ABSTRACT
This riff or mini chapter begins with research showing that we spend about 50% of our conscious time doing whatever it is we do when our minds wander. Mind-wandering, a technical term in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, refers to what happens when we lose our mental attention and drift toward a state of daydream or distraction. In opposition to the traditional mind/body split, this chapter claims that minds and bodies may not wander in lockstep, but they always wander together. Although mind-wandering isn’t always advisable, it may help us survive. Jean-Dominique Bauby offers much to ponder about mind-wandering as a means of survival in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997), which leads to brief discussions of Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage Around My Room (1794), Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–1767), and Georges Perec’s “Species of Spaces” (1974). The crucial point: mind-wandering operates in multiple registers, literary and personal, that we ignore at our loss. Reading and mind-wandering are different actions, but they often proceed together, and it is active mind-wandering that helps Jean-Dominique Bauby complete the memoir that appears two days before his death.
