I came across this video this morning, and it really spoke to me, so I wanted to share it. I named last year “The Year of Finishing Novels.” I dove into studying goal setting and motivation, from tiny habits to atomic habits. And it worked for a little while. But I found, like the videoContinue reading “Happy New Year! Welcome to Experience Writing 2023”
Category Archives: Exploring
Grief in Happiness and Happiness in Grief
Exploring the Big 5 abstractions is proving an interesting challenge. Turning my attention to happiness, I found some interesting websites: Happiness Academy World Happiness Foundation happiness.com https://www.dayofhappiness.net/ https://happinessday.org/ outlines 10 steps to Global Happiness: They define global happiness this way: Of course, none of those definitions actually define happiness which I contemplated a bit inContinue reading “Grief in Happiness and Happiness in Grief”
Do Our Ideas About Beauty and Ugliness Change When We Close Our Eyes?
This morning I did a search for “the ugliness in beauty” and found a couple of really interesting articles: The Biological Response to Beauty and Ugliness in Art [Excerpt] by Eric Kandel 2012 from Scientific American Experiences of Ugliness in Nature and Urban environments by Fatima M. Felisberti from International Association of Empirical Aesthetics TheContinue reading “Do Our Ideas About Beauty and Ugliness Change When We Close Our Eyes?”
The Ugliness in Beauty and the Beauty in Ugliness
I thought about continuing last week’s study of love and apathy, there is so much to think about and explore, but I decided I’ll let that simmer as I continue through my planned overview of the big five. This week I’m looking at the ugliness in beauty and the beauty in ugliness. Remember back inContinue reading “The Ugliness in Beauty and the Beauty in Ugliness”
How to Capture the Love in Apathy and the Apathy in Love
Contradictory Abstract Nouns Since I finished studying Calvino’s Six Memos, I had to decide which contradictory abstract nouns to dive into this week. I printed out an extensive list of abstract nouns and started thinking about grouping them to narrow down the list. I went back to Feurbach’s list of “Legitimate Aspirations” that I talkedContinue reading “How to Capture the Love in Apathy and the Apathy in Love”
Calvino’s Sixth: The unwritten memo – consistency
This week completes my study of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Calvino died before writing this final lecture in his series on values of literature. So I get to extrapolate from the other memos and imagine his ideas of consistency as a literary value. I found Andrei Codrescu’s attempt to do justContinue reading “Calvino’s Sixth: The unwritten memo – consistency”
Multiplicity: the dot that becomes a universe
Let’s continue to explore that smallest thing–the dot, the pixel, the eye mote, the speck of dust, the atom, the cell–that when multiplied “spreads out, encompassing ever vaster horizons, and would end by embracing the entire universe. (Calvino)” In an old set of geometry tools, I found two compasses: one regular with a point onContinue reading “Multiplicity: the dot that becomes a universe”
Calvino’s 5th Memo: Multiplicity – The finite in the infinite and the infinite in the finite
“Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function. . . . the grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branchesContinue reading “Calvino’s 5th Memo: Multiplicity – The finite in the infinite and the infinite in the finite”
Visibility: Fantasy in Reality, and Reality in Fantasy
This week I’m looking at Italo Calvino’s fourth value of literature: Visibility. After reading the lecture, I still wasn’t sure what he meant by “Visibility,” but after some time with my dictionary, I think I figured it out. Visibility, or visibleness, can mean “conspicuousness” or “conspicuity”–which I like the sound of–which means: Easily discovered, seen,Continue reading “Visibility: Fantasy in Reality, and Reality in Fantasy”
The Values of Literature
Last week I stumbled upon Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium which are a series of planned lectures about literary values he was working on when he died. He died before he finished writing the sixth. His six values of literature are: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity, and Consistency. In each of hisContinue reading “The Values of Literature”
Experience Writing 