Currently reading: Wise. Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life by Frank Tallis 📚
One reason I write:
“We remember only a tiny fraction of existence. We have forgotten most of what it is like to be alive, long before we die. Oblivion starts seeping into our heads as soon as we are self-aware.” (p.44)
I made the twenty photographs that accompany the text of Shu Ha Ri as part of a personal learning process, inspired by David Ulrich’s Zen Camera. I was influenced by Empire of Signs by Roland Bathes. As the author said of that work, “The text does not ‘gloss’ the images, which do not ‘illustrate’ the text.” During the COVID pandemic it was impossible to travel far, but several Japanese-style gardens were within reach. The images included here are of three in particular: Himeji Garden in Adelaide, Edogawa Commemorative Garden in East Gosford, and Auburn Botanic Garden in Sydney.
📷 A pair of cockatoos, feeding each other while scavenging.
#BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends
The Atlantic suggests that the end of reading is here. It used to be easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But now its easier to imagine the end of literacy than the end of YouTube.
At the End of the World (1921) with Betty Compson and Milton Sills. Public domain.
Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight
On the empty sky. – Ursula K. LeGuin
You might care to check out the shortlist for the 2026 Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction.
Cockatoos? Five sulphur-crested cockatoos, foraging beneath the Norfolk Island pines of Botany Bay? Well, all right, if you insist.
#BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends
Learning to tell a bright cow from a dull one
You might be wondering how anyone can grow from being an advanced learner to becoming an expert. It might seem like an impossible step to climb.
According to the traditional Japanese approach of Shu Ha Ri, a vital step in the learning process is to so absorb the rules that the student transcends them. The rules and conventions become second nature. But what does that look like in practice?
Here’s a great example from the world of veterinary medicine, where veterinary students were trained to identify whether an animal is bright (i.e healthy) or dull (i.e. sickening):
“Eventually, the students get good enough at evaluating bright vs. dull. What’s interesting is that, by then, they’ve lost the rules. What was once effortful and algorithmic is now perceptual and automatic. They can see things you and I do not.” – Oddly-Influenced
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.
And if you found this article interesting you might like to sign up to the Writing Slowly weekly email digest. You’ll receive all the week’s posts in a handy email format which you might prefer. But this site does of course have an RSS feed.
News just in from 2009:
“It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter.” – Techcrunch.
Well that didn’t exactly age well. And now there’s an RSS resurgence in the air – from Dave Winer, of course, who made RSS immortal by giving it an audio payload and thereby inventing podcasting.
We’ve been having our regular family disagreement about thinning our bookshelves, which made this article timely: How and why to cull your book collection [via Kottke.org].
On reflection, our bookshelves are very much a working library, more about flow than about stock. Most books pass through.
Odysseus: A name that spells trouble
Since we’re currently lost somewhere in the middle of wars that seemingly have no end-point, and arguably no point, I wonder just what film director Christopher Nolan will make of The Odyssey, his blockbuster movie of which comes out mid-2026.
After I watched another recent movie version of the story, The Return, I found out about the work of psychologist Jonathan Shay with Vietnem veterans. He wrote two books linking the works of Homer – The Iliad and The Odyssey – with the modern experience of warfare and with the travails of homecoming.
Two quotes from Jonathan Shay’s work stood out particularly. First, this one about war-induced PTSD:
Watched: The Return 🍿
Odysseus brings the war home with him. As Simone Weil said of The Iliad, the true hero is force itself.
Happy 250th birthday, USA. The defining image in my lifetime of American culture is the hooded man at Abu Ghraib prison. Well, you’re still young and “finding a place to be/ in the early days of a better civilization,” as Dennis Lee’s poem put it. Here’s to the next 250. It’ll improve; it has to.
The ascended Christ of this mural at St. Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague seems so happy I couldn’t help but think of the song by The Postal Service:
They will see us waving from such great heights
Come down now, they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
Come down now, but we’ll stay.
The heart of the craft: an encounter with the spirit of Shokunin
“There’s something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there’s always something you can learn.” – Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973.
I read this quote in the epilogue to Matt Alt’s book, Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World. (London: Constable, 2021).
It could be a summary of shokunin kishitsu (職人気質), the spirit of traditional Japanese artesanal culture.
In fact, Jiro Ono the consummate master of sushi, featured in the acclaimed documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and who was still going strong at the age of 100, says something very similar in the movie:
📚 Spotted in a charity store, the most ambitious book title I can remember. Can anyone beat it?
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Here’s Dr. Johnson on the dangers of quoting others in a commonplace book:
“the pleasure of wantoning in common topicks is so tempting to a writer, that he cannot easily resign it; a train of sentiments generally received enables him to shine without labour, and to conquer without a contest.” – Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 2, ‘The necessity and danger of looking into futurity’. 24 March, 1750. Link
There’s some irony in quoting him, but it’s in the service of pointing out that Johnson’s essays in The Rambler are well worth a read.
Loud and agitated shouting had me alarmed this morning. Sounded like a real bust-up. Then I understood. It’s the World Cup. Messi has scored. Our neighbours are Argentinian and this is only the start. ❤️🇦🇷
”A student’s understanding of particular subjects forms in collaboration with teachers, peers and the daily friction of being one mind among many.” – W. Ian O’Byrne
A thoughtful article on the messy process that helps kids learn.
So you practised for 10,000 hours but you’re still not an expert. What happens next? How to learn deliberate practice: https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/15/how-to-learn-deliberate-practice.html
#ShuHaRi #Expertise #LearningStrategies #PersonalGrowth