“You don’t talk about the shadows with your classmates, right?”
“Right. I think a lot of kids in my class can’t see them.”
                -Shima Shinya, Glitch (Volume 1)

                A few days ago I had one of those moments where I wondered, really wondered, about some kind of common natural process that I usually take for granted. It wasn’t what happens inside a lightbulb to emit the light, but it was something like that. A foundational “how does that work?” while looking at the world. I can’t remember what it was because I thought about it for a moment and let it go. Reading Shinya, I start thinking more about some everyday mysteries — about the ones I see, the ones I don’t. And about how easy it is to stop talking about them, especially when I’m not sure anyone else is “seeing” them. Or when I can so easily stop seeing them myself.
                Years ago, in undergrad, my friend Ryan and I fell into an excited conversation about some famous philosophical problem. (The Ship of Theseus, maybe, or Leibniz’s thought problem about a brain the size of a windmill so you can walk inside). It was a lovely conversation. A few days later I brought it up with Ryan and some other friends. I turned to Ryan to help explain whatever the philosophical problem was. Ryan smiled — interested, but not taking the lead. They said something like: “I’m not seeing it right now. Can you help get me started?” At the time I was surprised—just two days ago we’d been excited about this together, and now they didn’t understand? Looking back, I’m struck instead by how my own interest — my ability to see, and to connect, and to wonder — changes day to day. And by Ryan’s gentle recognition that they weren’t connecting, and that, through the right conversation, they might start seeing something that caught their eye.