間Ma

序— a preface

間A notebookthat waits.

間(ma) is the Japanese word for the space between two things — the pause in a phrase, the gap between stones in a garden, the silence before a bell. It is where meaning lives.

Ma is a note-taking application built around that idea. A room for thought, swept clean every morning. A second brain that does not try to be a first brain.

Begin→The practice
01one thought per page.
one page per thought.
02plain text. local disk.
no kingdom in the cloud.
03no streak. no notification.
no gamified remembering.
一

practice

the daily form

Ma asks only one thing of you: that you open it. There is no sidebar, no onboarding, no colour. Only a page, its date, and the thin grey margin of the day.

You write — a sentence, a name, a reminder, an overheard phrase — and close the window. Later, when a thought on Wednesday echoes a thought from February, Ma will set them on the same shelf, without announcement.

The app is designed to be forgotten. What is remembered is what you wrote.

水曜日Wed · 14.IV.26

the space between two things is a thing in itself. stones in a garden — it is the distance between them that you are meant to see.

— on ma, and why one should not fill the page.

·#garden #form·
一枚— a single page, at rest.
二

objects

五つの道具 · five tools
  1. 紙
    kamithe page

    A single blank, every morning. Write what is present. The app remembers the date, and the season, and the weather, so you don't have to.

  2. 糸
    itothe thread

    Notes that share a phrase draw gently toward one another. You may trace the thread back as far as you have written.

  3. 鏡
    kagamithe mirror

    Once a month, ma offers you a small mirror: the five sentences you wrote that still seem to be asking something. Nothing more.

  4. 箱
    hakothe box

    A plain folder on your own machine. Your notes are text. When you leave ma, they will still be text, and they will still be yours.

  5. 鐘
    kanethe bell

    One quiet bell a day, at an hour you set. Not a reminder. An invitation to pause, to put down the phone, and to write one thing.

「

The best rooms are the ones you can leave.
The best notebooks are the ones you can close.

」

— ma, a prospectus

四

invitation

Ma is available for macOS, Linux and Windows. It costs what you feel it is worth, from zero to the price of a good meal.

We will send one letter. It will be quiet. You may stop it with one reply.