Every book braids the thoughts of reader and author together to create something new

This article is the curation of a Zettelkasten note.

Permanent Note: Every book braids the thoughts of reader and author together to create new thoughts

Book: Braiding Sweetgrass
Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Quote: Preface page ix:

Linked by sweetgrass, there is reciprocity between you, linked by sweetgrass, the holder as vital as the braider.

Will you hold the bundle while I braid?

Fleeting Notes:

Reading a book is a communication between the author and the reader.

It is the author’s wish to allow the reader into his mind and think his thoughts, just not in the brain’s chaotic ways, but in the curated order of writing.

In a way, the author wants to braid your thoughts and theirs into one braid.

Working with a Zettelkasten, this is what the fleeting notes and literature notes are: Two strands of the braid.

With the fleeting notes you explore your own thoughts about the topic or quote.
With the literature notes you try to understand the author’s point of view.
The third strand of the braid is the Zettelkasten itself.

All the other notes that are in there provide a skeleton of thoughts, and you have to find out where the new permanent note will fit in. Where it will continue a conversation or a train of thought.

Once you insert the new crystallized permanent note, braided together from your thoughts, the author’s thoughts and your other notes, it becomes part of the web of your networked thoughts.

And then you can follow the strands and connect the synapses in your brain that are already existing in the form of ideas, permanent notes and trains of thoughts. What does this idea from one train of thought have to do with that other thing I’m interested in? Are there hidden analogies here?

And that’s what a Zettelkasten is supposed to do:
To braid different strands of thoughts and interests together to form new ideas, aha-moments, epiphanies and insight.