On attention

I caught myself highlighting Buber’s I and Thou and understood, too late, that the highlighting was the very thing he was warning me about. To mark the sentence is to turn the You back into an It, to convert a moment of presence into something “describable, analyzable, classifiable.” My instrument for holding the encounter is exactly what ends it. This belongs next to the older note that I keep a journal to let my thoughts pass, which makes my main tool for letting go also a machine for holding on.

I keep a journal precisely to set my thoughts down so they can pass, which makes my main instrument for letting go also a machine for holding on.

My best questions arrive while I’m driving, which is backwards: driving is the task and thinking is supposed to be the distraction. Somehow the hands-and-eyes occupation frees the rest, and the thing I am “doing” becomes the cover for the thing actually happening. I wonder how much of my real work has been done in the disguise of doing something else.