Jenny Odell

The kid in front looked up from his clipboard, scrutinizing me. “So would you say…care?” he asked.

I suggested “communication,” but days later, his clarification stayed with me. After all, communication requires us to care enough to make the effort. I thought about how it’s possible to move to a place without caring about who or what is already there

I suggest that we withdraw our attention and use it instead to restore the biological and cultural ecosystems where we forge meaningful identities, both individual and collective.

It would not have been the same if I had gone to Calabazas Creek alone. The moment that Josh and I combined the fragments in our memories into the same body of water, the creek came not just to individual attention but to collective attention. It became part of a shared reality, a reference point outside of each of us.