Annie Dillard on noticing

I knew what I was doing at Paw-Paw:  I was beginning the lifelong task of tuning my own gauges. I was there to brace myself for leaving.  I was having my childhood.  But I was haunting it, as well, practically reading it, and preventing it.  How much noticing could I permit myself without driving myself round the bend?  Too much noticing and I was too self-conscious to live; I trapped and paralyzed myself, and dragged my friends down with me, so we couldn't meet each other's...