Seeing by Annie Dillard

"While he was blind he was indifferent to objects unless they were edible; now, "a sifting of values in...his thoughts and wishes mightily stirred and some gew of the patients are thereby led into dissimulation, envy, theft and fraud." pg. 702
This quote fascinated me, because it is interesting how many values are lost in appearance. What people see, the first impression, became very important to a newly sighted person who used to care for nothing material except food. And that is the way it should be. And yet we get so carried away with the colors and beauty and richness of our appearances that it becomes a competitve unspoken game to have the nicest furnishings and the best High-Definition TV. One would wonder if it was human nature to be this competitve and mark your status, or it was just our sight and appearance awareness. And this quote proves that to this man sight changed his whole view not only on the world but on himself.

"But shadows spread, and deepened, and stayed. After thousands of years we're still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp wiht out arms crossed over our chests."pg. 697
This quote was my favorite because I am afraid of the dark and question why every night. In biology we learned that there is believed to be a trigger in everyone that either triggered by a small experience and stays for the rest of your life or is never triggered, and certain genes hold fears to be triggered like that of the dark or spiders etc. Is it still that thousands of years ago humans found the dark less apt for survival and therefor we shall forever be strangers to the dark? Or is it the lack of something we become so dependent on, seeing, that frightens us. I have found that over the years it has become harder for me to constantly close my eyes or walk in the dark. Is it because a gene has been triggered? Or because I have become so dependent on my sight that I am terrified to function without it. Or perhaps as she puts it, it is a simple human nature that humans use their sight as survival and to the darkness we are aliens, strangers in a new land. Fearful of something unknown to us.

END

"...and turned and went back down to this world."

I found this quote interesting almost singly because he said, "this" world. He is going back to life, not the whole world like he was on another planet, but the stereotypical suburban world that is. He is returning to the generic life. He is leaving the mountains the and the sweet no worries life.

"Firs on steep banks you could barely see on the lake shore were like ranged ghosts in the mist. It was the real northwest grim and bitter misery."

This quote is just simply beautifully written. It describes the feeling along with the picture. I really feel as if I am there in the desolate mysts of the northwest.

Dharma Bums to page 223

"I dunno-out of the way we feel about life. You and I ain't out to bust anybody's skull, or cut someone's throat in an economic way, we've dedicated ourselves to prayer..."

I found this quote interesting because it shows the very passive calm attitude they have towards people. So much so that it becomes abnormally kind. But if you look at it from a different perspective they are being quite hypocritical because throught the book all they do is speak of the ignorance of the common american, and suburban lifestyle. They are also speaking of how their way of life is superior to all others and they should sometime be rewarded for it.

Alvah said, "It all ends in tears anyway."

This is the first quote that is remarkably true and common yet I had never heard it said before. It is a grim but honest look at things. Most things do end in tears. From graduations to farewells, to the end of lives, tears are usually present. It is a distant way to look at sorrow, just as the emotion of the end of things. Alvah's six word line summed up the whole scene of Japhy leaving.

"Across the evening valley the old mule went with his broken "Hee haw" Broken like a yodel in the wind: like a horn blown by some terribly sad angel: like a reminder to people digesting dinners at home that all was not as well as they thought. yet is was just a love cry for another mule. But that was why..."

This quote is about the sad mating call of a deer. In a field that used to be full of deer, but is now an empty field, his call is sad because there is no anumal to receive it. As people eat their meals at home, the deer is wandering alone. The call is a forlorn sadness.

"I began to notice that the uppermost twigs and leaves were lyrical happy dancers glad that they had been apportioned on the top, with all that rumbling experience of the whole tree swaying beneath them."

This is a descriptive and picturesque quote. As he lies under the tree and watches the branches, it symbolizes his general happiness at the time. The scene is happy, with dancing leaves. The quote is a blissful fairytale in a book of realistic stories.

Dharma Bums to page 171

"I figured if it was my destiny to die on the midnight ghost it was my destiny."

I found this quote interesting because he had yet to speak of death in the book, and when he does he seems to have a very relaxed viewpoint. Perhaps because he is a buddhist and believes in reincarnation. Or because he has had that revelation of what he is here to do, to teach, to enjoy, and to fill his empty pages. He is walking on clouds. Nothing can being him to the realities of his hitch hiking.

"Suddenly I exhilerated to realize I was completely alone and safe, and nobody was going to wake me up all night long."

I really liked this quote, because I realized that it is so rare for someone to be completely alone, and know nobody was going to disturb them. Only a few times in my life have I come to this realization. It is an exciting and a bit frightening realization, "exhilierating" being his word. I also thought about how society forms itself in this way. We live close to each other in our houses and normally everyone can see another house from theirs. From our houses most people are only a three-number digit from help if there is trouble. But Ray is living a moment that many do not.

Dharma Bums

"Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not seen or hear or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it's actually that orange, depednging on your mind to exist!"

This is such a fascinating quote I had to put it in. It it a thought that the only reason things exist as they do is because of our senses, and without these senses nothing would exist. If humans had never been able to hear we would never know that sound exists. This quote exemplifies how much Ray really does know after all of his blabber of small poems and radical thinking.


"I'm going to die!' because there was nothing else to do in the cold loneliness of this harsh inhospitable earth,"

This quote is singly interesting because it comes at this time in the book. He has returned home. Where everyone works and sits infront of the television at night. He has returned to the mainstream culture. He is offered a sleeping place infront of the wood stove. And yet this is where he is the most unhappy he has been in the book. He has this breakdown of momentary depression. This is just another example of how the mainstream culture does anything but bring happiness to many.

TREE SITTERS.

DEDICATION. PROTESTING SKI TRAILS. http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2003/Wachusett-Tree-Sitters10sep03.htm

TREE SITTER DIED FROM FALLING FROM A TREEE! http://www.peacenews.info/news/article/70

ARRESTED FOR TRESPASSING.http://clog.dailycal.org/314/tree-sitter-arrested-oakgate-refuses-to-die