The Schooner 'Flight' by Derek Walcott

The Schooner 'Flight'
1 Adios, Carenage

In idle August, while the sea soft,
and leaves of brown islands stick to the rim
of this Carribean, I blow out the light
by the dreamless face of Maria Concepcion
to ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight.
Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees.
I pass me dry neighbor sweeping she yard
as I went downhill, and I nearly said:
"Sweep soft, you witch, 'cause she don't sleep hard,"
but the bitch look through me like I was dead.
A route taxi pull up, park-lights still on.
The driver size up my bags with a grin:
"This time, Shabine, like you really gone!"
I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in
the back seat and watch the sky burn
above Laventille pink as the gown
in which the woman I left was sleeping,
and I look in the rearview and see a man
exactly like me, and the man was weeping
for the houses, the street, that whole fucking island.

Christ have mercy on all sleeping things!
From that dog rotting down Wrightson Road
to when I was a dog on these streets;
if loving these islands must be my load.
out of corruption my soul takes wings,
But they had started to poison my soul
with their big house, big car, big time bohbohl,
coolie, nigger, Syrian and French Creole,
so I leave it for them and their carnival -
I taking a sea bath, I gone down the road.
I know these islands from Monos to Nassau,
a rusty head sailor with sea-green eyes
that they nickname Shabine, the patois for
any red nigger, and I, Shabine, saw
when these slums of empire was paradise.
I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation,

But Maria Concepcion was all my thought
watching the sea heaving up and down
as the port side of dories, schooners, and yachts
was painted afresh by the strokes of the sun
signing her name with every reflection;
I knew when dark-haired evening put on
her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea,
sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh,
that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting.
Is like telling mourners round the graveside
about resurrection, they want the dead back,
so I smile to myself as the bow rope untied
and the Flight swing seaward:"Is no use repeating
that the sea have more fish. I ain't want her
dressed in the sexless light of a seraph,
I want those round brown eyes like a marmoset, and
till the day when I can lean back and laugh,
those claws that tickled my back on sweating
Sunday afternoons, like a crab on wet sand."

As I worked, watching the rotting waves come
past the bow that scissor the sea like milk,
I swear to you all, by my mother's milk,
by the stars that shall fly from tonight's furnace,
that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home;
I loved them as poets love the poetry
that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.

You ever look up from some lonely beach
and see a far schooner? Well, when I write
this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt;
I go draw and knot every line as tight
as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech
my common language go be the wind,
my pages the sails of the schooner Flight.
But let me tell you how this business begin.


2 Raptures of the Deep

Smuggled Scotch for O'Hara, big government man,
between Cedros and the Main, so the Coast Guard couldn't touch us,
and the Spanish pirogues always met us halfway,
but a voice kept saying: "Shabine, see this business
of playing pirate?" Well, so said, so done!
That whole racket crash. And I for a woman,
for her laces and silks, Maria Concepcion.
Ay, ay! Next thing I hear, some Commission of Enquiry
was being organized to conduct a big quiz,
with himself as chairman investigating himself.
Well, I knew damn well who the suckers would be,
not that shark in shark skin, but his pilot fish,
khaki-pants red nigger like you or me.
What worse, I fighting with Maria Concepcion,
plates flying and thing, so I swear: "Not again!"
It was mashing up my house and my family.
I was so broke all I needed was shades and a cup
or four shades and four cups in four-cup Port of Spain;
all the silver I had was the coins on the sea.

You saw them ministers in The Express,
guardians of the poor - one hand at their back,
and one set o'police only guarding their house,
and the Scotch pouring in through the back door.
As for that minister-monster who smuggled the booze,
that half-Syrian saurian, I got so vex to see
that face thick with powder, the warts, the stone lids
like a dinosaur caked with primordial ooze
by the lightning of flashbulbs sinking in wealth,
that I said: "Shabine, this is shit, understand!"
But he get somebody to kick my crutch out his office
like I was some artist! That bitch was so grand,
couldn't get off his high horse and kick me himself.
I have seen things that would make a slave sick
in this Trinidad, the Limers' Republic.

I couldn't shake the sea noise out of my head,
the shell of my ears sang Maria Concepcion,
so I start salvage diving with a crazy Mick,
name O'Shaugnessy, and a limey named Head;
but this Caribbean so choke with the dead
that when I would melt in emerald water,
whose ceiling rippled like a silk tent,
I saw them corals: brain, fire, sea fans,
dead-men's-fingers, and then, the dead men.
I saw that the powdery sand was their bones
ground white from Senegal to San Salvador,
so, I panic third dive, and surface for a month
in the Seamen's Hostel. Fish broth and sermons.
When I thought of the woe I had brought my wife,
when I saw my worries with that other woman,
I wept under water, salt seeking salt,
for her beauty had fallen on me like a sword
cleaving me from my children, flesh of my flesh!

There was this barge from St. Vincent, but she was too deep
to float her again. When we drank, the limey
got tired of my sobbing for Maria Concepcion.
He said he was getting the bends. Good for him!
The pain in my heart for Maria Concepcion,
the hurt I had done to my wife and children,
was worse than the bends. In the rapturous deep
there was no cleft rock where my soul could hide
like the boobies each sunset, no sandbar of light
where I could rest, like the pelicans know,
so I got raptures once, and I saw God
like a harpooned grouper bleeding, and a far
voice was rumbling, "Shabine, if you leave her,
if you leave her, I shall give you the morning star."
When I left the madhouse I tried other women
but, once they stripped naked, their spiky cunts
bristled like sea eggs and I couldn't dive.
The chaplain came round. I paid him no mind.
Where is my rest place, Jesus? Where is my harbor?
Where is the pillow I will not have to pay for,
and the window I can look from that frames my life?


3 Shabine Leaves the Republic

I had no nation now but the imagination.
After the white man, the niggers didn't want me
when the power swing to their side.
The first chain my hands and apologize, "History";
the next said I wasn't black enough for their pride.
Tell me, what power, on these unknown rocks -
a spray-plane Air Force, the Fire Brigade,
the Red Cross, the Regiment, two, three police dogs
that pass before you finish bawling "Parade!"?
I met History once, but he ain't recognize me,
a parchment Creole, with warts
like an old sea bottle, crawling like a crab
through the holes of shadow cast by the net
of a grille balcony ; cream linen, cream hat.
I confront him and shout, "Sir, is Shabine!
They say I'se your grandson. You remember Grandma,
your black cook, at all?" The bitch hawk and spat.
A spit like that worth any number of words.
But that's all them bastards have left us: words.

I no longer believed in the revolution.
I was losing faith in the love of my woman.
I had seen that moment Aleksandr Blok
crystallize in The Twelve. Was between
the Police Marine Branch and Hotel Venezuelan
one Sunday at noon. Young men without flags
using shirts, their chests waiting for holes.
They kept marching into the mountains, and their
noise ceased as foam sinks into sand.
They sank in the bright hills like rain, every one
with his own nimbus, leaving shirts in the streets,
and the echo of power at the end of the street.
Propeller-blade fans turn over the Senate;
the judges, they say, still sweat in carmine,
on Frederick Street the idlers all marching
by standing still, the Budget turns a new leaf.
In the 12.30 movies the projectors best
not break down, or you go see revolution. Aleksandr Blok
enters and sits in the third row of pit eating choc-
olate cone, waiting for a spaghetti West-
ern with Clint Eastwood and featuring Lee Van Cleef.


4 The Flight, Passing
Blanchisseuse.

Dusk. The Flight passing Blanchisseuse.
Gulls wheel like from a gun again,
and foam gone amber that was white,
lighthouse and star start making friends,
down every beach the long day ends,
and there, on that last stretch of sand,
on a beach bare of all but light,
dark hands start pulling in the seine
of the dark sea, deep, deep inland.


5 Shabine Encounters the
Middle Passage

Man, I brisk in the galley first thing next dawn,
brewing li'l coffee; fog coil from the sea
like the kettle steaming when I put it down
slow, slow, 'cause I couldn't believe what I see:
where the horizon was one silver haze,
the fog swirl and swell into sails, so close
that I saw it was sails, my hair grip my skull,
it was horrors, but it was beautiful.
We float through a rustling forest of ships
with sails dry like paper, behind the glass
I saw men with rusty eyeholes like cannons,
and whenever their half-naked crews cross the sun,
right through their tissue, you traced their bones
like leaves against the sunlight; frigates, barkentines,
the backward-moving current swept them on,
and high on their decks I saw great admirals,
Rodney, Nelson, de Grasse, I heard the hoarse orders
they gave those Shabines, and that forest
of masts sail right through the Flight,
and all you could hear was the ghostly sound
of waves rustling like grass in a low wind
and the hissing weds they trail from the stern;
slowly they heaved past from east to west
like this round world was some cranked water wheel,
every ship pouring like a wooden bucket
dredged from the deep; my memory revolve
on all sailors before me, then the sun
heat the horizon's ring and they was mist.

Next we pass slave ships. Flags of all nations,
our fathers below deck too deep, I suppose,
to hear us shouting. So we stop shouting. Who knows
who his grandfather is, much less his name?
Tomorrow our landfall will be the Barbados.


6 The Sailor Sings Back to the
Casuarinas

You see them on the low hills of Barbados
bracing like windbreaks, needles for hurricanes,
trailing, like masts, the cirrus of torn sails;
when I was green like them, I used to think
those cypresses, leaning against the sea,
that take the sea noise up into their branches,
are not real cypresses but casuarinas.
Now captain just call them Canadian cedars.
But cedars, cypresses, or casuarinas,
whoever called them so had a good cause,
watching their bending bodies wail like women
after a storm, when some schooner came home
with news of one more sailor drowned again.
Once the sound "cypress" used to make more sense
than the green "casuarinas", though, to the wind
whatever grief bent them was all the same,
since they were trees with nothing else in mind
but heavenly leaping or to guard a grave;
but we live like our names and you would have
to be colonial to know the difference,
to know the pain of history words contain,
to love those trees with an inferior love,
and to believe: "Those casuarinas bend
like cypresses, their hair hangs down in rain
like sailors' wives. They're classic trees, and we,
if we live like the names our masters please,
by careful mimicry might become men."


7 The Flight Anchors in
Castries Harbor

When the stars self were young over Castries,
I loved you alone and I loved the whole world.
What does it matter that our lives are different?
Burdened with the loves of our different children?
When I think of your young face washed by the wind
and your voice that chuckles in the slap of the sea?
The lights are out on La Toc promontory,
except for the hospital. Across at Vigie
the marina arcs keep vigil. I have kept my own
promise, to leave you the one thing I own,
you whom I loved first: my poetry.
We here for one night. Tomorrow, the Flight will be gone.


8 Fight with the Crew

It had one bitch on board, like he had me mark -
that was the cook, some Vincentian arse
with a skin like a gommier tree, red peeling bark,
and wash-out blue eyes; he wouldn't give me a ease,
like he feel he was white. Had an exercise book,
this same one here, that I was using to write
my poetry, so one day this man snatch it
from my hand, and start throwing it left and right
to the rest of the crew,bawling out, "Catch it,"
and start mincing me like I was some hen
because of the poems. Some case is for fist,
some case is for tholing pin, some is for knife -
this one was for knife. Well, I beg him first,
but he kept reading, "O my children, my wife,"
and playing he crying, to make the crew laugh;
it move like a flying fish, the silver knife
that catch him right in the plump of his calf,
and he faint so slowly, and he turn more white
than he thought he was. I suppose among men
you need that sort of thing. It ain't right
but that's how it is. There wasn't much pain,
just plenty blood, and Vincie and me best friend,
but none of them go fuck with my poetry again.


9 Maria Concepcion & the Book of Dreams

The jet that was screeching over the Flight
was opening a curtain into the past.
"Dominica ahead!"
"It still have Caribs there."
"One day go be planes only, no more boat."
"Vince, God ain't made nigger to fly through the air."
"Progress, Shabine, that's what it's all about.
Progress leaving all we small islands behind."
I was at the wheel, Vince sitting next to me
gaffing. Crisp, bracing day. A high-running sea.
"Progress is something to ask Caribs about.
They kill them by millions, some in war,
some by forced labor dying in the mines
looking for silver, after that niggers; more
progress. Until I see definite signs
that mankind change, Vince, I ain't want to hear.
Progress is history's dirty joke.
Ask that sad green island getting nearer."
Green islands, like mangoes pickled in brine.
In such fierce salt let my wound be healed,
me, in my freshness as a seafarer.

That night, with the sky sparks frosty with fire,
I ran like a Carib through Dominica,
my nose holes choked with memory of smoke;
I heard the screams of my burning children,
I ate the brains of mushrooms, the fungi
of devil's parasols under white, leprous rocks;
my breakfast was leaf mold in leaking forests,
with leaves big as maps, and when I heard noise
of the soldiers' progress through the thick leaves,
though my heart was bursting, I get up and ran
through the blades of balisier sharper than spears:
with the blood of my race, I ran, boy, I ran
with moss-footed speed like a painted bird;
then I fall, but I fall by an icy stream under
cool fountains of fern, and a screaming parrot
catch the dry branches and I drowned at last
in big breakers of smoke; then when that ocean
of black smoke pass, and the sky turn white,
there was nothing but Progress, if Progress is
an iguana as still as a young leaf in sunlight.
I bawl for Maria, and her Book of Dreams.

It anchored her sleep, that insomniac's Bible,
a soiled orange booklet with a cyclop's eye
center, from the Dominican Republic.
Its coarse pages were black with the usual
symbols of prophecy, in excited Spanish:
an open palm upright, sectioned and numbered
like a butcher chart, delivered the future.
One night, in a fever, radiantly ill,
she say, "Bring me the book, the end has come."
She said, "I dreamt of whales and a storm,"
but for that dream, the book had no answer.
A next night I dreamed of three old women
featureless as silkworms, stitching my fate,
and I scream at them to come out of my house,
and I try beating them away with a broom,
but as they go out, so they crawl back again,
until I start screaming and crying, my flesh
raining with sweat, and she ravage the book
for the dream meaning, and there was nothing;
my nerves melt like a jellyfish - that was when I broke -
they found me round the Savannah, screaming:

All you see me talking to the wind, so you think I mad.
Well, Shabine has bridled the horses of the sea;
you see me watching the sun till my eyeballs seared,
so all you mad people feel Shabine crazy,
but all you ain't know my strength, hear? The coconuts
standing by in their regiments in yellow khaki,
they waiting for Shabine to take over these islands,
and all you best dread the day I am healed
of being a human. All you fate in my hand,
ministers, businessmen, Shabine have you, friend,
I shall scatter your lives like a handful of sand,
I who have no weapon but poetry and
the lances of palms and the sea's shining shield!


10 Out of the Depths

Next day, dark sea. A arse-aching dawn.
"Damn wind shift sudden as a woman mind."
The slow swell start cresting like some mountain range
with snow on the top.
"Ay, skipper, sky dark!"
"This ain't right for August."
"This light damn strange,
this season, sky should be clear as a field."

A stingray steeplechase across the sea,
tail whipping water, the high man-o'-wars
start reeling inland, quick, quick an archery
of flying fish miss us! Vince say: "You notice?"
and a black-mane squall pounce on the sail
like a dog on a pigeon, and it snap the neck
of the Flight and shake it from head to tail.
"Be Jesus, I never see sea get so rough
so fast! That wind come from God back pocket!"
"Where Cap'n headin? Like the man gone blind!"
"If we's to drong, we go drong, Vince, fock-it!"
"Shabine, say your prayers, if life leave you any!"

I have not loved those that I loved enough.
Worse than the mule kick of Kick-'Em-Jenny
Channel, rain start to pelt the Flight between
mountains of water. If I was frighten?
The tent poles of water spouts bracing the sky
start wobbling, clouds unstitch at the seams
and sky water drench us, and I hear myself cry,
"I'm the drowned sailor in her Book of Dreams."
I remembered those ghost ships, I saw me corkscrewing
to the sea bed of sae worms, fathom past fathom,
my jaw clench like a fist, and only one thing
hold me, trembling, how my family safe home.
Then a strength like it seize me and the strength said:
"I from backward people who still fear God."
Let Him, in His might, heave Leviathan upward
by the winch of His will, the beast pouring lace
from his sea-bottom bed; and that was the faith
that had fade from a child in the Methodist chapel
in Chisel Street, Castries, when the whale-bell
sang service and, in hard pews ribbed like the whale,
proud with despair, we sang how our race
survive the sea's maw, our history, our peril,
and now I was ready for whatever death will.
But if that storm had strength, was in Cap'n face,
beard beading with spray, tears salting his eyes,
crucify to his post, that nigger hold fast
to that wheel, man, like the cross held Jesus,
and the wounds of his eyes like they crying for us,
and I feeding him white rum, while every crest
with Leviathan-lash made the Flight quail
like two criminal. Whole night, with no rest,
till red-eyed like dawn, we watch our travail
subsiding, subside, and there was no more storm.
And the noon sea get calm as Thy Kingdom come.


11 After the Storm

There's a fresh light that follows a storm
while the whole sea still havoc; in its bright wake
I saw the veiled face of Maria Concepcion
marrying the ocean, then drifting away
in the widening lace of her bridal train
with white gulls her bridesmaids, till she was gone.
I wanted nothing after that day.
Across my own face, like the face of the sun,
a light rain was falling, wih the sea calm.

Fall gently, rain, on the sea's upturned face
like a girl showering; make these islands fresh
as Shabine once knew them! Let every trace,
every hot road, smell like clothes she just press
and sprinkle with drizzle. I finish dream;
whatever the rain wash and the sun iron:
the white clouds, the sea and sky wih one seam,
is clothes enough for my nakedness.
Though my Flight never pass the incoming tide
of this inland sea beyond the loud reefs
of the final Bahamas, I am satisfied
if my hand gave voice to one people's grief.
Open the map. More islands there, man,
than peas on a tin plate, all different size,
one thousand in the Bahamas alone,
from mountains to low scrub with coral keys,
and from this bowsprit, I bless every town,
the blue smell of smoke in hills behind them,
and the one small road winding down them like twine
to the roofs below; I have only one theme:
The bowsprit, the arrow, the longing, the lunging heart -
the flight to a target whose aim we'll never know,
vain search for an island that heals with its harbor
and a guiltless horizon, where the almond's shadow
doesn't injure the sand. There are so many islands!
As many islands as the stars at night
like falling fruit around the schooner Flight.
But things must fall, and so it always was,
on one hand Venus, on the other Mars;
fall, and are one, just as this earth is one
island in archipelago's of stars.
My first friend was the sea. Now, is my last.
I stop talking now. I work, then I read,
cotching under a lantern hooked to the mast.
I try to forget what happiness was,
and when that don't work, I study the stars.
Sometimes is just me, and the soft-scissored foam
as the deck turn white and the moon open
a cloud like a door, and the light over me
is a road in white moonlight taking me home.
Shabine sang to you from the depths of the sea.

The Barley Mow Tilford

Watch of the Week: 1953 stainless-steel Rolex ref. 6062 known as "The New Standard"

 

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To His Mistress Going to Bed By John Donne

 Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,

Until I labour, I in labour lie.

The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,

Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.

Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,

But a far fairer world encompassing.

Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,

That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.

Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime,

Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.

Off with that happy busk, which I envy,

That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.

Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,

As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals.

Off with that wiry Coronet and shew

The hairy Diadem which on you doth grow:

Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread

In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.

In such white robes, heaven’s Angels used to be

Received by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee

A heaven like Mahomet’s Paradise; and though

Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,

By this these Angels from an evil sprite,

Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

    Licence my roving hands, and let them go,

Before, behind, between, above, below.

O my America! my new-found-land,

My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,

My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,

How blest am I in this discovering thee!

To enter in these bonds, is to be free;

Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.

    Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,

As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,

To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use

Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,

That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a Gem,

His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.

Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made

For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;

Themselves are mystic books, which only we

(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)

Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;

As liberally, as to a Midwife, shew

Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,

There is no penance due to innocence.

    To teach thee, I am naked first; why then

What needst thou have more covering than a man.

1981 BBC Lord Of The Rings

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The Japan Expedition, 1852-1854; the personal journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry

Visioni Di Fine Millennio

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Notarikon

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Bauhaus Chess by Josef Hartwig

Grant Baton Pipes

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The GabeCube

 

Erdős problems

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Niklas Luhmann: Communication with Zettelkastens. An experiential report.

I.

This text is an empirical work in the domain of social science. It concerns me and someone else: My Zettelkasten. It is clear that in this case the normal methods of empirical social science fail. It is nevertheless empirical because it concerns a real research object. And it is research because you can, I hope at least, generalise from it; even though one of the participants, no: both participants, apply the generalisation to themselves.

We need problems, concepts and, when possible, theories to conduct research that can be generalised to other cases. We (me and my Zettelkasten) obviously tend to think of systems theory. But as the framework for this presentation we choose communication theory, because nobody will be surprised that we think of ourselves as systems. But communication, or even successful communication? One of us listening to the other? That needs an explanation.

Zettelkastens can be recommended as communication partners because of the technical-economic problem of doing science. Without writing, you cannot think; at least not in a sophisticated and scientific way. You have to highlight differences somehow and record distinctions either explicitly or embedded in concepts; only the hereby secured consistency of the schema that produces information guarantees the coherence of the subsequent information processing. If you have to write anyway, it is pragmatic to exploit this activity by creating a system of notes that can act as a competent communication partner.

It is an obligatory condition for communication that both partners can surprise each other. Only in that way can information be created in the respective other. Information is an event that happens inside the system. Information is created when a message, an entry [of a note], is compared with other possibilities. Therefore, information is only created in systems that possess a comparison schema (even when this schema is merely: “this or something else”). For communication to be possible, it is not required that both communication partners have the same comparison schema; the level of surprise even increases when this is not the case, and when you consider it to be a coincidence that a message is meaningful or even useful against a background of other possibilities. Put differently: the variety in the communicating system increases if it can happen that both partners communicate successfully (meaning: useful for one communication partner) in spite of their different comparison schemas. This requires randomness to be built into the system. “Randomness” means: It is not guaranteed that the comparison schemata match or that the information that is transmitted by the communication(2) are accurate, but that information is created through the interaction of both partners.

There are two ways for a communication system to maintain its integrity over long periods of time: you need to decide for either highly technical specialisation, or for a setup that incorporates coincidence and ad hoc generated information. Translated to note collections: you can choose a setup categorized by topics, or an open one. We chose the latter and, after 26 successful years with only occasionally difficult teamwork, we can report that this way is successful – or at least possible.

Naturally, a setup of a communicating system that is meant to be enduring, open, and not topically restricted (it is restricted by itself) needs to adhere to certain structural requirements. Given the still high trust in human capabilities we may trust us humans to meet those requirements. But what about the Zettelkasten? How should the Zettelkasten be designed to make it capable of communication?(3)

It is not possible to answer this question by deducting the best choice from reviewing all the possibilities. We remain on experiential ground and just provide a theory-infused description.
II.

The equipment for the Zettelkasten consists of wooden boxes with drawers that open to the front, and DIN A6 paper slips. You should only write on the front side of the paper slips, so it is possible to read the note during searches without the need to take it out. It is true that this doubles the space needed (not entirely, since not all paper slips would have been written on the back anyway) which could be problematic because after decades of using the Zettelkasten it might become impossible to access it from your place at the desk. To mitigate this issue, it is recommended to use normal (thin) paper instead of (thick) index cards.

However, the external form just has an effect on convenience and not the power of the Zettelkasten. The inner workings, the arrangement of the notes, the mind of the Zettelkasten depend on a decision not to order notes by topics and subtopics, and instead choose an order with fixed placement. A content-based system (like a book’s table of contents) would mean that you would have to adhere to a single structure forever (decades in advance!). If you assume that this communication system and oneself can evolve, this will necessarily result in unsolvable problems where to place a note. The fixed-place orderdering doesn’t require topical ordering. It is enough to assign a number to each note, place it so that it’s easy to see (top left for us), and never change it, and thus never change the note’s place. This structural decision is exactly that reduction of complexity of possible arrangements that unlocks the creation of high complexity within the Zettelkasten and thus creates its ability to communicate in the first place.

The fixed-place numbering, abstracted from any content ordering, has several advantages that together enable a higher kind of order. Those advantages are:

(1) Free internal branching. You don’t need to add notes at the end, but you can connect them anywhere, even to single words within a text. A note with the number 57/12 can be continued with 57/13, but it could also be complemented from a word or a thought with 57/12a, which in turn could be continued with 57/12b etc.; to which in turn 57/12a1 could be attached. In the note itself, I use red letters or numbers to mark the place of connection. There can be multiple possible connections on each note. This enables internal growth of the system without systematic pre-programming and without depending on sequential linearity. The downside is that the original running text may often be interrupted by hundreds of in-between notes; yet, you can easily recover the original context if you are methodological with the numbering.

(2) Opportunity to connect. Because all notes have a fixed number, you can create as many references on each note as you want. Central concepts could be laden with a lot of references that indicate in which other contexts related information can be found. References allow solving the “multiple storage problem” without significant investment of labor or paper. With this technique it is not important(4) where you place a new note. When there are multiple options you can solve the problem by placing the note wherever you want and create references to capture other possible contexts. Often, the situation in which you decide to take a note suggests numerous connections to already existing notes, especially when the Zettelkasten is large. It is important, then, to capture those connections both radially and with cross-references to attractors. This step of the process also enriches the content of what you take note of.

(3) Register. Considering that there is no topical order, you have to put a search mechanism in place because you cannot rely on your numerical memory. (Alternating numbers and letters helps the memory and may be an optical aid when searching notes, but is of course not enough). It is therefore necessary to maintain a keyword index. Also for this, the numbering of the note is essential. You can connect a parallel tool with your literature management system. Bibliographical notes that you extract from literature should be captured inside the Zettelkasten. Books, articles, etc. that you actually have read should each get individual notes that belong in a separate section and that contain the bibliographical information. This allows you in the longer run to distinguish what source you have actually read and what source you have just collected for later use. The bibliographical notes also allow you to add references to the notes that are based on these sources, or that were inspired by them. This will prove useful because your own memory – others will have a similar experience to mine – works in part with keywords and in part with author names.

The result of working with this technique for a long time is a kind of second memory, an alter ego with which you can always communicate. It has, similar to our own memory, no pre-planned comprehensive order, no hierarchy, and surely no linear structure like a book. And by that very fact, it is alive independently of its author. The entire note collection can only be described as a mess, but at least it is a mess with a non-arbitrary internal structure.(5) Something will seep away. Some notes you will never see again. On the other hand, there are preferred hubs, cluster formations, and parts with which you work more often than with others. There will be large projected idea complexes that are never realised; and there are minor ideas that enrich themselves and accumulate; starting at a subsidiary part of the text,(6) and tending to dominate the system. To summarise: this technique ensures that the order – which is just pro forma – does not become a mental straightjacket, but adapts itself to the thought development.

Knowledge theory has given up the assumption of “privileged concepts” that function as axiomatic foundations to control the logical value of other concepts or propositions.(7) Similarly, you must give up the assumption that there are privileged places, notes of special and knowledge-ensuring quality. Each note is just an element that gets its value from being a part of a network of references and cross-references in the system. A note that is not connected to this network will get lost in the Zettelkasten, and will be forgotten by the Zettelkasten. Its rediscovery depends on chance, and also on it coincidentally being meaningful at the moment of finding it back.
III.

If you want to raise a communication partner, it is beneficial to equip it with independence from the start. A Zettelkasten that is constructed based on our instructions can achieve high independence. There may be other ways to achieve this goal. The described reduction to a fixed-placement (but merely formal) order, and the corresponding combination of order and disorder, is at least one of them.

Naturally, independence presupposes a minimal amount of intrinsic complexity. The Zettelkasten needs a couple of years to reach critical mass. Until then, it is merely a container from which you get what you put in. This changes with increasing size and complexity. The number of entry points and ways to query increases. It becomes a universal instrument. You can store nearly everything, and not merely ad hoc and in isolation, but with the possibility of internal connections. It becomes a sensitive system that internally reacts to many ideas, as long as you can note them down. You could ask, for example, why museums are empty while exhibitions of Monet, Picasso, Medici are overcrowded; the Zettelkasten accepts this question through the connection of “preference for what is limited in time”. Certainly, as this example tries to show, the internally available connections are selective. They lie in the realm of the non-obvious, because the system boundary between the note taker and the Zettelkasten has to be crossed. A new entry can also isolate itself – for example through a new keyword Picasso for the Picasso exhibition. However, if you try to communicate with your Zettelkasten you have to look for internal connection opportunities that result in something unexpected (i.e., information). You can try to generalise the experiences from Paris, Florence, New York via general concepts like “art” or “exhibition” or “crowding (interactionistic)” or “crowd” or “freedom” or “culture” and see whether the Zettelkasten reacts. It is usually most productive to search for problem statements that relate heterogeneous concepts to each other.

In any case, the communication is enriched if you succeed to activate the internal network of connections upon note entry and retrieval. Human memory also does not operate as the result of item-by-item accesses, but uses internal relationing and is only productive in the sphere of reduction of its own complexity.(8) In this way – at this point in space and time and caused by the search impulse – more information becomes available than expected during the search query; and particularly more information than has ever been stored in the form of notes. The Zettelkasten provides combinatorial possibilities that were never planned, never pre-meditated, or never designed in this way. This innovation mechanism is on the one hand based on the search query’s ability to provoke relational possibilities that were never laid out; on the other hand, on meeting internal selection horizons and comparison opportunities that are not identical to its own search schema.

Compared to this structure that offers actualizable connection possibilities, the relevance of the actual content of the note subsides. Much of it quickly becomes useless or is unusable for a concrete occasion. That is true for both collected quotes, which are only worth collecting when they are exceptionally concise, and for your own thoughts. Scientific publications thus don’t emerge, at least from my experience, by copying the note content that was intended for publishing. The communication with the Zettelkasten becomes productive only on more abstract way, namely on the sphere of communicative relationing of relations. And it becomes productive only in the moment of evaluation, meaning time-bound and highly incidentally.
IV.

You might ask whether the results of such a communication, too, are just incidental products. However, that would be too quick a conjecture. In science, the role of randomness is controversial. But if you think in evolutionary models, randomness has a prominent role.(9) Without it, nothing progresses anyhow. Without variation on given ideas, there are no possibilities of scrutiny and selection of innovations. Therefore, the actual challenge becomes generating incidents with sufficiently high chances of selection. We know from analyses of mutation processes in the realm of organic evolution that mutations are complex and finely regulated processes, and only have the stability that is necessary for selective success if they are subjected to pre-selection. They are incidents in the sense that they are not coordinated with the factors that select; but they are nevertheless conditioned by complex regulations themselves.

The allegory shouldn’t be overused; but you wouldn’t go wrong by assuming that in the social domain, and especially in scientific research, order also emerges from the combination of order and disorder.(10) his specification of emergence does not negate scrutinization, it rather enables it. Contrary to the old distinction of emergence and validity, nowadays, we assume that it is both impossible and methodologically unsound to isolate these aspects; that is because the generation of random stimuli needs organisation, if only to match the requirements of speed, frequency and success rate posed in a dynamic society.

On this abstract level of communication that is related to the philosophy of science as well as towards empirical research, the Zettelkasten is surely just one of many possibilities. Incidents during reading play a role, and even misunderstandings caused by interdisciplinary thought processes. Last but not least, the traditional “unity of research and education” is a source of friction that generates incidents. We can confirm that communication with Zettelkastens, compared to other options, is a viable solution and has many advantages regarding information density, speed, and mutual amenability.