Sometimes The Magic Works

from Little Big Man







Human language,
for us moderns,
has swung in on itself,
turning its back
on the beings around us.
Language is
a human property,
suitable only
for communication
with other persons.
We talk to people;
we do not speak
to the ground underfoot.
We've largely forgotten
the incantatory
and invocational
use of speech
as a way of bringing
ourselves into
deeper rapport with
the beings around us,
or of calling
the living land
into resonance with us.
It is a power
we still brush up against
whenever we use our words
to bless and to curse,
or to charm
someone we're drawn to.
But we wield
such eloquence only to
sway other people,
and so we miss
the greater magnetism,
the gravitational power
that lies within such speech.
The beaver gliding
across the pond,
the fungus gripping
a thick trunk,
a boulder shattered
by its tumble down a cliff
or the rain
splashing upon
those granite fragments
--we talk about such beings,
the weather and
the weathered stones,
but we do not
talk to them.
Entranced by
the denotative power
of words to define,
to order, to represent
the things around us,
we've overlooked
the songful dimension
of language
so obvious to
our storytelling ancestors.
We've lost our ear
for the music of language
--for the rhythmic,
melodic layer of speech
by which earthly things
overhear us.
--David Abram
Becoming Animal:
An Earthly Cosmology