on seeing

I've been reading a lot of Annie Dillard for class lately and I wanted to share a couple of passages that have hit me pretty hard this week. They are from her book Pilgrim's Creek

The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep if forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sound. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.

So here I am...in Seattle...on Mars...in the desert. Looking for this pearl.

Much of my first three weeks here have been met with feelings of total confusion leading me to wonder what the hell I'm doing here! Perhaps you know that feeling when it seems everyone else around you has it all figured out and you're the one left scrambling about. It's terribly exhausting. Now, I realize I may be being too hard on myself, but I suppose this is what blogging is for, right?

Anyway, I'll leave you with one more quote from Ms. Annie Dillard. This pretty much sums my first three weeks on Mars...

Finally with a shuddering wrench of the will, I see clouds, cirrus clouds. I'm dizzy, I fall in. This looking business is risky.