curls tight, waiting\nfor Jenny to awake and join on her lap.  Four years and eleven days ago, her\nmom, her 10 day old litter mates, and her, arrived at our house.  We fostered\nthem until they were old enough for their adoptive parents to take them home.\nShe loves snow, burying her nose to find what scents lurk\u2014mice and vole making\ntheir way amidst the blanketing cover.<\/p>\n<p>Both would play frisbee if I\u2019d ask; though tossing a disc in which snow sticks\nand packs, makes for a more dangerous sport.  So maybe a walk once all of this\nhouse awaken.  For now, me, I think I\u2019ll end this little bit of writing and\nenjoy another coffee.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Gnome and a Trixie Debian","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/11\/06\/gnome-and-a-trixie-debian\/","pubDate":"Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:03:57 -0500","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/11\/06\/gnome-and-a-trixie-debian\/","category":["personal","technologies"],"description":"\n        <p>Earlier this year, I switched my personal computering environment from MacOS to\nLinux.  I first started with <span><a href=\"https:\/\/system76.com\/pop\/\">Pop!_OS<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cPop!_OS\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cPop!_OS\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-POP-OS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n but in <time datetime=\"2025-09\" title=\"2025-09\">mid-September<\/time> I switched to <span><a href=\"http:\/\/debian.org\/\">Debian<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cDebian\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cDebian\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-DEBIAN\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n.\nPart of the reason is reducing dependencies: <span>Pop!_OS<\/span>\n builds on <span><a href=\"https:\/\/ubuntu.com\">Ubuntu<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUbuntu\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUbuntu\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-UBUNTU\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n which\nbuilds on <span>Debian<\/span>\n.  Another is to work within an <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Operating_system\">Operating System<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Operating System\">OS<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cOperating System\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cOperating System\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-OS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n that supports a\nbroad base of computers.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m looking to be able to help others, if interested, move away from proprietary\n<abbr title=\"Operating Systems\">OSes<\/abbr>\n.  Plus, I have a few old machines that are rather happy running <span>Debian<\/span>\n.  As\nI\u2019ve long worked in MacOS, and continue to use one for my day job, I\u2019d long used\n<span><a href=\"https:\/\/brew.sh\/\">Homebrew<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cHomebrew\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cHomebrew\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-HOMEBREW\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n.  Which I continued using in Pop!_OS and my initial <span>Debian<\/span>\n excursion.\nYet not all packages I wanted were in <span>Homebrew<\/span>\n, so I mixed them with <span>Debian<\/span>\n\npackages.<\/p>\n<p>However, in building <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emacs\">Emacs<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-EMACS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n by hand, I encountered linking problems.  I ran an\nexperiment removing <span>Homebrew<\/span>\n from my path, and building what I needed.  That\nworked well, so I kept doing it.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I have a simpler Linux installation, using well-vetted packages, and things\nwork quite well.  I explored using <span><a href=\"https:\/\/xfce.org\/\">Xfce<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cXfce\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cXfce\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-XFCE\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n, but prefer the <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/User_interface\">User Interface<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"User Interface\">UI<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUser Interface\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUser Interface\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-UI\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n\/<span>User Experience<\/span> (<abbr title=\"User Experience\">UX<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUser Experience\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUser Experience\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-USER-EXPERIENCE\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n of Gnome.  I\u2019m\ngoing to give another try of Wayland, but I\u2019m wanting to make sure that I map\n<code>Hyper<\/code> to the bottom left <code>Control<\/code>.  I see <a href=\"https:\/\/lars.ingebrigtsen.no\/2024\/04\/28\/the-simplest-thing-in-the-world-modifing-keymaps-in-wayland\/\">The Simplest Thing In The World:\nModifying Keymaps in Wayland<\/a> and I pause and wonder if I really want to\nintroduce that heartburn.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> The solution looks easy, the path to get there obnoxious.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I find myself writing more in my personal journal and less for a blog.  In part,\nI\u2019m doing more personal reflecting, but also recognizing that this is a season\nin which I both have less to say and need to listen more.  Which means I\u2019m also\nreading a lot more; having completed 54 books this year.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also feeling an itch to get back to some solo games, and know that winter is\na great time for building story.  So the blog rests but is not forgotten.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Enchantment and the Morning Star","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/09\/27\/enchantment-and-the-morning-star\/","pubDate":"Sat, 27 Sep 2025 07:09:41 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/09\/27\/enchantment-and-the-morning-star\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        <p>I woke at 5am, and wrapped up <a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/09\/27\/on-an-inner-library\/\">On an Inner Library<\/a>.  Now, I sit on the couch,\nLacey at my side, publishing that post.  Venus shines bright in the pail morning\nsky.  The faintest salmon colors rest upon the night dark tree-line.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m surrounded by enchantment.  Windows open letting in a cool breeze, the songs\nof tree frogs, the strumming of crickets, and the occasional acorn reporting\namidst leaves and steel.<\/p>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-09-27\" title=\"2025-09-27\">Later today<\/time>, we\u2019ll go out on our kayaks looking for the tiny fresh water jelly\nfish that live in the lake.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"On Sunrise Arriving Later Each Day","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/25\/on-sunrise-arriving-later-each-day\/","pubDate":"Mon, 25 Aug 2025 07:34:47 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/25\/on-sunrise-arriving-later-each-day\/","category":["personal","reflections"],"description":"\n        <p>Here just around the 43rd, as the morning dawns a bit later each day, I too rise\na bit later each morning.  Instead of 6am, I wake closer to 7am.  There is now\nless time between my waking and my starting work for my job.  I don\u2019t like this\ncompression, favoring the greater space of life before the clock started.<\/p>\n<p>Now, due to present projects, I\u2019m trying to get about the work just a bit past\n8am.  Which is not enough time to move from sleep to imposed thought.  Less time\nto savor the morning coffee, read a bit, or walk the dogs.  And the shower seems\nmore urgent; something that I must slot into a narrowing window.<\/p>\n<p>I am thankful I read <cite data-id=\"fb15e51e-3050-4d09-ab79-f6b6b1f916a8\">Being Peace<\/cite> by Thich Nhat Hanh, as it talked of being\nprepared when events explode.  And this dwindling morning feels not like an\nexplosion but an implosion, a collapse of time.  So I breathe and smile.\nReadying myself for yet another day of expressing my understanding of a shared\nmodel by asking questions, drawing diagrams, and writing instructions that both\nmachine and others (including my future self) should be able to understand.  I\nam ever the digital cartographer and archaeologist.<\/p>\n<p>I could compare my leisurely awakening with others and their hasty scamper to\npunch into their timeclock.  Those that must do so before the sun has even\nhinted at rising.  Yet that is not my present path\u2014though once decades ago was.<\/p>\n<p>I am aware of the tyrannous clock ticking away each second, demarcating an ever\narriving <em>Now<\/em> with a slipping away <em>Then<\/em>.  The drop of the executioners axe,\nreminding that the present is so very narrow.  A measuring tool for the\nmanagerial class eeking ever more out for capital.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the world\u2019s clock abides not by this same regimentation.  Depending on\nlatitude, season, and a bit of geography it lingers later and arrives earlier\nthan for others\u2014or departs sooner and arrives later.  Its plotted sinusoidal\nshape dictated by latitude; the greater the latitude the higher the crests and\nlower the troughs.<\/p>\n<p>Our clocks we establish and agree upon as defiance of nature.  To segment,\nenclose, and dictate.<\/p>\n<p>I am the sunrise.  The sunrise is me.  Where I am, now a bit slower to rise,\nearlier to fall, as I pass the quarter-cross en route to autumnal equinox.<\/p>\n<p>I think of my days of working in office.  Of busying myself and chatting around\nthe coffee maker; those moments of connection in which being dismissed early\nfelt like almost like gift yet more like when a teacher might wheel in a\ntelevision set to show a movie in the afternoon before an extended break.<\/p>\n<p>And of working remote.  No longer feeling as though I must be always on, but\ncertainly far more tethered to my work machine during working hours.  Attending\nto being visible lest it be thought I\u2019m not there.<\/p>\n<p>This morning in which I\u2019ve chosen a written meditation, moves at its own pace.\nI\u2019ll soon move to prepare some coffee and take a quick shower.  My job awaits,\nwith its infinite nice to haves.  Yet no matter how many ticks nor tocks, it\u2019ll\nnever draw closer to that infinite.  There is only this moment, in which the\npre-morning rain clouds made way for a resplendent dawn.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Living and Being through Meditating, Playing, and Reading","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/07\/living-and-being-through-meditating-playing-and-reading\/","pubDate":"Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:26:30 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/07\/living-and-being-through-meditating-playing-and-reading\/","category":["personal","reading","reflections"],"description":"\n        <blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"if-we-listen-closely-amid-the-din\">\n<p>\nIf we listen closely, amid the din of empires and nations, we might hear the\nfaint sound of beating wings, the sweet stirrings of life and hope.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Albert Camus, <cite>Create Dangerously<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-08-07\" title=\"2025-08-07\">Yesterday<\/time> some friends came over: I played Vantage with one while the others\nplayed with the dogs.<\/p>\n<p>The game of Vantage is unlike any board game I\u2019ve played before; a cooperative\nexploration game.  It is closest to a choose your own adventure book and a\nhexcrawl.  The game reveals itself to you as you make somewhat informed\ndecisions which launch you down new pathways.  Instead of attending to the\nmission at hand, my character stumbled into a village and became a tavern owner.\nI stopped exploring and set about learning skills, serving drinks, and crafting\ntools.<\/p>\n<p>After we packed up the game and my guests left, I published another post and\nthen read more of <cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite> by Rick Rubin, a meditation\non art and self.<\/p>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-08-07\" title=\"2025-08-07\">This morning<\/time> I woke before even the hint of dawn; 5am.  Darkness would soon to\nfade.  I sat to meditate and do some stretches.  Lacey (the more attention needy\nof the two) kept trying to nudge my hand to pet her.  I\u2019d tuck my hands away,\nand she finally settled on her bed.<\/p>\n<p>I have found that sitting in emptiness comes easy for me.  I sat for 20 minutes,\nbreathing, and letting myself flow through me.  I switched on a lamp and sat and\nresumed reading <cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite>.  That lamp, I felt as though I was stealing\nnight\u2019s authority.  It is one thing keep a light burning as the day fades, but\nanother sensation to spark a light before night\u2019s has begun its departure.<\/p>\n<p>After a bit of reading, I rose and took the dogs outside.  By this point, the\nsky had grown a bit lighter.  Venus and a companion hung bright as a wedded pair\ndrawing close.  I did some more stretches, breathing deep, and listening as\nbirds began waking.  Only now did I hear the noises of vehicles rumbling and\ngrumbling about the start of their day.<\/p>\n<p>I came back in, read some more, then took the dogs on a short walk.  I felt the\ncool yet humid morning, it will be warm and sticky.  After my walk, I fed the\ndogs then fried an egg, toasted some bread, and poured some homemade kombucha.\nI ate a quiet meal.<\/p>\n<p>Then I sat down committing to finish <cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite>; which I did.  Each\nchapter being reflections on life, art, and how to live it.  My pencil scribbled\nacross pages.  Capturing and connecting with past and current readings, work\nconversations, and moments near and far.<\/p>\n<p>I feel <cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite> filling with light the cracks within me; that are me.\nI feel the book vibrating and swelling within me, as though I\u2019m afloat in the\nLake Michigan and it is the waves, lifting and pushing me.  In this feeling,\nthere is no worry of undertow nor sunburn, just that feeling of warm sun\nsparkling on my wet skin, cooled by the waters pulled from the depths of\ncreation.  As though time ceases and the afternoon won\u2019t ever fade.<\/p>\n<p>There is some divine in this book, a gentle and assuring voice, speaking in\nparadox and resonance; not through story so much as triangulation.  Of orienting\nto oneself, in its multitudes, as well as one\u2019s relationship to their created\nart and the processes one might take bringing forward that art.<\/p>\n<p>I see <cite data-id=\"1254A3B2-19CC-4EA7-AA80-39B70CD21F5D\">The Creative Act<\/cite> being a book I keep within reach.  Its 60 or so short\nchapters can be viewed through the lens of a devotional; pluck one at random and\ngive it a read.  There\u2019s perhaps wisdom within.<\/p>\n<p>I realize now, my personal mistake in that play of Vantage.  I had settled into\na routine.  While my partner was exploring bandit caves, befriending animals,\nand climbing inspiring vistas, I settled in and chose to \u201cplay adult.\u201d  There\nwas so much to explore.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I wonder, am I writing about that game or this life I live?<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"A Dream of Chemistry Test Given by a Childhood Friend","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/06\/a-dream-of-chemistry-test-given-by-a-childhood-friend\/","pubDate":"Wed, 06 Aug 2025 22:46:23 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/06\/a-dream-of-chemistry-test-given-by-a-childhood-friend\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        <p><time datetime=\"2025-08-03\" title=\"2025-08-03\">A few nights ago<\/time> I had a dream in which a childhood friend had created a chemistry\ncourse and was administering a test.  The first 10 questions were food related.\nThere were pictures of a main dish and possible side dishes; none of the\npictures were of good quality, making it hard to discern what we were comparing.\nAnd we had to pick the best side-dish and show our work.  I was confused and\nsomewhat paralyzed at how I could know the right answer as well as show my work\nsupporting that.  And from what I could make out of the pictures, the choices\nwere of things I\u2019ve had with those dishes before.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m accustomed to picking something based on a qualitative evaluation; one in\nwhich I write up why I\u2019m deciding something.  Yet this dream left me perplexed.\nWhat goes with a dish?  I could write up my thoughts on why this, but relative\nto the others?  Would I need to refute those other options?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve known this person since I was 9.  And he often thinks of things in\ndifferent ways.  He\u2019s an entrepreneurial hippy stoner, who in high school would\nwalk the halls playing guitar and singing aloud.  So the test felt like\nsomething he might administer.<\/p>\n<p>What can I tease from that dream?<\/p>\n<p>Are there decisions that I\u2019m facing in which the right choice is so close to\nother choices that any would do?  Am I recognizing that I\u2019m facing something in\nwhich it\u2019s comical to spend time on a decision?  Do I feel as though the \u201cshow\nyour work\u201d is a press towards busyness without much utility?<\/p>\n<p>Or is there something related to my friend?  I don\u2019t talk with him much, only\nwhen I bump into him in Goshen; he\u2019s always walking with a cup of coffee in\nhand.  I did see him and his family at Goshen Brewing Company; his parents both\nolder than mine, looking a bit more hunched and wrinkled.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe a bit less cheese before bed?<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Thanks for Nothing","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/05\/thanks-for-nothing\/","pubDate":"Tue, 05 Aug 2025 21:29:28 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/05\/thanks-for-nothing\/","category":["personal","philosophy"],"description":"\n        <p>I asked myself to dream of thankfulness <time datetime=\"2025-08-04\" title=\"2025-08-04\">last night<\/time>.  Laying in bed, having just\nclosed a book, I thought at first of happiness, but instead set about\nmanifesting thankfulness.  As I was rather tired, I only recalled one or two\nthoughts on the matter before drifting off.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t even recall getting up once during the night.  I awoke without\nremembering any dreams.  Nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Was it because I slept with a sleep mask?  Was my sleep deeper, beyond the\nboundaries of the realm of dream?  I know that it can\u2019t be that I have nothing\nfor which to be thankful.  So is it a koan on which to meditate upon?  Be\nthankful for nothing(ness)?  I recall a chapter in the <cite>Tao te Ching<\/cite>\nin which the empty space of the bowl is what we find useful.<\/p>\n<p>Were I asked what I did yesterday, I might answer \u201coh nothing much.\u201d  But that\nwould be a falsehood.  For I cooked dinner, made and ate cookies, read from a\nfew books, went swimming with our dogs, wrote three blog posts, refactored some\npersonal code, played a few rounds of frisbee, did some yoga stretches, cleaned\nup the dishes, moved some books, found a notebook I\u2019d used in years past, worked\nmy day job and likely more.  For that list of \u201cnothing much\u201d I am thankful.<\/p>\n<p>I am thankful for the time and space between obligations; to have both narrow\nand extended moments to be: a writer, swimmer, cook, baker, coder, and more.\nBut also, importantly to be a human.  And that nothingness, that space between\nmyself and others, that is what gives perspective on this life I live.<\/p>\n<p>Were things crammed together, tight, how could I make sense of things.  My eyes\naren\u2019t as young as they once were and I often need a bit of distance between me\nand what I\u2019m looking at.<\/p>\n<p>And I consider nihilism\u2019s \u201cnothing matters\u201d; something that seemed to steep my\nformative years in which I lived under the backdrop of looming nuclear winters;\nin the shadow of a larger generation who shaped and continue to shape the\npresent.  Yet nothing <em>does<\/em> matter.  Without it, everything would be piled\nhopelessly on top of and within each other.<\/p>\n<p>I may have dreamed of nothing, but it\u2019s a blessing to have a bit of it.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Waking Up","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/04\/waking-up\/","pubDate":"Mon, 04 Aug 2025 18:53:37 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/08\/04\/waking-up\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        <blockquote class=\"verse epigraph\" data-id=\"but-sorrow-will-not-silence-old-dreams-or-young-wisdom\">\nBut sorrow will not silence<br \/>\nOld dreams or young wisdom.<br \/>\nNor will it make me give up on<br \/>\nThe beautiful pure joy of life.<br \/>\n<footer>&#8213;Hannah Arendt, <cite>Lament<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>On <time datetime=\"2025-07-01\" title=\"2025-07-01\">Friday<\/time> I picked up <cite data-id=\"db53fb82-3dc9-47ca-8378-9cb234bffe6d\">Wake Up<\/cite> by Jack Kerouac from\nOlympia Books in Dowagiac.  Since reading <cite data-id=\"472C1DBD-E0EB-4510-96D4-E474DF0C313E\">Siddhartha<\/cite> by Herman Hesse in high\nschool, I\u2019ve felt a connection with Buddhism; affirmed again by <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite> by Pico Iyer.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up a pastor\u2019s kid, attending General Conference Mennonite churches up to\nand past the merger with the larger Mennonite Conference.  I attended a\nMennonite High School and College.  My first job was at Mennonite Mutual Aid.\nSo through all of that I internalized the thread of \u201cJesus as wise man\u201d and saw,\nin an important moment of life, the presence of other wise traditions; picking\nup bits of Taoism and Buddhism and Stoicism in my formal education.<\/p>\n<p>The introduction of <cite data-id=\"db53fb82-3dc9-47ca-8378-9cb234bffe6d\">Wake Up<\/cite> explains, briefly Mahayana Buddhism has a greater\nfocus on love and Zen, which emerged from feudal Samurai Japan, with its\nbadass-ness.  I\u2019ve appreciated the Koan\u2019s of Zen, they disrupt my thinking.\nContrast where Mahayana, and <cite data-id=\"472C1DBD-E0EB-4510-96D4-E474DF0C313E\">Siddhartha<\/cite> by Herman Hesse are of love.  And\n<cite data-id=\"db53fb82-3dc9-47ca-8378-9cb234bffe6d\">Wake Up<\/cite> follows more in the Mahayana tradition.<\/p>\n<p>Further, the introduction highlights that the early Christian church\u2019s doctrine\nmixed with Mahayana influences; later castigated and proscribed by Constantine\nand excoriated by Saint Augustine.  I\u2019ve never explored those early years,\nthough know that the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/First_Council_of_Nicaea\">First Council of Nicaea<\/a> shaped the politic and domain of\nthe church.  Narrowing the possible and the allowed, thus positioning it to not\ndelve further, but to say that this is all there is.  To enclose.<\/p>\n<p>Since getting the <cite data-id=\"db53fb82-3dc9-47ca-8378-9cb234bffe6d\">Wake Up<\/cite>, I\u2019ve read a few pages before drifting to sleep\u2014no\nmore than six pages before my eyelids grow heavy and I find myself stumbling.\nI\u2019m reading tired and like to think that I\u2019m opening my heart and mind, by way\nof dream, to wrestle with aphorisms.  To turn a phrase from <cite data-id=\"AB3BE8D6-8D85-460F-8D91-A6B3128713C0\">Dune<\/cite>, the sleeper\nmust awaken.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also reading through <cite data-id=\"b1aaa6b7-baee-4d8f-8a63-94bb8f812777\">Open Socrates<\/cite>, feeling that I need to bolster my\nphilosophical tendencies; in particular around the big three: Politics, Love,\nand Death.  This has me reflecting on how I used my past polemics to cut\nassociations.  Instead of broadcasting about unfriending me on Facebook, I\nshould have simply deleted my Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>I had thought that I still wanted those attachments, curated and manipulated by\na malignant algorithm.  Yet, upon release, I\u2019ve found a greater calm.  However,\nI broadcast my \u201cpiety\u201d and made requests.  In hubris and arrogance.  And I think\na lot on a few severed friendship.  Those private thoughts that linger, and\nresurface as I wrestle with an ill-sitting decision.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a sorrow in abandoning the relationships to childhood friends.  Yet what\nare the forces that nurture and strengthen those bonds in the era of moving for\none\u2019s job?  Of each having children (or not) at different decades in life?  Of\nchasing the illusion of upward mobility by moving along the horizontal, ever\naway from a home base, created by growing up together.  Of living in the highly\npoliticized, in which algorithms seek to tear apart truth and connection.<\/p>\n<p>Gravity is not a strong force.  Yet how can we fall towards each other as our\nlives move in their own strange orbits around a singularity?<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Re: Read \u00abWhat We See When We Read\u00bb","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/07\/28\/re-read-what-we-see-when-we-read\/","pubDate":"Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:38:52 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/07\/28\/re-read-what-we-see-when-we-read\/","category":["personal","philosophy","reading","responses"],"description":"\n        \n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>I wrote portions of this post in the middle of July, having now gotten around to\nlifting it from my journal and developing more.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p><i class=\"new-thought\">Up before dawn<\/i>as Lacey was barking about something.  I did see in the\ndark someone walking on our road, which is a quiet street.  I suspect they were\nout walking their dog.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of going back to bed at 5:30am, I decided to watch the sunrise from the\nliving room window.  Cupped between the dark distant treeline and the leafy dark\nshape of a near tree, a pink pastel ember hints of a sun still an hour from the\ntreeline.  Colors not yet awake.<\/p>\n<p><i class=\"new-thought\">As I often do in the morning,<\/i>I sat down to read my daily feed of\ninformation.  And read <a href=\"https:\/\/tracydurnell.com\/2025\/07\/17\/read-what-we-see-when-we-read\/\">Read What We See When We Read<\/a>.  Some quotes from the\n\u00abWhat We See When We Read\u00bb, as transcribed by Tracey (the author of the post):<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\nThe story of reading is a remembered story. When we read, we are immersed. And\nthe more we are immersed, the less we are able, in the moment, to bring our\nanalytic minds to bear upon the experience in which we are absorbed. Thus, when\nwe discuss the feeling of reading we are really talking about the memory of\nhaving read.  And this memory of reading is a false memory.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>And then there\u2019s this one:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\nWe cherish the notion that books hold secrets; that books are <em>reticent<\/em>.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>That quote sums up my book collecting mindset.  To learn of secrets, as though\nin reading a novel or non-fiction, I have learned something that is worth\nlearning.  Why?  Because someone has taken the time to assemble the words and\nsend them forth into the world.<\/p>\n<p>And there will inevitably be insights into the human condition.  Which alludes\nto why I disdain this current era of \u201cGenerative <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction\">Artificial Intelligence<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Artificial Intelligence\">AI<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cArtificial Intelligence\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cArtificial Intelligence\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-AI\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\n<p>A novel invites our interpretive skills, but it also invites our minds to\nwander.<\/p>\n<p>Memory is made of the imaginary; the imaginary made of memory.<\/p>\n<p>Words are effective, not because of what they carry in them, but for their\nlatent potential to unlock the accumulated experience of the reader. Words\n\u201ccontain\u201d meanings, but, more important, words potentiate meaning\u2026 This is a\nword\u2019s dormant power, brimming with pertinence.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>In Tracey\u2019s post there is another quote\u2026about reading the word <em>river<\/em>.  I\u2019ll\nreplace that with <em>lake<\/em>.  For me, the quintessential lake of my past is\nShavehead; having swum in it since I was 5.  Each summer packing up and staying\na week at Camp Friedenswald.  There are other visits to lakes: Michigan on a few\noccasions.  Maybe Wawasee.  And Brown Bay visits for fishing.  Now the lake just\nout my window, which greets me each and every day.<\/p>\n<p>And as I read the word <em>lake<\/em> I receive that with all of the potential energies\nand memories of each visit to a lake.  These are personal memories.  Ones in\nwhich an author, invoking a <em>lake<\/em>, teases out of me.  Helping me revisit those\nmemories and mix within them that which they are writing.  Maybe just bringing a\nthimble full of <em>lake<\/em> to the larger reservoir; but invariably changing the\ncomposition.<\/p>\n<p><i class=\"new-thought\">This year,<\/i>Jenny (my partner) and I have joined our local library\u2019s\nreading competition.  The goal is for your team (of 10 or fewer members) to read\na total of 100 books.  As of <time datetime=\"2025-07-28\" title=\"2025-07-28\">today<\/time> we are at 81.  And what we\u2019re reading\nlaunches our interests towards other.<\/p>\n<p>On a lark I checked out <cite data-id=\"1f28328c-be96-453d-a9a8-9b921c39fd8a\">The Little Book of Solitude<\/cite> by Joost Joossen; and read an micro-essay about Pico\nIyer.  Curious, I looked up his bibliography, and found <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite> by Pico Iyer.<\/p>\n<p>Which, <time datetime=\"2025-07-28\" title=\"2025-07-28\">this morning<\/time> I sent an email sharing a conflation of memories, dreams,\nand readings with Sekar, the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/sekarwrites.com\/the-emotional-cost-of-being-a-reader\/\">The Emotional Cost of Being a Reader<\/a>.  I\nencountered something deep and reflective in <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<p>Iyer\u2019s <cite data-id=\"fee4ffa7-1d45-46e7-86f1-af203b92f54b\">Aflame<\/cite> dances through decades, a fire burning, fueled by solitude that\nbrings about a deeper connection to the world around.  I scribbled notes in the margins and captured several quotes for reflection.<\/p>\n<p>This is a book in which fire flickers, looms, and erupts; pulling upon my\nmemories of nights around a campfire, in which infinity feels within reach.  Of\nflames twisting, flickering, and revealing.  And of <cite data-id=\"7904CE86-1A82-4FCB-B0DB-BCBCE04C2811\">The Origins of Creativity<\/cite> by Edward O. Wilson, and his research of the types of conversations our\nancestors of millennia ago likely had around the fire\u2026these were the stories\nthat shaped identity, memory, and purpose.<\/p>\n<p>I also think of camp, when someone\u2019s marshmallow caught on fire, and to\nextinguish they attempted to fan it out by flapping the stick back and forth.\nThen watching in horror as that flaming marshmallow launched and hit someone in\nthe face\u2026a rudimentary napalm.<\/p>\n<p><i class=\"new-thought\">I find<\/i>myself fascinated with language and philosophy, often placing\nthe spiritual alongside philosophy.  Which writing that conjures an oft heard Bible verse: \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word\nwas God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These days, I\u2019m casting a broad net for wisdom and finding meaning.  Finding\nprofundity in paradox and poetry; in koans and aphorisms.  New, old, and\nancient.  From my immediate tradition (of Russian Mennonite) I never found nor\nheard calls for proselytizing; and consider suspect any of those calls to be\ndubious, arrogant, and dismissive.<\/p>\n<p>I look to each book as a dawn breaking, bringing color anew; as waves lapping on\nthe lake, an infinity of truth ever arriving; an evening fire around which I\nhear our stories old (and new).<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Summer Morning on a Small Lake","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/06\/28\/summer-morning-on-a-small-lake\/","pubDate":"Sat, 28 Jun 2025 08:16:56 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/06\/28\/summer-morning-on-a-small-lake\/","category":["personal","poetry"],"description":"\n        <p><span class=\"new-thought\">Awake early and read for a spell<\/span> I sit and clatter on my keyboard.  I\nstarted my morning reading a few chapters of <i class=\"new-thought\">I finished reading<\/i> <cite data-id=\"74f46596-7e82-4fe7-9921-a60da8c558c0\">William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love<\/cite> by Philip Hoare.<\/p>\n<p>Our house pregnant with our visiting children, not yet birthed into this waiting\nmorning.  I alone stir, expectant of the day ahead.  I woke in that hour of the\nchanging of the guards, when light has arrived but night hurriedly tidies up\nafter itself.<\/p>\n<p>I looked on the lake, and saw a thin wispy fog just above the waterline, as\nthough a procession of epineuston souls.  In that moment of the sun not yet\ncresting the treeline but having fully restored the days color, the lake takes\non different airs: mist and calm.<\/p>\n<p>I offer a morning haiku:<\/p>\n<div class=\"verse\">\n<p>Mites of fog skimming<br \/>\nrippling wake now funerate<br \/>\namidst morning fire<br \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Writing as Reciprocation","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/06\/11\/writing-as-reciprocation\/","pubDate":"Wed, 11 Jun 2025 19:49:19 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/06\/11\/writing-as-reciprocation\/","category":["personal","responses"],"description":"\n        \n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>I started this post on <time datetime=\"2024-11-18\" title=\"2024-11-18\">November 18, 2024<\/time> and have <time datetime=\"2025-06-11\" title=\"2025-06-11\">now<\/time> gotten around to releasing\nit into the world.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"we-must-not-abandon-the-memory-of-the-dead.\">\n<p>\nWe must not abandon the memory of the dead.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Roy Scranton, <cite>Learning to Die in the Anthropocene<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>I found the following quote by Mandy Brown from Jim Nielsen\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.jim-nielsen.com\/2024\/writing-is-human-expression\/\">Reading and\nWriting as Human Expression &amp; Connection<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\" cite=\"https:\/\/aworkinglibrary.com\/writing\/peasant-woodland\">\n\nWe receive our writing as a gift, and so it must be given in turn. We write\nbecause something needs to be expressed through us, and only by giving the\nwriting to a reader is that need fulfilled.\n\n<footer>&mdash;<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/aworkinglibrary.com\/writing\/peasant-woodland\" class=\"u-url p-name\" rel=\"cite\">Peasant Woodland<\/a><\/cite>\n<\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Where books may be the magic, writing is the alchemical catalyst that \u201cmakes\u201d\nthe magic.  A catalyst in that it does not destroy the source\u2014that is what we\nhave read and synthesized\u2014but instead issues forth an altogether transforming\nthing.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"books-as-guard-against-isolation\">Books as Guard Against Isolation<\/h2>\n<p>Throughout my life I\u2019ve felt varying degrees of isolation.  I also want to\nseparate isolation from solitude.  I enjoy solitude, a chance to be fully with\nmy thoughts and emotions, with minimal stimulus.<\/p>\n<p>But isolation, that is something else.  A sense of separation from something\ngreater.<\/p>\n<p>To remedy that, I know now, is to seek and be with people who demonstrate\nLove.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> As defined by M Scott Peck and brought to my attention by bell hooks: \u201cThe\nwill to extend one\u2019s self for the purpose of nurturing one\u2019s own or another\u2019s\nspiritual (e.g., body, mind, spirit) growth.\u201d<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>Why Love?  Isolation brings about the collapsing of identity into an ever\nnarrowing confine.  Whereas Love nurtures growth.<\/p>\n<p>And those people I seek?<\/p>\n<p>They are myriad: those whom I\u2019ve physically hugged as well as those who\nhave taken time to share a bit of themselves, that is Truth, through their art.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"reading\">Reading<\/h2>\n<p><time datetime=\"2024-11-16\" title=\"2024-11-16\">Saturday<\/time>, I finished reading <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Albert_Camus\">Albert Camus<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cAlbert Camus\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cAlbert Camus\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-CAMUS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n\u2019s <cite>Create Dangerously<\/cite>.\n<time datetime=\"2024-11-18\" title=\"2024-11-18\">Today<\/time> I read a few more chapters of bell hooks\u2019s <cite>all about love<\/cite>.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> I started writing this section on <time datetime=\"2024-11-18\" title=\"2024-11-18\">November 18th<\/time>.  So \u201ctoday\u201d takes on\ndifferent meanings.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>Their clear words erupt as lightning etched in the night sky.  Creating, for a\nmoment an illumined world; one that imprints upon the mind\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n<p>On a different <time datetime=\"2024-12-02\" title=\"2024-12-02\">today<\/time> I started reading <cite data-id=\"26A608F1-70C2-4E23-9DA0-B2C978D5BB52\">The Power of the Powerless<\/cite> by\nV\u00e1clav Havel.  Again text lighting a way.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"raising-my-standards\">Raising my Standards<\/h3>\n<p>In <time datetime=\"2019\" title=\"2019\">2019<\/time>, I wrote about my \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2019\/05\/19\/reading-challenges\/\">Reading Challenges<\/a><\/cite>, namely that for <time datetime=\"2019\" title=\"2019\">2019<\/time> I was going\nto limit my book reading to women authors.  This deliberate challenge shifted my\n1reading habits.  I\u2019m more discerning, ready to set down a book, knowing that\nthere are perhaps better sources.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/pluralistic.net\/2024\/12\/02\/booklish\/\">Corey Doctorow also practices setting aside books that he isn\u2019t enjoying<\/a>.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>One recent example, I set aside reading <cite data-id=\"37F1A94E-E29E-4745-8C05-FD507311E2C9\">The Mists of Avalon<\/cite> and shifted to\nreading (and finishing) Nicola Griffith\u2019s <cite data-id=\"B18FF3E3-E506-4883-9F81-C4BB74B32E80\">Spear<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<p>Why?  In part because my friend Judd shared that <cite data-id=\"B18FF3E3-E506-4883-9F81-C4BB74B32E80\">Spear<\/cite> \u201cis a fun,\nmore recent and very Queer bit of Arthuriana (that somehow feels old and I mean\nthat as a compliment).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Also because I wasn\u2019t prepared nor interested in engaging with Marion Zimmer\nBradley\u2019s framing of Gwenhwyfar: a timid and fearful Christ-driven manipulator.\nA sleight of hands of shifting the \u201cvillain\u201d from one woman to another.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas <cite data-id=\"B18FF3E3-E506-4883-9F81-C4BB74B32E80\">Spear<\/cite> is poetic and mythic yet not in a high register\n(e.g. Spencer, Mallory, Milton) but in one more akin to Seamus Heaney, Ursula K\nle Guin, and Emily Wilson, accessible and lyrical.<\/p>\n<p>And, as I wrote in \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2024\/11\/19\/spear-by-nicola-griffith\/\">\u201cSpear\u201d by Nicola Griffith<\/a><\/cite>, I see the plurality of\nrepresentation.  Subverting tropes while honoring the archetypes.<\/p>\n<p>With <cite data-id=\"B18FF3E3-E506-4883-9F81-C4BB74B32E80\">Spear<\/cite> finished, I started and finished <cite data-id=\"A6B3DC34-C462-46BC-8CD7-D89BDC31D6EB\">The Once and Future King<\/cite> by T.H. White.  What an amazing re-framing of <cite data-id=\"81AAA17D-763D-47BD-9924-C06ED85214C3\">Le Morte d\u2019Arthur<\/cite> by Thomas Mallory.<\/p>\n<p>I found the Guenever of <cite data-id=\"A6B3DC34-C462-46BC-8CD7-D89BDC31D6EB\">The Once and Future King<\/cite> to be interesting and\nactualized, given humanity and agency.  And appreciate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/culture\/2017\/5\/18\/15649214\/once-and-future-king-th-white-king-arthur\">Why The Once and Future\nKing is still the best King Arthur story out there<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-03-27\" title=\"2025-03-27\">Recently<\/time> I found <cite>T.H. White&rsquo;s Defence of Guenever: Portrait of a &ldquo;Real&rdquo; Person<\/cite>in <a href=\"https:\/\/dc.swosu.edu\/mythlore\/vol21\/iss1\/2\/\">Issue 1 of Volume 21 of Mythlore<\/a> to really contextualize the\nbrilliant recasting of Guenever; not as something different but as someone more\nhuman.  An equal member in the Arthur, Lancelot and Guenever triumvirate.<\/p>\n<p>Which had me thinking of other triples: Mordred, Morgause, and Gawain;\nthemselves morally impoverished shadows of their analogues.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"writing\">Writing<\/h2>\n<p>Turning from reading to writing, my hope is that what I publish finds a few\nplaces that cherish the gift.<\/p>\n<p>I write to learn more about myself and the worlds within which I move.  I\npublish to share bits of what I\u2019ve learned; and by extension a bit of myself.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"an-opening-to-a-story\">An Opening to a Story<\/h3>\n<p>The following is my latest draft of an opening scene of a book I\u2019ve long\nconsidered.  The story coming to me en route to a friends wedding; a moment when\nI was divorced and alone.<\/p>\n<p>The physicality of the character is very much me describing myself.  I have\nphysically enacted each of these moments, so I can think about how I might\ndescribe them.<\/p>\n<p>The underlying situation of the story is different from mine, but close enough\nthat I could view it from my perch.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\n<p>He shambled down the stairs, clinging to both railing and last night\u2019s dream,\nhoping to stumble into remembering and not down the stairs again.  Deliberate in\neach step through his pre-caffeine fog, focusing one foot forward then down onto\nthe center of the red-dyed wool carpet runner.<\/p>\n<p>Mid-flight he paused feet on staggered stairs.  His heart ached at the thought\nof losing him again.  Of the joy of dream\u2019s reunion, and the anguish of being\nagain wrenched away.  He thought of climbing back into bed and seek, in vain he\nknew, to re-open that dream\u2019s door.<\/p>\n<p>His hand touched the plaster wall, painted a warm green; he never did have an\neye for color, leaving that to her.  And while he could\u2019ve re-painted, he knew\nhe\u2019d never create such a harmonious palette of base colors.  He simply didn\u2019t\nhave the eye for it.  Instead he lived amidst her vision.<\/p>\n<p>A reminder of what was.  He thought of his father\u2019s words, \u201cDivorce is a funeral\nyou live each day.\u201d  As months turned to years, the sense of a funeral remained;\nbut instead of it being for someone close, it now felt like a distant great\naunt; one who had lived into her 90s, and outlived most everyone who might\nattend her funeral.  A celebration of what was, more than of what was lost.<\/p>\n<p>He really shouldn\u2019t linger on the stairs, he thought to himself\u2014at least find\nsomewhere level before you break down he half-muttered.  Letting gravity tip the\nscale, he scurried down the stairs and collapsed on the landing, staring into\nthe full length mirror that hung on the oaken door behind which was a small coat\ncloset.  He could roll to his left and topple one step further onto the main\nfloor of the living room.  Or lean forward, touching forehead to forehead with\nhis reflection.<\/p>\n<p>But instead, he sat with his feet on the floor, knees up.  His hands wrapping\naround his shins.  He rocked forward and back.  Eyes locking with that\nstranger in front of him.  How had he gotten this old?  He thought as he looked\nat the crows feet about his eyes and sagging skin above his eyebrow that each\nyear sunk a bit deeper, leading more and more folks to comment that he looked\ntired.<\/p>\n<p>His hair disheveled in its race between gray and gone.  He gazed into those\ngreen eyes, long familiar, though framed now by a face far older than he thought\nof himself.  The whites showed a red of the myriad of capillaries agitated as\nthe tears welled up.<\/p>\n<p>He let out a staccato breath, holding and releasing in bursts that were he to\nlose control, would become a blubbering wail.  He slowed his breathing, and\ntears dripped down his face.  The dream was gone\u2026shattered and cutting him once\nmore.  Time had shown that he could cope with losing her, but not him.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<h3 id=\"why-share-this\">Why Share This?<\/h3>\n<p>Why write this and share this?  First, it is something I struggle to approach.\nI know in my framing that the story will wriggle and writhe autobiographically\nclose to me.  And it feels daunting to gaze upon that serpent.<\/p>\n<p>This morning, I gathered up a quote from Faulkner:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\nThe past is never dead.  It&rsquo;s not even past.  All of us labor in webs spun long\nbefore we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and\nconsequence, of history and eternity.  Haunted by wrong turns and roads not\ntaken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim\ndramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing\ndown the generations.  The quotidian demands of life distract from this\nresonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Pause and consider: \u201cthe daily demands of life distract from the resonance of\nimages and events.\u201d  Writing is one opportunity to channel through me that which\nis within and around me.  To taste life and memory.  To seek the poetic and\nlyrical and glimpse the divine.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Morning Rituals Formed","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/05\/30\/morning-rituals-formed\/","pubDate":"Fri, 30 May 2025 16:26:32 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/05\/30\/morning-rituals-formed\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        <p>Our bedroom window faces south east.  At our latitude as we approach the\nnorthern hemisphere\u2019s summer solstice, sunlight begins creeping in around 6 am.\nEnough to wake Lacey (our 3 year old border collie).  She insists on going\noutside.<\/p>\n<p>Reluctantly, Ollie (our 11 year old border collie) follows; he stretches a bit\nto ease his stiffness.  They go out for a bit as I blearily wait; thinking I\nmight rejoin sleep for a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Often I can sleep another hour or so.  But not always.  Then, as the morning sun\nintensifies, Lacey again pulls me awake.  I get dressed, gather their leashes,\nand Lacey, Ollie, and I all head out for a 20 minute walk.  They sniff and mark a\nnow familiar circuit.<\/p>\n<p>The walk is something new.  At our previous place, the road in front of our yard\nwas a rural through-way for quite a lot of traffic.  I never considered walking\nthe dogs along that road, in part because I didn\u2019t want to establish that the\nroad was a place for them to go.<\/p>\n<p>Now, stepping out onto the road of our new house, I am on a rural cul-de-sac;\nwhich connects to a state road but that is a couple hundred yards away.  So we\nhave this quiet roadway on which to walk; perhaps a quarter mile for the\ncomplete circuit.<\/p>\n<p>As I walk, all of my tiredness leaves; the dogs and I are out and about.  I\nwouldn\u2019t mind getting up at 6am if it weren\u2019t for another change.  My partner\nand I are staying up rather late.  Mostly watching a show or two after working\nin the yard in the evening.  Here and <time datetime=\"2025-05-30\" title=\"2025-05-30\">now<\/time>, it gets dark around 10pm, so that\nevening work can go as late as 9pm.<\/p>\n<p>Now back from the walk, I feed the dogs and myself, put on a pot of coffee, and\nthen clean-up.  I pull out my computer and read through my <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/RSS\">Rich Site Summary<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cRich Site Summary\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cRich Site Summary\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-RSS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n feed; I\u2019ve\ncurated a cross-section of my interests.  There\u2019s investigative journalism along\nwith a myriad of personal blogs: literature, tech, gaming, and simply humans\nbeing human writing about their lives.<\/p>\n<p>As I\u2019m reading, I might write a bit in my personal journal.  I don\u2019t consider\nmyself a morning person, but compared to my partner, I\u2019m very much the early\nriser.<\/p>\n<p>As the coffee finishes brewing, I\u2019ll pour a cup for myself and partner;\ndelivering her a cup of coffee in bed.  She has recently closed her brick and\nmortar store, and is reclaiming time for herself.  For a decade she had worked\n12 hours or more a day, six or seven days a week for her business.  She\u2019s earned\nsome rest and recovery.<\/p>\n<p>And a morning cup of coffee in bed is a gesture I like to make.<\/p>\n<p>About an hour separates the beginning of the walk from me wrapping up reading\nand writing.  An hour, about the same as a past commute into work.  I feel a\nrichness and completeness that I wish were available for others.  And know that\nthis ability to work from home remains precarious.<\/p>\n<p>I wish I could bring myself to read books in the morning, but that remains a\nstruggle; in part because I have long habitualized that I should wake up, get\nready for, and then go to work.  And reading doesn\u2019t sit within that habit.\nWhereas opening my computer and pulling down my news does.<\/p>\n<p>Now, if I could bring myself to accept waking at 6am, I\u2019m certain I could then\nstart reading for a half-hour or so.  Something to consider, but that would mean\nI\u2019d want to be in bed by 10pm, which is contrary to our current habits and hours\nof daylight.<\/p>\n<p>Further, adjustments have been my partner around during the day.  She\u2019s been\ngardening, cleaning, baking bread, and sifting through our moved possessions;\ngathering to remove duplicates (what we had at home as well as at the store).\nThis is a welcome adjustment, as I have worked remote and without folks around\nsince <time datetime=\"2020-03\" title=\"2020-03\">March 2020<\/time>.<\/p>\n<p>Which means we eat lunch together, and maybe go for another walk as a break from\nour responsibilities.  I\u2019ve increased my daily physical exercise, not just in\nwalking, but also in gardening.  My wife has been removing the landscaping\nstones from the flower beds; and I\u2019ve been carting them away to our gravel\ndriveway.  I\u2019ve also moved several yards of wood chips from last <time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">year<\/time>\u2019s felled\ntrees.<\/p>\n<p>At the hyper local level, life is good.  A lot more baking and cooking,\nharvesting lettuce from our garden, and tending to our local food sources.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"A Dream of a Memory of a Dream","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/05\/16\/a-dream-of-a-memory-of-a-dream\/","pubDate":"Fri, 16 May 2025 21:17:39 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/05\/16\/a-dream-of-a-memory-of-a-dream\/","category":["personal","reading"],"description":"\n        <p><time datetime=\"2025-01-02\" title=\"2025-01-02\">The other night<\/time> I dreamt of traveling to a book store in a small town south of\nwhere I lived.  The building stood on a corner, with a wood pane window.\nEntering the bookshop, I ascended three steps.<\/p>\n<p>The room with warm wood built-in shelves welcomed me in, displaying a myriad of\nbooks, mostly front-facing.  Soft light radiating from amidst the shelves.  It\nfelt comfortable and familiar.  I had been there before during my waking hours.\nThis I knew.<\/p>\n<p>And I knew the roads that I\u2019d taken to get there.  These were recent enough\nmemories, though I don\u2019t know from when; but then again what has time become\nsince the days of COVID?<\/p>\n<p>I remember the drive not from the dream, but from that first and second time I\nhad been there; a turn and bank of a highway, one road heading east and another\ndipping south, splitting off to the small town where I\u2019d find this bookstore.<\/p>\n<p>There was the fields running along the state highway that I drove; one of those\nthat invariably has the moniker \u201cOld State Road\u201d as though the department of\ntransportation could not truly bury a road of yesteryear.<\/p>\n<p>Driving into the small town, with only three ways in, the store sat at what\nwould be top left arm of a T-intersection.  It was not a T of the perpendicular\nangled type, but instead a T as though it were an umbrella blown out by the\nwind.  This road was the major intersection of the small town.<\/p>\n<p>This street corner a convex lens into something deep within me.  What does it\nmean to have known so truly that I have been there both in a dream and in a\nmemory of a waking day that I came to realize was itself a dream?<\/p>\n<p>I have been there\u2014my soul at least.  Not seeking any book in particular, but\ninstead for a chance to commune with dead voices of those that have bled upon\nthe page.<\/p>\n<p>And as I write this <time datetime=\"2025-05-16\" title=\"2025-05-16\">several months since that dream<\/time>, I think of that road and\nthose steps.  And of other recurring dreams I\u2019ve had regarding libraries and\nbookstores.  What does my soul seek?  Connection?  To ancestors?  To memories?\nTo understand?<\/p>\n<p>I hope I may again travel that road and ascend those stairs; and if not those\nthen some other place that Borges too has visited.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Slowness: To Idle Against this Age","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/04\/18\/slowness-to-idle-against-this-age\/","pubDate":"Fri, 18 Apr 2025 07:44:41 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/04\/18\/slowness-to-idle-against-this-age\/","category":["personal","responses"],"description":"\n        <div class=\"verse\">\n<p>My mind is racing, as it always will<br \/>\nMy hands tired, my heart aches<br \/>\nI&rsquo;m half a world away, here in my head<br \/><\/p>\n<footer>\n\u2014R.E.M. <cite>Half a World Away<\/cite>\n<\/footer>\n<\/div>\n<h2 id=\"callout-the-instigator\">Callout the Instigator<\/h2>\n<p>The instigator of this post is Tracy Durnell\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/tracydurnell.com\/2025\/04\/13\/on-hobbies-and-the-difficulty-of-embracing-slowness\/\">On hobbies and the difficulty of\nembracing slowness<\/a>.  Reading that post, and her references sparked a frenzy in\nmy mind.  I found myself opening a succession of links, reading and reflecting,\nthen tumbling to another.<\/p>\n<p>I felt a crescendo building.  Not as an orchestral piece drawing to a close, but\nas a wave on Lake Michigan, building and soon to crash upon the shore.  Ideas\nshimmering as though a full moon reflecting on the choppy surface.<\/p>\n<p>I saw this wave, not yet cresting, knowing that if I moved into it, and let\nmyself relax, I could feel its power.  A push towards land, a pull towards the\nfloor, and a lift towards the heavens.  A powerful embrace of a moment.<\/p>\n<p>Here I felt the paradox of knowing that I needed to bring slowness to a moment\nof frenetic discovery.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-ice-storm-cometh\">The Ice Storm Cometh<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20230618T135415\">\n<p>\nThe plant that races through its cycle in a season could never be sure, up here,\nof fruition \u2014 there might be no successors.  Death would dog, not only the\nindividual, but the species.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Nan Shephard, <cite>The Living Mountain<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>In late <time datetime=\"2008-12\" title=\"2008-12\">December of 2008<\/time>, my brother, my children, and I went to Indianapolis to\nspend a night and a day at an indoor water park.  But it wasn\u2019t the stay that\nwas memorable, it was the return.<\/p>\n<p>And only in writing this do some of the memories return: of filling a gas tank\nin weather so cold that the pumps hardly worked; of momentary shock of\ntransitioning from the indoor part of the water slide to the outdoor (though\nenclosed) portion; of lounging on a lazy river.<\/p>\n<p>While there we chose to visit some then friends and their new born daughter.  It\nwasn\u2019t on our itinerary but the kids were eager to see a baby, me and my brother\nto chat with our friends, and it was unlikely we\u2019d be back anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p>This decision created the circumstances of a memory my family holds dear.\nNamely being stuck on Interstate 465 for 6 or so hours in an ice storm that set\nin so quick that the roads were not adequately treated for the weather; though I\ndon\u2019t know what would\u2019ve been adequate.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to think that being stuck in a mini-van with my brother, and three\nchildren (ages 11, 8 and 6) would be such a positive memory.  But it is.<\/p>\n<p>What we saw on the road was a double jack-knife of semis; one on the eastbound\nand one on the westbound.  We waited, as emergency vehicles slipped past on the\nshoulder.  We saw their wheels slide and that slight grade for drainage creating\nmoments in which we thought the emergency vehicle would slide off the shoulder\nand into drain field.<\/p>\n<p>The weather was miserable, and we rationed our meager juice boxes and snacks.\nWe sang songs.  Shared stories.  Relieved ourselves in that drain field.  All\nwaiting, powerless to do nothing to change our external situation.<\/p>\n<p>Yet inside that van, all of us were able to slow down and be present.  To see\nthat any bit of motion on that road was likely disastrous.  And when the\nresponse cleared the semi, each of us drivers, bearing witness to horrific road\nconditions began an ever so slow effort to move forward.  We eased off our\nbrakes and let our engines idle us forward; foot by foot.  Avoiding the\nprecarity of acceleration and vector changes.<\/p>\n<p>The specifics of that memory fade, but the time spent together remains.  The\nkids still speak of it, with a sort of fondness.  A remembering of a time of\ntogetherness; in which it felt simpler.  In which none of us could retreat to\nour isolating caverns of our digital devices.<\/p>\n<p>That day on Interstate 465, the slowness of transpiring events sunk deep into\nour shared memory.  As though the storm itself was freezing the event and\nvignettes that flashes in my mind as I write this post.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-questing-book\">The Questing Book<\/h2>\n\n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>I have several questing books, and keep that list handy when I visit a\nbookstore.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p>For several years, I had been questing for <cite data-id=\"C2F8BF31-362C-4F0D-A4F2-8F6B1927CB1A\">Slowness<\/cite> by Milan Kundera.  I had\nencountered a passage that became a personal strategy:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120451\">\n<p>\nThere is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and\nforgetting.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Milan Kundera, <cite>Slowness<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>When I want to remember something, I slow down.  Drink it in.  Write about it.\nWalk with it.  And when I want to forget, I take fast actions; one of those\nbeing doom scrolling.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> The act of finding a source of \u201cinfinite\u201d discrete and scannable concepts\nthat I can rapidly pass in and out of my field of vision.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I could\u2019ve solved resolved this quest by ordering online, but instead chose to\nwait.  Then one day, at a used book store, I saw a copy for sale.  They wanted\n$200.  Not a chance.<\/p>\n<p>My heart sank, as this was my first sighting in the wild.  Was this book really\nthat rare?<\/p>\n<p>A week later, I found a used copy for $10 or so dollars.  I felt excitement and\nelation.  I started and finished reading <cite data-id=\"C2F8BF31-362C-4F0D-A4F2-8F6B1927CB1A\">Slowness<\/cite> on a <time datetime=\"2025-02-27\" title=\"2025-02-27\">Thursday<\/time>; finding a\nsatisfaction in being able to \u201cclaim\u201d the epigraph as one I\u2019d encountered in its\nnative habitat, and the journey through that habitat changed me a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Now recognizing the destructive allure of the motorcycle; of the precarity of\nletting excitement overcome purpose and instead present novelty; and the tenuous\nstuttering interlacing dance of impulse and self-doubt.  And how our intentions\nmay be incongruent with our methods.<\/p>\n<p>That passage about the bonds of slowness and memory, and speed and forgetting,\nhas become my personal mantra.  One I try to remember when I feel things moving\nfast or when things are stuck.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"time-keeps-on-slipping\">Time Keeps on Slipping<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"verse epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120440\">\nFor being human holds special grief<br \/>\nOf privacy within the universe<br \/>\nThat yearns and waits to be retouched<br \/>\nBy someone who can take away<br \/>\nThe memory of death<br \/>\n<footer>&#8213;Herbert Mason, <cite>Gilgamesh<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>I often think of nostalgia, less and less these days pining for it, but instead\nacknowledging its allure.<\/p>\n<p>A late friend of mine once traveled to England and asked to see some old stuff.\nStarting from an urban center, he\u2019d find a guide that pointed him to something\nold.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019d get there, poke around a bit, and then ask folks at that place for a guide\nto something old.  Repeating this, he was pointed to something pre-historic and\nhauntingly old, yet known to be human made.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t settle on the first answer of something old, but kept pressing,\nasking.  Until he found a neolithic forge in a remote corner of the British\nIsles; a place that left him with a sense of ancient and remembered only in\nmyth.<\/p>\n<p>He wasn\u2019t looking restore that past, but instead to bath in its faded memories\nnow projected into our future.  Those moments and spaces in which we know, when\nencountered, of something sacred and old.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> In\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2024\/11\/06\/numb\/\">Numb<\/a><\/cite>, I wrote of my experience visiting <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Buchenwald_concentration_camp\">Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration\ncamp<\/a>.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>Yet the past wasn\u2019t a simpler time, it was a slower time; slower relative to our\ncurrent lived experiences.  And there is a myriad of slowness; that of times\nperception as one ages, of speed of communication and fabrication, of transit.\nAnd that slowness is unevenly distributed.<\/p>\n<p>As I grow older, my birthdays seem to come a sooner and sooner each\nyear.  I\u2019d imagine my last year of life will look like a flash compared to a\nyear of mine in adolescence.<\/p>\n<p>Or of communication, the instantaneity of the medium being a factor of how soon\nI forget.  Of fast fabrication, leading to impulse buys.<\/p>\n<p>So I wonder, is there a connection to our march into the Anthropocene; shaping\nthe world in \u201cour image\u201d (which we construe as the image of God), which has\nturned our understanding of the world into one of pending death.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve had prophets long saying that the end is nigh.  But the end of what?\nCertainly not the earth, nor life in general.  Much like others will go on\nliving after I die, the earth will go on living after \u201cwe\u201d die.<\/p>\n<p>Blur your eyes a moment, and read about the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lindy_effect\">Lindy effect<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\nThe Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or\nbe used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy.\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Humans are short-lived compared to the totality of nature.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"the-fire-next-time\">The Fire Next Time<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120405\">\n<p>\nManuscripts, after all, being only as safe as the libraries in which they\nreside, which is to say as safe cities in which the libraries reside, and as we\nknow the cities of men are remarkably prone to destruction.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Daniel Mendelsohn, <cite>Three Rings<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>I often think to the firing of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Library_of_Ashurbanipal\">Royal Library of Ashurbanipal<\/a>; in which\nAshurbanipal was such a despise tyrant that the oppressed sought to burn Ninevah\nfrom memory.  Yet, it was this purging fire that baked the wet clay tablets,\npreserving amongst other things <cite>The Epic of Gilgamesh<\/cite>.<\/p>\n<p>The weapon of destruction, turned instead to a preserving force.  As though in\nthe haste towards destruction, the oppressed forgot the knowledge of pottery.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder how the agendas of those advocating to adopt and use <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction\">Artificial Intelligence<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Artificial Intelligence\">AI<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cArtificial Intelligence\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cArtificial Intelligence\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-AI\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n for \u201call the\nthings\u201d are in fact operating from the perspective of \u201cstarving the beast?\u201d\nThat age old conservative strategy of remove resources from functioning systems,\nthen attack the system as crap, with a goal of privatizing and enclosing.<\/p>\n<p>What is the greatest financial beast of most companies?  Their payroll.  Yet\nwhat might this \u201cfiring of a great library\u201d mean for the present and future?  Is\nthat fire illuminating the city gates of Omelas?<\/p>\n<p>Are we chasing <abbr title=\"Artificial Intelligence\">AI<\/abbr>\n to commune with the dead?  As a brace against the knowledge of\nour own cognitive decline and death?  Hoping to ourselves be part of that <span>Large Language Model<\/span> (<abbr title=\"Large Language Model\">LLM<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cLarge Language Model\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cLarge Language Model\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-LLM\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n\nand through statistical happenstance and a million <del>monkeys<\/del> processors appear\nbefore another?<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"to-fight-against-this-age\">To Fight Against this Age<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120443\">\n<p>\nIf being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going\nto refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then\nwe must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at\ngreat cost and against great odds.  We must not abandon the memory of the dead.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Roy Scranton, <cite>Learning to Die in the Anthropocene<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\n[The Holy Roman Empire is] a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own\nmembers, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing\nfermentations in its own bowels.\n\n<footer>&mdash;\n<span class=\"p-author h-card\">James Madison and Alexander Hamilton<\/span>, <cite>The Federalist<\/cite>\n<\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Once the immediate shock of the <time datetime=\"2024-11\" title=\"2024-11\">November 2024<\/time> <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\">United States<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"United States\">USA<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUnited States\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cUnited States\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-US\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n elections wore off, I started\nthinking through history.  There are correlations to Germany, but my hope is\nthat we can move past this without a war.<\/p>\n<p>Instead I looked to places in which the Soviets gained and then lost.  Remnants\nof a confederation that was neither holy nor Roman nor empire.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> To channel some Coffee Talk.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I was looking for experiences that would be legible to me: a white settler who\u2019s\nancestors first migrated west to east; from what is now the Netherlands, to\nPoland, and then the Ukraine; then reversing direction and immigrating to\nNebraska.<\/p>\n<p>I also wanted to consider that there is a personal illegibility for me of\nIndigenous and Black actions.  Some aspects are illegible by design<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> See <a href=\"https:\/\/emsenn.substack.com\/p\/the-theory-that-survived-the-war\">The Theory That Survived The War<\/a>.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n while\nothers are an untranslatable element due in part to my having less systemic\ncommonality to those experiences.  Not that there isn\u2019t something to learn in\nthose struggles and achievements, but that it may not be as easily applicable.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not discrediting nor ignoring those Indigenous and Black voices, but am\n<em>adding<\/em> to my listening the stories of people closer to my lived reality.  None\nof us alone house the answers.<\/p>\n<p>The fundamentals remain: build and strengthen local relationships.  And one idea\nI have is to examine and share the differences between our learned and lived\nhistory.  Imagine, each of us sharing memories of past collective hardships, at\npresent fading from memory.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve encouraged my mom to share and talk with her friends about those they\nremember dying from polio, smallpox, measles, and others forgotten.  In part to\nspark memories of medical progress that we\u2019ve made, but which is jeopardized.<\/p>\n<p>It is hard to rally around abstractions, as within those abstracts enters\ndisagreements of specificity.<\/p>\n<p>One of those pathways shared by Tracy lead me to <a href=\"http:\/\/oldschool.scripting.com\/ksmith3123@gmail.com\/2025\/02\/04\/160039.html\">aka Ken Smith: We the people of\n&lsquo;89<\/a>; which speaks of Czechoslovakia\u2019s Velvet Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>I recall reading, though cannot remember where, that when asked how\nCzechoslovakia so quickly established a successful democracy after the communist\nresignation, V\u00e1clav Havel said something along the lines of: it is because we\nhad been talking to each other.<\/p>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-04-14\" title=\"2025-04-14\">Today<\/time> that talking would definitely not be on \u201csocial\u201d media platforms.  In part\nbecause those platforms are not designed for the slow; they are for fast\nengagement.  Even notifications reminding you to re-engage in something,\ndistract you from that which just before had your intention.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"save-some-time-to-dream\">Save Some Time to Dream<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120429\">\n<p>\nFor the world is only a tissue of masks and veils; And when the veils are\nlifted, in birth or death or the other ecstasies, we look beyond them, and see\nfaces that we already know, but cannot bear to look at for long.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Simon Heywood, <cite>The Legend of Vortigern<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>The other day, I found the following from D.L. Mayfield\u2019s \u201cHealing is My Special\nInterest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\">\n\n<p>Here&rsquo;s my pep talk after studying authoritarianism:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>They never truly expect a long-term resistance movement because they think\npeople are a collection of trauma triggers who are easily controlled thru\nterror.<\/li>\n<li>If they can&rsquo;t terrorize you 24\/7 in your mind, they have already lost the\nwar.<\/li>\n<li>The single best way you can resist fascism is to not let them terrorize you\nconstantly.  Protect your mental health to ensure you are not constantly in a\nterrorized state<\/li>\n<li>Keep connecting to who you are at your core.  Your values, preferences,\nethics, and beliefs.  Build up capacity to resist<\/li>\n<li>Remember they are like abusive parents: they only see us as extensions of\nthem.  They have no clue how powerful joy and community and self-expression\ncan be.  We can use this to our advantage \u2014 we can be the strong-willed child\nthey never saw coming.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Spending time connecting to your true self is not selfish in these times \u2014 it&rsquo;s\nintricately connected to a resistance movement that is tied to honoring our\nbodies, our communities, and to the land.  We have to build capacity to resist\nby being exactly who we are!<\/p>\n\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>As I pasted that copy into my blog post, I first re-read Kundera\u2019s aphorism then\nread it as though a turtle; moving slowly towards the sandy shore in which I\nmight lay my clutch of eggs.<\/p>\n<p>First, there\u2019s the \u201clong-term resistance.\u201d  This isn\u2019t a sprint, its not even a\nmarathon, it\u2019s more akin to a wave on the ocean, moving towards the shore.  The\ncrashing arrival may be the waves end but the water remains, receding to join\nanother wave.<\/p>\n<p>I loath the language of Agile, in particular sprints.  Having seen teams adopt\nan every two weeks, for two full weeks we will do a chunk of work we call\nsprinting.  What, I wonder, is the psychological impact of using that language\nfor that unending cadence?  How can that mindset not lead way to \u201cMove fast and\nbreak things?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Or is it a problem (e.g., \u201cwe broke things\u201d) being reframed or rationalized with\n\u201cbut we were moving fast?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now consider the \u201c24\/7\u201d, at times when I\u2019ve engaged in a \u201c24\/7\u201d news cycle, I\u2019ve\nfound exhaustion and disorientation.  And my earliest memory of that lived\nexperience was the news cycle on and after <time datetime=\"2001-09-11\" title=\"2001-09-11\">September 11, 2001<\/time>.<\/p>\n<p>So I consider when I\u2019ve felt ensnared by that 24\/7 cycle.  And remember what it\nfelt like when I cut myself from that net.  There\u2019s a lightness of being.  Of\ninspecting my person and seeing if its all there.<\/p>\n<p>Now I look to \u201cTerrorize you constantly\u201d; the adverb is what\u2019s doing the work\n\u201cconstantly\u201d as in all of the time.  I know at times I\u2019ve felt as though I were\nin the terrorizing coil of metaphorical boa constrictor.<\/p>\n<p>And in almost each of those cases, I had chosen to climb amongst those coils.\nWhat I have found is that \u201cbeing informed\u201d of each \u201cgrand\/global\u201d moment does\nnot help me.<\/p>\n<p>Which has me wondering, if I feel a need to be informed (by this 24\/7 cycle) how\nmight I ritualize and make temporary both gazing into the abyss and screaming\ninto the void?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKeep connecting to who you are\u2026\u201d  I\u2019ll touch again on that aphorism, I more\neasily forget who I am when I\u2019m \u201cgoing fast.\u201d  When I\u2019m bouncing between\nfragments; an electron in a probability cloud of thought; never truly anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can be the strong-willed child they never saw coming.\u201d  Here I think we can\nuse inverse, namely that there are agents moving fast (and creating a sense of\nthings happening fast) so perhaps there will be lots of forgetting.<\/p>\n<p>And what is forgotten is that which we have lost sight of.  I find that I must\nslow down to remember.  To look back across time along that bending arc and\nforward as well.<\/p>\n<p>Extending that analogy and bringing in some relativity, consider that light\nbends around gravity wells.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> Parallax being an observable phenomenon, and one that we\u2019ve used to\ndetermine astronomical distances.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n Those wells of gravity being a density of matter.<\/p>\n<p>How might I bend that arc?  Forgetting is a disintegration of memory: a\nformlessness.  In memory and sense of self, I take form.  How might I join\nothers in forming something that matters?<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"conclusion\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"death-no-matter-our-desires-cant-be-distracted\">\n<p>\nDeath, no matter our desires, can\u2019t be distracted.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Maria Dahvana Headley, <cite>Beowulf<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>The mini-van I drove that day in Indianapolis has long been totaled; the result\nof an accident a few years later.  But not before we all traveled to Nebraska\nfor my brother\u2019s wedding.<\/p>\n<p>Considering this tension between fast and slow; there\u2019s always a consideration\nof Aesop\u2019s fable of the tortoise and the hare.  A fable that was apart of\nmy upbringing, but less so for my children, and I suspect less so now.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate that Tracy\u2019s post left breadcrumbs for fellow travelers.  Eating\nthose breadcrumbs brought about memories of past reading feasts.  Some of those\nbeing what I\u2019ve written as section quotes, but others, such as <cite data-id=\"A6E49A97-C58B-44B3-A755-1CA627C0B8E5\">Wanderlust<\/cite> by Rebecca Solnit, being from an era before I wrote down\nmuch of my reading.<\/p>\n<p>Looking to <a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/epigraphs\/\">my collected epigraphs<\/a>, when I read Tracy\u2019s post and the\nconstellation of related posts, my first thoughts were to death: in which our\nhastening culture, I suspect, is hoping to outrun.<\/p>\n<p>I find this paradoxical, in that the dominant culture in which I live, claims\nthat through resurrection death has no sting.  Yet the actions seem to indicate\notherwise.  As though the denouncement were in fact a confession of fear.  Of\nrecognizing that \u201cgoing fast and breaking things\u201d might well catch up with you.<\/p>\n<p>I know I want less broken things (and certainly less broken people).<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Personal Limitations and Self-Exploration","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/04\/14\/personal-limitations-and-self-exploration\/","pubDate":"Mon, 14 Apr 2025 17:26:33 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/04\/14\/personal-limitations-and-self-exploration\/","category":"personal","description":"\n        \n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>I\u2019ve sat on this post since <time datetime=\"2023-07-20\" title=\"2023-07-20\">July 2023<\/time>.  Since that time Craig has died, though\nnot without writing and sharing his vulnerability and love of life.  He didn\u2019t\ngo quietly into the night.  But continued to share; a mix of the physiological\nimpact of cancer but also his continued desire to learn, play, and be human.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p>For quite some time I\u2019ve been reading <a href=\"https:\/\/decafbad.net\/\">Craig Maloney\u2019s<\/a> blog.  For the last while,\nhis posts have included aspects of living with cancer and cancer treatments.\nBut that is only one of the threads that weave throughout his day to day\nblogging.<\/p>\n<p><time datetime=\"2023-07-20\" title=\"2023-07-20\">Today<\/time> I read the following:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote  class=\"h-cite\" cite=\"https:\/\/decafbad.net\/2023\/07\/19\/checking-in-2023-07-19\/\">\n\nI was thinking about some of my programming projects and realizing that I tend\nto think within my own perceived capabilities.  That&rsquo;s not necessarily a bad\nthing but it makes me wonder just how far I could go if I pushed myself beyond\nthese boundaries.  How much more could my grasp be if I reached beyond what I\nthink it might be.  That&rsquo;s something that I&rsquo;m going to have to practice with.\nI&rsquo;m not exactly sure how this would look or be but that&rsquo;s the beauty of\npracticing something like this; if I fail I know one of my boundaries and what\nto work on.\n\n<footer>&mdash;\n<span class=\"p-author h-card\">craig<\/span>, <cite><a href=\"https:\/\/decafbad.net\/2023\/07\/19\/checking-in-2023-07-19\/\" class=\"u-url p-name\" rel=\"cite\">Checking In: 2023-07-19<\/a><\/cite>\n<\/footer>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>One strategy to discover my \u201cperceived capabilities\u201d is to spend a bit of time\nreflecting on the things that I know historically shifted those capabilities.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/about\/resume\/\">My resume<\/a> alludes to many of my professional \u201cperceived capabilities.\u201d  My blog\ntestifies to other aspects of those \u201cperceived capabilities.\u201d  And <a href=\"http:\/\/github.com\/jeremyf\">my Github\nprofile<\/a> provides other insight.<\/p>\n<p>Yet these are all <em>by-products<\/em> of my capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been working in <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ruby_on_Rails\">Ruby on Rails<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Ruby on Rails\">Rails<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cRuby on Rails\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cRuby on Rails\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-ROR\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n since <time datetime=\"2005-12\" title=\"2005-12\">December 2005<\/time>.  That framework has helped\nshaped my perceived capabilities <em>in regards to my programming<\/em>.  But more\nimportant has been my ongoing curiosity around things not related to digital\ncomputering.<\/p>\n<p>I consider \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2011\/08\/09\/mustering-into-the-gencon-volunteer-corp\/\">Mustering into the GenCon Volunteer Corp<\/a><\/cite> as a critical moment for\nmyself.  At the time, while waiting in line, my wife nudged me to see if I could\nhelp get things moving.  This highlighted that direct action matters.<\/p>\n<p>I also look to my <time datetime=\"2018\" title=\"2018\">2018<\/time> \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2019\/05\/19\/reading-challenges\/\">Reading Challenges<\/a><\/cite>; taking a year to set aside reading\nbooks written by men.  This arbitrary decision helped broaden my perspectives\nand pay more attention to the books I read, which in turn stewards my journey.<\/p>\n<p>In <time datetime=\"2020\" title=\"2020\">2020<\/time>, I adopted <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emacs\">Emacs<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-EMACS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n as my text editor.  A decision that continues to have\nprofound and unexpected impacts.  Forging new face to face friendships; which\nhas a direct tie to conversations around <span>Emacs<\/span>\n.<\/p>\n<p>Expanding my blogs topic from \u201call about games\u201d to \u201call that I care to publish\u201d\nalso demonstrated an expanded capacity; finding what I consider a more lyrical\nvoice and other folks who have a plurality of interests and values.  I\u2019m no\nlonger looking for those who blog about games, but for those who write about\ntheir passions.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"forward-to-the-present\">Forward to the Present<\/h2>\n\n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>This section I wrote after re-discovering a blog post I left in draft status.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p>I\u2019ve also shifted my problem solving strategies.  In particular I\u2019ve started\nasking more questions; trying to bring clarification before diving into\nimplementing a \u201csolution looking for a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This means more writing, and in the case of work, making that available for\nreview and feedback.  I\u2019m seeing this direction of pressing against a perceived\ncapability yielding positive results; namely helping provide checks for ensuring\nthat a group\u2019s excitement matches their capacity.<\/p>\n<p>These clarifications are not intended to halt but instead ensure we collectively\nunderstand a problem and can then work towards a solution.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sure there are other <em>perceived capabilities<\/em> that are not, at this point\nsalient.  But in the words of a departed sage\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMore as I know it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Welcome to the World of Tomorrow","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/04\/12\/welcome-to-the-world-of-tomorrow\/","pubDate":"Sat, 12 Apr 2025 18:52:44 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/04\/12\/welcome-to-the-world-of-tomorrow\/","category":["personal","reflections"],"description":"\n        \n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>I wrote this <time datetime=\"2025-01-01\" title=\"2025-01-01\">New Year\u2019s Day<\/time> but failed to send it forward.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p>A New Year\u2019s eve tradition I started <time datetime=\"2024-12-31\" title=\"2024-12-31\">yesterday<\/time> is watching the first episode of\n<cite data-id=\"943173CC-E080-4A08-B921-307EDD26BAB4\">Futurama<\/cite>; one which happens in both the <time datetime=\"2000\" title=\"2000\">2000<\/time> and <time datetime=\"3000\" title=\"3000\">3000<\/time> new year.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t stay up to usher in the <time datetime=\"2025-01-01\" title=\"2025-01-01\">new year<\/time>.  And at this stage in life, for New\nYears Eve antics, I channel Professor Farnsworth\u2019s sentiment: I could go out\n\u201cthough I am already in my pajamas.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"plans\">Plans<\/h2>\n<p>A key priority: <strong>guard my capacity for attention and empathy<\/strong>.  I\u2019m assuming that\nthe attacks on attention and empathy will continue to escalate.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"reading-more\">Reading More<\/h3>\n<p>I finished 17 books, abandoned 2, and started 8 books <time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">last year<\/time>.  Which is less\nthan I\u2019d like.  However, I must give myself grace, as <time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">last year<\/time> I moved twice\nand changed jobs.  Three high stress personal events; plus the malaise of the\n<time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">2024<\/time> political \u201cdiscourse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I consider myself a rather broad reader; reading from most any genre and era.\nMy \u201cprocess\u201d of picking a book involves serendipity and recommendations.<\/p>\n<p>I follow a few readers and writers; The Marginalian has drawn my attention to\nmany books.  When reading non-fiction, I note references to other books, and add\nthem to my \u201ckeep an eye out for these books.\u201d  At book stores, I peruse most\nsections stumbling upon curiosities.<\/p>\n<p>In years past, I looked to Appendix N, and now look to other book indices\ncreated by authors and readers.<\/p>\n<p>I also have weekly dinner and drinks with a group of friends.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> The Dam Nerd Club as we\u2019ve named ourselves.  We met at a brewery near a dam.\nA Dam Run Club has been meeting there for 8 years.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n We talk about\nbooks, software, music, hardware, historic architecture, and most anything else.\nOur group\u2019s reading interests are varied, which is fantastic for sharing.<\/p>\n<p>Were I to start a book club, it would be of the \u201cbring a book you want to share\u201d\nformat.  And it could even be \u201cI started this book but am struggling and here\u2019s\nwhy\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"writing-more\">Writing More<\/h3>\n<p><time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">Last year<\/time> I wrote 121 blog posts.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> See <a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2024\/\">my Posts for 2024<\/a>.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n But I also privately wrote more: daily\nprivate journal entries and hand written letters.  I did this by prioritizing\nmorning writing; done before I started my day\u2019s job.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019m going to work to strengthen and reinforce this habit.  Meaning I\u2019ll be\nattending to improving my note taking and capture process.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"growing-our-own-food\">Growing Our Own Food<\/h3>\n<p>At our new house, I\u2019m looking to install two raised beds and grow some yummy\nvegetables.  We\u2019re considering getting some chickens, however with the bird flu\nrising, I\u2019m reconsidering (or thinking about mitigation).<\/p>\n<p>I dream again of being able to harvest a few fresh herbs and vegetables for my\ncooking: onions, cilantro, sage, rosemary, thyme, peppers, beans, and squash.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"diving-deeper-into-foss\">Diving Deeper into FOSS<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ve had access to a home computer since <time datetime=\"1984\" title=\"1984\">1984<\/time>.  But never explored the gritty\ndetails; instead focusing on software.<\/p>\n<p>For <time datetime=\"2024-12-25\" title=\"2024-12-25\">Christmas<\/time> I got a <a href=\"https:\/\/libre.computer\/products\/aml-s905x-cc\/\">Sweet Potato<\/a> with the plans of building a <a href=\"https:\/\/pi-hole.net\/\">Pi-Hole server<\/a>\nfor my home network.  I installed <span><a href=\"http:\/\/debian.org\/\">Debian<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cDebian\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cDebian\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-DEBIAN\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n, and as a curiosity also installed the\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gnome.org\/\">Gnome desktop<\/a>.  From that little machine I felt comfortable that it had all I\nneeded\/want: <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emacs\">Emacs<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-EMACS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n and Web Browser.<\/p>\n<p>I have access to several older computers and am thinking about re-purposing them\nto create a fleet of Linux machines that I can share with others.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"talking-and-sharing-more\">Talking and Sharing More<\/h3>\n<p>We are wrapping up renovations on our new house and will be moving back in <time datetime=\"2025-01\" title=\"2025-01\">early\nJanuary<\/time>.  We\u2019ll be reaching out to get to know our neighbors, for community and\nresource sharing.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m considering hosting \u201ca read aloud around the campfire\u201d evenings.  Our house\nis on a small lake and the yard is framed by several massive gnarled white oaks.\nI imagine a serene evening of reading aloud epic poetry; sharing fellowship,\ndrinks, and snacks.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"where-i-m-at\">Where I\u2019m At?<\/h2>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-04-12\" title=\"2025-04-12\">Today<\/time> I\u2019m revisiting my draft blog posts, and this one I think is worthy of\nbubbling up.<\/p>\n<p>How am I doing at reading more?  I\u2019ve finished 16 books, some that I started in\n<time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">2024<\/time>.  I\u2019m in a bit of a lull on my reading, having been bitten by the <span>Emacs<\/span>\n\nbug.<\/p>\n<p>I am midway through <cite data-id=\"87f4018e-a675-44a7-9c95-b1183384affd\">The Dispossessed<\/cite> by Ursula K. Le Guin and <cite data-id=\"d334ef0c-4398-479f-ad82-4d8b9e993d2c\">The Trial<\/cite> by Franz Kafka.<\/p>\n<p>And writing more?  With this blog post I\u2019ll be at 38 <a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/\">posts for the year<\/a>.  My\ndaily journal is at about 40,000 words.  Hitting on the virtuous cycle of\nreading and writing.<\/p>\n<p>What about growing our own food?  <time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">Last year<\/time> we needed to remove two massive\ntrees.  We had the tree service mulch many of the branches, leaving us with\nabout 10 yards of local mulch.<\/p>\n<p>And <time datetime=\"2025-04-12\" title=\"2025-04-12\">today<\/time> we laid down 4 raised beds (though we need more), and started\nidentifying where to plant berries and fruit bearing trees.  We have the seeds,\nsome from a seed library hosted by our local library.  We also found a possible\nsource for chicks and are considering raising chickens to have both eggs and\nexcellent fertilizing.<\/p>\n<p>What about diving deeper into <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Free_and_open-source_software\">Free Open Source Software<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Free Open Source Software\">FOSS<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cFree Open Source Software\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cFree Open Source Software\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-FOSS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n?  I\u2019ve repurposed an older iMac, installing\n<span>Debian<\/span>\n and <span>Emacs<\/span>\n, with the goal of having an air-gapped machine on which I can\nwrite without temptation of internet distraction.<\/p>\n<p>And talking and sharing more?  We moved into our renovated home and are talking\nwith our neighbors; sharing plants and concerns.  The stakes feel high, and the\nsystem wants snap responses; so slowing down into the analogue and immediate\nworld is far more sustainable.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"Re: On Keeping a Notebook","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/03\/25\/re-on-keeping-a-notebook\/","pubDate":"Tue, 25 Mar 2025 17:13:12 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/03\/25\/re-on-keeping-a-notebook\/","category":["personal","reflections"],"description":"\n        <blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20241016T210555\">\n<p>\nWe write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Ana\u00efs Nin, <cite>The Diary of Ana\u00efs Nin<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>From <a href=\"https:\/\/sachachua.com\">Sacha<\/a> I learned about <a href=\"https:\/\/johnrakestraw.com\/post\/on-keeping-a-notebook\/\">On keeping a notebook<\/a> by John Rakestraw.  And John\u2019s\nreflection shone as morning sun on the calm lake outside my waking window.<\/p>\n<p>I am thankful for the time I spent writing down \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2021\/02\/26\/a-journey-to-conjure-those-now-gone\/\">A Journey to Conjure Those Now Gone<\/a><\/cite>; capturing the prior evenings waking and dreaming.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;ve read that post several times, and even thinking of it now, I feel the sting\nof welcome tears gathering in my eyes; reminders of humanity, of what I&rsquo;ve lived\nand lost.  Intrinsically a part of who I am, as I drift along the river of life.<\/p>\n<p>Who are we when we lose part of us?  Do we become more or less than what we\nwere?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also thankful that I wrote down a \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2021\/02\/06\/winters-reverie\/\">Winter&#39;s Reverie<\/a><\/cite>; an evening of simple\nadventure in my back yard with our two dogs and me.  Again I tear up at the\nthoughts of Corrie, who at that time was quietly experiencing the beginning\nravages of liver cancer that would one day force upon us the decision to\neuthanize her.<\/p>\n<p>And I tear up at the thought of Ollie, now older and arthritic, knowing that all\ntoo soon, time will separate us.  Who will go first?  Him or I?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20231027T130321\">\n<p>\nDeath, no matter our desires, can\u2019t be distracted.  We know this much is true,\nand it\u2019s true for all souls: each of us will one day find the feast finished\nand, fattened or famished, step slowly backward into their own dark hall for\nthat final night of sleep.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Maria Dahvana Headley, <cite>Beowulf<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>We moved recently, and I was trying to remember if I owned <cite data-id=\"4e959922-6b23-491e-96e8-36dca782aa48\">Novelist as Vocation<\/cite> by Haruki Murakami; in part because\nMurakami (and Kafka) kept coming up in my travels through my literary and\ndigital neighborhoods.<\/p>\n<p>I had memories of holding the <cite data-id=\"4e959922-6b23-491e-96e8-36dca782aa48\">Novelist as Vocation<\/cite> and of other books along\nside it.  But I couldn\u2019t recall if I had set it down or not.  I poured through\nmy daily journals, finding reference to <cite data-id=\"50692E9D-0DC3-4D57-92E6-395DAA08D615\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commongood.cc\/reader\/a-few-rules-for-predicting-the-future-by-octavia-e-butler\/\">A Few Rules for Predicting the Future<\/a><\/cite> by Octavia Butler; one I had purchased and read at a restaurant later that day.<\/p>\n<p>This sparked a memory of another book for which I knew I bought but for which I\ncould not account: <cite data-id=\"0EEB1AF1-65B3-477B-AB67-96BFED263AD0\">Kant&rsquo;s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write<\/cite> by Claire Messud.  While at a library I had read a few essays from that book,\nand promised myself to purchase the book were I ever to find it; essays on Camus\nand a pithy title about Kant?  Yes please.<\/p>\n<p>With knowledge that I had likely purchased the book, I replayed in my head what\nI might have done.  Those memories were blocked, but the instincts were there:\nput them in the basement, out of the way, for that day when I reshelf my boxed\nbooks.<\/p>\n<p>I rummaged a bit, and found an unassuming plastic bag; one I had dismissed as\nhome to yet to be tidied construction supplies.  I grabbed the bag, and found\nanother trove of books, the ones I half remembered gathering.<\/p>\n<p>What in life is worth remembering?  Is there a hope that if we do, we can\nachieve some immortality?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20230121T173953\">\n<p>\nAs a writer, you withdraw and disconnect yourself from the world in order to\nconnect to it in the far-reaching way that is other people elsewhere reading the\nwords that came together in a contemplative state.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Rebecca Solnit, <cite>Orwell\u2019s Roses<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>I know as someone who feels the compulsion to write, channeling the \u201cpatron\nsaint\u201d Montaigne, that I also feel a compulsion to explore the how and why of\nwhat I write.  Hence adding <cite data-id=\"4968c62c-d89a-415f-95e9-1c1ce9b96858\">The Notebook<\/cite> by Roland Allen to my shopping list.<\/p>\n<p>It is also a primary driver for my incessant tinkering with <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emacs\">Emacs<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-EMACS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n; to help my\ntools keep pace with my thoughts but also to build means of revisiting those\nthoughts; and those of others of whom I\u2019ve read and lived a bit through their\neyes.<\/p>\n<p>I do most of my writing on a computer; accepting that with all the conveniences\ncomes a loss.  Losing that relative slowness of ink to paper, a slowness in\nwhich thoughts move and grow as though under a different light.  And losing the\nimmediacy, that is what I write on my computer requires a computer and all its\nwizardry to read; whereas those paper notebooks require the paper notebook.<\/p>\n<p>Writing is a release, as though my mind were a dammed reservoir, with rain and\nsnow-melt filling it up.  I feel the levies strain; and writing is my opening\nthe dam and letting flow forth the life waters.  For I cannot hold them back,\na follow that will spill forth ruinous flood.<\/p>\n<p>And what of tears?  Do those fall into the reservoir?  Or are they sputtering\nfrom a cracking dam?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"one-writes-in-order-to-feel-that-is\">\n<p>\nOne writes in order to feel: that is the fundamental mover.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Muriel Rukeyser, <cite>The Life of Poetry<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>And <time datetime=\"2025-03-25\" title=\"2025-03-25\">today<\/time>, through Sacha\u2019s mastodon post, I learned of a new constellation of\nothers who feel and express these compulsions.<\/p>\n<p>This all dovetails with an email I received from <a href=\"https:\/\/traceydurnell.com\">Tracy<\/a> asking further questions\nof \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/03\/23\/a-walk-through-my-digital-neighborhood\/\">A Walk Through My Digital Neighborhood<\/a><\/cite>; there\u2019s a blog post in that response.\nBut for now, I\u2019ll summarize that it gets into a bit more of how I live in my\nneighborhoods as well as express \u201cdigital community.\u201d  And reflections there-in.<\/p>\n<p>I also wonder how this compulsion dovetails with <time datetime=\"2025-03-24\" title=\"2025-03-24\">yesterday\u2019s<\/time> reading of <cite data-id=\"5dd8020b-640b-420d-ae24-84169585038c\">To Fight Against this Age<\/cite> by Rob Riemen which quoted the\nfollowing:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"one-of-the-most-striking-characteristics-of-the-contemporary-world\">\n<p>\nOne of the most striking characteristics of the contemporary world is its\n<i class=\"dfn\">superficiality<\/i>: we vacillate between superficiality and restlessness.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213; Paul Val\u00e9ry<\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>I certainly feel the restlessness of which Val\u00e9ry wrote; and wonder if these\ncompulsions are my soul fighting against the pull of the superficiality of our\ncontemporary world.  As though my soul senses the event horizon that is the\n(growing) singularity of our contemporary world.  Pulling and stretching with\none goal: consumption.<\/p>\n<p>As I\u2019ve expanded the scope my blog and written more (both public and private), I\nfeel as though I\u2019ve introduced(\/discovered\/honed?) a lyricism and poetic to my\nvoice.  In part as a playfulness, but also in an effort to draw connections.<\/p>\n<p>Recalling my freshman year of college, during a general education requirement\nclass in Philosophy, Professor Brandt mentioned in a paper that I had \u201cthe soul\nof a philosopher.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to respond: \u201cWhich one?\u201d With the implication that I had captured a\nsoul and had it in some vessel.<\/p>\n<p>But I knew what Professor Brandt meant; I was uninterested in the\nsuperficiality of things.  Instead feeling alive in moments engaging in\n<dfn>culture<\/dfn>: that process of cultivating the soul, for being open to\ntruth, beauty, and doing what\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<p>How shall I fight against that which is proclaimed inevitable?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221009T120402\">\n<p>\nWe live surrounded by ideas and objects infinitely more ancient than we\nimagine; and yet at the same time everything is in motion.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213; Pierre Teilhard de Chardin<\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>In \n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2014\/12\/14\/divorce-a-personal-experience\/\">Divorce - A Personal Experience<\/a><\/cite>, I wrote of shoe boxes of photos I had taken\nof my future self.  Divorce, in part, being about casting into the fire those\nfuture memories.<\/p>\n<p>There are also those shoe boxes of photos of past lives lived.  They reflect\nconstructed moments, important stories I continue to tell myself.  But unless I\npull those boxes down, and sift through them, I might become transfixed in\nnostalgia; a precarious glorification of untruth.<\/p>\n<p>The allure of nostalgia: a reconstructing of a past that never was <em>and<\/em>\nwishing for a return.  It is a simplification and a negation of past struggles.\nI find writing in a notebook to be part of the hygiene of avoiding the nostalgia\ntrap; they are the soap of which I can use to scrub clean and reveal those\nmemories.<\/p>\n<p>Why else would folks destroy history?  To reconstruct a different corpus of\nmemories.  To project a simplification onto the past, which invariably is an\nuntruth.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"verse epigraph\" data-id=\"i-love-the-dark-hours-of-my-being\">\nI love the dark hours of my being.<br \/>\nMy mind deepens into them.<br \/>\nThere I can find, as in old letters,<br \/>\nthe days of my life, already lived,<br \/>\nand held like a legend, and understood.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThen the knowing comes: I can open<br \/>\nto another life that\u2019s wide and timeless.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSo I am sometimes like a tree<br \/>\nrustling over a gravesite<br \/>\nand making real the dream<br \/>\nof the one its living roots<br \/>\nembrace:<br \/>\n<br \/>\na dream once lost<br \/>\namong sorrows and songs.<br \/>\n<footer>&#8213;Rainer Maria Rilke, <cite>The Book of a Monastic Life<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n<p>In re-reading old journals I exhume a past that I may have buried.  But digging\nin that dirt also brings my present self into that earthen grave.  In a\ncommunion of then and now.<\/p>\n<p>I lay down amongst myself as I-from-above, toss earth once more upon the\nplurality of me; leaving my journals as the headstone by which the future\nmultiples of me may find that treasured \u201cX\u201d and dig again.<\/p>\n<p>I opened with the first sentence of Ana\u00efs Nin\u2019s entry, but thanks to John\nRakestraw\u2019s investigation in <a href=\"https:\/\/johnrakestraw.com\/post\/we-write-to-taste-life-twice\/\">We write to taste life twice<\/a>, there is so much\nmore.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"expanded-we-write-to-taste-life-twice-in-the-moment-and-in-retrospection\">\n<p>\nWe write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.  We write,\nlike Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is\neternal.  We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.  We\nwrite to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the\nlabyrinth.  We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted,\nor lonely.  We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals.\nIf you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing\nin writing, then don\u2019t write, because our culture has no use for it.  When I\ndon\u2019t write, I feel my world shrinking.  I feel I am in a prison.  I feel I lose\nmy fire and my color.  It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and\nI call it breathing.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Ana\u00efs Nin, <cite>The Diary of Ana\u00efs Nin<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"},{"title":"A Walk Through My Digital Neighborhood","link":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/03\/23\/a-walk-through-my-digital-neighborhood\/","pubDate":"Sun, 23 Mar 2025 06:29:17 -0400","author":"jeremy@takeonrules.com (Jeremy Friesen)","guid":"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/03\/23\/a-walk-through-my-digital-neighborhood\/","category":["blogging","personal"],"description":"\n        <blockquote class=\"quote epigraph\" data-id=\"20221104T192821\">\n<p>\nWe read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is\nso vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time,\nimperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.\n<\/p>\n<footer>&#8213;Harold Bloom, <cite>How to Read and Why<\/cite><\/footer><\/blockquote>\n\n<aside  role=\"note\" class=\"margin\">\n\n<p><small>This post started from an email exchange with <a href=\"https:\/\/tracydurnell.com\">Tracy Durnell<\/a>.  It\u2019s sat in my\ndrafts folder for more than two months, and a bit of insomnia paired with\nindigestion, was enough to prod me into wrapping it up, and releasing it into\nthe world.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n\n<p>With <em>enshitification<\/em> screaming onto the scene in <time datetime=\"2024\" title=\"2024\">2024<\/time> and social media platforms\nrevealing their asses (from which the shit pours); there\u2019s an ongoing call to\nown your online \u201chome base.\u201d  That is a website or blog.  I agree with that\nsentiment, but want to take a different angle.<\/p>\n<p>Namely, a stroll from my \u201cdigital home\u201d through my \u201cdigital neighborhood.\u201d  That\nis to put some shape and form to what can be ephemeral.  Let\u2019s start by creating\nsome mental images.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"visualizing-my-neighborhood\">Visualizing My Neighborhood<\/h2>\n<p>In this neighborhood, I live amongst owners and renters; each in their own\nabode.  Some of these abodes fade, perhaps abandoned, becoming almost entirely\ninvisible.  But sometimes they spark back alive, with their occupants again\ngoing out and about in <del>my<\/del> our neighborhood.<\/p>\n<p>From my abode, I write my private thoughts.  Some of those, I\u2019ll turn into\nletters that I read aloud from my front porch for all who have chosen to gather\nnear.  There\u2019s recording of what I read, which others might later hear.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t allow others to respond to my reading on the front porch.  Instead, I\nencourage them to drop something in my mailbox or go ahead and speak from their\nfront porch, hoping that I\u2019ll hear them.<\/p>\n<p>Also from my abode, I read my newspaper.  This is something that I\u2019ve assembled\nover time; a list of addresses of folks who are speaking from their front porch\nand whom I might want to hear.  I add a few notes about the speakers, sometimes\nsaying \u201cthis person is provisional\u201d and others are \u201cI will read everything they\nwrite.\u201d  This helps me tend to that list of addresses.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll review this list every so often, and by happenstance Craig Maloney\u2019s is the\nfirst in that list.  I always smile and tear up in fond memory of a person I\nnever met, but whom lived and shared an admirable life.<\/p>\n<p>In my abode, I also look to the mailbox to see if folks are writing me letters.\nI love receiving these letters, either inquiring about a post or sharing their\nresponse.  We have a slow conversation and sometimes I might ask them if I can\nuse our conversation for a porch reading.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving the front-porch, I journey out.  This is different.  I\u2019m looking for\nmore casual conversations; those serendipitous moments where one might talk with\na stranger sitting beside you on public transportation.  I don\u2019t talk with\neveryone I see on the street; even those that I\u2019ve talked with before.  My day\nout is instead a time for me to engage in that small talk in which something\nmore might spark.<\/p>\n<p>While out, I also take notice if they are sharing their personal \u201cbusiness card\u201d\nand if they look to have broad interests, I might add them to my newspaper list.\nOr very specific interests.  It depends on my whim.  I\u2019ll try to scratch a few\nnotes on that business card to help me remember.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also viewing these conversations as ephemeral.  While recorded, I don\u2019t\n\u201cown\u201d those recording.  I can\u2019t reproduce what I\u2019ve said.  And that\u2019s fine.  If\nI want to reproduce something, I\u2019ll go back home and write up my thoughts and\nshare them from my front-porch.<\/p>\n<p>The beauty of walking through my neighborhood, is that folks can\u2019t help but walk\naround with their \u201ctags\u201d on display.  It\u2019s as though everyone\u2019s bought a new\noutfit, didn\u2019t cut off the tags, and thus shows where to find what they\u2019re\nwearing and sharing.<\/p>\n<p>And I take notice.  I might see an interesting tag, such as #libraries, or the\naddress of someone\u2019s shared thoughts, even a bit of a summary to let me know what\nthey too are sharing.  I use those to add to my newspaper sources.<\/p>\n<p>I think about that newspaper, I\u2019ve set it up such that my computer saves all of\nthose clippings.  And I can find them later.  I have also set it up so I can\neasily reference those clippings; in private thoughts or in sharing.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"a-digressive-technical-overview\">A Digressive Technical Overview<\/h2>\n<p>I have a personal website: <a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\">https:\/\/takeonrules.com<\/a>.  I \u201cown\u201d it.  Served from a\n<span>Virtual Private Server<\/span> (<abbr title=\"Virtual Private Server\">VPS<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cVirtual Private Server\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cVirtual Private Server\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-VPS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n.  In years past, I \u201crented\u201d my site by hosting on Github and prior to that\nin Wordpress.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve consistently written on my blog since <time datetime=\"2011-02-03\" title=\"2011-02-03\">February 2, 2011<\/time>.  Of late, I\u2019ve\nwritten more per year, which means I keep flicking the lights back on.<\/p>\n<p>I write daily journal entries and draft my thoughts via <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emacs\">Emacs<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cEmacs\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-EMACS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n.  All starting on\nmy local file system.  From those local files, I pluck and publish posts from\njournal entries and other thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>To read my newspapers I load my <span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/RSS\">Rich Site Summary<\/a><\/span> (<abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cRich Site Summary\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201cRich Site Summary\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-RSS\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>)\n feed via the <span><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/skeeto\/elfeed\">elfeed package<\/a><\/span> <small><a class=\"ref\" rel=\"tag opener\" aria-label=\"Other site-wide references of \u201celfeed package\u201d\" title=\"Other site-wide references of \u201celfeed package\u201d\" href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/site-map\/glossary\/#abbr-dfn-GLOSSARY-ELFEED\">&#128214;<\/a><\/small>\n.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> My \u201cWhy of Elfeed\u201d is explained or alluded to in\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/01\/22\/on-elfeed-and-backups\/\">On Elfeed and Backups<\/a><\/cite>,<br \/>\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2024\/08\/11\/exporting-org-mode-elfeed-links\/\">Exporting Org Mode Elfeed Links<\/a><\/cite>, and\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/03\/01\/reorganizing-my-rss-feed-reading\/\">Reorganizing My RSS Feed Reading<\/a><\/cite>.<br \/><span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n While\nvisiting, I might capture quotes into my journal.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> See\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/takeonrules.com\/2025\/01\/16\/some-entries-from-my-personal-journal\/\">Some Entries from My Personal Journal<\/a><\/cite> for hints of the \u201cprivate\u201d made\npublic.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n I might also head over to\nmy Mastodon timeline and read what others are thinking, sharing, and saying.<\/p>\n<p>I cherish those moments when I read an <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n feed item, and see that as part of\nthat feed item the author has included means of contacting them: a link to their\nemail.  I\u2019ll sometimes take a bit to write them an email.  And we\u2019ll engage in a\nbit of back and forth.<\/p>\n<p>Also, I identify any <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n feed entry that does not provide the full text.  And\nthose live in provisional status.  My reflexes are to ask \u201cthere\u2019s lots of\nfull-text feeds, why bother with this truncation?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why?  Because I\u2019m sick of click bait, and I\u2019m curating my <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n feed to avoid\nclick bait.  That is to not give time nor space to the practice of hinting at\nsomething, and requiring further action to get that something.  Especially when\nthat action is surveilled with more computational processing cycles than we ever\nspent getting to the moon.<\/p>\n<p>Once a week or so, someone will send me an email.  One person recently\nreached out regarding \n, we exchanged a few\nemails, sharing our love of Tolkien and table-top role-playing.  But diving into\nfar more.<\/p>\n<p>Going on a walk about, is me reading Mastodon or spending time to <a href=\"https:\/\/indieblog.page\/\">Discover the\nIndieWeb, one blog post at a time.<\/a>  It\u2019s a more casual activity, one where I\u2019m\nhoping for serendipity.<\/p>\n<p>Most all of this I do from my laptop.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"wherefore-art-thou-smart-phone\">Wherefore Art Thou Smart Phone?<\/h3>\n<p>I do have a \u201csmart\u201d phone, but I don\u2019t have a convenient means on it of reading\nmy <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n feed; things I read on my \u201csmart\u201d phone are to easily misplaced and\nforgotten.  And my writing capabilities are anemic on that \u201csmart\u201d phone.<\/p>\n<p>I accept the limitations of my \u201csmart\u201d phone.  And instead have thought of it\ndifferently.  I don\u2019t need nor expect it to be a mobile proxy for my laptop.\nInstead, I treat that \u201csmart\u201d phone as though all conversations on it are as\nthough I were talking on it\u2026with a caveat.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> For awhile, I thought I needed Google Maps on my phone.  But I\u2019ve removed it\nand instead rely on reviewing a map before I go mobile.  Along the way, I might\npull up an offline copy of a map to help orient.  I\u2019ve found this all more\nmentally stimulating.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I have started a private notes file on my phone; here I\u2019ll write a sentence or\ntwo of what I consider to be opening sentences for paragraphs of different\nnovels that may be rattling in my brain.<\/p>\n<p>Treating these notes something similar to Borges\u2019s review of a novel he had\npublished; except Borges never published a novel and the review was what\nsatisfied his desire to publish said novel.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Approach_to_Al-Mu%27tasim\">The Approach to Al-Mu&rsquo;tasim<\/a>.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve also tried audio recording of my thoughts, but those are even less\nmemorable, easily forgettable, consuming more space, and eventually being\npurged.  Were those spoken words transcribed, I might find greater \u201cuse\u201d.  But I\ndon\u2019t have those \u201cservices\u201d enabled on my phone, and relative to their cost, I\ndon\u2019t think I\u2019d get much \u201cvalue.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll just scratch something on paper, or send a text to myself.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"overlaying-digital-and-analogue-neighborhoods\">Overlaying Digital and Analogue Neighborhoods<\/h3>\n<p>While living this digital networked life, I also likely have three to seven\npaper books that are in my \u201cI\u2019m currently reading them\u201d mental space.<\/p>\n<p>For example, I\u2019m currently \u201creading\u201d (or perhaps considering continuing\n\u201creading\u201d):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><cite data-id=\"87f4018e-a675-44a7-9c95-b1183384affd\">The Dispossessed<\/cite> by Ursula K. Le Guin<\/li>\n<li><cite data-id=\"works-don-quixote\">Don Quixote<\/cite> by Miguel Cervantes<\/li>\n<li><cite data-id=\"f9b083b9-1531-45f3-9b87-d0df0f6c3ac8\">Use of Weapons<\/cite> by Iain M. Banks<\/li>\n<li><cite data-id=\"C34F6133-45F8-4495-8D23-0407FD322510\">Orwell\u2019s Roses<\/cite> by Rebecca Solnit<\/li>\n<li><cite data-id=\"2780cea5-fbca-4c36-8b87-842398e476f2\">R\u00e9sistance<\/cite> by Agn\u00e8s Humbert<\/li>\n<li><cite data-id=\"32E68B73-F3F0-49AA-A3FF-81F99F317BF7\">The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World\u2026<\/cite> by David Graeber<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I suspect that one never finishes <cite data-id=\"works-don-quixote\">Don Quixote<\/cite> by Miguel Cervantes; even if you\nturn the last page having read all of the words.  As it continues living with\nyou, and you with it, joining Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and Cervantes as yet\nanother layer.<\/p>\n<p>A favorite moment recently was reading a mass market paperback copy of <cite data-id=\"BAEA3D15-DA6C-4699-9DCC-3F424B515740\">We<\/cite> by Yevgeny Zamyatin.  The significance of mass market, was that it could fit in my\nbreast pocket.  So I carried that little book around and read a short-chapter\nhere or there.<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> I learned that the mass market paperback form was developed so that a book\ncould fit in a World War 1 soldier\u2019s breast pocket.  A technological means that\nfit in one\u2019s pocket, for helping them disassociate from the horrors of the\nmoment.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>I also keep my poetry collection close by (on the shelves near my bed), grabbing\nand reading one in those interstitial moments.<\/p>\n<p>I spent a half-hour one evening tumbling through <cite data-id=\"d1653e24-3255-483d-a234-940dc8cf0b9e\">Borges<\/cite> by Jorge Luis Borges.  There\u2019s some relation between poetry and the quote, often\nattributed to Mark Twain of: \u201cIf I had more time, I would have written a shorter\nletter.\u201d<small class=\"side-container\">\n  <span class=\"side-label\"><span class=\"hidden\">(<\/span>Sidenote<span class=\"hidden\">:<\/span><\/span>\n  <span class=\"side\" role=\"note\"> See <a href=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2012\/04\/28\/shorter-letter\/\">Quote Origin: If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter\n\u2013 Quote Investigator\u00ae<\/a>.<span class=\"hidden\">)<\/span><\/span>\n<\/small>\n<\/p>\n<p>In the cases of those paper books, I almost always have pen or pencil ready, to\nmark and annotate; to discuss with the book.  This slows the reading, but\nenlivens and enriches the activity.<\/p>\n<p>Having these analogue writings near, both physically and in my subconscious, is\nanother strategy for serendipity.  Of making connections across time and space.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"email-newsletters-one-short-step-from-the-dustbin\">Email Newsletters\u2026One Short Step from the Dustbin<\/h3>\n<p>And last, and definitely least of these, are the email lists; too important to\nunsubscribe, but ones that I constantly lament how they could\u2019ve been in my <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n\nfeed.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t want to read an email that could\u2019ve been a \u201cblog post\u201d.  Especially one\nloaded with tracking pixels and surveillance.  But there are a few folks who are\nwriting important (to me) things and what they have available is of that nature.<\/p>\n<p>But, <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n has been asphyxiated by those who wish to steward an algorithm of what\nthey present to you.  Where I want to walk my local environs, the asphyxiation\nis analogous to highways (and sidewalks) cutting that landscape; implying where\nI can go.<\/p>\n<p>Let me be blunt:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I treasure personalized emails<\/li>\n<li>I struggle to find \u201cvalue\u201d in most email newsletter; they feel wrong.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And I wonder, is my mental model of email one of paper and envelopes?  An\nenvelope that has hand-written address information will spark my interest.  And\ndoes these newsletters, via email, remind me of getting a bill?  Or junk mail?\nOr a catalog from a company I once ordered from?<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, I hold little patience for \u201cnews platforms\u201d that distribute only via\nemail.  Give me an <abbr title=\"Rich Site Summary\">RSS<\/abbr>\n feed in which I need to provide authorization\ninformation, and I\u2019ll keep reading.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"conclusion\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cOwning\u201d my digital abode brings me a sense of pride and contentedness.  It has\nenriched my literary, professional, and thinking life.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m thankful for my past decisions to prioritize the time to establish that\nownership.  I write and share, in part, to pay forward some of what I have\nexperienced as possible and conceivable.<\/p>\n\n      ","source":"Take on Rules"}]}}