WU Ming-Yi, The Man with the Compound Eyes
- The Cave
- “My job is to design a tool that will bore through the ‘heart’ of a mountain.” Detlef looked his students in the eyes one by one. “But now I sometimes have my doubts. I wonder whether we shouldn’t just go around, especially when it’s a hill with a particularly complicated core. Going through a mountain to get from place to place as quickly as possible is one way of life, while going around is another. We thought we were making a scientific judgement, but actually we were making a life style choice.” (p.203)
- He’d hermetically sealed every crack in the room and left the gas on. It was like a cave inside.
- Nobody has ever seen the forest he now beholds, like a forest in a novel that has grown into a real wood. This is not to say that the forest is not immense, peaceful, dark and deep. It is indeed immense, peaceful, dark and deep, just a bit unreal. (p.220)
- The boy’s skin is fair, his eyes enchanting–brown at first sight but almost blue from a certain angle.
- As soon as the boy and the man see the cliff off to the one side, they immediately feel that the forest just now has been as real as real can be, and that the immense rock wall they now confront is fantasy.
- Amundsen’s eyes were flashing, like he had an insect’s compound eyes. “Sara, I renounce my identity as a seafaring hunter.”
- Pangcah
- Bunun
- Suddenly a giant silkworm moth flew over and stopped on the map, like a mark, or like a symbol, like an interjection. It opened the eyes on its wings and stared at her.
- How come it looks like he has compound eyes? How could a person have compound eyes? Am I seeing things? the man thinks to himself. (p.255)
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