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Oh who wouldn’t want to look away? The cell phone rings, another American Idol is belting it out, the war is on, and the glittering Web sparkles like the Milky Way in a box—promising that if I keep clicking and clicking, I might finally get to what I long for, to the message, the rug, the T-shirt. I will move beyond suffering and beyond time, beyond the limits of my money and my story and life. …

This might be the most difficult task for us in postmodern life: not to look away from what is actually happening. To put down the iPod and the e-mail and the phone. To look long enough so that we can look through it—like a window.

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