about

Ergo is my initials, out of order. It happens to be two other things I would have chosen anyway: ἔργον — érgon, the Greek for work, deed, the thing actually made — and the Latin ergo, therefore. Work, and what follows from it.

Nautica comes from ναῦς, naus, ship, by way of the Latin nauticus: sailors, ships, navigation. Not arrival — navigation. The part where you are still deciding.

Why a compass that is wrong

Put together, the name is a compass that needs constant readjustment. That is the mark at the top of every page: a bearing needle sitting fourteen degrees off north, with north marked in plain sight anyway.

It is not a mistake in the drawing. An instrument that reads true forever is not an instrument, it is a decoration. The useful ones tell you where you actually are, which is usually a little off from where you meant to be, and they expect you to correct and keep going. Work is like that. So is everything else that changes, which is everything else.

So this site is notes taken from inside the work, while the reading is still uncertain — not from the far side, where every decision looks inevitable and every correction has been quietly edited out.

More here in time. The index is where the writing goes.