to be a human in the information age is to be surrounded by rectangles. i am typing this message on a rectangle. you are reading it on a rectangle. if you put them under a microscope, you would find that the letters themselves (and the space between them) are made of tiny rectangles. and even if you were to write them with a pencil, odds are you would write them onto a rectangle. in a room made of rectangles. in a building made of rectangles. on a street made of rectangles. we keep all of our knowledge in one series of rectangles. and before that, we kept them in another series of rectangles. you exchange your labor for rectangles. of course these days most don't carry many of those rectangles in their pockets. the bank stores those rectangles and provides you a single rectangle to represent them all, which you keep in a sleeve in a rectangle that you must never lose, as it also contains the rectangle the state uses to confirm your identity. to participate in democracy, you must have a rectangle. to leave the country, you must have a rectangle.
nature produces very few rectangles. you know where man has tried to conquer nature because there, you will find rectangles. what we call "liminal spaces" are spaces where rectangles feel inescapable. it makes us uncomfortable because we love to escape rectangles. when we say we're "getting away", much of what we're getting away from is rectangles. the absence of rectangles recharges the spirit.
but, sadly, we cannot stay. we have many very important rectangles to get back to.
no single element of nature is more excited to convey its essential shape, base-scale than minerals imo
it's everything else that insists on "conforming to conditions" and "being subject to gravity" and all that
