Silence like a cancer grows “Fools,” said I, “You do not know Silence like a cancer grows Hear my words that I might teach you Take my arms that I might reach you” But my words like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the wells of silence Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, The Sound Of Silence silencediseaserain
He feels the end of the cane Picture a blind man probing his way with a cane. While he is alert to the feelings in the hand holding the cane, the crucial distinction may be defined by saying that these feelings are not watched in themselves, but that he watches something else by way of them, that is, by keeping aware of them. He has a subsidiary awareness of the feelings in his hand, feelings which are merged into a focal awareness at the end of the cane, constituting two kinds of awareness that are mutually exclusive — "from awareness" and "focal awareness". There is here a particularly interesting phenomenal transformation. The sensations of the cane on his hand (the surface of the cane as it touches the palm of his hand, etc.) are lost. Instead, he feels the end of the cane as it touches an object...If our blind man shifts his attention from the tip of his cane to his hand, the meaning on the end of the cane disappears. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge Focal awareness