{"id":7742,"date":"2021-10-28T23:31:03","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T21:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/?p=7742"},"modified":"2021-10-28T23:32:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T21:32:38","slug":"david-abram-neviditelny-svet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/david-abram-neviditelny-svet\/","title":{"rendered":"David Abram: The Invisible World"},"content":{"rendered":"

This essay by American ecophilosopher David Abram was first published under the title \u201cThe Invisibles\u201d as an introductory article in Parabola magazine (volume 31, number 1, Spring 2006). It was published in Czech in the author\u2019s anthology of texts Procitnut\u00ed do \u017eiv\u00e9 zem\u011b (OPS Nymburk 2008, pp. 77-93, Czech translation Ji\u0159\u00ed Zem\u00e1nek and Barbora Svat\u00e1). The essay is also included in the author\u2019s book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Random House 2010).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To live is to dance with an unknown partner whose steps we can never quite predict, it is to improvise within a field of forces whose shifting qualities we can feel playing with our skin or pulsating rhythmically between our cells, but whose ultimate nature we can never grasp or control with our minds. To affirm our own animal existence, and thereby to awaken within the world, is to renounce the claim to an outside perspective that might one day explore and explain every aspect of the workings of this world. It is to acknowledge the horizon of uncertainty that surrounds every layer of knowledge, and to accept the fact that our lives are at every moment nourished and sustained by mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we are truly bodily embedded in this cosmos that we see and feel around us, bodily embedded within this earthly plenum, then we experience the real exclusively from within its own depths, and therefore each aspect of reality we encounter conceals another behind it. Certainly, there are many aspects or forces of the world that we can name\u2014the sun, the earth, the cliff, the bear and the bird, the full and new moon, the cloud, the rain, the river. Yet the very presence of these beings in the same field that we ourselves inhabit means that there are aspects of each of them that we do not see; each visible facet of this world speaks to us in dimensions that are invisible to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To notice the invisibility of the world, it is not necessary to imagine other scales of existence\u2014whether microscopic or submicroscopic\u2014nor is it necessary to conjure up immaterial or supernatural dimensions. It is enough simply to notice the sensory landscape that materially surrounds us and the most ordinary manifestations with which it is populated. There is, for example, the invisible nature of what is hidden. for<\/strong><\/em> things we see. Every opaque entity obscures the things behind it, and each has its own other side, which is invisible to our eyes at a certain moment. We can change our position to catch a glimpse of this far side - but this immediately hides them from us. other <\/strong><\/em>sides, and what we saw clearly a moment ago now suddenly disappears, obscured by what lies before it. Wherever we move and however we twist, we cannot dispel the strange invisibility of the visible world, the way it hides behind itself and recedes from our view. In the narrowest and most intimate sense, we encounter this strange concealment in the unseen nature of the back of our own body; in the widest sense, we feel it in the way in which the broad horizon of the visible landscape constantly hides from us all the other regions that lie beyond it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet there is another, truly fundamental mode of concealment that lends its mystery to the visible world: that which is hidden. inside<\/strong><\/em> every visible thing. The interiors of buildings we pass on our way to school, the woody core of a young maple tree, the inner density of a stone or a mountain, the inner physiology of a snake we have just disturbed and which is trying to hide in the grass - almost all visible presences that surround us contain a depth that remains hidden from us, an inner structure that is invisible to our eyes. We experience this invisibility most intimately as the hiddenness of the inside of our own body. Surely we will someday be able to see this inside introduce<\/strong><\/em>, for example, according to the pictures we have seen in anatomy textbooks. However, the impression of space and light conveyed in these conjured images is at odds with the apparently dark and airtight nature of the real inside of our bodies, with which we have no visible experience. Only the surgeon (and the subsistence hunter \u2013 who regularly skins and cuts up his prey) can sneak a glimpse of this dark interior, which nevertheless remains almost completely hidden from our view as long as we are alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the most general sense, this second mode of invisibility is experienced in the hidden or invisible nature of everything that is found underground. And here too, although we can dig in the ground to gain some awareness of things, and while a geologist can learn to distinguish in part the different layers and profiles of rocks that a highway cut or an excavation has made visible, the vast majority of what exists at various depths underground remains completely hidden from our consciousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of these modes of invisibility - that which is hidden for<\/strong><\/em> by the things we see and the things that are hidden inside <\/strong><\/em>the thing we observe \u2013 lends the everyday world of our direct experience a penetrating sense of mystery and unknowability. The intuition that, despite all our accumulated knowledge of the workings of this world, we are in a constantly felt relationship with invisible realms. It is an awareness of the mystery of the world \u2013 a sense that has been largely forgotten in the modern context; many of us think of the earthly world as not being entirely part of it, as if we were outside of nature, staring at a satellite image of the Earth on our computer monitor or looking at the \u201clandscape\u201d as if it were some flat prospectus. The earthly world loses its mystery if we think of ourselves as separate from it, as if we think of it as a determinate set of objects that are measurable and countable or as a reservoir of natural resources that are \u201cmanaged\u201d by humanity. However, once we return to the immediacy of the present moment and therefore to our ongoing animal experience within this world, then the flatness disappears and its enigmatic depth begins to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, both forms of concealment that we have just mentioned always have to do with depth; each of them, in fact, reveals a unique meaning of the concept of "depth." The concealment of what lies for<\/strong><\/em> visible things and ultimately beyond the horizon of the visible landscape, is a function of horizontal depth, which photographers call \u201cdepth of field.\u201d It is this dimension of depth that we are always referring to when we talk about the relative proximity or distance of perceived things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the hiddenness of what lies inside <\/strong><\/em>visible bodies around us \u2013 in tree trunks and stones and deepest within the solid earth itself, beneath the surface of the perceptible landscape \u2013 is also a matter of depth, in this case internal vertical depth: that precipitous dimension we always refer to when we speak of the depths of a dark lake or the depth of bedrock or the yawning abyss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both of these depths\u2014the mysterious depth of distance and the alluring depth of the abyss\u2014become apparent and impressive only to a being who is materially embedded in the landscape he perceives, bodily embedded within this sensuality. Each lends its unique mystery to the world, thereby ensuring a kind of rebellious otherness to the things we perceive, a certain resistance of the world to our human desires and intentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are, of course, other invisible dimensions\u2014the invisible nature of sounds, for example, or smells, or even thoughts. But while it is quite possible (and even easy) to imagine a visible world that lacks these various dimensions\u2014a field of visible things without the accompaniment of sounds, smells, or thoughts\u2014it is impossible to imagine a visible world without the invisible dimensions we have discussed. They are absolutely necessary for its visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there is a third form of invisibility that is an integral part of the visible world, a third mode of concealment that is absolutely necessary for the perception of the visible surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In harmony with the unseen presence of what lies within each moment for<\/strong><\/em> visible things, as well as the hidden existence of what lies inside<\/strong><\/em> these visible bodies, there is also an invisible presence of what moves between<\/strong><\/em> visible things \u2013 the unobservable atmosphere, the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Air, itself invisible, is the medium through which we see all visible things. And this third dimension of invisibility also corresponds to a certain aspect of depth. It is the third and deepest meaning of depth: the depth of immersion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the most original meaning of depth, the dimension to which we refer whenever we say that we are fully \u201cimmersed\u201d in something \u2013 that we are wandering in the depths of great sorrow, or throwing ourselves into the depths of all-consuming work \u2013 as completely as fish are immersed in the sea. Or as perfectly as our breathing bodies are immersed in the invisible atmosphere of this world and completely permeated by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The back of things, the inside of things, and the environment between them. These are three aspects of depth, each corresponding to a unique form of invisibility that inhabits the visible world. The mysterious presence of what lies beneath the earth; the unknown nature of what awaits beyond the horizon; and the secrets carried by the invisible air itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the human animal, there is no place, no region of the earth, that is not visited by this triple invisibility. However, the specific quality of these three mysterious dimensions and the precise way in which they permeate and inform each other are peculiarly different in each place. We may say that it is this unique combination of invisibilities that determines genius of the place<\/strong><\/em>, that special power of a certain place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear, then, that from the perspective of our viewing bodies the world of the senses is permeated with uncertainty. Our most immediate experience of the earth around us also brings with it an awareness of inexplicable and ambiguous realms. Indeed, every visibility of our world presupposes from the outset a series of invisible dimensions whose reality we can perceive, yet whose mysterious invisibility cannot simply be overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consciousness of the mysterious and the unseen is, in other words, entirely inherent in our experience of the material surroundings. Invisibility is not primarily an attribute of some immaterial or supernatural domain beyond the sensual, but is an integral part of our encounters with visible nature itself. While there are certainly many beautiful and brightly colored things that we can point to or specify with some precision, the relationships between these visible objects\u2014the ways in which they affect each other and how they affect us\u2014remain hidden. We know that plants, although distant from each other, exchange pollen with each other, and that they attract insects and other pollinators that fly to them from afar\u2014yet the precise vectors of these exchanges, as well as the atmospheric gradients that produce this attraction at a distance, remain invisible. The abundance of trees in a given area seems to influence the frequency and density of visible clouds that sometimes gather above them, yet the determining tensions and currents that produce this effect remain invisible. The rains that fall from these clouds to the ground also seem to enhance the green and leafy life of these trees, yet the paths that the rain takes once it disappears into the ground\u2014the precise paths by which the water is first drawn into the tangle of roots, then through the stronger roots into the trunk, and finally distributed to the individual leaves\u2014are hidden from our squinting eyes. Countless currents, torsions, and tensions affect and reshape this breathing terrain we inhabit, yet the vastness of these currents remains hidden from our direct understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But because we are bodily woven into the same field as these trees and clouds, we can sometimes sense or feel the urgency of these messages, how they gently play with our bodies. Other invisible currents can only be felt by extending our bodily imagination outward, into the vast depths of the living landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although such invisible forces and torsions can be felt, we almost never perceive them directly \u2013 and therefore we cannot pinpoint them, we can hardly define or describe them, without violating their fleeting qualities, without distorting their constitutive invisibility. Although we suspect that such mysterious messages make up a large part of our world, we can only point to them indirectly, using modes of speech that are deliberately \u2013 and even playfully \u2013 ambiguous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such, for example, are all the numerous "intelligences," "forces," and "spirits" that figure in the oral speech of indigenous peoples throughout the world. Every community that lives in close and intimate contact with undomesticated nature\u2014whether hunter-gatherers or small-scale cultivators\u2014recognizes the myriad energies that move in the invisible depths of the sensory world, and honors these forces with regular gestures of sacrifice in return for the continued provision of earthly sustenance. Cultures whose reliance on the living earth is not yet mediated by a great deal of technology cannot help but experience the seasonal sustenance on which they depend as a gift that offers itself to them from an invisible heart of mystery. The plants we consume for food emerge silently from the dark depths of the subterranean; the bison or the caribou arrive each year from far beyond the horizon; the water that quenches the thirst in our throats is constantly replenished from clouds that somehow gather and materialize from the invisible depths of this medium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We merely misinterpret these invisible "spirits" worshipped by native oral cultures as entirely disembodied supernatural entities\u2014as immaterial illusions conjured up by naive and primitive imaginations. Are the currents and eddies in this invisible air disembodied? Are the colliding swells and sinks that make up the fluid space in which we are immersed immaterial? Or is the invisible cloud of lichen spores that floats on these currents like a transparent silken substance? Is the hidden sap rising inside a pine tree trunk, or the contagion that spreads through the body of a young elk, of a supernatural nature? For oral indigenous peoples, \u201cspirits\u201d or \u201cinvisibles\u201d are not incorporeal beings, but rather a way of becoming aware of the myriad dimensions of the sensory world that we cannot see at any given moment\u2014a way of honoring the manifold invisibilities that move across the visible landscape\u2014and a way of keeping ourselves and our own culture receptive to such invisible and elusive aspects of reality. They are a way of keeping our senses open to what is necessarily inexplicable from a certain perspective, a way of remaining in a feeling relationship with the invisible waters that nourish us, with the invisible ebbs and flows in which we are immersed. Acknowledging \u201cspirits\u201d is itself part of the practice of humility necessary to avoid endangering our own society\u2014a simple and gentle way to remind ourselves of our constant dependence on forces we cannot create and whose actions we cannot control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is indeed only we in literate, technological Western society who tend to interpret "spirit" as something completely insubstantial, completely beyond any sensory comprehension. Only educated Christian civilization assumes that spirit is something completely outside this world inhabited by our breathing bodies. However, the English word "spirit" (spirit<\/em>) comes from the Latin term "spirit<\/strong><\/em>", which originally meant "wind" and "breath" - and is apparently the predecessor of the English term "respiration" (respiration<\/em>). By separating the concept of "spirit" from its entirely tangible earthly origin as wind, alphabetic civilization transformed a mystery that was once simply invisible<\/strong><\/em>,<\/strong> into a mystery that was completely untouchable <\/strong><\/em>and it was impossible to taste none<\/strong><\/em> from the bodily senses. By pushing the spirit out of the sensory realm, civilization stripped the material world of its enigmatic depth, its distance, and its concealment. Thus stripped of its constitutive peculiarities, stripped of its mysteries and invisibility, the material world could now be interpreted as pure presence, as pure object<\/strong><\/em>, which can, at least in principle, be seen all at once; knowable, at least theoretically, in its entirety \u2013 without any obstacles or obscurities. And we, purely knowing beings, no longer experience material reality from within its own depths; we float apart from the tangible world, examining this magnificent object with the dispassionate gaze of a disembodied spirit \u2013 with a pure mind free from any physical properties or inhibitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only when we claim to view the world from this disembodied perspective does it appear to us as a fully determined and definable presence, knowable in its entirety. Whenever we speak of nature in strictly objective terms, whenever we consider the material world as a set of clearly defined events, entirely amenable to quantitative description, are we tacitly inclined to this strange conception of nature as a pure plenitude that can be known from all angles at once\u2014a plenitude from which we, the knowers, are necessarily separated. Of course, our animal bodies can be included in this measurable, mechanical nature, but our conscious, knowing "I" cannot. We float apart from nature, and we contemplate this material plenitude from without.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This view of the world from the outside turns out to be a very useful illusion in itself. Yet it is already clear that if we treat<\/strong><\/em> With the material world as an object from which we ourselves are excluded, we are destroying the earth's ability to support our human presence. Topsoils, forced to yield ever greater yields, are rapidly being depleted and stripped of nutrients. Waters that have long been convenient dumping grounds for industrial waste have become toxic. The tattered atmosphere no longer protects smooth-skinned beings like us from the penetrating heat of the sun. The earth is shaking faster and faster as if in a fever., <\/em>while countless other species\u2014all forms of sentience and earthly sentience\u2014are plummeting into the widening abyss of extinction. It will probably not be long before our own intelligent species follows suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless we awaken from the long-held delusion of our separation from the physical earth \u2013 and rediscover that we are within the breathing body of the world. Unless we begin to engage with the landscape around us as attentive participants in its vast life, and let our actions be informed by other participants \u2013 other beings <\/strong><\/em>\u2013 whose perception is so richly intertwined with our own. Unless we break out of our technological cocoons, shake our senses and free them from their rigid immobility, open our eyes to receive the flash of sunlight from the wing of a falcon circling over the city buildings, and open our ears not to the play of words but to the voices of silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not only the fascination with technologies that keeps us apart from the earthly world, but also the ways of speaking and thinking that have emerged with these technologies and now have a life of their own. How are we to maintain our intelligence down here in the midst of things when our language constantly pulls us away from sensuality, when our words and the ways we handle them immobilize things, deaden their dynamism, enclose them within themselves as unchanging and final products?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of us experiences moments of surprising sensory clarity\u2014moments in which that ever-cycling wave of abstract thoughts dissolves into the resonant eloquence of a stream, swollen by fresh rain, its waters foaming and rushing over stones.1<\/a><\/sup>In the English original guttural stones<\/em>, which means Throat stones.<\/em> The author compares the stone bed of a stream to a throat that resonates with its sonorous speech.<\/span>. Yet we rarely manage to maintain such animal alertness; once we return to our friends and begin to speak, our language seems to tear us away from the foam and flow of the present moment. As educated people, we are bound to the protective arms of reflection, in which our speech recursively circles back upon itself\u2014the speaking self conducting an internal dialogue with its own words, verbal thoughts prompting and then triggering further thoughts, over and over again, until finally we become completely indifferent to the touch of the wind on our skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So if we wish to restore our solidarity with the sensory land, then we should learn to speak in some new ways. We will have to learn how to speak in greater harmony with our animal senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It rained long and hard last night. In the morning I walk through an old orchard, walking on the bare dirt between the trees, looking closely and noticing a small, fragile leaf peeking out from under a clump; I bend down and see another leaf and suddenly realize that the ground is full of tiny green shoots pushing out of the dark soil. How many seeds must have been sleeping inside that dry soil, patiently waiting for the magic of rain! I grab a strong apple branch and push it to the ground. It bends and straightens again, throwing me back into an upright position. I reach for the leafy branch of another branch and gently tug on one of its leaves. The branch bends toward me for a moment and then jerks back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can feel the unyielding life in the leaves and the supple muscle of the sap-filled wood. As if the mere bending of an apple branch was a simple experience of reciprocity, a chance encounter of two different lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I head up the hill behind the house, climb under the poplars2<\/a><\/sup>In the English original cottonwood<\/em>s \u2013 American poplars.<\/span> and I look for a way among the junipers and pines until I finally come up among the tall pines and aspen groves. Opposite me lies the southern slope of the hill, densely covered with junipers and pines, both those with short needles and those with long needles3<\/a><\/sup>Pine tree<\/span> \u2013 a dark green cover interrupted here and there by the lighter foliage of some deciduous trees. I know from the literature that the leaves of deciduous trees have cells on their surface that are sensitive to the entire spectrum of visible light, and I assume that pine needles have the same ability. I learned about the complex chemical photosynthesis in high school and studied it even more intensively in college, amazed by the elegant efficiency of this process. However, I would like to know what it is feeling <\/strong><\/em>to be rooted in one place, to suck up minerals through root hairs that spread themselves according to taste through the dark dense underground, and at the same time to drink sunlight during the day through their needles? What kind of feeling is accompanied by the transformation of sunlight into matter? We really cannot believe that such transformations occur without any accompanying sensations \u2013 that there is no experience that would accompany this transformation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear that deciduous trees lack a central nervous system and therefore their perception is probably much less centralized than it is in us. However, the fact that feelings are not related to a central perceiver does not rule out the possibility that they are felt in the leaves themselves. Experiencing is simply a much more diffuse and democratic affair for most plants than it is for more hierarchically organized beings like us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We may suppose that the poplar is entirely devoid of perception, and that therefore the summer dawn leaves no impression on its body. We may also assure ourselves that there is no sensitivity in its leaves to distinguish a cloudy afternoon from a cloudless afternoon, no perception in the tips of its roots when a heavy rain penetrates the soil, no perception in the wood cambium while the sap flows inside the trunk, and that all these daily and seasonal changes in the metabolism of the tree do indeed proceed according to purely mechanical causality, without any need for perception and in the complete absence of feelings (in the inert void of mute materiality). But such an idea again drags us back to the belief that perception arose outside the body and the corporeal earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It follows from this that our own ability to experience appeared suddenly in the material field of the world. That is, that our perception cannot be a development of sensitivity already contained in organic matter \u2013 for example, in the countless microbial entities whose collective activities enable the metabolism of plants and animals \u2013 and therefore must be a force that suddenly penetrates physical reality from elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if I admit that this wildly flowing sensibility that I call \u201cme\u201d was born from this upright body dreaming its way through the world\u2014if I admit, for example, that my perception is sustained by the air that flows through my nostrils and the diverse forms of sensitivity that permeate me (the eager receptivity of the bacteria in my gut and the capriciousness of every bundle of neurons in my spine)\u2014then a new affinity with the sensory world can blossom. Because then all the other bodies I see around me, be they blackbirds, blades of grass, or the rainbow-colored beetle that is currently crawling up my shirt, testify to their own specific perception. The emerald green leaves that swing like wings on a nearby aspen branch testify, in their perfect coloration, to the never-ending pleasure that permeates the entire quivering periphery of the tree\u2014the exhilaration of chlorophyll. It is as if our own breathing lungs were straightened and spread out on the smooth surface of our bodies, and the heat of the day made them quiver with a quivering transformation \u2013 the outer membranes from dawn to dusk captivated by the sun\u2019s rays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked up and perceived the coniferous slope on the other side of the valley as a curved field of sensation \u2013 my skin feels the variety of green of all these trees like a quiet ecstasy that permeates this hill. It is an ecstasy in which I myself regularly participate by taking in the glow of these colors, the tender feeling of joy that is there for me in the green of the leaves and needles. always<\/strong><\/em> was \u2013 a gentle pleasure in the face of greenery, <\/em>which can be felt even more intensely whenever sunlight spills over the grasses and leafy trees - a pleasure that I have only now begun to fully realize, a kind of empathy in the eyes<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But where does this empathic connection take place? Do I step out of my own eyes and fly across the valley to feel the pleasure of meeting this needle? Is there some force that flows from those branches and through the thick air to meet and connect with my body here in this place where I stand with my gaze fixed? Somewhere between there and here (perhaps at every point between us) there is a connection and a kind of mutual interpenetration. This simple instance of perception, this momentary encounter across the valley, cannot but be influenced by the mood of the environment between us, which is stimulated or obscured by the numerous events unfolding within that invisible depth\u2014local turbulence and eddies, condensation and warm currents, and the cool, clear stillness that briefly opens and closes again within that invisible river of air that flows between my body and the breathing hillside opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our perception of the things around us is always mediated by such invisibilities. The reciprocity between our body and the earth is made possible by a multitude of imperceptible yet subtly palpable presences, fluid and often fleeting forces whose near presence we can sense or be intuitively aware of, yet whose precise contours remain unknown to us. The felt invisibilities, whose lives sometimes intertwine with or permeate us in such a seamless way, cannot be described in thought, but only acknowledged. Or honored with simple gestures of greeting and gratitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If, therefore, we wish to open our consciousness to the real place in which we live, if we wish to free our senses to perceive the earthly reality that so completely surrounds and permeates us, it is most likely that we will have to invite back into our language ghosts<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether we characterize them as spirits, forces, or presences (or even\u2014in keeping with oral tradition\u2014as fairies, gnomes, elves, or other \u201cinvisibility\u201d), it is only by addressing these invisible elementals that we begin to free our senses and awaken those minute sensitivities that have been dormant for so long. By allowing such mysterious phenomena back into our own discourse\u2014recognizing them not as entirely objective entities, nor as purely subjective experiences, but (like a scent carried on the breeze) as ambiguous realities that move simultaneously around us and within us, and sometimes through<\/strong><\/em> us \u2013 we will revive the participatory sensitivity of our bodies. By speaking of these invisibility not as accidental ephemerals or as determined forces, but as mysterious and effective powers that we feel in our proximity from time to time, we will free our capacity for intuition and empathic observation and bring to light again the subtlety and penetratingness of perception that the modern age has buried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, through these subtle sensations, with which the living landscape tunes our bodies, it also invites our communities and our cultures into a dynamic, dance-like connection with the breathing earth. Spirits are not untouchable; they are not from another world. They are the way the land begins to speak to us as we step back into this one <\/strong><\/em>of the world.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay by American ecophilosopher David Abram was first published under the title \u201cThe Invisibles\u201d as an introductory article in Parabola magazine (volume 31, number 1, Spring 2006). It was published in Czech in the anthology of the author\u2019s texts Procitnut\u00ed do \u017eiv\u00e9 zem\u011b (OPS Nymburk 2008, pp. 77-93, Czech translation by Ji\u0159\u00ed Zem\u00e1nek and Barbora Svat\u00e1). The essay is also part of the author\u2019s book Becoming Animal: An\u2026 Continue reading David Abram: The Invisible World<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,35,59],"class_list":["post-7742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nezarazene","tag-david-abram","tag-ekofilosofie","tag-preklady","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7742"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7746,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7742\/revisions\/7746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}