//Ode to Old Friends

Things change, people grow, situations move. But sometimes, despite all this, everything is still the same. This is the feeling that one gets with a kindred spirit. This is the feeling I get with John: that the relative space between us remains the same.

This same intuition makes me doubt my extended flirtation with all things material. "Everything is the way it is because it got that way," writes D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. He argues that an object is a thing in constant making, a diagram of the forces that shape it: a product of its extrinsic environment.

However, what he was not aware of at the time is the role of genes in pattern formation. That is, the intrinsic force is an important scaffold for vectors to act upon. John today shared his plan for the next few steps: to work in SF or move to Europe. Both are wildly different from his earlier ambitions but were not surprising given the tenor of his character. It felt in line.

Being in line is something that should always escape explicit definition: instead, it is a bandwidth within which one operates: a modus operandi. This is different from a raison d'etre. The former is unconscious: it is about embedded actions/reactions. A raison d'etre is how one uses this to an explicit end.

With this I wonder about my raison d'etre. I am trying to remain mute about it right now, because previously it suffocated the horizontal growth of my modus operandi. But now, with little to no raison d'etre, it is hard to react to things because I lack a position. The best I can muster is an open appreciation of all things, which usually means smiling alot, laughing more and saying nice things. To some extent, it is starting to feel like flat platitudes.


links:
On D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

My extended flirtation with all things material -

Today, we met again for