Dullard’s essay starts out with discussing the value that can be found in meeting as simple as a penny. As a child she would find a penny and then re-hide it in a crack in the cement or the roots of a tree, and then went home taking joy hoping that someone would stumble upon it and be just as delighted as she was. A penny has almost no value yet if we can find value in something so small we will be rich indeed “But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days” (Dullard 40).
In comparison she later discussed eyeing birds and how they were like “free gifts, the bright coppers at the root of a tree” (Dullard 41 basically she was comparing the birds or even nature in general to the penny, nature may be so much more vast than a penny but if you don’t really look hard enough you completely miss out on everything that is around you. There are so many facets to nature, big and small, and it is just as much of a gift as finding a penny hidden in the cracks of a sidewalk when you do finally see it. Mound a lot of beauty in those simple statements, we see birds and pennies every day, I’m sure, but how often do we simply stop ND see value in the small and common things around us? Dullard simply meant that if we look hard enough for the smallest of details we will find wealth in that, and even the smallest of details can make us happy. Dullard spent a lot of time discussing Natural and Artificial Obvious. “But the artificial obvious is hard to see.
My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head; I’m bony and dense; see what expect” (Dullard 42). “Natural Obvious” is to see what we expect, what we understand is there, is there, “Artificial Obvious” is the idea that if we look hard enough and without expectation we will see things that are unexpected and thus find more joy or happiness because we will see much more, for example she discussed the experience of trying to see a bull frog, everyone around her could see it and she could not see it at all.
She still could not see even after she was told that it was green “When I at last picked out the frog I saw what painters were up against: the thing wasn’t green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark” (Dullard 42). She described the people who could see it as lovers or knowledgeable because they understood what they were looking at, they loud see the artificial obvious and she was looking for the natural obvious. It’s not that the frog was not green but it wasn’t the shade of green that must have popped into her head. The point is that just don’t know what the lover knows; just can’t see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct (Dullard 43). I too have experienced this, everyone else can see it but I cannot seem to see what is in front of my face, but once do it is very hard to UN-see it. I think it also is a matter of perception, much like looking into a window or a pond. If at night time you look beyond the window to the outside you can e everything but only once you change your focus do you realize that you were also looking at your own reflection. Dullard also felt that light also alters our perception of what we see.
Our expectations in the dark are that Of the unknown, more so in that We let Our imaginations take over and what we think we perceive tends to not be what is there in the light. “An uneasy pink here, an unfathomable blue there, gave great suggestions of lurking things” (Dullard 44). Many times have I had that almost irrepressible urge to run in fear when walking at night because of the ark objects or noise around me, my imagination is so much greater than the reality of what I would see if the sun were to suddenly come up again and show me what was there.
Though darkness may cause fear, light causes us to be unable to see clearly simply by the brilliance it creates. Sunglasses, visors, and hats are almost a necessity when it is bright out, it can hurt your eyes causing you to squint, making it almost impossible to see clearly what you are looking at. My favorite parts of this poetic essay are the stories (Marcus von Sender’s, Space and Sight) about how surgeons were able to come up with a surgery hat fixed patients with blinding cataract problems since birth.