Journal Entry: "SEEING"

BY ANNNIE DILLARD

In Lopate’s introduction to Dillard, he writes, “Dillard is a self-described seeker, a pilgrim in a mission to retrieve a sense of ecstatic wonder before the natural world. “I have had an idea in mind for an essay of my own: one about looking at my own world, my world as a mother through eyes like Annie Dillard.

Lopate writes, “Dillard is fascinated with silence, with the muteness of things, and her work surges up from that mystery and returns to it. Before learning TM I used to have the useless interior babble that kept me from seeing. Since learning TM I like Dillard is fascinated with silence.

I like how Dillard uses the sense of sight and talks about it while using other senses. Dillard writes, “But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I stay transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, - When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this way I am above all an unscrupulous observer. Dillard is referring to holding onto the past and not staying in the moment, the present.

Overall, as an Essayist, Dillard’s writing style when compared to Wendell Berry’s does not feel personal enough to me as with I was able to have a conversation with Barry while reading ‘An Entrance to the Woods” but I had a hard time staying connected with her through out the reading.