Klinkenborg's Short Sentences
On noticing...
It would be difficult to know where to begin quoting Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing, so useful is this manifesto on writing and so applicable to the theme of this newsletter and to those who want to cook. Although it is addressed to the aspiring college-age writer, it is nevertheless applicable to the novice as well as the seasoned professional. Klinkenborg describes in a fiercely reductive fashion the architecture of the best kind of writing what to avoid, what is true or counterfeit, and above all, what to pay attention to. Some find it overly prescriptive, others repetitive. I find it exactly pertinent, and it has wide-ranging implications for the pursuit of cooking and the practice of noticing. In the “About” tab of this newsletter, I have described cooking as a “language.” It follows that cooking shares attributes with the making of words, sentences, essays, and stories. Here is a taste of it:
“Start by learning to recognize what interests you. Most people have been taught
that what they notice doesn’t matter,
So, they never learn how to notice,
Not even what interests them.
Or they assume that the world has been completely pre-noticed,
Already sifted and sorted and categorized
By everyone else, by people with real authority.” (Pg. 38)
“Is it possible to practice noticing?
I think so.
But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning
And a pause in the desire to be pouring something out of yourself.
Noticing is about letting yourself out into the world,
Rather than siphoning the world into you…
Noticing means thinking with all your senses.
So what is noticing?
A pinpoint of awareness,
The detail that stands out amid all the details.
It’s catching your sleeve on the thorn of the thing you
Notice ’
And paying attention as you free yourself.” (Pg. 39)
“You’ll feel a subtle disturbance, a nameless, a barely discernible tremor
Inside you…
Pay attention now:
The small internal quaver, this inner disturbance,
Is the most useful evidence you’ll ever get…
For now, what’s important is to notice it.
Noticing is always the goal.
Actually, the goal right now is noticing that you’re noticing.
One day merely noticing will be enough.” (Pg. 53)