{"id":2012,"date":"2011-05-06T15:20:40","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T23:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=2012"},"modified":"2012-12-08T11:23:53","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T19:23:53","slug":"becoming-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=2012","title":{"rendered":"Becoming Animal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Serendipitously, I just picked up a book which seems to touch quite poetically and evocatively on some of the themes Jack is helping us to explore in this course.\u00c2\u00a0 The book is entitled Becoming Animal,<\/a> by David Abram.\u00c2\u00a0 The following excerpt will give some sense of the possible resonances between this text and the theme of this course (exploring and ‘opening’ our senses).<\/p>\n

Best wishes,<\/p>\n

Bruce<\/p>\n

~*~<\/p>\n

“I’ve written this book, a spiraling series of experimental and improvisational forays, in hopes that others will try my findings against their own experience, correcting or contesting my discoveries with their own.<\/p>\n

This venture will start slowly, gathering energy as it moves.\u00c2\u00a0 Simple encounters from my own life — encounters unexpected and serendipitous — will provide a loose, structuring frame for each investigation that follows.\u00c2\u00a0 The early chapters take up several ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of the perceived world — shadows, houses, gravity, stones, visual depth — drawing near to each phenomenon in order to notice the way it engages not our intellect but our sensing and sentient body.\u00c2\u00a0 Later chapters delve into more complex powers — like mind, mood, and language — that variously influence and organize our experience of the perceptual field.\u00c2\u00a0 The final chapters step directly into the natural magic of perception itself, exploring the willed alteration of our senses and the wild transformation of the sensuous, addressing magic and shapeshifting and the metamorphosis of culture.<\/p>\n

Many of our inherited concepts (our ready definitions and explanations) serve to isolate our intelligence from the intimacy of our creaturely encounter with the strangeness of things.\u00c2\u00a0 In these pages we’ll listen close to the things themselves, allowing weather patterns and moose and precipitous cliffs their own otherness.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll pay attention to their unique manner of showing themselves, attuning ourselves to the facets that have been eclipsed by accepted styles of thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 Can we find fresh ways to elucidate these earthly phenomena, forms of articulation that free the things from their conceptual straitjackets, enabling them to stretch their limbs and breathe?”\u00c2\u00a0 ~ David Abram, Becoming Animal<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Serendipitously, I just picked up a book which seems to touch quite poetically and evocatively on some of the themes Jack is helping us to explore in this course.\u00c2\u00a0 The book is entitled Becoming Animal, by David Abram.\u00c2\u00a0 The following … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01_general","category-2010-11tskonlinecourse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}