"The things you see, the rustle, crackling, and tones you hearken to, the roughness and the sleekness you touch are not just pieces of a puzzle you have to understand. In fact there are no intelligible concepts that grasp the languorous liquidity of the water in the bath, the tang of lemonade, the velvety green of springtime, the foolishness of a kitten rolling a ball in the sidewalk and tumbling over itself"
-- Alphonso Lingis, “Contact,” Janus Head 8, 2 (2005): pp. 439-54, p. 452.
“This contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like a momentary switching on of some new current, or the passing of ray of a brighter light, illuminating the outlook upon perhaps the most ordinary and familiar objects—an impression which we experience sometimes in instants of direct extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a wire from sheer overtension, and we watch the consummation of some impending catastrophe with the marveling unconcern of a mere spectator” (p.459). This shifted perspective is possible due Psychical Distance. |
" ... direct the attention to the features 'objectively' constituting the phenomenon--the veil surrounding you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outline of things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesques; observe the carrying-power of the air, producing the impression as if you could touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it lose itself behind the white wall ..." (459) |
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