Field notes on things that run themselves
Start here
The Standing Wave is a publication about self-sustaining systems — the loops, cycles, and standing patterns that hold their shape while everything inside them flows through and leaves. One issue, one system, explained as clearly and as beautifully as I can manage.
The newest issue sits on the home page, but the latest one isn’t the best way in — whichever of these three pulls you is. Read one; the rest of the series rhymes with it.
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The Most Durable Things Are the Least Solid
Where it starts: a candle flame, and the whole idea in miniature — a shape that survives only by letting its substance burn away.
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A World That Drinks Its Own Rain
The one people email about: a sealed bottle garden, undisturbed for decades — a whole living world running on nothing but light.
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A Leak That Keeps Time
The one that’s about you: your heartbeat, a rhythm the heart makes for itself and would keep making in a dish on a bench.
Or just begin at the beginning — Issue No. 1 → — and read forward. Every issue ends by naming the next.