There are many charming and lurid moments in Circus Philosophicus, Graham Harman's short, new book of philosophical myths. But this is the passage I find my mind returning to, in which Graham explains why causation is buffered:

A thing does not come from the void and strike us like a meteor. This model also reflects one of the many prejudices of materialism. Namely, it holds that contact between two entities is an all-or-nothing affair, with entities at first at a distance and then suddenly striking us as if from nowhere. In fact, a more rudimentary form of contact must always be present before deeper contact is made at a level beyond that of images. ... What I mean is that things can be in contact with something else without being fully in contact with them."

One of the things I like about Harman is his ability to transform common-sensical notions into complete yet economical metaphysical explanations.

This particular specimen offers an important clarification of allure: the meeting point between an object and its qualities (in Harman's metaphysics, the parts of an object that don't recede) is situated in a kind of loose coupling. The idea of buffered causation immediately brought to mind an example I use (if in passing), in Alien Phenomenology: the sensation of foot on clutch as the collar of the synchro obtains a friction catch on the gear, whose dog teeth engage against the layshaft coupling of a transmission assembly.

When piloting a manual transmission, the driver must clutch to find the friction point, the point where the engine power transfers from free idle to the transmission. There's play in the clutch as the synchronizer allows the gear and the collar to make contact before the teeth themselves mesh to spin the differential.

Think of it this way: buffered causation is like the friction point in a manual transmission. There's considerable free play in the assembly, during which the driver can sense something about the various natures of the fork, collar, and gear. The buffer is the pulpy viscosity between a thing's qualities and the murky object beneath.

All objects regularly engage this buffer zone, like clutch on transmission. But to engage in productive contact, it must first make some initial orientation to the qualities of an object, as if finding its friction point. Such is one of the operations of allure.