This morning, riding the T, I read this line from the chapter "Seeing" in Annie Dillards's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.

Dillard writes about reading Space and Sight by Marius von Senden. The book details the case histories of individuals, blinded since birth by cataracts, who were given sight by the first surgeons to discover how to safely perform cataract surgery. Their first awakenings to the world of light were radically divergent. Some, overwhelmed by the gulf between their blind and sighted experiences and understanding of the world, wanted to return to blindness. The world of sight was a horrible subversion of spatial and, more importantly, self knowledge. Of those who embraced their new world, a common experience was the coloristic flatness of space and shape. An example: one woman stands in front of a tree, touches it, and proclaims it is "the tree with the lights in it." With great reason, Dillard wishes these men and women and children had been given the materials to paint. She also, with great reason, yearns to every now and then catch a glimpse of this flat world.