Author: Jack Fuzz

Don’t forget the narration

November 15th, 2025

Unfortunate are the adventures which are never narrated.

– Penelope Fitzgerald

I haven’t read any of her novels yet, but Hermione Lee’s Penelope Fitzgerald biography is a gem. It’s about carrying on, even during life’s foibles and kicks to the shins.

Especially encouraging if you’re trying to cobble some unorthodox life together.

So how to narrate your adventures then? Keep a journal. Snap a photo each day. Blog. Record a lyric into your phone. Something.

Keep going.

Lee, Hermione. Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life. United States, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. pg 123
An ugly world no more?

November 8th, 2025

Every technology becomes obsolete and outdated, but a good esthetic, even if fashions change can never become obsolete. It is definitionally timeless.

Sheehan Quirke

When people ramble about the ills of the internet I think of Sheehan Quirke. He’s a man who wouldn’t be here without the internet. He’s a man who makes the internet great. This video is one example.

The internet is his fuel and platform. Without it we’d be robbed of his curiosity and wonder.

A few nods to Wes Anderson in this video also. I saw it.

Inspiring throughout.

A brief candle

November 1st, 2025

                                                                                            
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle,
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

- Macbeth

Another poetic passage that stood alone. A moment before, Seyton tells Macbeth that Lady Macbeth is dead. His response isn’t sorrow, but rather a stoic shrug.

Who knows life and death like Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), 5.5.21.

Washed in Neptune’s Ocean

October 25th, 2025
```
                                                                                             Whence is that knocking?
How is't with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here? Ha: they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
 clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green, one red.

- Macbeth
```
You can never go wrong with a Shakespeare entry in your commonplace book. Often the memorable lines aren’t the famous ones. Capture the ones that make you pause. That you need to re-read because they don’t make sense. Or because they’re striking.

Striking is a fine reason too.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2015), 2.2.66.
Who’s a philosopher?

October 18th, 2025

We should not be impressed by anybody who describes themselves, or is described, as a ‘philosospher’, and should recognise that many who are never called it might be that very thing. That brooding bartender, the distant cousin who makes curios comments, the cab driver saying things that make your ‘ragged Ronts all shiver and shake’ – any or all of these might be a philospher. Even You-Tubers, bearded or otherwise! I am not making this up. Any attempt to gather people who have been called a ‘philosopher’ and work out what they have in common yields one answer: it was not what they studied, what they believed, or when they lived – it was simply that they thought, and thought well.

– Sheehan Quirke

I sympathize with this sentiment. That one doesn’t need an academic degree to be considered a philosopher. Or that it’s knitted only to one type profession. But how does one “think” well. We’ve all thought. Is thought well the memorization of facts? Is it generating new ideas? Or is it an apprenticeship of deep research on specfic topic?

Maybe Opus 4.1 has an answer. Enjoying this book though. Self recommended. Deserves more love and buzz.

Sheehan Quirke, The Cultural Tutor: Forty-Nine Lessons You Wish You’d Learned at School (London: Viking, 2025), 83,84.
Summer’s end. Autumn’s perfection.

September 27th, 2025
```
And because our summers were always ending, and because they lasted forever, we grew impatient with our games, we sought new and more intense ones; and as the crickets of August grew louder, and a single red leaf appeared on branches green with summer, we threw ourselves as if desperately into new adventures, while the long days, never changing, grew heavy with boredom and longing. 
```
From one of my favorite short stories Flying Carpets, by Steven Millhauser. It might be my favorite short story. Is there any other description of summer so true, going to fall so true, that has ever been put on the page? I doubt it.

Maybe Thoreau?

Steven Millhauser, The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (New York: Crown Publishers, 1998), 77.

Does it curd thy blood?

September 13th, 2025

That were enwombèd mine. 'Tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds.
You ne'er oppressed me with a mother's groan,
Yet I express to you a mother's care.
God's mercy, maiden does it curd thy blood
To say I am thy mother? What's the matter,
That this distemperèd messenger of wet,
The many colored Iris, rounds thine eye?
Why? that you are my daughter?

                                                                                     - Countess

There are moments when reading Shakespeare where the dialogue hits you. And you admit, oh this is why he’s the greatest writer of all time.

Shakespeare, William. All’s Well That Ends Well. Edited by Claire McEachern. The Pelican Shakespeare. New York: Penguin Books, 2019. pg20

King of Games

September 12th, 2025

Christopher became obsessed with cricket almost overnight. So did Oneir. “It’s the King of Games,” Oneir said devoutly, and went and bought every book on the subject he could afford. He and Christopher decided they were going to be professional cricketers when they grew up. “And my father’s business can just go hang!” Oneir said.

I was unsure about this book. Too many cat references. I wasn’t sure where the story was taking me. But oh the cricket bits saved it. And here, Diana Wynn Jones recreates that feeling of first discovering something you’re going to obsess over the rest of your days.

Jones, Diana Wynne. The Lives of Christopher Chant. United Kingdom: HarperCollins Publishers Limited, 2008. pg110,111
So the astronomers soul

August 31st, 2025

Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet–no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.

As read from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The “knack” is typically a trait linked with natural ability, not diligence and attention.

In the movie “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” Ricky Baker and his foster uncle, Hec get lost in the New Zealand bush. They split up to find food. The boy, raised in the city can’t catch a thing worth eating. Hec, played by Sam Neill catches a catfish with ease.

They eat.

They sit by the fire.

Ricky Baker asks Hec: “How did you catch that fish?” Hec replies. “I don’t know, I have the knack.” (all paraphrased.)

Don’t dismiss the “knack”.

Don’t dismiss diligence and attention.
Do your best

August 28th, 2025

“Do the best fucking job you can and slay it.”

– Tom Sachs

Finding your destiny is step after step after step. Plenty of what you don’t want to do mixed with more of what you don’t want to do. Choose to love your task. A difficult but rewarding approach.

Slay it.