A wakeful world

Oh the sweet 'ickle birdie!! What a characterful face this little chap(ette) has!

Anyway. Wakeful world. The term came up in the Thom Van Dooren book at it turns out to be the title of a book written by a Druid about animism. Emma Restall Orr delves into the history of philosophy to explore dualism, materialism, idealism and then animism. Now, I'm not sure that I fully "get" it. But the argument is good and the history of ideas is well covered.

The term, though, is what really grabs me. Being in a world awake to you, as you are to the world. Amongst beings who recognise you. And in landscapes with their own way of experiencing, their own memory. What, asked William James (I think it was him and he didn't put it quite like this), is a river bed if not the memory of a river?

Likewise, what are trunk, roots, branches if not the memory of a tree?

Here's the park robin who recognises me.

At the same time, two other recommendations. I have just started Carol Gigliotti's The Creative Lives of Animals. This is superb! It's all I wanted to say about animal cultures and more. She has culture as one chapter of the book, while I had creativity as one aspect of culture. It is great.

And the other is completely blowing me away. A Black Fox Running by Brian Carter. It is set in the Devon countryside after the Second World War and the characters are both human and animal. The foxes speak, but this is not a children's book. The writing is luminous and beautiful. Poetic. The animals are all individuals - ravens, crows, buzzards, stoats, dogs... This is a book written by an artist with a deep reverence for the natural world. I read half of it on the trip to London day. He writes of a fully wakeful world in all its cruelty and beauty. It is absolutely superb. It decentres humans without romanticising nature. It is the best.