Quote of the Week...from James Joyce

Shut your eyes and see.                                ---James Joyce

The first reaction I had upon reading the renowned early twentieth century Irish author's above quote was that it's probably not a very good idea to do that if you're driving!  But I think James Joyce was using the word "see" in a more expansive way, meaning "perceive", "reflect" and "receive enlightenment".  As for myself, I am very sensitive visually to my current environment, especially in social settings...just sitting there watching everything and everyone around me doesn't make very much sense and can actually be a bit distressful.  I am a perceiver of patterns and tend to unconsciously connect them together to form principles and trends, as was, I suspect, Joyce: once you "see" how things are, then why keeping looking?  Not that I am endorsing his life, reportedly fraught with personal difficulties including perhaps mental illness.  But he was also a great writer and is responsible for Ulysses, a novel that I will soon embark upon reading and which many regard as the apex of English language literature.  I liked this quote of his...not knowing its exact context or when he made it...because of its brevity and that I often find myself closing my eyes in order to sort through thoughts while cutting out the distractions of the world around me.  Again, this is NOT something to do while driving...

Also, "Shut your eyes and see" can mean that sight isn't the only one of my senses that matter...hearing, in particular, is often made secondary to seeing, but can be an important source of information beyond the visual.  Between television and radio, the former has a tendency to rivet my mind in a semi-trance as I sit before it, demanding my complete attention...but the latter accords me the mental freedom to pick and choose the degree to which I pay attention while I go about my other tasks in life...or maybe just choose to shut my eyes for a little while...