Writing fiction is like making bread. You need to know when to knead it, and when to just let it rise. — The other day, I took a break from my writing desk and went into the kitchen to make bread. There’s something therapeutic about the process of mixing flour and yeast and water, combining it, then turning it out onto the table to knead it into shape. When I write, sometimes…

In a world obsessed with conversation, physical books bring us solitude and freedom. — Several years ago, I attended a talk by the Canadian poet Erín Moure. She talked about poetry and translation and writing. It was a talk so full of brilliant insights that, as I jotted things down in my notebook, I struggled to keep up. …

Myanmar helped me come to terms with grief. Now I am grieving for Myanmar. — I arrived in Yangon for the first time in January 2017, my life broken into pieces. The previous year had been punishing. In August, Elee, my partner of thirteen years, died of breast cancer. Before her death, we talked about what I would do after. I said I didn’t know…

A story about fox spirits and fraudsters translated from Taiwanese / Minnan. — Fox spirits and fraudsters I’ve been having fun learning a little Taiwanese lately. And because there are not that many materials around, I’ve been rummaging around online to find some older texts that I can translate. This is language-learning by diving in at the deep end. And it’s all largely for my own entertainment.

A woman philosopher in Ancient India, and the art of debate — Philosophical Swagger, and the Nature of Reality The philosopher Gārgī Vācaknavī appears in the Bṛhadāraṅyaka Upaniṣad, a philosophical compilation that dates to around the seventh or the sixth century BCE, although it contains strains of material that may be much older. She is one of the earliest named women philosophers in the Indian tradition, and may have…

We write the way spiders spin webs. Thoughts on the medieval Chinese writer Liu Xie — and spiders! — 1. Spider Liu Xie’s fifth century masterpiece on the art of writing, the Wenxin diaolong, or The Heart of Literature and the Carving of Dragons, makes no mention of spiders. But late one spring, I go to the park close to where I live — by the exercise machines nobody uses, within…

The philosopher Carneades advocated giving up on ideas of truth and the good life, arguing that we should focus instead on what is plausible. Obsession and self-medication The philosopher Carneades was born in Cyrene, home of the Cyrenaic philosophers, sometime around 214 BCE. …

Why so serious? On philosophy, mood, and why seriousness is overrated. — This post is one of a seven-part series on how to read philosophy, published first on LookingforWisdom.com When we moved the Looking for Wisdom HQ up to Scotland a year ago, we packed away all our philosophy books into boxes. There were lots of boxes. So on the outside, with…

For the philosophers of the Nyāya school, the role of knowledge was to make effective action possible. — Texts and Woven Threads The tradition of Nyāya philosophy in India goes back to a text called the Nyāya-sūtra. It is one of the most extensive treatments of the art of reasoning to be found in early Indian philosophy. The Nyāya-sūtra is a fascinating text, one that explores the relationship between knowing, practical action…