The Marginalian
A source of inspiration for me and "Harrowings"
Working in the field of cultural history, Maria Popova, has been consistently blogging and using hypertext in a way that I find really relatable. I’ve been following her work for some years and doing what I can to reamplify the rich posts she puts out. She has her critics to be sure, but I usually find myself following her links and being inspired to do more research as I follow the Ariadne’s thread of her cruise through literature, music, science, and art.
Here’s a recent example: The Science of Sleep: Dreaming, Depression, and How REM Sleep Regulates Negative Emotions.
Here Maria gives us 18 Years of Life Lessons from 18 Years of the Marginalia. She’s been building up to this.
If you would like to know more about Maria, this article lays it out.
Another of her exceptionally prescient posts - especially considering her background comes in the form of a snapshot from the year of my birth: 1963.
Harrowings is not about me. It is about amplifying signals through my filter across the medium of cyberspace. It’s publishing the legacy of my deceased father and the central link on the front page of The Harold B Gill Foundation leads here. There are extensive amounts of materials that might take me the rest of my life to work through, since he was a long-lived historian and meticulous in working with primary documents of all sorts. Moving them from his study has been less than organized.
I’ve been preparing myself by gathering my friends together in a group. I did this when I was very sick with some sort of respiratory crud in September 2023. It felt strange and still does at time - but it provides me with a “space” in cyberspace where my friends from different circles can know each other and that’s what really lights things up for me.
The pandemic lockdown was instrumental in helping me to make these connections.
I will continue this post later - so I hope you’ll provide some feedback and help steer me in my writing and exploration of what it is to not only be in the world, but to be a conscious agent moving with discipline and clarity in practice.
Feedback is most welcome! Without you, we are not us. Thank you!