Attention to how animals see us dissolves human-centered categories and anxiety

Evidence

Inevitably, I began to wonder what these birds see when they look at me. I assume they just see a human who for some reason pays attention to them. They don’t know what my work is, they don’t see progress—they just see recurrence, day after day, week after week. And through them, I am able to inhabit that perspective, to see myself as the human animal that I am, and when they fly off, to some extent, I can inhabit that perspective too, noticing the shape of the hill that I live on and where all of the tall trees and good landing spots are. I noticed that some ravens live half in and half out of the Rose Garden, until I realized that there is no “rose garden” to them. These alien animal perspectives on me and our shared world have provided me not only with an escape hatch from contemporary anxiety but also a reminder of my own animality and the animateness of the world I live in. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 102

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s project of defending Odell against the ‘withdrawal’ misreading: this is her position on attention as world-constitution — the crow ritual is not retreat but re-inhabitation of perspective. Pairs with the Deep Listening selections already in the library on sound perspective.
• ADDENDUM: Ties into the ‘Grafting & Growth’ tree essay via inhabiting a landscape’s shape — noticing hill form, tall trees, good landing spots is a non-human wayfinding/terrain schema.