Every experience is dependent on the way you frame it. Carmen Papalia was one of the most positive people I’ve encountered in a long time. For me, losing my eyesight is a terrifying idea. Sight is generally considered the most important sense that humans use. It is “essential” to our functioning in the world. However, Mr. Papalia showed us another way of thinking. He framed being vision impaired as not an impairment at all, but as something to value and even celebrate. And after his blind field shuttle tour of Bryn Mawr’s campus I would have to agree with him. Through the tour I was able to get to know both the campus and my classmates a lot better. I felt more connected to my surroundings out of necessity. One wrong step and I felt like I was going to fall down the slope that led into Morris Woods. But I didn’t, which I think that it was largely due to my classmates. This in itself was interesting since it was literally the blind leading the blind. None of us could see. Even our leader could not see perfectly. But as eetong and I discussed on our way out of class, this, in a way, made us feel safer. We felt that since he had had so much experience being in our situation, that he was a very trustworthy guide. Granted, I was in the middle of the line and so protected by both the people in front of me and the people behind me (both would feel uneven terrain before I did.) I was also protected by my height (any overhead branches would hit the people in front before hitting me.) I wonder how my experience would have been different if I had been in the front of the line?

I don't know why, but the thing I keep thinking about from The Lives of Animals is the way Costello began her talk: with the information about the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Maybe this is because I worked with the Jewish Community Center in Skopje on a project about the Holocaust, and because my best friend's favorite museum is the Holocaust Museum in Skopje. That's why I was so shocked when Costello makes the connection between the concentration camps and eating meat. I mean, I pledged to be vegetarian for a year when I was an active member of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and I still do feel guilty when I eat meat, but I never thought of eating meat as something as atrocious as mass genocide. After all, there is a reason why the biological food chains exist: some animals eat other animals for subsistence, others eat plants. Also, why should plants not be considered living beings in the same way as animals and humans? Following that thought, would it be ethical to eat plants then too? I don't think that there is a single solution or answer to these questions. That is why I am against campaigning for a single way of life - diversity is beautiful, and it's what makes life interesting. Hence, while I do support Costello for being vegetarian, I'm not so sure I agree with her reasoning.

In The Lives of Animals, Coetzee adressed the question: “If we are capable of thinking our own death, why on earth should we not be capable of thinking our way into the life of a bat?”

As the question was being addressed with intensity, it could not be easily be explained by a simple sentence saying--"we are not bats"--although this is what I was thinking right after I read this question.

And the question could extend to--Are we capable of thinking from the perspective of another animal, live or dead?

I believe that some of us are capable--and I mean psychics. Like Oda Mae Brown in Ghost, psychics could embrace another soul into their body. Also, when we are caught by a spell, we could become little mouse, birds, etc.

Back to "reality", under many circumstances, when the "animal side", or shall I say, the beast-like part, of our soul is activated, we are thinking like any other animal--like the Nazi example in this book. So yes, we are capable of thinking as an animal, but not a nice one. We could never think like a nice, innocent little rabbit (unless we are infants) because I think the only intersection of cognitive process between human and other animal is that related to the same type of desire we have, not virtue, not ethics.

I opened this class with a Thoreauvian ramble that was in the form of a rhymed poem in iambic pentameter. In my final site sit I hope to show the influence of our botanical ramble and blind field shuttle, and to respond to Anne’s “push.”

To the left sun

and to all else the push push push of the wind

leaving shadows dancing

sounds fading

true blue sky and deadened brown leaves.

How long in this place? is every day a new breath of life

disturbed by the powdering of leaves into confetti and a sharp cold blade leveling the hibernating

the sleeping

the fighting

the surviving

the living

life of plants.

i  trespass in my presence

hearing breathing tasting seeing

stationary but ready to move.

reflection of life as now but future too

Ending only to begin again anew. 

Today’s observation period at my sight sit besides being my last was also the first one that I’ve managed to have for a few weeks. With the weather conditions making the day feel more like it should be in March rather than December, it felt like it was going to be a rather pleasant hour at my bench. Unfortunately though, the visuals that I witnessed at the bench were not as pleasant as the weather. Although the sight of the trees along the nature tree and the pine needles healthily covering the bench were still there, placed right in the middle of the Arboretum field in front of me, was a cleared section of dirt and gravel. Leading from this spot were both a similar dirt and gravel path and a black plastic fence snaking away towards the Nature Trail and apparently extending all the way to Haverford Road. Upon inquiring about the cleared patch later, I found out that the field was being prepared to be turned into a temporary parking lot for the golf tournaments that were to take place on local golf courses during the summertime.

I just had this random thought that being an vegetarian is against the natural design in some way... Some vital amino acids are almost only accessible to us by meat or diaries before supplements were available. Native Americans once had a diet relied completely on maize and their life span suffered from that. That was vegetarian in practice but they were forced to be.

I looked up the history of vegetarianism. Vegetarianism was initially almost always religion or philosophy related. It did not only serve as an attitude but a discipline among a specific community.  Since about late eighteenth century vegetarian population started to grow and became more common without institutional restriction. I see this of as a mark of the civilization of human society because we are only to think about being nice to other beings when survival is not the main concern. I want to say that it seems to me that we have evolved to be able to even think about being a vegetarian. If we are able to choose a diet regardless of our natural biological premise, it indicates a privilege. So even though we are using a non-violence policy to other animals, what exactly is the philosophy behind - Mercy? Love? A repulse to eat the juicy flesh? I know that a lot of times different philosophies yeild the same outcome, but I wanted to bring up this to discussion...

Today we had a brief discussion about consciousness and animals, but I think the real ethical dilemma that plagues Elizabeth and the reason for her deep empathy and concern is the question of whether or not all animal life forms (includes humans, excludes plants) have an "immortal soul". I am leaning towards the opinion, assuming that evolution of animals and humans is historically the same, that all animals and all humans either have immortal souls or they do not. This is idea equates humans and animals, essentially placing them on the same level. So, then, is is morally right to systematically slaughter beings with immortal souls? This is Elizabeth's primo concern. But do we agree? Animals eat other animals, animals have been known to eat us. Is Elizabeth advocating against the killing of all animals, or just the ones that we actively farm? Is farming and domestication morally objectible, even if the process is "humanely" excecuted? What is the difference between domestication and slaughter, if we are talking about things with immortal and feeling souls?

What has been on my mind about this novel is the implication when Coetzee mentions the mother’s aging and her son's consolation that “it will be over soon”. We said in class that it means either the heavy days they have been experiencing are going to an end or Elizabeth’s mortality will soon take her sufferrings away. Elizabeth Costello is approaching death and so she will not have to endure “the crime of stupefying proportions” - which has formed the basis of her lectures. I wonder what its broader implication might be, to use the image of an aging woman to prosecute the case for compassion as a core value. The first lecture ended with a strange closing remarks: “we can do anything and get away with it, that there is no punishment.” Might it suggest that Elizabeth’s mortal ache represents a broader premonition of our humanity’s extinction, prompted by humans' institutionalised anthropocentrism in the face of such tragedy?

I'm conflicted about the result of our trip, so my reflection may be a bit scattered. There were some things I really liked and some that I didn't like so much, but overall I think we made the right decision to experiment with this alternative class structure.

Still, I think we failed in our objective to connect with water. I spent a lot of our ramble looking into the water, but I couldn't find much except for mossy rocks and trash. The water itself seemed a bit dirty (probably due to the trash surrounding it), and I think that may have been why I didn't see a lot of people doing what I was doing. Most people I observed were talking in groups or exploring the plant life around the banks. I'm completely okay with this, but I think if our intention was to explore in this way, we should have chosen a different location. 

The water was cold and contrasting with the overwhelming (to me) surprise of Monday's heat, and I enjoyed being able to sit on a stone in the center of the creek, surounded by water on all sides, and look for frogs or minnows in its slower parts. I didn't find any, though. I guessed that this might have been because of the conditions of the creek area which, again, weren't very good. In result, my individual ramble was a time of pastoral reflections shadowed by the real, ecological concerns of litter and irresponsible human behavior. I don't think I did much connecting in result, but I do think my experience was important.