Earth Sensory Perception is a subsection of Our Uncertain Future and represents a compilation of essays on animistic nature connections in the modern world.
Animism and Nature Connection in Daily Life
We are born animists, all of us. As children, we embody an innate knowing that our universe is alive. We inherently create relationships with the nature beings and inanimate objects around us. This is our default mode.
I was born animist. I was blabbing with the Earth while shaping mud pies and climbing boulders. As a child I always talked to trees, pets and bugs. I also deeply believed that my stuffed animals would come alive at night and protect me from my nightmares. I lined them up around my bed in a particular order to ensure they were prepared to ward off any monsters.
Even the most introverted and “indoorsy” children befriend dolls, toys, stuffies, houseplants, and invisible friends. Children that venture afar have multiple companions with the crooked trees and boulders with faces. We all talked to bugs, fairies and pets like old friends. On the chance a child encounters a deer or a bunny, they welcome them as if they are expected.
Reviving Childhood Wonder: Returning to Animist Roots
As a child, I loved to lounge in the sunroom, named for all the windows, south facing and encircling around the wooden red door. Trees shaded the windows in the summer and kept the bright room cool. On days when no one was around, quiet afternoons with my siblings out for the day and my parents working in the yard, when the air was completely still, I spoke with house flies. I loved to create relationships with flies. Only the patient and lazy focus of a child can communicate with the harried nature of a fly. Only a child could hold herself close enough to listen beyond the frenetic buzzing.
I would wait as the fly circled my head. I never felt the need to swat at it. I waited patiently until it inevitably landed on a shoulder, a hand or an arm, optimal landing spots for long chats. I engaged that day’s fly in conversation. Small talk, friend to friend, “How are you today?” I had no agenda in mind the way we adults always have an agenda. The fly was my friend in that moment, my nearest acquaintance, my fellow of the sunroom realm. Our meetings were intimate. I named my fly something silly like Fred or Frances of Fuzzy the Fly. I felt the gentle ticklish touch of her rubbing legs against my skin. I pondered her desire to leap from me again and again before returning to continue our chat. These were not deep conversations between child and fly, they were appropriately simple, kind and encouraging chit chat with my companion for a few moments while I whiled away the afternoon, doing nothing and caring for the nothing I did. Just being. I never questioned if the fly felt the same way about me or understood what I was saying. There was no question about our relationship; we were in synch, in tune. I knew this fully in my little bones and cared nothing for a world that disagreed.
I miss that feeling, that talking to the housefly feeling. These days, I swipe them away instantly with a fervor; they are a nuisance, a pest, disgusting flies, poop-eating flies. These days, I’ve lost my sense of what it means to be still enough to befriend a fly. When did it disappear? Where did it go? Will I ever find it again. as an old woman perhaps, on my deathbed, welcoming flies in my final days to take what they need from my decaying flesh?
Do you recall a time when you talked to flies or beetles or flowers or clouds? You might not recall it any longer, or maybe you do. If you are lucky, you still remember the way you felt the world animated. You were always in relationship, not just to humans, but to everything you chose to be in relationship with. Your world was large and abundant with life.
Animism Versus Scientific Fact
However, unless you were fortunate enough to grow up with animist parents who homeschooled you, this was eventually trained out of us. Once we were institutionalized into schools, we were told that our world is not only inanimate, but that humans are the center of the world. Perhaps even before you were sent to school, the adults around you made it clear that you were overly imaginative and tried to rid you of your fantasy world lest you embarrass them or yourself amongst peers. Do you remember the moment you stopped greeting butterflies?
It is not the fault of the adults, of course, for they were once animist children too who were also forced to conform to a world lacking imagination. Our modern world with its Newtonian way of validating our existence, is a world based on objective truth. Scientific fact is considered the one true reality and reigns above experience. It does not matter if you saw a tree spirit or heard the voice of a rock unless you can prove it. If you are the only one who hears it, then it only exists in your mind and is not “real.” But, animism requires subjective truth, a truth based on personal perspective, regardless of whether it can be scientifically proven to be right or wrong.
Intersubjectivity: Living Relationships with the More-Than-Human World
Animism is about intersubjectivity; reality is the lived experience shared between subjects. Every being on Earth has its own truth and all beings and truths are deserving of respect. This means that the human and spiritual world, the world beyond dualism, beyond monotheism, are in mutual and helpful relationships. The language of the spirit. Animas means soul, consciousness and breath, physical and spiritual. Everything is part of the animism network—humans, nature, spirits and the divine.
There is more to the world than the five sense of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. There is the heart sense and intuition and dream worlds and art and music and ritual and so much more than a flat three-dimensional existence. It is time we remember our true inheritance.
Childhood Dreams
The orange mesh hammock between two shade trees
Dim in the shadows strong dark bark, moist and verdant,
birds singing. I am six. Maybe.
I am swinging, one leg over the side. A lazy day
only a child can have, the sway of late summer carefree.
I am not hiding, per se, but I am hidden. The clouds
Conceal me. The branches obscure me. The greenery
Masks me. The birds quiet my breathing. I can stay here
As long as I please. Only my dog cares to visit.
She is mangy and hot. She likes the bed of the black
Earth on her belly and so I sing her a song, one that comes
To me from far away, a time of fairies. Fireflies flit.
Dragonflies stop to perch on my bare toes. The evening
Has arrived in whispers growing louder. Soon I will be called to dinner
If they remember me at all. They will summon me out of hiding.
I will crawl like ladybug examining each blade of grass,
Taking my time, a long haul across the driveway through
The tunnel of lilac bushes along the brick patio with grasses
Growing between its blocks, to the paved pathway, up
The wooden stairs. My dog will have departed by then,
Sought the cool cavern of her cave beneath the porch
With no desire either to go indoors. My cat mews
At the threshold, beckoning me a little longer into night
Before I open the creaking screen door awakened
From a dream by the loud din of others.
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Naked in Nature
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All of Us Stardust
Earth Sensory Perception is a subsection of Our Uncertain Future and represents a compilation of essays on animistic nature connections in the modern world.
Seeing the stars at night is something I was blessed to do most of my life. Every night as a child till I left for college at almost 17. It’s a moral crime not to. It’s a connection to something vast and of unimaginable scale. Awe and wonder is an important thing for humans. Especially children.