Dreary March has passed us by. Poor March has the duty of transitioning us from winter to spring. That it can do this at all is a miracle, so one shouldn't judge it too harshly when this transition isn't smooth. I am guilty of spending much of March doing just that, so I decided to atone for this by reflecting on the things I was able to do in March despite my many judgments.

What I did

The new beginnings of Spring had an effect on me. I engaged in small talk with some coworkers whom I had previously only exchanged the occasional "hello" with. During those couple of minutes of small talk, I reluctantly agreed to run with them the following Thursday. Not running once in 5 years to running a 5K on a whim was daunting, and I can't say that I enjoyed every second of it, but there's a sense of pride in testing the capabilities of the human body. Every stride I took, I imagined I was Pheidippides running to Athens, minus the death.

On the digital side of March, I've made more changes to my website. Since my last post, I've added an activity feed that supports showing notes, likes, follows, and replies to content across the web / Fediverse / Bluesky. Each entry is created by messaging an XMPP bot a command + content (e.g. /like <url>, /note This is a note!, /follow <profile>, etc.). This allows me to easily update my website from my phone.

What I ate

My partner and I have both been vegan for basically our entire adult lives. My veganism is not from the standpoint of health, but from the standpoint of animal liberation. Animal and human exploitation share a common root, and thus are inextricably linked together. I'd like to expand on this idea one day by writing about Marco Maurizi's Beyond Nature, but I'd have to re-read it first.

Being vegan makes cooking an exciting process for me in two ways:

1. It has forced me to experiences new cuisines, flavors, and vegetables I never would've experienced back when I was a picky eater.
2. It has let me experiment with different ways of emulating and substituting foods that I grew up eating, which has led to a better understanding of how flavors in a dish interact with each other.

On this latter point, in March we bought mung beans and kala namak and used them to make vegan omelettes by following this recipe (use an ad-blocker). It's simple: you soak mung beans overnight, then you blend them with various spices, including kala namak, otherwise known as black salt, which has a sulfur-like taste that's reminiscent of eggs. The result is a "batter" that you can pan-fry to create an omelette-like crepe, or break apart to create a "scrambled egg." The end product is incredible, and we've done this two more times since first trying it.

What I listened to

My music taste has not changed much since the end of last year, except for the obscene amount that I've listened to Magdalena Bay's Imaginal Disk. Mica's voice is perfect for the upbeat, dreamy, energetic songs and the slower-paced songs on the album. What drew me in to the album were the former kinds of songs, but I've come to appreciate the slower songs like Angel on a Satellite.

Besides Imaginal Disk, I listened to Diabolica by Bontempi and Así de grandes son las ideas by Calle 13. Bontempi is one of the bands that the Gillis sisters were a part of after Plumtree broke up. Diabolica reminds me a lot of Plumtree's song Go! both in length and in energy. Listening to Calle 13 mainly fills me with nostalgia about my childhood when I would listen exclusively to MTV Latino and whatever my sister was into.

What I read

I started March by reading Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, only to be told by Schopenhauer to not even think of reading this before first reading his dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I took his suggestion seriously, and read his dissertation all the way through, only to be met with lots of confusion. So much so that the next book I opted to read was How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler.

How to Read a Book was about the four "levels" of reading: the elementary level, the inspectional level, the analytical level, and the syntopical level. Besides these levels and the best way to actively read, a major takeaway from this book was that it is not necessary to understand a book the first time through, and that one should read a book all the way through regardless of how much they understand it. The first read will be the basis for better understanding it on future reads. This implies that one should re-read books.

This is an idea that I've come across constantly. Nietzsche urges the reader of his books to have read and re-read his previous works. Schopenhauer insisted on reading his dissertation and Kant's works multiple times over before reading The World as Will and Representation.

There is no shame in not understanding a book the first time through and re-reading it in the future. This gave me renewed vigor for re-reading On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Beyond Nature some day.

To break up these two non-fiction books, I also read Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen. Haruki Murakami's way of writing women in Norwegian Wood was one of my least favorite parts of the book, so when I saw several Instagram reels saying, "if you like Haruki Murakami's writing style but hate how he writes women, then you should read Banana Yoshimoto," I took the suggestion. You can read my thoughts on Kitchen on Pagebound / Goodreads.

What I thought about

A quick thought I had in the middle of reading How to Read a Book regarded analogies and the best way to utilize them.

An analogy is useful insofar as it complements a point that has already been established and argued for, not as the basis itself for establishing a point. What I mean is that analogies are best used as supplementary material so that a reader can better understand the argument being made. The argument has primacy over the analogy and is independent of it.

For example, let's say I believe that reading is made up of separate acts that come together to form a graceful, harmonious activity. I present my reasonings for this and argue in favor of it so that others may see my case and choose to agree with me. After arguing this, I can then compare reading to another activity, such as skiing, to illustrate how the separate acts that one needs to keep in mind while skiing are combined to produce harmonious movement like smooth turns. The analogy of skiing is supplemental, and if the original argument was solid, it can stand on its own without the analogy present.

An analogy should not be the starting point for an argument. It is dishonest to say that reading and skiing are similar activities, present the example of harmonious movement in skiing, then say that because reading and skiing are similar, reading must also be harmonious.

I see that a lot online, where someone will read (the headline of) a news article, then in a comment form an analogy about this situation with another situation, and make an argument about the current situation from the proposed analogy. Their starting point is the analogy, not the situation presented in the article, so they skip developing an argument or material analysis on the contents of the article.

This is something I'd like be careful about doing in my thinking and writing going forward.

What I'd like to do next

Now that spring is here, the weather has gotten sunnier and warmer. Once it's consistently warm and the rainy days begin to clear up, I'd like to enjoy the sun and go bike riding.

The Spring Lisp Game Jam has been announced for May 15th to May 25th, and I may join in. I have never made a game before, whether using Lisp or another programming language, but the idea sounds fun and like a good opportunity to better my Clojure skills or learn a new Lisp (maybe Fennel).