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Jenny Odell Biography

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“The happiest, most fulfilled moments of my life have been when I was completely aware of being alive, with all the hope, pain, and sorrow that that entails for any mortal being.”

Life Alive Living

Book:How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Source: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“If we're able to leave room for the encounters that will change us in ways we can't yet see, we can also acknowledge that we are each a confluence of forces that exceed our own understanding.”

Growth Change Identity Humility Transformation Self Awareness Complexity Openness

Book:How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Source: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“Over the years I've noticed that, on hearing birds that are out of sight, I've gone from asking "What's there?" to "Who's there?”

Nature Change Awareness Identity Perspective Mindfulness Aging Connection

Book:How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Source: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“When I worry about the birds, I am also worrying about watching all my possible selves go extinct. And when I worry that no one will see the value of these murky waters, it is also a worry that I will be stripped of my own unusable parts, my own mysteries, and my own depths.”

Loss Identity Vulnerability Extinction Environmentalism Inner Life Selfhood Connection To Nature

Book:How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Source: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“Any idea is actually an unstable, shifting intersection between myself and whatever I was encountering. By extension, thought doesn't occur somehow inside of me, but between what I perceive as me and not-me.”

Philosophy Consciousness Identity Perception Thought Introspection Epistemology Self Vs Other

Book:How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Source: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

“Most living entities and systems on this planet obviously do not live by the Western human clock (though some, like the crows who memorize a city's daily garbage truck route, do of course adapt to the timing of human activities). To watch a brown creeper as it inches up and down, peering into crevices and extracting bugs with its little dentist beak, is thus a way of catching a ride out of the grid and toward a time sense so different that it is barely imaginable to us. In Jennifer Ackerman's book The Bird Way, I learned that the male black manakin, a South American songbird, can do somersaults so fast that a human can see them only in slowed-down video. Some birdsong contains notes that are sung too quickly or are too high-pitched for us to hear. Veeries, a species related to the American robin, can predict hurricanes months in advance and adjust their migration route accordingly, and no one currently knows how. Birds own bodies and their movements are an entanglement of time and space: If a loon is in the higher latitudes, it's summer, and the bird is mostly black with a striking pattern of white stripes. If the same loon is near my studio in Oakland, it's winter, and the bird is almost unrecognizably different, a dull grayish brown.”

Time Nature Western Clock Birds Looneyleft

Book:Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

Source: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock