Notes on Noticing

I keep a note on my phone called things with no current purpose. It is the most useful document I own.

It contains a bus conductor humming the same four notes between stops. A man carrying flowers with the solemnity of a legal document. The sentence, “I did not know the sea could be so tired,” overheard near a tea stall.

None of this is a song. Not yet.

Attention before meaning

There is a temptation to turn every observation into a metaphor immediately. To make the rain stand for grief before it has even reached the ground. I am trying to let things remain themselves for longer.

A cracked cup is allowed to be a cracked cup. A missed train can simply be a missed train. Meaning has a way of arriving after it is no longer being chased.

A short list

1. People lower their voices when they say something true.
2. Every neighborhood has one dog with excellent timing.
3. The final light in a building is almost always in a kitchen.
4. We apologize to furniture when we walk into it.
5. A remembered smell is faster than a remembered face.
6. Nobody looks graceful while searching for their keys.
7. Most endings are only changes in volume.

The work, perhaps, is to keep enough empty space around a thing that it can tell you what it is.