Begging Presence

Danielle Dutton writes, "Viktor Shklovsky argues that we perpetually grow habituated to everything around us- "Habituation devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war.."—and that the job of art is to make the world strange so that we might see it again rather than simply recognizing it out of habit.

Only presence and attention can reawaken us to the textures we’ve grown blind to.

If we can’t practice presence—if we forget how to return to it again and again—we succumb to novelty to feel alive. New people. New lovers. New projects. New highs.
The brain forgets. The pace of life pushes us along. And we forget why we love what we love.

When we cannot be still in the grocery store line—fingertips grazing chocolate bars, basking in the plasticky scent of checkout—we lose.

We lose each moment there is a split between what we are experiencing and what we are thinking about.

If our nervous systems stay frayed—if we double-fist our screens and blast songs in rare moments of silence—then even the laugh of a friend will pale in comparison, the warmth of a pet goes unregistered.
Even our own joy will start to sound like background noise.

Dysregulation tunes us to a frequency where life’s quiet joys can’t reach us. The threshold for awe and presence lowers, while the threshold for chaos, fear, and adrenaline grows wider and wider.

Take a moment here. Can you tune in to the breath hitting your upper lip? Is it warm? Cooler than you expected? Are you warm? Can you feel the shape of your body in the seat you’re in? Can you sense that you are always held—by the chair, the ground, the environment rushing up to meet you? Can you do all this?
Have you read this far? Or are you already onto the next thing?