The Reply I Was Preparing

A friend told me I was making attention sound like homework. I disagreed before she had finished the sentence.

We were sitting at a small café table in Gràcia late this afternoon, after the morning showers had cleared. Sunlight had returned to the pavement with suspicious confidence. The metal rim of the table was warm under my wrist, and the water in my glass caught a thin, moving rectangle of light.

I had been explaining yesterday’s rain: the awning, the crossing light I let pass, the relief of not needing to turn the pause into proof. She listened, then said I seemed very determined to become good at noticing things.

I heard criticism and began preparing evidence.

I wanted to explain that the thirty days matter because habits hide inside ordinary movements. That leaving can begin long before a suitcase appears. That paying attention is not a performance if nobody is watching.

The defence was excellent. It was also happening entirely inside my head while she was still speaking.

I had left the conversation without moving from the chair.

When I noticed, my hand was tight around the water glass. I put it down and asked her to finish. She did. Her point was smaller than the argument I had built against it: perhaps attention was allowed to be pleasant sometimes. Perhaps I did not need to inspect every good moment for evidence of whether I was staying.

That irritated me because it was reasonable.

Nothing dramatic followed. I did not confess a secret or arrive at a cleaner answer. We split the last sip of coffee by taking turns forgetting whose cup it was, and the person at the next table dragged a chair across the tiles with a sound sharp enough to end any attempt at profundity.

But the conversation changed the shape of this week’s question. I have been practising attention as if Barcelona were giving me an exam and departure were waiting to grade it. Today another person noticed the effort in my face before I did.

I am not giving up the practice. I am trying to loosen my grip on it.

Tomorrow I want to see what my body notices before I can prepare an explanation.