Permission to Linger
On the magic of seeing things differently
When my husband and I go on walks together we notice completely different things. He points to the flowers, the trees, the grasses (because he can distinguish one kind from another!). He tells me the names of plants, their preferred climate, their varieties and the color of their blooms. I squint to look into house windows, at the details of a passerby’s face, the way their forehead scrunches under the brim of a baseball cap. He hears the birds, I overhear conversations, reporting to him on the bickering between a couple walking their off-leash dachshunds. Sometimes I joke that our walks are just an opportunity for Jared to identify plants at me. But, truthfully, I mostly like it (ha!). I like that we can be in the exact same context and experience it so differently. That he brings me out of my view and into his. For me it’s a reminder that no two lenses are the same. When we debrief after a party (do all couples do this?), I’m surprised by his interpretation of a conversation we participated in together. “You didn’t notice the glare she shot him?” I ask. No, he didn’t. But I didn’t notice the art he liked in the guest bathroom. Through our respective worldviews, even the same context is different.
In Jenny Odell’s book How To Do Nothing (I can’t stop referencing it, can I?), she discusses two art projects that have me thinking a lot about how we attune and orient our attention. First is a 1973 public art project by Eleanor Coppola titled Windows. The project was a map of 54 windows to look through across San Francisco (gawd, I love looking through windows!!). Coppola considered these windows visual landmarks and her purpose in curating the map was to “bring to the attention of the whole community that art exists in its own context.” As Jenny writes, “the piece casts a subtle frame over the city as itself a work of art.” The second piece that Odell discusses is titled Applause Encouraged (2015) by Scott Polach. In this project, eight theater style seats were roped off and set at the edge of a cliff at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego. Eight guests were ushered to their seats just before sunset. No phones were permitted and together they watched the sky turn dark. Afterward they applauded. Refreshments were served. What I love about these pieces, maybe obviously, is they sharpen our attention toward the familiar. They create pause. They make the same old contexts new again. They pull us out of our daily myopia. They illuminate the power of a reframe.
I’ve been making sourdough! And unexpectedly, I LOVE. TO DO IT! I’ve always considered baking kind of a bummer: too mathematical, too precise. But guess what? I have a kitchen scale now, and a starter that I feed weekly, and I truly can’t stop making bread. I love to shape the dough, to stretch it and fold it, to watch it rise and take shape, to wet my finger tips before I scoop it out of the mixing bowl and onto a floured cutting board. It just feels good. And, there is also the oft discussed benefit of being a beginner.
The discomfort of getting really confused. Wait, I feed the starter two days before I bake the bread?
The frustration. Cue me running out of flour mid recipe.
The slow and then backwards progress. My third loaf was great, my fourth…I forgot the salt!
The mistake making until you arrive at more ease and clarity.
The intoxicating feeling when you start to improve!
But, what I really love about it is the way it shifts my attention toward the granular. Odell says the attention economy (online platforms that hijack and profit from our attention), remove us from the sphere of granularity. Imagine the person walking with eyes fixed on their phone. They look up, noticing the sunset and snap a photo. They post and keep walking, face buried back in the screen. Or the anxiety-inducing boredom of just sitting on a bench in an empty park. The attention economy has weakened our ability to attend to our real life surroundings. Our attention is perpetually dulled. We see things in broad sweeps, low res. Sourdough brings me back into high resolution living, like when my daughters stare eternally into a spiderweb.
I’ve been listening to the song I Don’t Do Anything by Olivia Barton. I just noticed the similarity to Odell’s book title, lol! Anyway, here are the lyrics.
“How’s the music going? / When is your next show in town? /Have you been writing lately? My friend’s playing Friday, you should come out.
Thanks for asking. / Yeah, it’s going. / Nothing on the books yet. . Writing is laborious. Not sure what I’m doing Friday, but I’ll try to make it.
I don’t do anything you think I do
How is being in love? /Aren’t you like totally gay now? /You two are so cute. I’m living vicariously through you. / Oh, you’re so sweet. / Ya, she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. / I wish it were that easy. / There’s some shit with her family and I’ve been a bitch lately, but everything is great. I guess it’s hard to complain.
We don’t do anything you think we do. I drive down the highway thinking everybody is going somewhere more important than anywhere I’d go right now, but I’m sure that you don’t do anything I think you do.”
I don’t know. I just love these lyrics. A reminder that we don’t know anyone else’s life. Even though I am sometimes struck with envy when my neighbor glides peacefully by our house with her four children waddling quietly behind her while mine seem to zig zag chaotically all around me…you know… “I don’t do anything you think I do.” And “You don’t do anything I think you do,” either. My imaginings of what it’s like to be you are woefully limited and inaccurate. Even when Jared narrates our walks - the walks we are on together, at the same moment, in the same exact place - I can't get behind his eyes. And he can’t get behind mine.
But, I guess we can look differently than we have been, we can sharpen, we can shift the direction of our gaze, we can look closer and longer. We can do better than just a glance. Scrolling past scenery like we scroll past Instagram photos. We can linger.
Here is a poem by
I can’t stop reading!
And here is another one I came across dog eared in a book at an Airbnb.
Okay, love ya!
Stephanie
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I see a lot of couples in my town to go for walks together, and I’m always kind of jealous. When I drag my husband out for a hike, I love how observant he is, and the things he sees that I would have missed. You write so beautifully about this!