What Remains When We Stop Asking

We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

The mountain doesn't perform. It doesn't become clearer or more beautiful because you're watching. Li Bai describes the ordinary work of attention: showing up, staying put, letting the self gradually fall away like sediment settling in water. Not transcendence. Just what's left when you stop needing the experience to mean something about you. This is the texture of real looking.