There's a difference between being slow and being still. Slowness is active — it means choosing to move at a pace that lets you notice things. Stillness is its own practice.

I keep coming back to the idea that most of what I rush through would be better if I let it take longer. Meals. Conversations. Decisions. The rush is rarely for a real reason.

"Not all those who wander are lost." — but also, some of us just need to sit down for a while.

• related: the concept of "slow media"
• related: why I started handwriting notes again

Not books about light literally, but books where the author pays such careful attention to how light falls on things that you start noticing it yourself afterward.

• In Praise of Shadows — Tanizaki
• The Rings of Saturn — Sebald
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost — Solnit

Still adding to this. There must be more.

Not travel destinations, exactly. More like: specific corners of places. A particular bench. A stairwell that smelled like something good. The way a certain square looks at dusk.

I want to write about these before they fade.

Just a seed for now. Something about how attention is the rarest thing we can give — to a person, to a task, to a place.

Still thinking.

A running list of things I want to remember that don't fit anywhere else.

• the smell of old bookshops in the morning
• how to fold a letter so the first thing you see when you open it is the ending
• that one recipe that always works
• certain words in other languages that don't translate