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I am scanning all the pages of a book. In B&W the scan is fast enough that I might as well just stand in front of the scanner and wait for each page. I wait for the sound of the imager returning to its original position--which is louder than the scan sound and distinctive--to open the lid and orient the next page. I notice after a while that I know just when to open the lid, anticipating the sound. As soon as I notice this I try to see how close I can get and am not as close. I realize that it's because I am thinking about it, and wasn't thinking about it before, since the idea hadn't occured to me. Then I try not to think about it to see if my accuracy improves. Trying to to think about it is hard. Eventually I succeed a few times but not always. I notice that my accuracy is improving anyway. Is this expertise? Are these the stages of acquiring expertise? Is the final stage dialectic, in that it incorporates the opposites of unconscious and conscious mastery? Can I answer these questions better by trying not to think about them? (Certainly I write better when I achieve the state of half-attention, dark glass. But then there's editing. This has not yet been done. Is there a cycle, an asymptotic spiral toward the center?) Well, there's more scanning to do. I wonder where I will pick it up. Of course the scanning process is not indivisible. There are the physical motions that I am perfecting, and are becoming more unconscious (i.e. the primitive actions are becoming complex; I decide to 'scan the next page', not 'pick up book, then check if page needs to be turned', etc. This frees me up to think about things like my accuracy of prediciton of the sound. And there's the point at which I want to sit down and record my thoughts. Then scanning stops. That keeps happening. Thankfully I have decided to let the physical world save my state of progress; I always know from looking at the scanner and the book what to do next. I have to do this a lot; I am scrupulous about keeping my keys and all other going-out pocket contents in a box by the door. If I had to actually remember--at the time I'm walking out the door--what to bring, I'd be lost. I put objects on the floor in the doorway exiting the room I'm in if I'm going to need to take it somewhere else. Then I trip over it. My continuity of self depends on my tripping myself up. So I get up every sentence or two to scan another page. Was scanning what I was going to do today? Ah well. That's never what I'm actually doing. Can be tiring. Calendars only go so far. This is the lesson. It's very tactile how a page sits right at the edge of the glass. Soon it no longer tactile but still felt; a posture, a proprioception. Soon it's just a sensory event of knowing, an arrival in an emitter's field, like a halt at a wall or a shop door's bell. Synesthetes must know naturally what it's like to discover the essence of a thing. 555 words exactly; stop a hundred short! The beast approaches. Wow.