This week, while on a short nature walk, I started to think, in relation to Annie Dillard, on how I really “see” nature and even the world around me. I was walking on my road, in Gorham, which is pretty much surrounded by farms and animals. I saw some cows, sheep, and pigs on the nearby farm and started to wonder how I really see these living things. The majority of the time people do not look at animals as having their own lives, their own world to live but rather they are living in our world and they serve a purpose such as food, clothing, help with work, and even income. I felt sad when I started looking at these animals thinking that the way in which I have always looked at these animals, I have never really “seen” them. Dillard expresses seeing in two ways, one in which people see the world around them, the colors and shapes, the revelation of looking at things for what we perceive them to be. But there is another “king of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera.” (Dillard pg. 33) We find a separation between our world and the world in front of us, based upon how we “see” things.
But I wonder if this has something to do with an interesting idea that I believe Dillard promotes. She discusses at several points the idea of the horror, the grotesque in the world that we can see, and when we “see” this horror we can’t see the beauty, and vice versa. Dillard says that “cruelty is a mystery and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull.” And se further states that “there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous”. (Dillard 9) The idea of good and bad existing means there is a balance. Dillard speaks of mystery many times, and in relation to horror and beauty, maybe these two things are connected through mystery. This mystery is the result of our inability to really “see” the world or nature around, leaving us with a lack of understanding. Maybe our view of the world around us, of nature, and of me seeing the animals is like this balance of horror and beauty. We see only good or bad at any given time, with the alternate not being in sight for that moment.
I once saw a snapping turtle on the side of the road to my house, although I didn’t know it was a snapping turtle at the time, and I had never seen a turtle in “real life before (as in up close, although this term is conveniently ironic). I got out of the car and walked alongside the turtle and went to touch it, only before my husband warned me that it could hurt me. My train of thought, at the time, was one not concerning the turtle but the beauty of a turtle being conveniently placed here, at that moment for me to see and touch. I never thought about the possibility of the turtle’s life, the horror of getting my finger snapped off simply because I was too eager and selfish in interrupting the life of the turtle. I wonder if we can truly “see” things in the world, in nature, what this will do to our understanding of beauty and horror in so much as maintaining a balance.
It's funny that you mention how most people do not think of animals as having their own little worlds and only thinking of them in ways that relate to the human world, because on occasion I DO think about this (I had always thought I was a little crazy, though, until I read Dillard and this blog post). When I am stressed out about "human things" like money, marriage, schools work, and housework I think to myself that I would rather be an animal; animals only need to focus on surviving, it seems.
ReplyDeleteI love dogs and I always try to imagine how a dog thinks and what they think about (my greyhound in particular). Ever since I was young I had thought that dogs were completely different than most animals. Dogs seem to love and feel and I have not really experienced this in other animals yet in my life. My husband and I recently saw a documentary called "Decoding Dogs" on PBS (which is on Netflix, you should all watch it). The show explained how it cannot be scientifically proven or explained why dogs are the way that they are, but dogs are definitely different than most animals. Is this because dogs have been included in the human world for so long? If so, why did dogs actually begin to like being a part of the human world? Cows, cats, and livestock have been a part of our human lives for a long time as well and they do no show the "human" characteristics that dogs do. In fact, it was shown how dogs can actually perform tasks of "intelligence" that chimps and monkeys cannot! I will now stop rambling on about dogs; I am becoming difficult to follow in my thinking, but I thought that this was very interesting and it makes my mind run in circles.
We had a lot of snapping turtles in Pa and they are incredibly mean. I've seen one try to snap at my brother once as a kid and it was terrifying to see this huge yet beautiful animal become so frightening in an instant. It had tried to bite my brother because he had walked too close to the animal, so it is perfectly understandable why the turtle struck out. I notice that much of the "horror" of nature is brought out due to human interference. Dillard seems to "interfere" with nature in the book. Is she really interfering or is she simply a bystander?
I like this idea of not seeing animals. After watch Food inc. all I could think of was why those animals were being treated in such a manner. All of the cruelty and filth. It was disgusting to me, and then I realized that when we look at say a cow, we do not see the animal we see milk and steak. And in seeing animals in a way that is convenient to us we can remove their value. I feel that Dillard is right when she says that we have two ways of seeing things the blurred shapes and the images that we have to let go. The things we can ignore and that which we can't.
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading last time I remember that Dillard that Nature has a "now you see it now you don't aspect" as well as a "now you don't see now you do". She is saying that as we look at nature we are able to pick out different aspects of it, the beauty and ugly. To some extent we do this with everything. I think that we do this more so with nature because it is easier to see beauty surrounding us than it is to see ugliness. Dillard it seems would say that in seeing the ugliness we can appreciate nature in its true form.