encounters

For the early voyagers, wonder not only marked the new but mediated between outside and inside (Milton's 'sees|Or dreams he sees'). Hence the ease with which the very words marvel and wonder shift between the designation of a material object and the designation of a response to the object, between intense, almost phantasmagorical inward states and thoroughly externalised objects that can, after the initial moments of astonishment have passed, be touched, cataloged, inventoried, possessed.

Gleenblatt/ Marvellous Possessions/ 22