In his compendium of pithy statements, On Thought, Abba Evagrius Ponticus (345-399) makes the claim that thoughts cut. Thoughts cause into being trajectories of further thought that, in turn, influence actions and behavior patterns (for good or evil). These trajectories can be caused to swerve in new directions by the intervention of new thoughts. Thoughts cut across thoughts. Similar patterns of trajectory and interruption define our lives today. In our world of ever-increasing acceleration and algorithm-driven circulations, fragments of data, images, and ideas interrupt the trajectories of our concrete day-to-day lives, and often go on to entrap us within circular loops of repetitive behavior, on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. Whereas for Evagrius and his contemporaries the functions of the pithy and the cut were to open up the self to the apophatic presence of the always already other than, the pithy and the cut are used today to keep the self within endless repetitions of more of the same. Religion, too, seems caught up in this. Believers now have apps, like Hallow. Prayer, sacred reading, and spiritual direction are mediated not by a spiritual father or mother, but by an algorithm that promises spiritual profits but is programed to increase corporate wealth. Comfort and ease have become the new criteria for what counts. Using Evagrius' claim as a primary clue, the paper first presents the aesthetics of the cut and the function of the pithy as practiced by the Desert Fathers and Mothers. The paper then lays out ways in which an alternate aesthetic of the cut functions today, in and through contemporary media. Framed against today's fragmentation of culture and its fixation on acceleration and change, the paper finally suggests a possible path forward, by using Evagrius' aesthetic of the cut to cut across and change the trajectories of contemporary entrapment.