Ahmad Hijazi · Monthly Marginalia
From the
Margins.
Ideas & Connections
October 2026 / 7 notes
Three films related to OTS, a couple of ideas, and three books.
This month, in the margins
![8 1/2 [Fellini]](https://ahijazi.website/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/image-300x300.png)
01 · Film
8 1/2 [Fellini]
8½ | Federico Fellini | Italy, 1963Keywords: Metafiction, Creation, Identity, Fragmentation, Beauty, Reconciliation A filmmaker struggles to create a masterpiece while memories, dreams, desires and contradictory identities overwhelm his vision. His inability to construct a coherent work becomes the work itself. This film was…
02 · Film
A Ghost Story
A GHOST STORY | David Lowery | United States, 2017Keywords: Loss, Lingering, Memory, Recurrence, Time, Transcendence A dead man remains in his home as a silent ghost, witnessing love, loss and centuries of transformation. An intimate meditation on what survives when everything familiar disappears. The courage or cowardice…
03 · Book
Affective Neuroscience
“Before We Know… We Care” Book: Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, Jaak Panksepp (1998) Keywords: Affect, Emotion, SEEKING, Motivation, Evolution, Agency, Identity Panksepp explores the biological foundations of emotions, identifying seven primary emotional systems in mammalian brains…
04 · Film
Kurusawa’s Dreams (1990)
Keywords: Dreams, Symbolism, Folklore, Beauty, Art, War, Hierarchy, Mortality, Tranquility. The eight dreams, in sequence: (1) Sunshine Through the Rain; (2) The Peach Orchard; (3) The Blizzard; (4) The Tunnel; (5) Crows; (6) Mount Fuji in Red; (7) The Weeping Demon; (8) The Village of the Water Mills…
On Innovation, Investment, and Impact… Innovation: The creation and successful application of something new that produces value. Technological novelty, spectacle, and innovation are not necessarily the same thing. Elon Musk’s new Tesla Roadster took the headlines a couple of days back. It can leap into the air (for…
Creativity & Innovation / Intent & Human Agency / Self, Culture, Mind
06 · Book
B = A + E
In Fuzzy on the Dark Side, the above formula recurs to describe how our representations (B) of reality (A) inevitably contain an error (for so many reasons). So we have : B = A + E Applied in so many ways: Busyness = Productivity + E Credentials =…
Approximate Thinking / Intent & Human Agency / Self, Culture, Mind / Books
Kate Crosby recovers a forgotten Buddhist tradition linking meditation, alchemy, medicine, and generative grammar. Its decline reveals how cultures lose integrated knowledge systems, and how political power shapes what counts as legitimate knowledge. Reflections on Kate Crosby’s: “Esoteric Theravada: The Story of the Forgotten…