Many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision. To one patient, a human hand, unrecognized, is ‘something bright and then holes.’ Shown a bunch of grapes, a boy calls out ‘It is dark, blue and shiny….It isn’t smooth, it has bumps and hollows.’ A little girl visits a garden. She is greatly astonished, and can scarcely be persuaded to answer, stands speechless in front of the tree, which she only names by taking hold of it, and then as ‘the tree with the lights in it.’
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek