On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes
Ratings9
Average rating3.1
15
Ratings9
Average rating3.1
You are missing at least eighty percent of what is happening around you right now. You are missing what is happening in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. In marshalling your attention to these words, you are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that continues to bombard all of your senses. This ignorance is useful: indeed, we compliment it and call it concentration. It enables us to not just notice the shapes on the page, but to absorb them as intelligible words, phrases, ideas. Alas, we tend to bring this focus to every activity we do. In so doing, it is inevitable that we also bring along attention's companion: inattention to everything else. This book begins with that inattention. It is not a book about how to bring more focus to your reading of Tolstoy; it is not about how to multitask, attending to two or three or four tasks at once. It is not about how to avoid falling asleep at a public lecture, or at your grandfather's tales of boyhood misadventures. It is about attending to the joys of the unattended, the perceived 'ordinary'. Even when engaged in the simplest of activities - taking a walk around the block - we pay so little attention to most of what is right before us that we are sleepwalkers in our own lives. This book is about that walk around the block, and how to rediscover the extraordinary things that we are missing in our ordinary activities.
Reviews with the most likes.
I didn't make it too far into the book because I prefer my books, non-fiction or otherwise, to stick close to the story line and keep the plot moving. This was too much like the dump of a mind bouncing here, there, and everywhere. What the author was presenting from her walks was way too varied for my taste and she dove into each variation quite a bit.
I read this because it was on the TBR of a Goodreads friend who recently died. In honor of #jennyguy colvin.
An interesting read, unlike any other book I've read. Based on the description I received from a friend with regard to this book, I thought it was going to be different people all walking around the same block. It was instead, people walking around blocks that are close to them in proximity. But it's amazing how different the perceptions of people can be. The things that people notice are so different based on their own lived experiences, compared to someone else. It's like when you get a new car, or you're thinking about getting a new car. You never really saw that car before. But all of a sudden you notice that same make and model, wherever you go! Your perception of it is heightened, because of your exposure, your experience. Quite amazing, actually.
