Rationale for The Book of Uncertainty

homage fragments assembly

“Luck, aesthetic luck included, is just the ability to exploit accidents... I found myself praying for the angel of uncertainty.” —Sally Mann, Hold Still

This is a blog with aspirations. They are equally lofty and mundane, about something and yet about nothing. Mostly this is a blog about uncertainty, as it appears in the world in general, and in design processes and products, buildings and landscapes, drawings and imagery, and sentences and writing.

The title of this blog is The Book of Uncertainty.

The whole project is a shameless, direct act of theft and homage, both directed at Fernando Pessoa, author of the astonishing posthumously published work, The Book of Disquiet. Like its inspiration, the project is based on the accumulation of fragments over an extended period of time. Unlike that book, these fragments may be text, sketches, hand drawings, photographs, scans or other forms of writing or image.

The Book has no fixed subject beyond uncertainty, which by definition must remain uncertain and only provisionally resolved at any given point in time.

You might say that each fragment is a temporary, limited, provisional resolution of points of uncertainty: a fixed but ephemeral moment with uncertain precursors, which may lead to uncertain outcomes. Yes, that is a good way to understand the seeds that make up this blog.

The Project was formally commenced 10 December 2021, following 13 previous years of regular blogging. It will continue indefinitely. Explore the project pages to learn more about Pessoa and the ideas underpinning this life-long project.

 Verso

In these random impressions, and with no desire to be other than random, I indifferently narrate my factless autobiography, my lifeless history. These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, fragment 12

 Recto

What makes us yawn, which we call boredom, what makes us fidget and is known as discomfort, and what makes us practically immobile, namely weariness – none of these things is tedium; but neither is tedium the profound sense of life’s emptiness that causes frustrated ambition to surface, disappointed longings to rise up, and the seed to be planted in the soul of the future mystic or saint.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, fragment 381