While reading "Seeing" by Annie Dillard, it's easy to be seduced by her captivating use of language and dazzling imagery. Her words paint a mental picture so vivid, the reader is tempted to simply sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. However, she also creates plenty of moments that provoke deep thought and self-evaluation. One of these lies near the bottom of her essay's eighth page, reading: "Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it." That one arguably obvious statement forced me to take a step back from the text and reconsider what it really means to see. So many things pass before our eyes every day, but we notice little of it because our mind's air-tight filter leaves little room for frivolous observations. The handful of images that stick is quickly analyzed, categorized, and verbalized by the brain. If an image does not correspond with a memory or cannot be named, it is soon discarded as if it were never seen at all. This is the rigid process Dillard attempts to loosen in her exploration: by treating everything she sees with equal importance, she can learn more about her surroundings and increase the wonder in her life.
Still, she understands that this is not only a matter of observing more but of thinking more, too: "It's not that I'm observant; it's just that I talk too much." Her method of seeing involves thinking about every blade of grass she steps on (has it been trimmed by a field mouse?) and every tree she encounters (what birds are hiding up there?). Dillard expresses this journey artfully throughout her entire piece, but the aforementioned paragraph contains a rare glimpse at the complexities of seeing.
I, to a degree, agree with this quote in the sense that unless we take the time to truly witness and appreciate something, we don't really "see" it for what it is. Many aspects of the quote you decided to focus on I often see correlating with Knittel's essay piece about the Nickel's Arcade. Both have the same main idea that we often visit places only to pass them by without viewing what potential beauty that they may have. However, one idea comes to mind when I think of lessons such as these: if we try to focus on finding the beauty in everything, then how can really distinguish between what has real beauty or not?
ReplyDeleteSeeing is all about how you remember it, I definitely agree. If something doesn't make you think of something else, it becomes more difficult to remember it. The way to get around this is to assign a name to it or to associate it with some sort of great importance, such as remembering a building's name as CC Little, or remembering that it is where your first ever class on campus will be. For me personally, "thinking verbally" is how I remember certain things and learn to interpret them. Creating a narrative in my head is how I remember things and learn to describe them. Eventually as the narrative is woven, I begin to ask questions about the place or thing, and that's how I form opinions and learn to describe things in greater detail and with respect to different things. Dillard's proposed way of seeing is very similar to this, and a very good way to go about remembering new things.
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