Solaris and Seeing

     I got nightmares. I am one of those people that rarely remembers dreams, unless its a midday nap. But I read Solaris at night, alone, right before going to sleep, and I had three nights of nightmares. Its not the nightmares I remember so much as waking up feeling like someone was in my room and having to turn the light on to check and verify with myself that there was no one there. This was my main reaction to Solaris, other than this disturbance, which has gone away since finishing the book, I don't have much to say. I like the novel, the plot was interesting, it was a quick and fairly easy text to read. I do have to admit I glossed over the sciencey parts for the desire to not be bogged down by that and lose track of the story.
    The novel for me did not cross paths with Stevens until the last five or so chapters. It may have been because my Dad asked me if I still remembered "that one poem I had to memorize a while back", and I replied confidently by reciting A Postcard from the Volcano for him. It was after that when I was reminded of Solaris.

Children picking up our bones will

 never know...and least will guess that 

with our bones we left much more, left what

 still is the look of things, 

left what we felt at what we saw....

     We leave behind pieces of us when we die, be it in accomplishments or the impressions we have made on peoples live, these are legacies. For Kelvin he leaves behind his work as a Solarist and all the other fantastical things that he goes through in the book. The last two paragraph he becomes very Lucretian, talking about life and humans and how the ocean has affected all of it. I can now answer the question Sexson posed to us, about why he would assign this book, and I feel that it was a way for me to read something that was not Lucretius and was not Wallace Stevens and was not presented obviously as sublime, and yet I saw all three of those things in the novel. This for me goes back to the first few days of class when we were talking about seeing things for the first time, and how it is all about what you want to see, what your attention is drawn to notice. Before this class if I had read Solaris I would not have seen any of Stevens, Lucretius, or the sublime. Actually, to be honest I would not have read Solaris at all if it hadn't been assigned. But that is the beauty of classes, making you read things you may not have otherwise and coming out all the better for it.
   I will close with one last thought, I am currently home in Southern California for break and I ventured down to the beach this afternoon. Sitting on the sand looking out at the Pacific Ocean I very much believe that it is alive, not in the bizarre way the ocean on Solaris is, but watching the birds dive into the waster and the seaweed swaying in the current, the waves crashing set after set I found myself completely mesmerized by the rhythmic nature of it. It was as though I was seeing the ocean for the first time.