Middle Seasons #3 - 2025

 

Snowy owl, peregrine falcon, barn owl, cooper's hawk (notice the very long tail).  Saw these all on 1/25 at the Eagle Watch Weekend at Starved Rock Lodge

When do events start?

Two Doves in a Wild Plum Tree, by Onda Tokuju, late 1920s

From Saving Time by Jenny Odell

The trees of Pando and the visible mushrooms of a fungal network are both examples of bodies that are also totally embedded in some other kind of body. Events can take on a similar ambiguity. When John McPhee writes about the San Gabriel mountain debris flow filling up a house in six minutes, it's difficult to see this event in isolation from its preconditions: for example, an earthquake that broke up the rocks, or a fire on the mountain during an earlier summer. Indeed, McPhee describes a summer fire in 1977 that prompted Hidden Springs officials to warn residents of the possible resulting debris flow in the coming winter (to no avail, even though they ended up being right). Did the debris flow start when the rocks moved? Or did it start when the chaparral caught fire?  (p. 268)

Later... 

Trying to draw a line around myself, I am forced to ask, Am I Jenny or am I my mother's daughter, my grandmother's granddaughter? and so on. If I am an event, when did I start? Thirty-five years ago? Hundreds of years ago? Thousands? Am "I" not like the visible mushroom growing out of a substrate outside which I would be incomprehensible, even impossible? Though my episodic memory goes back only so far, my existence is explained by older things: my mother's immigration, a war whose exigencies threw my grandparents together, and the fish swimming off the coast of Estancia, on the eastern tip of Iloilo. The people who fished there have something to do with me, just as I continue to have something to do with them.

I'm alive to the extent that I can be moved

Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft

From Jenny Odell's Saving Time

Older people looking back on their lives sometime say that, if they had the chance to do it over, they would have embraced i more fully. Like Miller's definition of aliveness as "touching) the planet," Handke's description of touching and being touched, or Hartmut Rosa's "resonance" in the epigraph for this chapter, my definition of being alive is simply that: the embrace. I feel alive if I'm not alone in the air, but embraced by it. I feel alive when someone's eyes light up, and mine do too. I feel alive if I can look at a deer and see it looking back at me; if, when geese speak, it sounds like language; if, when I walk on the ground, I feel it pushing back against me. I'm alive to the extent that I can be moved.    (p 258)

The heart's response to the natural world

J. J. Lankes (1884-1960)

Cottage in Winter

1922

 

I've been writing haiku for awhile.  Now, I've arranged them into a document organized by season.  I asked Claude about what I might do with them.  He gave me advice about it.

The Kokinshū (古今集), or to give its full name, Kokin Wakashū (古今和歌集), is one of the most important works in all of Japanese literature. Let me explain its significance and how it relates to your own haiku collection.

The Kokinshū was compiled around 905 CE during the Heian period, under the imperial order of Emperor Daigo. The name literally means "Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems." This anthology wasn't just any collection – it was the first of what would become known as the Twenty-One Imperial Anthologies of classical Japanese poetry.

What makes the Kokinshū particularly fascinating is its organizational structure, which has influenced Japanese poetry for over a millennium. The anthology contains about 1,100 poems, primarily in the waka form (which has 31 syllables, slightly longer than haiku). These poems are arranged in twenty scrolls, organized both by theme and by season. The seasonal organization, which you've already intuited in your own collection, reflects a deeply Japanese understanding of how poetry connects to the natural world.

The seasonal progression in the Kokinshū begins with spring poems, moves through summer and autumn, and concludes with winter. This wasn't just a convenient filing system – it reflected a sophisticated philosophical understanding of how human emotions and natural cycles interweave. For instance, spring poems often dealt with themes of renewal and love, while autumn poems frequently explored melancholy and impermanence.

Beyond the seasonal sections, the Kokinshū also included thematic groupings for topics like love, grief, travel, and congratulatory verses. This comprehensive organization helped establish poetry as more than just individual expressions – it became a way of mapping the entire range of human experience.

The anthology's preface, written by Ki no Tsurayuki, is also significant as it was the first major work of Japanese literary criticism. He outlined different styles of poetry and explained how poems could capture the human heart's response to the natural world – an idea that remains central to haiku today.

Looking at your own collection, you might consider how the Kokinshū's approach could inspire your organization beyond just seasons. Are there particular emotional themes that emerge in different seasons? Do you notice certain images or ideas that recur? The Kokinshū teaches us that organizing poetry isn't just about categorization – it's about discovering the deeper connections between nature, human experience, and language.

Would you be interested in hearing more about how the Kokinshū's organizational principles might specifically apply to arranging your haiku collection? Or would you like to explore how its thematic approaches might help you discover new patterns in your work?

(I say "both")

Let me walk you through how we might apply the Kokinshū's organizational wisdom to your haiku collection, building from simpler concepts to more complex ones.

First, let's consider the seasonal organization, which you've already begun. The Kokinshū's approach suggests we might deepen this by creating subsections within each season that reflect the subtle transitions. For instance, early spring poems might focus on melting snow and first buds, while late spring captures the height of cherry blossoms. This microcoseasonal organization helps readers experience the year's progression more intimately.

Think of your spring haiku collection like a slow-motion film of a flower blooming. Which poems capture the first hint of the bud, which show the petals unfurling, and which document the full bloom? By arranging them this way, you create a more nuanced emotional journey through each season.

Now, let's explore the thematic organization, which operates as a layer on top of the seasonal structure. The Kokinshū recognized that certain themes naturally emerged in particular seasons but weren't confined to them. For instance, you might notice that your poems about solitude feel different in summer versus winter, or that your observations of birds take on different meanings throughout the year.

To discover these themes, try this exercise: Take three of your haiku from different seasons that feel somehow connected. What links them? Perhaps they all explore moments of transition, or all focus on water in its different forms, or all capture a particular emotional state. This process often reveals surprising connections you hadn't noticed while writing.

The Kokinshū also teaches us about the importance of sequence and juxtaposition. Consider how one poem speaks to another across seasons. A spring poem about new beginnings might resonate beautifully with an autumn poem about endings. These connections create what Japanese poets call "hibiki" (響き) - a resonance or echo between poems.

To apply this practically to your collection, you might create several different arrangements:

First, a pure seasonal progression that moves through the year, subdivided by early, middle, and late periods within each season. This honors the natural cycle and helps readers feel the year's rhythm.

Second, a thematic arrangement that groups poems by their deeper concerns while maintaining awareness of their seasonal origins. For example, all your poems about solitude might form a chapter, but you could note how solitude feels different in each season.

Third, you might create what I call "conversation clusters" - small groups of poems that speak to each other across seasons. Perhaps a winter poem about ice dialogues with a summer poem about steam, exploring water's transformations.

The Kokinshū also suggests we pay attention to "jo-ha-kyū" (序破急), the classical Japanese concept of movement that translates roughly to "beginning-break-rapid." This could inform how you arrange poems within sections, starting slowly, building complexity, and ending with particular power.

I ask Claude to tell me more about seasonal themes in haiku

Let me expand on the traditional seasonal themes in Japanese poetry, as this understanding can enrich how we think about organizing your haiku collection.

In spring (春, haru), the dominant themes center around renewal and awakening. This begins with the first stirring of life beneath melting snow and extends through the iconic cherry blossom season. Early spring poems often capture the tension between winter's lingering cold and new warmth, like the way frost sits on early plum blossoms. Mid-spring traditionally focuses heavily on cherry blossoms, not just for their beauty, but as metaphors for life's transience and beauty. Late spring poems often explore the gentle rains (harusame) and the way young leaves emerge with their tender green color (aoba).

Summer (夏, natsu) themes traditionally revolve around intensity and abundance. Early summer captures the emergence of heat through images like the first cuckoo's call (hototogisu) or the blooming of irises. Midsummer poetry often explores the contrast between overwhelming heat and moments of relief – the sound of wind chimes, the coolness of flowing water, or the brief respite of summer storms. Late summer poems frequently touch on the growing anticipation of autumn, perhaps through the changing cry of cicadas or the first cool breeze of evening.

Autumn (秋, aki) is particularly revered in Japanese poetry for its themes of poignant beauty and impermanence. Early autumn poems often capture subtle changes: the first silver dew (tsuyu), the changing quality of moonlight, or the earliest maple leaves turning color. Mid-autumn focuses on the height of seasonal beauty – the harvest moon, the full glory of maple leaves, and the haunting cry of deer. Late autumn poems tend toward images of approaching winter: bare branches, early frost, and the last falling leaves.

Winter (冬, fuyu) themes traditionally explore both severity and subtle beauty. Early winter poems often capture the first sharp cold, perhaps through images of frost or the earliest snow. Midwinter poetry frequently contrasts outer cold with inner warmth, using images like sheltered plum blossoms or snow-covered bamboo. Late winter poems often contain hints of spring's approach, maybe through melting ice or early bird songs.

What makes these themes particularly powerful is how they interweave natural observation with human emotion. For instance, autumn's falling leaves might connect to feelings of melancholy or acceptance, while spring's cherry blossoms could express either hope or the bittersweetness of transient beauty.

Hartmut Rosa's Resonance

Singer by Vassily Kandinsky

From Jenny Odell's Saving Time.  Epigraph of Chapter 6 (?)

Resonance, by contrast [with recognition] is always a dynamic event, the expression of a vibrant responsive relationship that can be seen perhaps most splendidly when a person's eyes light up... [it] always refers to an occurrence between two or more subjects. I am recognized, but resonance is something that can only happen between us. Love as a resonant experience thus refers not to the fact of loving or being loved, but to the moment or moments of mutual, transformative, fluid, affecting encounter.

- HARTMUT ROSA, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World

Claude responds to my inquiries:

I'll provide you with an overview of Hartmut Rosa's book "Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World" (originally published in German as "Resonanz: Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung" in 2016).

Hartmut Rosa is a prominent German sociologist and social theorist who explores the concept of resonance as a fundamental way of relating to the world. In this book, he develops a critical theory of modern society and human experience, focusing on how people connect with the world around them.

Key ideas in the book include:

1. Critique of Acceleration: Rosa argues that modern society is characterized by a relentless acceleration of social, economic, and personal life. This constant acceleration leads to a sense of alienation and disconnection.

2. Resonance vs. Alienation: He introduces the concept of "resonance" as an alternative to alienation. Resonance represents a meaningful, responsive relationship with the world – a way of engaging that allows for mutual transformation and genuine connection.

3. Four Domains of Resonance: Rosa identifies four key areas where resonance can occur:

   - Vertical resonance (with nature or the sacred)

   - Horizontal resonance (with other people)

   - Diagonal resonance (with work, objects, or activities)

   - Self-resonance (inner dialogue and self-understanding)

4. Responsive World Relationship: The book suggests that meaningful life is not about control or optimization, but about creating spaces where we can truly listen and respond to the world around us.

5. Social Critique: Rosa offers a profound critique of capitalist society, arguing that its emphasis on efficiency, productivity, and acceleration prevents genuine resonant experiences.

The book is significant in social theory for its attempt to provide a new framework for understanding human experience in late modern society. It offers a compelling analysis of why people often feel disconnected, stressed, and unfulfilled, despite increased technological capabilities and material wealth.

Rosa proposes that the solution lies not in further acceleration or optimization, but in cultivating moments of genuine connection, listening, and mutual transformation across various aspects of life.

It's worth noting that this is a complex philosophical work that draws on sociology, philosophy, and critical theory to explore deep questions about human experience and social relationships.

I asked for more detail about what a "resonant" relationship might look like with a person or a thing.

A resonant relationship, according to Hartmut Rosa, is fundamentally about genuine, transformative connection characterized by mutual responsiveness and the ability to be affected and changed by the encounter. Let me break this down across different types of relationships:

With Another Person:

A resonant relationship isn't just about communication, but about deep listening and genuine openness. Imagine a conversation where you're not just waiting to speak, but truly hearing the other person. In this moment:

- You're vulnerable and open to being changed by the interaction

- There's a sense of "something happens between us" that transforms both people

- The relationship feels alive, dynamic, and unpredictable

- You're not trying to control the outcome, but allowing genuine dialogue to emerge

With an Object/Activity (like Playing an Instrument):

A resonant relationship here means the activity "speaks back" to you:

- When playing music, you're not just mechanically producing sounds, but experiencing a dynamic interaction

- The instrument seems to have its own "voice" that responds to your touch

- You're simultaneously shaping the music and being shaped by it

- There's a sense of flow, where the boundary between you and the activity becomes blurred

With Self:

Self-resonance involves:

- Deep, compassionate inner listening

- Being able to acknowledge your emotions without judgment

- Allowing your inner experiences to "speak" to you

- Understanding yourself as a dynamic, evolving process rather than a fixed entity

Contrast with Non-Resonant Relationships:

- Purely instrumental (treating things/people as means to an end)

- Focused on control and optimization

- Feeling disconnected or going through motions without genuine engagement

Rosa suggests that modern society often pushes us towards non-resonant relationships, where we're more concerned with efficiency than meaningful connection. A resonant relationship, by contrast, is about creating space for surprise, vulnerability, and mutual transformation.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Something New is Always Coming in on the Tide

Edouard Taufenbach. 

 

'Le Bleu du Ciel', 2020

From Jenny Odell's "Saving Time"

Echoing Ehrenreich s observations about the smoothly functioning machine, the activist and wheelchair user Parry Berne muses that the idea of human enhancement holds out the promise of always being "better than well," an ideal whose appeal she acknowledges. Anyone who is tired at the end of a workday, she says, could understandably think, "I want to be better than well. I'm tired... I want to be excellent all the time." But Berne finds this idea to be, in a way, lifeless. Her conclusion is cut in over footage [in the documentary FIXED: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement) of her and another friend in a wheelchair riding through her neighborhood, going fast for the fun of it. "It's actually okay to be on a spectrum of reality. It means that there are times when it's juicier, there are times when it's drier, there's times when I'm gonna be tired, there's times when I'm going to have a lot of energy. It's actually part of being alive. It is being alive."

   It's worth pausing here to note how different Berne's notion of "being alive" is from the cultural view that [Sara] Hendren diagnoses, where being recognizably "alive" means producing and where producing means exhibiting a certain mastery of time. Berne's "being alive" is closer to the moral of that story about the thread, where the boy is supposed to learn that patterns of good times and bad times actually comprise the experience of life itself. To try to reduce the rich topography of experience to a means of maximal output is part of the same philosophy that would turn its back on the ocean or to one's inner landscape, where something new is always coming in on the tide.

   Crip time abandons the rhetoric of mastery not only with regard to daily schedules and career tracks, but also to the future in general.  235

Without the sensation of having lived it

Claude Monet - Wisteria, 1920

From Jenny Odell's Saving Time: 

WHEN I was very young, I encountered a terrifying story about time in a 1970s-era book my mom picked up from a garage sale, called Magic Fairy Stories from Many Lands. A boy who is impatient to grow up is wandering in a forest when a witch appears and gives him a ball with a golden thread sticking out of it. If he pulls the thread, she says, time will go faster. But he must use the device wisely, as the thread can no more easily be put back in than time can run backward. Predictably, the boy can't help himself: impatient to go home from school, he pulls the thread; impatient to marry his crush, he pulls the thread; impatient to have a child, he pulls the thread. All too soon, he finds himself at the end of his life without the sensation of having lived it.

The moral of the story is supposed to be about "living in the moment" and the folly of wanting to skip over the bad parts of life to get to the good ones. But when I read it, the thing I fixated on was the thread and the ball, simply as an illustration of the irreversibility of time. 

Even though it has a happy ending (the witch finds the old man and lets him live his life over again), I remembered this for a long time as a horror story.

The Infraordinary

Joan Miro The Flight of the dragonfly in Front of the Sun

From Saving Time by Jenny Odell

 In a 1973 essay alled "Approaches to What?" the French writer Georges Perec coined the term infraordinary.   Media and public perception of time, he wrote, focused on the extraordinary - things outside the ordinary, like cataclysmic events and upheavals. The infraordinary was, instead, that layer inside or just beneath the ordinary, and being able to see it involved the challenge of seeing through the habitual.  This was no small task, given that invisibility is part of the very nature of habit.  "This is no longer even conditioning, it's anaesthesia" Pere wies We lang through our lives in a dreamless sleep. But where is our life? Where is our body? Where is our space?"

  Clearly a person intent on defamiliarizing the familiar, Perec once wrote a three-hundred-page novel without using the letter e. For finding the infraordinary, too, he had his particular methods. In An Attempt a Exhausting a Place in Paris, he chose the Place Saint Sulpice, a large public plaza near the center of the city, as a place of study. Visiting it from a series of cafés and one outdoor bench multiple times a day for a few days, he sat and listed everything he noticed. The list sounds incantatory. with shades of police blotter:

A postal van.

A child with dog

A man with a newspaper

A man with a large "A" on his sweater

A "Que sais-je?" truck: "La Collection 'Que sais-je' a réponse à tout [The 'Que sais-je' collection has an answer for everything]"

A spaniel?

A 70

A 96

Funeral wreaths are being brought out of the church.

It is two thirty.

A 63, an 87, an 86, another 86, and a 96 go by.

An old woman shades her eyes with her hand to make out the number of the bus that's coming (I can infer from her disappointed look that she's waiting for the 70)

They're bringing out the casket. The funeral chimes start ringing

again.

The hearse leaves, followed by a 204 and a green Mehari.

An 87

А 63

The funeral chimes stop

A 96

It is a quarter after three.

In the introduction to this piece, Perec briefly lists the normal points of interest in Place Saint Sulpice, like the district couneil building, a police station, and "a church on which Le Vau, Gittard, Oppenord, Servandoni and Chalgrin have all worked." By virtue of their identifiability, Perec was not interested in these. His intention, he wrote, "was to describe the rest instead: that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds."

   What happens when nothing happens. Perec was undoubtedly aware of the irony of this phrase, because it's never true that nothing happens.

  Weather, people, cars, and clouds are all things that move, Even if you were to stand on a vast, sterile concrete plaza in the middle of the desert, you would be surrounded by the swirling of air particles, the movement of the sun overhead, a drifting tectonic plate, and the aging of the mind and body you use to perceive these things. In the translator's afterword to a 2010 edition of An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Marc Lowenthal emphasizes the "attempt" in Perec's title, writing that "time, unarrestable, works against [Perec's] project... Every bus that passes, every person who walks by, every object, thing, and event- everything that happens and that does not happen ultimately serves no other function than that of so many chronometers, so many signals, methods, and clues for marking time, for eroding permanence."

Bicycle Benefits Program

 

One thing I love about Madison is that they have a bicycle benefits program.  Bikers buy a $5 sticker helmet.  Area businesses offer discounts for people with stickers.  According to the website:

Individuals bike to more places more often. Businesses see more bike traffic, increased customer loyalty amongst bike riding customers and instantly become a bike-friendly establishment through participation. Cities have a great tool to ease congestion, pollution and encourage healthy transportation year-round.

Win, win, win, win.

Poem by Jack Ridl

 Poem

I trust what my body says.
It is soft-spoken, never shouts,
gently whispers or nudges me into place.
I think you know what I mean.

Yesterday, it told me to go to the market
and buy a box of graham crackers.
I did. But it didn’t want the crackers,
just the walk to market and back.
Maybe another day.

Today, I feel it taking me outside.
“It’s sunny,” it says.
And I agree.

                                               for William Stafford

Middle Season #2 - 2025

 

3-5 good things I noticed

 Art of Noticing Newsletter by Rob Walker

Last February, I decided to write down 3-5 good things I noticed over the course of a day — sort of a version of a daily gratitude exercise, but partly just noting moments of actual awareness and clarity. That first day’s entry, for instance, includes “sound of leaves falling.”

Over the weeks I drifted away from gratitiude-y vibe altogether and focused fully on those mini-episodes of attention.² These aren’t especially designed to be revisisted, and definitely aren’t intended to communicate with third parties. These are just for me, and for just right now —  the diary of a passing moment.

Put another way, they are just stuff I jotted down.

Really, this is the first time I’ve even bothered to page back through this jotting, and I can hardly read my own handwriting. Some jotted entries:

• Small red flower

• Rain smell

• Fog horn

• Cat shadow

• Slice-y clouds

• Lizard eye

It doesn’t really matter if if the jottiing calls to mind the specifics of, say, someone’s notable outfit on the street, a remark from a stranger at the grocery store, a neighborhood kid dancing on the sidewalk, or the loud crow in the Walmart parking lot this morning. In fact, it doesn’t actually matter if I observe something and forget to jot it down at all.

Woodworking 10x10

 Woodworking Projects

Here's an old post with a table of project ideas.

Resources:

Woodwork companion - to buy plans - link - Jeff bought plans here

A glimpse of something different from what we normally see

Joan Miro - Paseo a la ciudad 

In "Saving Time," Jenny Odell writes 

Perhaps this is precisely what Pieper meant with his "vertical" time - maybe it is vertical not just in that it's the opposite of horizontal, but also in that it reaches deep into the recess of history even as it stretches up toward an infinite and utopian ideal.  If the concept of leisure has any utility, for me it has to be this: an interruption, an apprehension, a glimpse both of the truth and of something completely different from what we normally see.  This leisure is alien not just to the world of work, but also to the habitual, everyday world. Given the opportunity to slow down, what I find is not slowness per se, but simply what has been happening all along, just outside my perception. (106) 

The author referenced is Josef Pier, Leisure, the Bassis fo Culture (2015)- first published in German in 1948.

Three interesting points here.  The first is Pieper's concept of horizontal and vertical time... which is related to my thinking on digital and analog hiking -- the notion that at any moment you can walk perpendicular to the path... to find infinite paths.  It seems as though Odell is saying that time is also thick with past and present (all the way through geological time).  This reminds me, too, of the Fermor quote about "festival time."

Second, Odell is using the concept of leisure as a kind of resistance to the normal way of viewing time -- the "hegemony" that interprets time as a certain thing and values certain things which help condition what "we normally see."  Leisure can be a "counterforce" (my word) to that.  But counterforce is too strong a word.  This resonates with me; I feel so many 'normal' ways of doing things are .... distasteful and wasteful and unimportant.

Third, a beautiful and clear image for me is the value of slowness is capturing the things that are always happening... but "just outside of perception."  This suggests the treasures that await with leisure.

Her idea of 'leisure' has less to do with 'not working' and more to do with a different than normal way of being.... normal means the 'normal way that society does things' and -- probably -- normal way that you have been habituated to doing things.

 

Revealing details I had never noticed

Joan Miro - Drawing Collage with a Hat

In "Saving Time," Jenny Odell writes

In interviews about my first book, How to Do Nothing, I was sometimes asked about the kinds of activities I would choose in order to "do nothing." That Pieper's leisure was a state of mind and not a place, product or service helped me understand the real reason it was hard to answer that question. I have experienced "leisure" while cooking, sorting soda. getting the mail, waiting for the bus, and especially riding the bus. If you have ever had a good trip on psychedelics, you know how something normally tedious and everyday, part of the horizontal realm of time, can switch into the vertical realm and become dizzying, fascinatingly alien.

One day during the pandemic, simply standing in a socially distanced line to get into a grocery store prompted me to see the street from an unfamiliar angle, revealing details I had never noticed: the new leaves appearing on the trees, the stucco on the wall next to me, the quality of light at that particular time of day. The people in front of me in line were not obstacles between me and the store but fellow travelers in a surreal historical moment. In short, I forgot about clock time and, for a moment before I went in, felt Pieper's "inability to understand" and his "recognition of the mysterious nature of the universe." (94)

A vertical axis of time

Joan Miro - Woman and Birds at Night

In her book, "Saving Time," Jenny Odell writes

Consider the difference between work-life balance and the notion of leisure outlined by the German-Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper in his 1948 book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. In work, he writes, time is horizontal, a pattern of froward-leaning labor time punctuated by gaps of rest that simply refresh us for more work. For Pieper, those little gaps are not leisure. True leisure, instead, exists on a "vertical" axis of time, one whose totality cuts through or negates the entire dimension of workaday time, "run[ning) at right angles to work." If such moments happen to refresh us for work, that is merely secondary. "Leisure does not exist for the sake of work," Pieper wrote, "however much strength it may give a man to work; the point of leisure is not to be a restorative, a pick-me-up, whether mental or physical; and though it give new strength, mentally and physically, and spiritually too, that is not the point." Pieper's distinction strikes an intuitive chord for me, as it probably does for anyone else who suspects that productivity is not the ultimate measure of the meaning or value of time. To imagine a different "point" means also imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside the world of work and profit.