Tomorrow it will be August! So once again, it’s time for Savor of the Month!

For newcomers:

At the start of every month I announce one specific thing or theme to look out for, pay attention to, appreciate. The idea is to convert something everyday and taken for granted into something we might, yes, savor.

And every month I create a chat thread where TAoN Supporters can share what you are noticing, or enjoy what others have noticed, in connection with the current theme. Supporters can post pictures, drawings, written observations, whatever works for you. Or just browse!

Themes so far:

Doors (results here) * Pink (results here) * Flaws (results here) * Rust (results here) * Public Text (results here) * Calm (results here) * Treasure (results here) * Winter (results here) * Mysteries (results here) * Outliers (results here) * Ornamentation (results here) * Everyday Artists (results here) * Reflections (results here) * Contrast (results here) * The Temporary (results here; related audio essay here) * Wind (results here) * Circles (results here) * Small Flowers (results here) * Shadows (results here)

For August, the subject is NUMBERS. Below, I’ll say a little more about this, and about why I chose this subject, but in short: Be attentive to NUMBERS as you go about your days in the month ahead.

The thread is open.

This month’s back story:

Read more

For a while now I’ve been pondering this essay, sent to me by artist/writer/educator and dear friend of TAoN Amy C. Evans. It describes an approach to poetry that entails a very particular method of observation and attention.

The essay’s author is Roohola Ramezani, a writer with a background in philosophy. He decided that his writing students might benefit from an approach that borrows from phenomenology, “the philosophical tradition that begins with the simple but radical idea that we should attend to things as they appear before we explain them.”

What his students had been doing was the opposite, writing poetry about what an object (such as a coffee mug or a hoodie) allegedly “meant,” without truly seeing — let alone revealing — what it really was. So he devised a two-part procedure. First students had to create a “not list,” a litany of things they could not write about a given object: its name, function, history, any “abstract adjectives,” etc. The idea was to prohibit writing about anything outside the object’s physical self. This process of stripping away context led to the nickname the Naked Object Workshop.

The second stage of the workshop was the “is list.” Students spent ten full minutes regarding their subject-object strictly in terms of “what appeared to their senses: how light hit the object, how it resisted or yielded to touch, how it changed as they watched it.” Only then did they write a short poem on the object, drawing on the “is list.” Ramezani writes:

The first drafts were awkward and electric. One student, writing about a pair of glasses, produced lines like, “Two thin moons press against my face / leaving small dents of heat.” Another, describing a hoodie, wrote, “A dark cave that smells like last week / holds my arms in soft shadow.” They were not trying to be poetic. They were trying to be accurate.

For many, it was the first time they had felt that poetry could emerge from looking rather than performing.

Ramezani went on to have the students move their new practice from focusing on a single object into the world and their experiences — again shaped by the not/is exercises — and create “phenomenological poems about walking down the hallway, about breathing after running up the stairs, about sitting in the cafeteria during lunch.”

If you are at all interested in the additional processes and thinking specifically related to writing poetry, read the whole essay, which won The Bechtel Prize. It’s great.

But for TAoN purposes, I want to land on this idea of “naked” attention. Can you apply that in your everyday? Can you strip observation of an object, place, experience, to its concrete basics? How might that affect what you observe? How might it effect how you observe?

From Ramezani’s essay:

What students were really learning was that perception is not passive. The mug wasn’t just “there.” It was edge against air, warmth against skin, shadow shifting as they watched. Their attention created the object anew each time they looked.

Or as one of his students said: “I feel like I can write about anything now, because everything has something to notice.” Yes.

Try to apply these ideas in your creative practice or your day-to-day, and tell me (us) what you think.

Leave a comment

THANKS Amy!

And a note: Ramezani is Iranian, and apparently remains, writing, in Tehran. Join me in wishing safety to him, his students past and present, and all of their loved ones; peace to them all from this violent chaos.

BECOME A SUPPORTER

Do you believe in this newsletter’s mission — to help us all stay human and engaged and creative in a world of (mis)information overload and endless distraction? Then you should join the community of TAoN Supporters!

You’ll get access to the full archives as well as Supporter-only bonus posts and threads. Your support makes this newsletter possible. Seriously. Thank you!

Subscribe now

THE NEXT FREE EDITION IN TWO WEEKS!

IN OTHER NEWS

• Jenna Schnuer kindly mentions TAoN in her article on travel journaling in The New York Times. Nice piece!

• The return of Uni Watch

• On complimenting strangers, by Jami Attenberg

• Moist Towelette Online Museum. Via Kottke

• Photos of sad English soccer fans

• Knuckle Duster That Looks Like Broccoli. Added to the Things That Look Like Other Things collection

• Worthwhile essay on Doonesbury and the Trudeau bio

• Old pal of TAoN Jack Crager has a cool piece on a cool subject: Lenny Kaye

• Free payphones in Portland. I love this! The Magnet reports

• Scottish Rural Post Offices in the 1970s

  ---

  OKAY THAT’S IT!

• As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

• —> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.

Share The Art of Noticing

And thanks for reading …
rw

All this by Rob Walker (unless otherwise noted) PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032.

—> Send me mail! I’ll give a three-month free trial to the Supporter version of TAoN to any current free subscriber who snail-mails me a request (include your email address).

To unsubscribe see the bottom of the email, or go here.

Today a quick word of praise for an excellent project, from one of my favorite newsletter writer/photographers. I forgot to include it in last week’s “other news” roundup. But just as well, because now I can give it a bit more spotlight!

SYZYGY is a side project of photographer Rob Stephenson, whose newsletter The Neighborhoods I’ve touted ibefore. Since at least 2013, Rob has, in the course of his various explorations, been noticing and photographing “split” houses around New York City — “houses that resemble single-family homes until a closer look reveals that they have been divided into two independent residences.” Recently he shared an incredibly cool related site he’s made, where you can match up different half-houses in endless variation — so fun!

A little more on the project (and that name!) below.

Read more

Howdy, everyone. Thanks for the feedback on Savor of the Month. (Continue to chime in here.) I’m going to limit participation to Supporters for now, but will continue to monitor and perhaps experiment. If you haven’t already, do check out the July installment, devoted to theme of DOORS. Enjoy others’ contributions, make your own, leave reactions, etc., here!

This isn’t actually in the thread, but I really love this comment related to the DOORS theme, from John E Simpson:

Doors — I love doors! One photo project I occasionally go back to: shooting the *backs* of building ... like strip malls, downtown shopping districts, and so on. Of course the front doors (display windows etc.) get all the architectural and design attention, but the back doors and walls, unadorned because why bother? *They* get attention from anyone who cares less about the fronts. Disgruntled or clever employees, graffiti artists, and so on — all that empty space is just asking for idiosyncratic “completion”!

What a brilliant project idea! And it’s so in line with paying attention to the overlooked, ignoring what wants to be noticed in favor of what’s hiding in not-quite-plain sight! I wish I’d thought of it :) But I’m happy John did.

A good reminder to say that I am always happy to hear about your projects!

Leave a comment

Below are a couple more images from the thread, very hard to choose. Go see for yourself.

Read more

Longtime TAoN readers will recall Alastair Humphreys, a veteran writer and adventurer who has become an expert on finding the remarkable in the local. (I wrote about that back in issue 95.) He’s particularly insightful and inspiring on the natural world, so I was excited to hear about his latest book, Unwilded. Alastair writes:

Unwilded is a book about learning to notice the world again and finding our way back to nature. It argues that our constant digital connection has dulled our engagement with the natural world – and that this disconnection is harming not only the planet, but our own wellbeing too. We have become unwilded, and urgently need a simple, slow, offline reconnection with nature. ….

My bold claim is that spending just fifteen minutes outdoors each day, paying attention and beginning to care, can be the first stepping stone towards repairing both ourselves and the living world. It might involve climbing a tree once a month, taking your coffee outside, making pinhole cameras from beer cans collected on litter picks, rewilding your garden, joining parkrun, or simply moving your next Zoom meeting outdoors. This is accessible outdoors time for anyone and everyone.

Obviously I love the very concrete prompt to spend 15 minutes a day outside. And however much time you find yourself outside, I suspect we can all relate to this passage from the book: “We’re too busy for nature today. We’ve got work to do and kids to feed and an infinite algorithm to scroll through,” Alastair writes. “But that is OK, as today is just one day and nature will still be there for us tomorrow. Until it isn’t. The nature we put into our days is, of course, the amount of nature in our lives.”

With that in mind, I asked Alastair if he would answer a couple of questions for TAoN.

Q: Is 15 minutes daily better than hour or two on the weekend?

Alastair Humphreys: “Spending 15 minutes, or five minutes, or even one minute, paying really close attention to your nearest bit of nature is very different from getting out for an hour or two at the weekend. The best way I can show this is that I feel the four years I spent living in nature, riding around the world and sleeping in a tent every night, revealed less about the miracles of the wild universe than my relatively newfound fascination with nearby nature and everyday wildness, which I’ve been working hard to develop over the last few years.

“There is a very strong argument that if your modern 21st-century life is too busy to spend 15 minutes outside every day, then you probably need to spend 30 minutes outside every day... Leaving that aside, though, I think that spending even one minute looking carefully at a tree every lunchtime offers a different type of benefit from an hour or two hiking at the weekend.”

Q: Do you have any how-to-start advice for someone who can’t quite envision how to get going — can’t picture what they’ll do with those 15 minutes?

A: “Take a photograph of a tree every week for a year. The only way this will realistically work is if there is a tree you see regularly enough to make it part of your routine. For example, I scheduled a reminder every Thursday morning at 9 a.m. to photograph a tree. I put it into my Google Calendar exactly as I would a Zoom meeting.

“After just a few weeks, this tiny action became something I looked forward to. By the end of the year, it had shown me clearly what a wild gallop our little planet makes around the sun over the course of a year. The miracle of the universe was revealed to me through the changes you notice when you do something as small as snap a photo on your phone once a week.”

Thank you, Alastair, and congrats and bravo on Unwilded!

Leave a comment

30%-OFF SUMMER SALE!

Do you believe in this newsletter’s mission — to help us all stay human and engaged and creative in a world of (mis)information overload and endless distraction? Do you appreciate posts like today’s, featuring helpful inspiration from cool and surprising TAoN guests?

Then you should support TAoN with a paid sub!

This newsletter has offered concrete strategies for thriving in the so-called attention economy since 2019. I absolutely love TAoN and its readers, but this project NEEDS YOUR HELP to keep going. So please take advantage of a rare sale: 30% off for a limited time.

Summer 30% -off sale!

You’ll get access to the full archives as well as supporter-only bonus posts and threads. Your support makes this newsletter possible. Seriously. Thank you!

THE NEXT FREE EDITION IN TWO WEEKS!

IN OTHER NEWS

• “I recently prepared myself for the hardest reporting assignment of my career: sitting still for 15 minutes. I was about to have my brain scanned while I meditated.” WSJ gift link. Good piece, even (especially?) if you’re a meditation skeptic.

• A Tumblr of cityscapes from vintage video games. Via.

• Trigger warning to graphic designers: worst AI-designed fliers, via the excellent 404 Media. Heinous! And kinda hilarious. Somebody tell Debbie Millman ;)

• Mary Oliver documentary.

• “A series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Country Music of the Fifties (1954–1963)!”

• Artist depicts Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht, burning. Via.

• Painting Tree — By Semi O.K in Istanbul, Turkey , via Street Art Utopia:

  

  ---

  OKAY THAT’S IT!

• As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

• —> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.

Share The Art of Noticing

And thanks for reading …
rw

All this by Rob Walker (unless otherwise noted) PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032.

—> Send me mail! I’ll give a three-month free trial to the Supporter version of TAoN to any current free subscriber who snail-mails me a request (include your email address).

To unsubscribe see the bottom of the email, or go here.

Either way I’m a few days overdue for a mid-year update to Supporters. I’ve really enjoyed some of the experiments so far in 2026 — the “Turning Moments into Haiku” Zoom workshop from Lisa Germa…

Read more

It’s July! And once again, it’s time for Savor of the Month!

For newcomers:

At the start of every month I announce one specific thing or theme to look out for, pay attention to, appreciate. The idea is to convert something everyday and taken for granted into something we might, yes, savor.

And every month I create a chat thread where you can share what you are noticing, or enjoy what others have noticed, in connection with the current theme. You can post pictures, drawings, written observations, whatever works for you. Or just browse!

Themes so far:

Pink (results here) * Flaws (results here) * Rust (results here) * Public Text (results here) * Calm (results here) * Treasure (results here) * Winter (results here) * Mysteries (results here) * Outliers (results here) * Ornamentation (results here) * Everyday Artists (results here) * Reflections (results here) * Contrast (results here) * The Temporary (results here; related audio essay here) * Wind (results here) * Circles (results here) * Small Flowers (results here) * Shadows (results here)

For July, the subject is DOORS. I guess that’s self-explanatory? Below, I’ll say a little more about this, and about why I chose this subject, but in short: Be attentive to DOORS as you go about your days in the month ahead.

The thread is open.

This month’s back story:

Read more

I’ve admired the work of writer and educator Ian Bogost (perhaps currently best known as a contributor to The Atlantic) for years. We share an interest in objects, and I cited some of his thinking about everyday games in The Art of Noticing book, among other connections.

So I was excited to hear from him about his newest book, The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life. Described as being all about “existing deliberately and with attention to regain our human-ness,” it certainly sounded TAoN relevant! And indeed it is.

In the book, Ian spotlights and explores the specific idea of gratification. This differs from happiness (“big-picture contentment”) and satisfaction (“pride in accomplishment”). In his words:

“Gratification is the sensory enchantment of everyday life.”

I love the sound of that! So I asked Ian if he could offer a prompt to share with TAoN readers to get us in the gratified mindset. He responded with two prompts, both terrific. He writes:

The more I worked on understanding gratification, the more I tried to deemphasize the idea that feeling gratified requires work. We’re so used to thinking that feeling good must require effort! But the good feeling of your senses connecting to the world is weirdly effortless. It happens all the time. I’m touching the keys of my keyboard as I type these sentences. My forearms sense the smoothness of my desktop. In another room, I hear the tink-toss of a garment careening around in the clothes dryer.

So I’ve found it helpful is to think of gratification as something the world gives and that you accept. The keyboard is offering me smoothness and clickiness; the dryer is tendering tink-toss sounds. To enjoy the momentary delights of the physical world, all I have to do is accept the sensory gifts it offers.

THE PROMPT: A THING YOU SENSE OFTEN

Choose one thing you touch (or hear, or smell) repeatedly every day. It might be a door handle, a cup of coffee, a steering wheel, a shampoo, a refrigerator door—or whatever. Allow the repetition of your encounter with the thing to suggest that it has something to offer you. Even two or three encounters is enough. Think of it as a friend offering you a gift, and accept that offering: The coolness and smoothness of the brass doorknob, or the pinkness and viscosity of the shampoo, or the earthy smell of the coffee, or the cushiony give of the refrigerator-door gasket.

And the next time you encounter that object, accept the gift again—or see if it offers you something new.

BONUS PROMPT: SHARE WHAT YOU FIND GRATIFYING

Gratification can feel weird and even a little embarrassing. What am I doing, enjoying the squish of the fridge-door gasket? It can help to verbalize the sensation and why it felt gratifying. Just tell someone about it. This can work great in the moment, with a coworker, family member, or friend who is in the room with you. Describe what you felt, and you will probably find that other people feel it too—but they were perhaps a bit shy to recognize gratification, too.

Great stuff! Thank you, Ian Bogost! And to all: check out The Small Stuff (Bookshop.org / Amazon). It’s a unique and welcome addition to an important cultural conversation. And it’s a useful one, too: “You probably encounter, or more likely overlook, hundreds of chances to feel gratified every day,” he writes. Agree!

Leave a comment

30%-OFF SUMMER SALE!

Do you believe in this newsletter’s mission — to help us all stay human and engaged and creative in a world of (mis)information overload and endless distraction? Do you appreciate posts like today’s, featuring helpful inspiration from cool and surprising TAoN guests?

Then you should support TAoN with a paid sub!

This newsletter has offered concrete strategies for thriving in the so-called attention economy since 2019 — THERE IS NOTHING ELSE LIKE IT!

I absolutely love TAoN and its readers, but this project NEEDS YOUR HELP to keep going. So please take advantage of a rare sale: 30% off for a limited time.

Summer 30% -off sale!

You’ll get access to the full archives as well as supporter-only bonus posts and threads.

Your support makes this newsletter possible. Seriously. Thank you!

THE NEXT FREE EDITION IN TWO WEEKS!

IN OTHER NEWS

• Flattered to be a guest on author/speaker/coach Jann Freed’s podcast, Becoming A Sage. (N.B.: I’m no sage. But fun convo.)

• “Sit somewhere ordinary and attempt to notice, for ten unbroken minutes, the things around you that are not asking to be noticed.” Thanks for sending this, Leo!

• New Kate Bingaman-Burt book to mark 20 years of Daily Purchases!

• Car as transition space, by Alex Wipperfürth. Been meaning to link to this — very interesting piece! (Slightly related: this “invent a commute” item from a pandemic-era TAoN post.)

• Summertime Bingo, from Rubi. I gotta do a bingo prompt!

• Mark Frauenfelder on the Yoko Ono show now at the Broad Museum in L.A. It sounds amazing, and I love Mark’s documentation of “Painting to Hammer A Nail.” Wish I could see this show! (While you’re at it, here’s an old TAoN post about Ono’s book Grapefruit.)

• The Rumpus is back.

• Music critic Bernard Holland Q&A with music critic Bernard Holland. “Interview yourself” is a good writing assignment.

• W. The letter — one of my favorites ;)

• Wordnik Interview with novelist Bennett Sims. “Your novel A Questionable Shape uses quite a few unusual words, including addorsed, apostil, claustral, colligates, lazzarettos, roscid, taphephobia … were there any unusual words you wanted to use but couldn’t fit into the narrative?”

  ---

  OKAY THAT’S IT!

• As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

• —> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.

Share The Art of Noticing

And thanks for reading …
rw

All this by Rob Walker (unless otherwise noted) PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032.

—> Send me mail! I’ll give a three-month free trial to the Supporter version of TAoN to any current free subscriber who snail-mails me a request (include your email address).

To unsubscribe see the bottom of the email, or go here.

While the recent livestream interview with Anne Kadet was very warmly received, it’s been suggested that I should offer a text “takeaways” sort of post for those who aren’t really into video. (After all, both Anne and I prefer text. “I never watch videos of anything,” Anne announced early in our conversation. “I would never watch this video!”)

So here, for you video resistors (but also for those who enjoyed the full convo and wouldn’t mind a highlight list), is a cheat sheet!

I wanted to talk to Anne, who writes insightfully and hilariously about New York City in her Café Anne newsletter, about posts she’s done on “the worst” laundromat, bagels, and pizza joint in town. Specifically I wanted to ask: Why focus on the worst? Obviously, she had great answers.

Read more

First I waited in the waiting room, then I was ushered into a smaller room where I waited some more. Of course I got annoyed —  who likes to wait? — but I managed keep things in perspective, and tried to turn this into an opportunity to pay attention and be present.

Thus I pr…

Read more

Friend of TAoN Kate Canales — a designer and educator who says her “design super power” is “noticing” — recently published a very charming and smart TED talk about “makeshift signs.”

That is, the familiar handwritten or similarly informal signs that annotate the physical world with useful, even necessary, information and guidance. These are “everyday instructions,” signs that “help us think,” Kate maintains. They are, she further contends, “examples of ingenious human problem-solving.”

Kate’s been noticing, and photographing, such signs for a couple of decades. As she says in the talk:

These signs are evidence that we still need each other, out here in the real world, to do some very basic things. The person who came before us took the time to leave some instructions, to make sure that our experience is a little bit better than theirs. And that is a sign of humanity that I am always happy to stumble upon.

Check out her eight-minute talk for many (frequently funny) examples — definitely worth it! But also . . .

. . . I so enjoyed this subject that I convinced Kate to let me quiz her about her project. My main question had to do with her addressing these signs from a design perspective.

Q: You essentially celebrate makeshift signs as successful (vernacular) design — but aren’t they evidence of failed (professional) design and engineering?

A: In many cases they are both! At the beginning of my design career I was a faithful believer in the Don Norman (of Norman Door fame) creed: “If it needs a sign it is a design failure.” In my sign collection, I have plenty of examples involving designers who stopped well short of a high standard.

At left below is one that made a couple of rounds on the internet recently. (I didn’t take this picture.) Indeed, it appears the industrial design cycle at Bose should have lasted longer here, ending in something less trashcan-like. But given that this is what the speaker looks like, the sign is helpful. I refer to this as “design after the fact,” and I think it counts as design because it finishes what the professional designers should have. If professional designers get credit for other speakers that people don’t throw trash in, then vernacular designers should get credit for this one.

In other cases — like the sign above right — the formal design failure is likely one of testing. The underlying problem here was likely avoidable with a little more prototyping.

And yet, after the fact, the sign makes the difference between a revolving door and a wall, so it still counts as good design in my book, even if the original revolving door designers made a hash of it.

I’ve done enough trips around the design block to have empathy for the designers or engineers who ultimately inspired many of the signs in my collection. There are often systemic or budgetary or technological limitations that make it beyond reasonable to get the design right. The preponderance of signs on point-of-sale machines, like the one below for example, is most likely explained by some kind of back-end tech constraint, surely. I don’t know what it is, but this can’t be 100% bad design. Maybe one of your readers can explain it?

Let’s also agree that professional designers are not mind-readers. In many cases, the signs are helping to situate a formal design in a setting that it was not intended for. See below: No designer of a door lock should be expected to accommodate a scenario where the door is not meant to be locked. This one is not on the designer.

The short of it is, regardless of how we got to the point of needing the sign, the sign makers are designers because they are trying to make the experience more functional, which is a decent definition of design to begin with.

Q: You have convinced me! Now, can you suggest a makeshift-sign prompt to TAoN readers beyond looking out for them (which we are now all inevitably going to do now that you’ve brought this to our attention)?

A: I recommend reframing what happens in your imagination when you encounter these signs. I often go into pretty elaborate imaginings about the person who makes one. Were they in a hurry? Did they have the Sharpie on hand? Is this the first or the tenth iteration of the sign? In cases where the sign is more permanent/produced, I wonder whether there was a meeting to decide about the details (and whether that meeting lasted long enough).

As I say in the talk, I also really love to visualize what was happening before the sign existed — people queued up in the wrong place, someone walking confidently into a glass door, customers throwing their trash into what turns out to be a speaker, etc. Do that, and it’s very easy to call forth some gratitude for these sign-making problem-solvers! So maybe the prompt is simply to say: “Hey, thanks” when you see a sign that helps you on your way.

I love it! Thank you Kate Canales!

Leave a comment

SUPPORT TAoN

If you enjoy TAoN, please become a paid supporter. You’ll get access to the full archives as well as supporter-only bonus posts and discussion threads. Your support makes this newsletter possible. Thank you!

THE NEXT FREE EDITION IN TWO WEEKS!

• Noticing is about other people, too. The Icebreaker series aims to help with that. There’s a central collection spot for all the icebreakers to date, here.

Today’s icebreaker is adapted partly from remarks during a recent episode of Choose To Be Curious about the Come Together Music Project, which “uses music to deepen existing relationships, create new ones, and build bridges across socio-economic, ideological, and generational divides.” And it was influenced by some recent discussion on NPR’s All Songs Considered about generational music.

What’s a song that reminds you of your youth?

See also Come Together’s guide to using music to find common ground.

Please send your favorite icebreaker (whether you made it up or found it elsewhere) to consumed@robwalker.net.

Leave a comment

IN OTHER NEWS

• Very excited to learn that the great Carrie McLaren has a new zine on the way: Ape Sh*t Issue #1: The Bizarre History of the Service Monkey. I have ordered!

• Nice article about the excellent Anthony Del Rosario and his noble work to preserve and honor hand-painted signage in New Orleans. (Thx Amy!)

• Tattoos of World Cup players

• Another good episode of Code Switch: “Why being Black and outdoorsy is a whole thing.”

• The Semiovox Color Codex series is back!

• Craft as activism (includes craftivism pioneer Betsy Greer), in The Persistent, which is worthy of attention.

• Marc Weidenbaum explains where his Disquiet Junto prompts come from.

• Barf bag design.

• Women in trees.

• There’s this obscure singer from the past that I’ve become interested in lately . . .

  ---

  OKAY THAT’S IT!

• As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

• —> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.

Share The Art of Noticing

And thanks for reading …
rw

All this by Rob Walker (unless otherwise noted) PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032.

—> Send me mail! I’ll give a three-month free trial to the Supporter version of TAoN to any current free subscriber who snail-mails me a request (include your email address).

To unsubscribe see the bottom of the email, or go here.

Today a short note on chit-chat with strangers — yes, I am still thinking about the enthusiastic response to the recent Chit Chat Challenge, and possible future iterations.

When I’m eating out alone in a city that isn’t home, I often choose to sit at the bar. Bartenders are possibly my favorite strangers. It’s a cliché that they listen well. But also if you listen well, they are quite often interesting. And on my most recent trip, one introduced me to a great stranger-chat exercise.

Read more

It’s June! And once again, it’s time for Savor of the Month!

For newcomers:

At the start of every month I announce one specific thing or theme to look out for, pay attention to, appreciate. The idea is to convert something everyday and taken for granted into something we might, yes, savor.

And every month I create a chat thread where you can share what you are noticing, or enjoy what others have noticed, in connection with the current theme. You can post pictures, drawings, written observations, whatever works for you. Or just browse!

Themes so far:

Flaws (results here) * Rust (results here) * Public Text (results here) * Calm (results here) * Treasure (results here) * Winter (results here) * Mysteries (results here) * Outliers (results here) * Ornamentation (results here) * Everyday Artists (results here) * Reflections (results here) * Contrast (results here) * The Temporary (results here; related audio essay here) * Wind (results here) * Circles (results here) * Small Flowers (results here) * Shadows (results here)

For June, the subject is PINK. As in the color. I have pondered a single color prompt for a while, as an echo of the whole color walk idea.

Below, I’ll say a little more about this, and about why I chose this color, but in short: be attentive to PINK as you go about your days in the month ahead.

The thread is open.

This month’s back story:

Read more

In a “live” video earlier today, I talked to the amazing ; I’ve touted her great newsletter in the past. Today I quizzed her about her explorations of “the worst”: the worst laundromat in New York City, the worst pizza, the worst bagel. Should we all go on a Worst Quest?

Also mentioned: enemies!

Our Worst Convo was the best. Let me know what you think!

Leave a comment

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning in!

OKAY THAT’S IT!

• As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.

• —> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.

Share The Art of Noticing

And thanks for reading …

rw

All this by Rob Walker (unless otherwise noted) PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032.

Today I have quick tips on two fun tools — or games, really — for the creatively attentive.

First: I received an email this weekend from Mohamed Asran, who recently started reading The Art of Noticing book and liked the sound of the “count with the numbers you find” exercise. Inspired by designer George Nelson, this noticing challenge involves paying attention to numbers you encounter while out and about: First spot a 1, then a 2, and keep going for a day (or forever).

“I wanted to start immediately, but couldn’t find anything to track progress properly, so I built it myself,” Mohamed writes. “It’s called The Hundred Hunt: find and photograph every number from 1 to 100 in the wild, log each find with a photo and location, and watch your grid fill in slowly. I’ve been hunting in NYC and it’s already changed how I move through the city. The site is at thehundredhunt.com.”

Doesn’t that sound awesome? Thanks, Mohamed!

Share

Second: Liminal Bingo (brought to my attention by Rubi and by Shanna — thanks!)

I’ve been thinking for a while about the creative-attention possibilities of bingo, but this project beat me to the punch:

Read more

I showed up early for a coffee date with a friend the other day, so I decided to stroll around the block. It was beautiful out and the whole world looked picturesque.

Naturally, I started looking for flaws.

That sounds a little sour. But really I just had the imperfect on my mind because flaws are May’s Savor of the Month prompt. In a nutshell, the idea…

Read more

WHAT (OTHER PERSON’S) OBJECT WOULD YOU SAVE FROM A FIRE?

Earlier this year I had a post about “light secrets” (the opposite of a dark secret), notable in part because I borrowed it from a work of fiction — a terrific short story that’s actually titled “Light Secrets,” by Joseph O’Neill.

I find that certain fiction is often a useful source of inspiration, full of fun and provocative ideas lurking within the narrative. Today I have another example related to one of my favorite subjects: the meaning and value of objects.

It comes from a story called “Understanding the Science,” by Camille Bordas, I writer whose work I really enjoy. The character Maria is at a dinner party at a friend’s apartment, “so bored” by the conversation that she starts looking around wondering what object she would save if the place “went up in flames right at this moment.” This is only a quick aside, and the question is not answered. (Maria seems so unimpressed by her friend’s taste she might not save anything!)

I like this as a variation on the more familiar question of what objects you would save from your own burning house. In this case, it’s a way to instantly tune into your surroundings in a new way. Or at the least, something amusing to focus on when the dinner party discussion bores you!

Your attention games and practices and ideas, pinched from fiction or not, are always welcome!

Leave a comment

MORE OBJECT NEWS AND INSPIRATION

• Very interesting obit of artist George Herms, “an early practitioner of California assemblage — an art form that embraced the messiness of everyday life by incorporating junkyard finds, broken car parts and other castoff materials.” I particularly liked this bit:

Read more

Usually when I dip into reader mail it’s to highlight the physical mail you’ve sent — and there’s some of that below. But today I also want to share some digital feedback. First, the picture above and email from dear friend of TAoN Bobbie G:

I came across something recently that I thought might be good for your newsletter. I was trying to find the name for the sunbeams you see after sunset (crepuscular rays, btw), and one of the things I learned was that there’s a name for the hour after sunset (and the hour before sunrise): the blue hour. Maybe everyone knows about the blue hour, but I’d never heard of it, and now I have a new appreciation for it.

I was not familiar with this either! Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:

The blue hour (from French l'heure bleue) is the period of twilight (in the dawn or dusk, around the nautical stage) when the sun is at a significant depth below the horizon. During this time, the remaining sunlight takes on a mostly blue shade. This shade differs from the color of the sky on a clear day. …

Here’s a Google Image search result:

Bobbie adds: “Apparently it’s not even an hour long (more like 20 minutes) but I’ve definitely been paying more attention to the pretty blue hues, and I’m inspired to take more photos during that time of day. 💙”

Would this be a good savor topic?

Leave a comment

THANK YOU Bobbie, and bonus points for crepuscular rays ;)

The next bit of useful feedback also came in digital form, but is about physical mail. In a comment, valued reader Lynn Mason explained that she has long sent postcards to friends and family while traveling, but sometimes found hunting for the right card exhausting.

“A couple of years ago, I bought BLANK postcards to take on our travels,” she continued. She basically uses one side to make a collage, constructed of things picked up along the way — “like cutouts from a museum brochure or a music festival. Something reflective of what we have done on our travels.” (And yes she carries appropriate tools, and stamps.)

What a cool idea! And I bet the recipients love it. Thanks, Lynn!

Now to the physical mail: I absolutely love this zine from valued reader Kim Cofield, in Australia — her first zine!

Read more

Read more

Read more