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dogs can sniff up to seven times a second.
But, of course, no dog is polite or impolite. It is we who attribute these characteristics to them. Dogs are perfectly culturally ignorant.
everything visible has a history. It arrived at the spot where you found it at some time, was crafted or whittled or forged at some time, filled a certain role or existed for a particular function. It was touched by someone (or no one), and touches someone (or no one) now. It is evidence.
An expert can only indicate what she sees; it is up to your own head to tune your senses and your brain to see it. Once you catch that melody, and keep humming, you are forever changed. My initial walk now felt like the imprimatura for an oil painting: the very first layer of paint on a canvas, which lends something to future layers but will eventually be obliterated by them.
In some paintings, even heavy, Rembrandtian oil paintings, there are gaps where the base layer spread on the new canvas shines through, where it has not yet been altered by layers of oils and inks and colors. Those peeks at the imprimatura are not moments of laziness; the meaning of the gaps changes because the context around them has changed.
unpainted is now surrounded by smears of pinks and reds that form the nose, or the ear, or the eye of the subject of the portrait; the unpainted bit becomes the nostril, or the inner ear, or the corner of the eye—and will never be just a base layer again. My i...
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There is no mandate; only opportunity. Our culture fosters inattention; we are all creatures of that culture.
you, reader, are in a new culture, one that values looking. The unbelievable strata of trifling, tremendous things to observe are there for the observing. Look!
I don’t consider myself an expert on anything at all. Sometimes, though, others can see your fortes by contrast with their own.
overmuch.
“blooming, buzzing confusion”:
