Phenomenology of Belonging #1
An Introduction
The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
My work as an applied ecopsychologist focuses on bringing together aspects of nature awareness and connection, with applied animal welfare through the lens of trans-species psychology. Every organism evolves specific strategies through which to thrive and live in symbiotic connection with its ecosystem. It is through these energetic exchanges that the relational balance of the ecosystem is maintained with each organism playing their part. This relationship between organism and system is reciprocal and the organism achieves its optimal physical, and cognitive vitality by participating with their ecosystem through certain behavioral patterns called a species- specific behavioral repertoire. It is the normative sequence of behaviors under natural conditions through which an organism participates with its evolutionary environment. Normative in this sense would refer to any “behavior that has developed during evolutionary adaptation of an animal in a certain environment” (Jensen, 2002). Darwin reminds us, “let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life” (Darwin, 1859). Our bodies, our brains, our senses, our minds have all been designed to interface with the natural world through a reciprocal dance that took place over evolutionary time. Paul Shepard (1998) expands on this relationship in his work Coming Home to the Pleistocene.
“Our bodies are Niche-fixed, defined by the characteristic features of our ecology in the strict sense of the word – that is, the energy and symbiotic patterns and demographics of our genus, Homo, as they have existed for perhaps two million years. The genome has its demands... Above all, it links the individual’s relationship to the social and ecological environment.”
We are designed to participate as a member of the living systems. The entirety of what we are is a result of our ability to fit into a larger puzzle we have long since ignored.
It is through our direct sensate relations and the interplay with place that we were created. Our ability to survive was dependent on our ability to connect with and participate in the ecological cycles of the natural world. The interconnectedness of things makes it so no one piece can be separated out from the whole. That is to say, that the energetic exchanges an organism relates with its system through are just as integral to its being as are its physical traits. For it is those physical traits that coevolved and exist only in as far as they were capable of relating the organism to its system, the piece to its puzzle.
When a non-human animal is captivated, that is, removed from their context within the ecosystem of their emergence, they suffer. They are prevented from performing the behaviors that connected them to their place in the world. We see this in zoos when the artificial enclosure does not meet the cognitive or physical needs of an animal. The distress caused by an inability to perform these behaviors sets the animal desperately attempting to fill this void with other behaviors that ease its discomfort. Unfortunately, most of the time these behaviors take the form of abnormal, repetitive, self-harming behaviors known as zoochosis. Enrichment programs are then developed by zoo professionals in an attempt to mimic the natural exchanges an organism would have with its natural environment (its species-specific behavioral repertoire). Through this simulated relational exchange, the discomfort caused by the void in the organism’s behavioral repertoire is lessened, and thereby the appearance of the symptoms of zoochosis is also reduced.
The human-made world we have created for ourselves (and the resulting human-nature disconnection) imposes similar voids in our behavioral repertoire that artificial environments pose to every captive species of animal on this planet. Thus today, many humans are suffering from their own zoochosis that prevents ancestral energetic exchanges with the natural world from which we coevolved. Characterized by an anti-ecological way of life that is celebrated, condoned, and taught as both sane and healthy, we perpetuate this pathology collectively and intergenerationally. I call this contextual mismatch and telegraphing of trauma: Enculturated Captivity.
The following short essays began as a phenomenological investigation trying to map out the nature connection and awareness practices I was creating to combat enculturated captivity. Yet, as I sat down to write I found things wanting to be said, that at the time, felt unconnected to my initial inquiry. My guideposts were a feeling; a shiver. The sensation that every one of my cells had come alive in response to some unseen force or frequency. I wanted to know what it meant and where it was leading me.
When taken together as a unified work, the threads of connection, loss, vulnerability, captivity, and the resiliency of the heart stand out and weave together to create: A Phenomenology of Belonging.
I hope my investigation will support your own adventure home toward self-awareness, expression, acceptance, and belonging. Welcome.
—VW
Phenomenology of Belonging #2
Gravity and the Ground
I watched the little black dog run across a small red bridge that connected pavement to forest. I followed her slower than usual. My legs carried a heaviness to them, a soreness remembered from running this same route two days prior. My thighs were tight, contracted with tension. My calves were loose, open yet lacking in strength. The response time between brain and feet felt especially slow and long.
I stopped and loosed three arrows across the dried, stony, creek-bed, my thoughts elsewhere with worries from the morning. They felt intrusive, pulling at me like needy children or barking dogs. I thought about pushing them away. I pulled the bow over my shoulder, it’s string pressing in on my rib cage and dividing my chest with a dull pinch. The wooden bow itself dug into the left side of my back with a similar familiar discomfort as I began to climb the tree.
Soft green moss covered its surface and met my hands with a feeling like burnt hair crunching under my fingers. My feet found comfortable footholds and let the weight of my body settle. I looked down at the bank on the far side of the creek. It seemed higher than I remembered. The bowstring now felt more constricting than it had just a moment ago. The pace of my heart beat quickened, and my chest contracted. I had the sensation of withdrawing even though I leaned forward in the tree as if I hoped to get just a little closer to where I hoped I would land. Then I leaned back into that withdrawal, suddenly unsure as to whether this was the way I had gone before, “last time I climbed did I actually jump”? I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.
I jumped into darkness. I jumped with my eyes closed. The speed with which gravity sucked me back to the earth was quicker than I’d expected. My feet impacted the ground, leaves and dirt made a noise like only leaves and dirt can make as they readjusted under me. My spine compressed, and my knees bent under the force. I didn’t land where I expected.
My legs caved under me as the angle of the hill tipped me backwards and I fell again. This time the speed was slower - I thought about the rocks at the bottom of the dried up creek. This time my eyes were open - I saw the rocks spin into view as I toppled down on them. This time my whole body was aware of the impact as I came to settle on the myriad shapes of stone. This creek’s bed was now my own, and so I rested.
After a short time I pressed myself up, my body all too aware of itself now. My shoulder was alive, awake and throbbing. My thigh was cut and fully present. As I stood I again felt the bowstring still hugging its 30 pounds against me, which I imagined meant it wasn’t broken. The tight, netted liner of my running shorts dug up and into my groin as I took my next first step, now very much aware of my body and its relationship with gravity.
—VW
Phenomenology of Belonging #3
When the Bough Breaks
I heard the wilderness instructor say “grab your kits”, which I knew meant we were going to spend the next couple hours practicing making friction fires with our bow-drill kits. I almost groaned, but didn’t. The breath left my mouth like a wordless complaint begging to be heard but maybe too afraid to let itself become audible. My eyes rolled in annoyance as I turned my head, feeling almost embarrassed to let anyone see my displeasure.
I rifled through my pack, again my frustrated, fumbling movements an unspoken protest. I watched the others in the group of twelve excitedly begin searching for tinder to make their little bundles for which they would hope to light a fire, while I instead stomped around like an angry child snatching up debris from the forest floor. It was October in Northern California and the crisp autumn air had signaled it was time for the trees to shed their foliage. There were thus ample stores to collect from. I haphazardly gathered my tinder into a small nest that no self- respecting bird would ever call home, and set to work.
The fire pit had become the apex from which the group distributed itself like numbers on a clock. I laid out my kit on the soft ground off to the side of the group. My hearth-board was of big leaf maple 2 inches wide, 12 long, and just under an inch in thickness. The spindle was madrone, a harder wood than was recommended, but who was I kidding I wasn’t ever going to make a fire with this thing anyways. The handhold was a clunking cylinder of redwood that had been halved leaving one side flat. And the bow was a length of paracord tied to a barely curved piece of redwood, the length of my arm from armpit to wrist, and the thickness of my thumb.
I took my left shoe and sock off and set my stance as I had been shown: bare foot on the hearth-board, leaving right angle at my knee, right knee behind left heal - far enough away that the space below my left leg made an empty square, right foot kicked out behind so the three points of right foot, left foot, and right knee would make a triangle if traced with a pencil. I twisted the spindle into the bowstring, placed the spindle onto the hearth-board, and steadied it as my other hand brought the hand-hold down to complete the circuit. The spindle began to spin as I dragged the bow back and forth. I waited for the little spinning stick to pop-out and go flying off in failure, as it seemed to love to do. But then I saw smoke.
The smoking wood pieces ground together, and I didn’t let up. Something felt different. I felt different. What was this feeling? My arm strained, I wanted to let up, but didn’t. A common mistake when learning to surf is to stop paddling when you think you’ve caught the wave, you haven’t, keep paddling. Exhausted, I pulled the spindle out of its knock and inspected the smoking wedge of dust left behind from this intimate friction. I had a coal. I... me... I did this. I had birthed this infant fire. I felt an old familiar shiver run through me electrifying the hairs on my arms.
I think I loved this little smoldering pile of dust. I wanted it to live. I needed it to live. Something had me, a possession of sorts that I fail to name anything other than Purpose. It shivered through my body. With trepidation, as if my entire being hinged on this little coal becoming a flame, I tipped it into my poorly prepared nest, and blew. It’s hard to imagine a contradiction of blowing and yet at the same time forgetting to breathe, but that’s what it felt like, a contradiction: a giddy terror, a disbelieving excitement, a precarious joy. Paradox.
I watched the coal go out in my hands. Stillborn and silent, the cradle fell from my palms and scattered itself at my feet. I remember looking down at my hands, first the palms and then the backs of them. I remember smiling, feeling the shiver still alive in me. Something felt different. Something felt changed. What if I could do this? What if I belonged here? What if I was home?
—VW
Phenomenology of Belonging #4
Waking Up in a Cage
It’s early morning in New York City, maybe 7:00 a.m. A cold January quiet hangs over the Bronx as I make my way from the five train’s platform to the gates of the zoo. I feel a relaxation in the emptiness of the streets, a reprieve brought on by the winter hibernation, as I imagine snooze buttons are being pressed and warm blankets are being pulled up tight by people bargaining for just a few more minutes in bed. I cherish moments like these. I feel myself expand and take up more space. I look up and around more, taking in the world around me, a world that at least for this brief window in time feels less grating and less overwhelming.
I sign in at the zoo and notice how welcomed I feel by the curated trees, managed soils, and the imprisoned creatures all around me. Perhaps they too share the quiet joy of an empty early morning before the field trips and tourists flood these paths with their cameras, and screaming children. Or perhaps the kinship I feel toward these creatures is more of a shared knowing, a knowing that they, like me, had not been shaped by natural forces and coevolved over millions of years to live in a cage.
Their captivity was obvious; they were held hostage by not only the concrete walls and steel bars but also an ample and effortless supply of food, health care, and reproductive mates. The toys provided to detract from boredom and the terrain built to mimic the shadow of a lost world served only to highlight how far these beings were removed from the place on this planet that birthed them, the same place that they had evolved to participate with as an integral member, the place where they actually came from and belonged still.
This is a simple observation, one that any of our young field-tripping children could make. If asked, “where do tigers come from?” no child would answer, “from that concrete box in the Bronx.” No, this was not where they belonged; that was obvious.
What about me? What about us? Where do we belong? Humans—are we not animals? Did we not once have a place in this world? Somewhere we belonged—far from the concrete walls of our cities and the invisible bars of our culture? Had we not evolved in relation to the natural world like every other living being on this planet? Therefore, were there not still ecosystems longing to have us participate with them in the ways our ancestors had coevolved to do?
Oh, how I love these cold lonely morning walks through the empty zoo before it opens to the public. There is a certain relaxation, a safety, or maybe just a hint of sanity that comes with being able to see and lay a hand on the bars that hold a life captive and know with certainty that they are not imagined.
—VW
Phenomenology of Belonging #5
Snow Falling
I see snow, and I see a mountain. A mountain not so big, steep or foreboding that people become famous for climbing it. Not so remote or undeveloped that a western academic would mistake it as pristine wilderness. It feels like this mountain grew up wanting company, somehow it knew it wanted to be a playground when it grew up. This mountain beckons me, welcomes me onto it’s curves and asks only that I try to learn to fly while I am here, while it enjoys watching me get back up, again and again, when I fall.
There is a blue/grey sky above, and there are families, lots of families: small and large, broken and un. They skitter and skid and scream with joy and terror across the faces, facets and folds of this mountain. Their brightly colored snowsuits polka dotting the white blue skin of my snowy friend. Let’s say it’s Christmas and a particular cheer, the kind that lets people say, “go ahead”, or forget to fight over parking spots, the kind of cheer that possesses strangers to smile and wave has, god only knows how, gotten into these people. Or at the least it has gotten into me, as it always does. But I’m not with all those families right now. I’m around the backside of the mountain where the trails haven’t been completed just yet.
The snow is deeper, and there are large piles of timber, stacked haphazardly like giant wooden porcupine, each wearing a white blanket of fresh snow. There aren’t nearly as many people back here. Just me and mine at the moment, and we are fast.
They jockey around me, my friends, like wild salmon or horses or some other wild thing. The snow is deep and light, it blows up and around us, into our faces and our mouths. We could close them of course, our mouths, but it’s not such an easy thing when moving that fast with such little effort, surrounded by a surging calm and in sync with so much. A wide smile or two are bound to glue themselves onto our faces and insist that we breathe the white cold powder.
We snake through the trees, quickly picking individual courses, within that of the groups. Precision, focus, and sheer enjoyment coalesce into something else as we navigate the frozen mountain forest. My legs pump hard. My shoulders, hips, knees and feet all speak to one another and dance in balance, counter-balance, balance. I am stronger than I’ve been before, and I know it. My body knows it too, and moves my weight like water down into the board strapped to my feet, and then on into the frozen water I fly through, without gap or lag or hesitation. I am not a man, on a board, on a mountain. I am something else, something more than a summation of relations between the three. Satori.
Towards the bottom, the slope becomes gentler. I look up at the snow falling around me. It falls all around us big and white and fluffy, not so much that it obstructs vision, but enough that it feels like being inside something instead of on something or at something. I can at once see it all falling together as a whole event, yet still let my focus attach to individual flakes, and track them as they fall.
I’m moving across the gentle incline of the mountain at the same speed that the snow is falling down on to the mountain, something about this plays with my perception, it affects me in a lasting way. Everything suspends and bends toward the infinite. I’m there, looking around in the moment: snow, falling on a pine forest, on a mountain, on me.
As I sit here typing I hold this mountain in my mind. I add the conifers, the families, the falling snow, me, my smile, and the more-than we become when together. I can almost begin again to forget all the lines between, the marches that divide one from the other. I can feel that shiver. I can feel it move, buzzing into my chest. All at once, I am allowed to both remember and forget.
—VW