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(Dr. Abram) That to focus
one's eyes on these little bits of ink on a page
and see visions,
and hear conversations
that are unfolding on the other side of the planet,
see scenarios that happened not just elsewhere but two thousand years ago.
All
through my participation with these little
ostensibly inert bits of ink on a page
is, it seems to me,
a kind of magic. A kind of participation,
and a mystic participation,
not that different
from an indigenous
Hopi woman
stepping out of the pueblo and walking along the path and having her eyes
grabbed by ...
by ...
a small bush wherein a
spider is
weaving its web. And as she focuses her eyes on that spider,
she suddenly feels herself addressed or spoken to
by the spider.
Or
a Lakota man
strolling down a path and
seeing a boulder, and his eyes are captured and he focuses on a patch of lichen on
that boulder, and suddenly
finds that the boulder is speaking to him. And he enters into a conversation with the boulder.
We do just the same thing
with our own scratches and scripts. We come down in the morning, open the newspaper, focus
our eyes on these little bits of ink,
and they start speaking to us.
And we
enter into this rich,
magical,
field of ...
of conversations happening
at other times and other places.
This
is an intensely concentrated form of animism,
but it is animism nonetheless, as outrageous as a talking stone
or a talking spider.
We do it with our own scratches
and scripts. Our ancestors did it with leaves,
spider webs, tracks of animals, clouds, twigs,
boulders.
It's as though we
have focused down this animistic
proclivity of our senses to ...
in order to practice it
so intensely with our own scratches and scripts that this
new magic we're engaged in has effectively eclipsed all the other forms of participation
in which the human organism wants
engaged.
So
the sun and the moon no longer speak to us. Trees no longer seem to speak directly to us.
Boulders certainly not.
Gusts of wind. Mmm mmm.
But the page does.
Or the neon sign with its lettering does.
Wherever we see letters of the alphabet,
we feel ourselves being spoken to.
Addressed.
And I would say that that is homologous to, it's directly related to
the way a
non-writing culture,
a culture without any formal writing system,
experiences
the whole of the sensuous surroundings
as expressive
as speaking.
As animate. As alive. Not
primarily speaking in words,
but nonetheless
filled with meaning and expressive meaningful
gestures and
stories
to be, you know, learned from,
the more we pay attention
to the world around us and the things around us.