'no substitute for living'

'It is said that thinking and reading and writing and talking about living is no substitute for living, except that thinking and reading and writing and talking are already life.

These marks on this page/screen are not "not natural".  Both these pecks on the page/screen and the pecks on the bird's nest (outside my window) are natural, where "natural" is a totalizing term for all that is, positively speaking, and which comes to us humans and individuals as most obvious in the most powerful "other" that humans deal with, which are the physical elements, external and internal.'

-Memento Vivere project rough notes, 12 Oct 2020, adapted