On Experience and Reflection -- a Passage by Alexandra Ranieri
We recently went to an orchid show. When I call the experience “dazzling” I mean to convey more than praise—in the profusion of different types, in the sheer number of blooms and of colors, there was as much to overwhelm the sight, as in a stained glass window held up against the sun. It is not easy in the midst of such an experience to take in every moment to its full in the manner one could wish. Many insignificant or even unpleasant details are given more attention than is their due, while instances of unsurpassable beauty are passed over with a glance. Yet we ought not to berate ourselves, or give up the experience as a failure. Those glances which seemed least all-encompassing in the experience, will prove in reflection as tenacious as the resin in which a hapless insect, alighting for a moment, is transfixed.
