A few weeks ago, I was looking for something else entirely and came across a note I’d written in the back of a spiral-bound journal. The original intention was to locate either a once-successful strawberry sherbet recipe or an important tax-related password, responsibly logged in a notebook otherwise reserved for inconsequential scribbles. (It seems the only reliable motivators for revisiting old versions of myself are the stress of hosting guests for dinner… or accounting-adjacent doom.)

There was no date, no context, just the familiarity of my own handwriting and the sense that, at the time, it had mattered enough to write down two words: “gratuitous motion.” Followed by: (Miyazaki, maybe).

The notebook was in a rough state. Cobwebs braided into the metal spirals, plus many innocent dust bunnies who knew nothing of the current administration. But something about the line stopped me, so I looked it up.

Here’s the full quote from a 2002 interview between director Hayao Miyazaki and Robert Ebert:

“I told [Hayao] Miyazaki I love the ‘gratuitous motion’ in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people just sit for a moment, or they sigh, or look into a running stream. They do something extra—not to advance the plot, but to offer a sense of time and place and who they are. Miyazaki clapped his hands three or four times. ‘If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all,’ he said, ‘it’s just busyness. But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension.’”

It felt like finding a lantern, still warm. Or like taking a pitchfork to the compost heap of old thoughts. I’ve been thinking about how ideas don’t always arrive fully formed, but as reencounters. Recognitions, waiting patiently for us to be ready.

What I think I was trying to hold onto, years ago, was the idea that not everything needs to push the story forward. A moment can seem extraneous and still be essential. What appears functionless might be where the truth is hiding. Something doesn’t need to add to the painting to give the frame its borders.

I’ve been wondering how to build for that kind of space. How to let more of the unnecessary in, just often enough that I don’t forget how.

It’s like:

• How whales can swim thousands of miles off course and still know where they are, sensing something we don’t.
• A ladder left in a tree.
• The shape of cloud cover reflected in the back of a spoon.
• A new word, used plainly.
• How Jasper Johns said, “I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I’m doing.”
• The time it takes for bees to decide where to go.
• The sound of scissors cutting through thick paper.
• “The inessential is never without its charms,” wrote Annie Ernaux.
• Learning that a feather doesn’t form only on the bird, but also (mostly!) in relation to the air it moves through.
• Moss on the north side.
• The sun, when it “strikes you like a gong,” to quote Dorothea Grossman.
• Remembering: bewilderment is a gift.
• And mostly, “All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers.” — Mary Oliver

I’ve been keeping a list of these fragments that tilt the world just slightly. I don’t know if any of it matters, but I’d like to live in a way that assumes it does. And I’ve been wanting to remember to tell you, because maybe you’re keeping your own list, too.