Smells and Bells

Bandit   In Spell of the Sensuous , Abram writes: “In indigenous, oral cultures, nature itself is articulate; it speaks. The human voice in an oral culture is always to some extent participant with the voices of wolves, wind, and waves— participant, that is, with the encompassing discourse of an animate earth. There is no element of the landscape that is definitively void of expressive resonance and power.” (75) Being around animals for a long period of time really taught me the truth of this idea. Animals develop their own language (and I don’t use that term lightly). They are capable of lying or misleading you, which suggests that they can tell when someone knows them well. They can recognize people as members of their flock just as readily as other sheep or goats. The line between humans and other animals is much more permeable than we might imagine.  Lady At twelve, I began volunteering at a farm. It was situated on two hundred acres of forests and pastures. I worked in t...

When I used to think of the sixth sense, I immediately associated it to magic and the ability to see dead people (obviously influenced by the literal movie 'The Sixth Sense'). After reading more about it and being introduced to more examples of how it is displayed in our daily lives, I have developed a more complex understanding. Whether it is 'feeling' someone's eyes on you, turning the car around because you had an inkling of a feeling about not shutting the garage door (one that I have felt way too often), or getting a call from someone that you had been meaning to call all day, our sixth sense is represented in many forms. "My life and the world's life are deeply intertwined; when I wake up one morning to find that a week-long illness has subsided and that my strength has returned, the world, when I step outside, fairly sparkles with energy and activity; swallowing are swooping by in vivid flight; waves of heat rise from the newly paved road smelling ...

I was really thinking hard about what I could write about with the 6th sense, so I started by looking for a topic in the Spell of the Sensuous  book and I came across the section on pages 78-79 about animal communications. This made me start thinking about how I communicate with my dogs at home. We teach them tricks and they seem to understand them, but sometimes they just know things without getting any indication from us. For example when one of my family members is sick one of my dogs will not leave that person alone like he has to constantly sitting near them or looking at them. For example, one time I was super sick at Wheaton so I came home for a long weekend, and my dad told me while I was sleeping he was literally standing on my chest looking at me to make sure I was ok. So strange. Java (left) and Diver (right) (Shiba Inu and Beagle Mix Brothers) So last night I had what I decided was a weird 6th sense moment where I was sleeping (It was like 3:30 am so I was dead as...