As the crickets’ soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.
- Gary Snyder
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.
- Gary Snyder
Photograph by 16 year-old Gary Snyder on a climb of Mount Hood.
In David Abram's, The Spell of the Sensuous, he discusses a gradual disconnect over thousands of years. This disconnect is between humans and "the other," or what some view as the "natural world". As of late, human interactions and relationships only involve other humans, relinquishing the sense of community with our surroundings that once existed years and years ago. A deep concern developed in Abram, stemming from the realization that we, as humans, had removed ourselves from the natural landscape, thus, stripping our own identities of the very lifeblood from whence we came...
"To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human," (22).
How has Western identity become so estranged?
"To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human," (22).
How has Western identity become so estranged?