Revealing details I had never noticed

Joan Miro - Drawing Collage with a Hat

In "Saving Time," Jenny Odell writes

In interviews about my first book, How to Do Nothing, I was sometimes asked about the kinds of activities I would choose in order to "do nothing." That Pieper's leisure was a state of mind and not a place, product or service helped me understand the real reason it was hard to answer that question. I have experienced "leisure" while cooking, sorting soda. getting the mail, waiting for the bus, and especially riding the bus. If you have ever had a good trip on psychedelics, you know how something normally tedious and everyday, part of the horizontal realm of time, can switch into the vertical realm and become dizzying, fascinatingly alien.

One day during the pandemic, simply standing in a socially distanced line to get into a grocery store prompted me to see the street from an unfamiliar angle, revealing details I had never noticed: the new leaves appearing on the trees, the stucco on the wall next to me, the quality of light at that particular time of day. The people in front of me in line were not obstacles between me and the store but fellow travelers in a surreal historical moment. In short, I forgot about clock time and, for a moment before I went in, felt Pieper's "inability to understand" and his "recognition of the mysterious nature of the universe." (94)