Embedding-derived clusters across the full corpus
These 30 clusters come from running the full ~2,000-piece writing corpus — not just the pieces selected for this portfolio — through a topic-embedding model and grouping by proximity. They surface the shapes and recurring obsessions the curation above doesn't capture on its own: threads that never got collected into a project, ideas revisited across decades, whole unwritten books hiding in the archive.
11 clusters read like the outline of a book that was never assembled.
Eighty-nine pieces of verse and fragment, 1993–2007, from 'When the hills are burning bright' to 'Purpose.' No capstone because no collection was ever assembled: this is the chapbook that never happened.
Permaculture, waste, environmental hypocrisy — 1999 to 2021, mostly before ecology became a schools metaphor. The ecology book that predates the education book, still unwritten.
Forty-five love-tagged pieces across 1994–2021, from college verse to 'Focusing On Love.' A love-writing collection exists here in scattered form.
From 1993 college essays to the 'Thoughts on Money & Poverty' series: a sustained, structural account of poverty that already has a series skeleton and no book.
A buried fiction serial — 'Chronicles of Crispin' and its satellites, 1993–2017. The novel-shaped object in the corpus; the strongest fiction-revival candidate.
The travel chronicles, 1999–2012: 'Fotos,' 'Coming Home,' 'Mundanity.' With c22 and c28, a complete travel memoir exists in pieces — the clearest unwritten book after the poetry.
'To Live,' 'You' — loss written across 27 years, 1994–2021, plus the 2020–2023 father pieces beyond this cluster. The hardest and most complete unwritten book here.
The on-the-ground travel writing — 'Parque Nacional del Café,' 'Fincas y el Futuro.' Companion half of the travel memoir.
School buildings, air, light, acoustics, design, 2012–2025. This is the book Mark publicly said he'd started — its three finished chapters (acoustics, greenery, air quality) are in this portfolio. The most already-written unwritten book.
Buses, cars, traffic, roads — 'The Trip to Santa Marta,' 'On the Road to NYC.' Third panel of the travel memoir.
Rahsaan Patterson, copyright, album lists, 'Zen Industrialized,' 2001–2009. Thin but real: the music-critic book that stopped in 2009 — and the seam the Music Jukebox bridge could reopen.
Fifteen years of arguing with education reform, from 'A New Approach to Sustainable School Reform' (2013) onward. No single capstone — but this is the constellation the Schools as Ecosystems anthology already harvested.
Testing, standards, and professional judgement, anchored by 'On Threshold Concepts and Experiences.' The skeptical-practitioner seam of the reform writing.
Segregation and integration in NYC and beyond — 'Integrating NYC's Public Schools,' 'An Editorial on Societal Culpability for Have-Nots.' Capstoned oddly by a venture-capital piece; the real anchor is the whole seam.
Eighty-nine pieces of verse and fragment, 1993–2007, from 'When the hills are burning bright' to 'Purpose.' No capstone because no collection was ever assembled: this is the chapbook that never happened.
Bush, Obama, war, and American self-regard, 2002–2018. Topical by nature — a time capsule rather than a book.
Permaculture, waste, environmental hypocrisy — 1999 to 2021, mostly before ecology became a schools metaphor. The ecology book that predates the education book, still unwritten.
The philosophical spine: existence, identity, interconnectedness, from 'Vision Logic' to 'Grappling With This.' Feeds every other cluster; too diffuse to be its own volume.
Forty-five love-tagged pieces across 1994–2021, from college verse to 'Focusing On Love.' A love-writing collection exists here in scattered form.
The freewrite habit itself — 'Part III 1/2,' 'On and Off' — three decades of warming up the instrument.
From 1993 college essays to the 'Thoughts on Money & Poverty' series: a sustained, structural account of poverty that already has a series skeleton and no book.
A data artifact: image-caption and link-share posts clustered by their boilerplate ('image contains description'). Not a theme — a format.
Despair fought with self-awareness — 'Complacency is the Enemy of All that Lives.' The motivational-interior register.
The core metaphor worked in public — 'Socially Resilient Heirloom Schools,' 'Schools as Ecosystems as an International Framework.' The anthology's home territory.
The active seam: reading science, language development, LLMs — capstoned by 'Language—like reading—may not be innate.' This book is currently writing itself at languageandliteracy.blog.
Early existential pieces on fear, perception, and the social self, 1993–2016.
A buried fiction serial — 'Chronicles of Crispin' and its satellites, 1993–2017. The novel-shaped object in the corpus; the strongest fiction-revival candidate.
Complex-systems thinking applied to brains and schools, capstoned by 'How Can We Mitigate the Errors in Our Minds?' Bridges the ecosystems and cognition seams.
Teaching's emotional interior — relationships, therapeutic environments, special education.
Updates, equilibrium, why-am-I-writing posts. The corpus watching itself; source material for any memoir but not a book alone.
The travel chronicles, 1999–2012: 'Fotos,' 'Coming Home,' 'Mundanity.' With c22 and c28, a complete travel memoir exists in pieces — the clearest unwritten book after the poetry.
College literature essays — Pynchon, postmodernism, long essays. Apprenticeship work; the interesting ones are already in the portfolio.
'To Live,' 'You' — loss written across 27 years, 1994–2021, plus the 2020–2023 father pieces beyond this cluster. The hardest and most complete unwritten book here.
The on-the-ground travel writing — 'Parque Nacional del Café,' 'Fincas y el Futuro.' Companion half of the travel memoir.
Tahoe to New York and back through every move — 'Anniversary of My Arrival,' 'Leaving Tahoe.' The geography of the life.
School buildings, air, light, acoustics, design, 2012–2025. This is the book Mark publicly said he'd started — its three finished chapters (acoustics, greenery, air quality) are in this portfolio. The most already-written unwritten book.
Meta-posts, year-enders, posting-month announcements. Scaffolding, not writing.
Guns, wildfire, family memory. Small but dense memoir cluster.
Cultural and political reckonings — Trayvon Martin antecedents, David Foster Wallace. Occasional pieces.
Buses, cars, traffic, roads — 'The Trip to Santa Marta,' 'On the Road to NYC.' Third panel of the travel memoir.
Rahsaan Patterson, copyright, album lists, 'Zen Industrialized,' 2001–2009. Thin but real: the music-critic book that stopped in 2009 — and the seam the Music Jukebox bridge could reopen.