Seeing As, part II

Part of "seeing" lies in the object. Most of seeing lies in the seer. If you don't learn to see differently, you will always be looking at the same thing, whether that thing is a cat or skyscraper or a star, whether it's a politician or a preacher or a war. Seeing differently is what metaphor allows us to do. All I have to do is call touch "the sight of my fingers" and I open a new world of seeing, a richer knowledge of the world. Learning a second language or a third does the same thing, since all languages are just new sacks of metaphors. Meeting other people accomplishes this as well, the otherer the better. A man among women, a straight among gays a white among non-whites. If you only know your mother tongue, talk to someone whose first tongue was not that. She'll draw from her native sack of metaphors. She cannot quite help it. The poorer her English, the richer you will be. Let the others in or you will atrophy. "Conservative" is a fancy word for fear.