Philosophy and Compass

“Animal rationis capax”
The animal capable of rationality.
—Jonathan Swift, amending Aristotle

This phrase rescued me. Not rational animals—that burden of perpetual reason—but creatures capable of rationality. The difference is everything: between being and becoming, between essence and potential, between judgment and grace.

Here, in this digital manuscript, I explore what that capability means. How presence emerges. How patterns connect. How attention shapes both seer and seen.

The Guides

Four voices shape how I move through the world:

Christopher Alexander taught me that living structure emerges from patient observation. His pattern language infuses everything—seeking what wants to grow, not what I want to impose.

Gaston Bachelard revealed the poetics of space. Through him, a rehearsal room becomes a shell of resonance, a bow stroke carries the weight of breath, silence has texture.

John Berger insisted that seeing is never neutral. Every observation carries ethics, politics, love. To look is to be implicated.

Richard Sennett grounds everything in craft—the dialogue between hand and material, the slow accumulation of skill, the workshop as site of both resistance and revelation.

The Desk

There is a desk beneath the window. Morning light from the northeast. The shutters open just enough to let the day arrive gently.

A red writing mat anchors the surface. Papers rest in loose formations. A mechanical pencil. A thin notebook. A handmade mug, still warm.

The mug is thick-walled, unglazed at the base, ochre and grey like riverbank clay. It holds heat like a body, which feels honest. I don’t reach for it so much as return to it. Steam rises in vapor-spirals.

My son is not yet born, but I feel his presence. He reshapes the silence around me. I write more slowly now—not because there is less time, but because the time I have feels newly textured.

And my daughter—

She is not in this room, but the room bears her shape.
The turn of the chair toward the light.
The way I hesitate before beginning.
The softness I now permit myself.

This desk is not where I work.
It’s where I return, when I want to listen more carefully.
To what matters.
To who I’m becoming.
To what love requires of me next.

The Making

This site breathes through chosen constraints:

Typography that invites dwelling → The Shape of Thought
Tools selected for presence over efficiency → Digital Craft
Attention organized by quality, not category → Forms of Attention
Influences acknowledged and ongoing → Living Constellation
Now as moving target → Current

No tracking. No comments. No urgency.
The only speed is yours.

Presence

Barcelona
Playing viola with Jordi Savall
Teaching through presence
Writing here

You can reach me by email I don’t use Zoom

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”
—Henry James

Seasonal Geometries

The footer carries a geometric glyph that changes with the seasons—a quiet marker of time’s passage through form:

○ Circle — Winter solstice to spring equinox. Wholeness waiting.
△ Triangle — Spring equinox to summer solstice. Ascent and growth.
□ Square — Summer solstice to autumn equinox. Fullness and stability.
▽ Inverted triangle — Autumn equinox to winter solstice. Descent and release.

These ancient forms map the year’s breathing—expansion and contraction, rising and falling, the endless cycle of becoming.

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Begun Paris 2002 · Revised Barcelona 2025 · Third Edition · \(buildVersion\)