Once attention has individualized a place it cannot revert to blankness

Evidence

As I came to know my bioregion, I found myself increasingly identifying with a totemic complex of fellow inhabitants: Western fence lizards, California towhees, gray pines, manzanita, thimble-berries, giant sequoias, poison oak. When I travel, I no longer feel like I’ve arrived until I have “met” the local bioregion by walking around, observing what grows there, and learning something about the indigenous history of that place (which, in all too many places, is the last record of people engaging in any meaningful way with the bioregion). Interestingly, my experience suggests that while it initially takes effort to notice something new, over time a change happens that is irreversible. Redwoods, oaks, and blackberry shrubs will never be “a bunch of green.” A towhee will never simply be “a bird” to me again, even if I wanted it to be. And it follows that this place can no longer be any place. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 429

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reader’s definition of attention as world-constitution: specificity of attention yields irreversibility of world.
• SEED: Angle: attention as an irreversible commitment — noticing is not neutral but binds you to a place, with consequences for where you can call ‘anyplace.’