Lenses

Lenses by Annie Dillard Annie Dillard wrote on her experience with analyzing other forms of life. She inadvertently discovered that she and other human beings were not alone in the world. She described her different views of the world by either using a microscope, to see a world too small to see with the naked eye, or binoculars, to see a world that appears to be sightly never ending. Dillard recalls as a child obbessing over watching the algae in her “child’s microscope set”. She was so dedicated to the point wear she made it possible that she could’ve become ultimately blind because she switched her “dim” five-watt lamp with a ,15 times stronger, seventy-five-watt lamp. Her interest in seeing these small organisms zooming around in and out of eye’s sight eventually led her to the realization that there was a tiny world at her fingertips as she watched them meet their death at the matters of her hands and her seventy-five-watt lamp. Not only was the lamp too harsh for her suseptible eyes but it nearly instantly evaporated a “biomass”. I can relate to her excitement for discovery. I feel most children have had their own microscope set which either helped them figure out their passion for science or helped them realize they absolutely hate it. I actually did exactly what she did. I kept the microscopic murder at a minimum, in contrast to her. She set “...up a limitless series of apocalypses.” She can even come off as devious or even psychologically unstable as she says, “I set up and staged hundreds of ends-ofthe-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out. Over and over again, the last trump sounded, the final scroll unrolled, and the known world drained, dried, and vanished.
When all the creatures lay motionless, boiled and fried in the positions they had when the last of their water dried completely...” Anytime it rained, my front yard would flood and that was the perfect time to collect any organism I may want to explore.