On a hike this winter in Northern Colorado, I was considering whether the human ear can perceive light. It is a wavelength after all. The trail had dipped into the shadow of the mountain and the snow beneath our feet crunched beneath our weight. Yet, it seemed so quiet and still. Of course, it’s likely that most mobile beings like insects and animals would prefer the warm sunshine in winter than the shadowy side of a mountain, creating the silence of the darkness, like the void of space where, at least to human understanding, there’s nothing alive and breathing.
What of other senses perceiving light? When I am in the sunshine, I feel heavy. Is it the pressure of the speed at which light travels pushing against me? Light doesn’t seem to weigh anything, but does something that moves 186,000 miles per second really have no force? Modern science claims that the eye is the fastest perceiving organ in the human body. This makes sense considering how fast light moves. Only, I’m not convinced. How can we simplify the power of human perception when I feel the force of the sunshine on my body when I walk outside. Is it my skin that perceives first the sensation of my environment? My ears hearing the click of a stick down by the creek, my whole body responds to the possible threat or eager sighting of wildlife. And I feel wild in response; a tender, fleshy and fluid soft sack of sentience that in the case of being stalked may not be able to defend myself.
As Crooke’s radiometer (that little science object that looks like a lightbulb and has the little kite-shaped plates and spins in the light) displays, light can make the plates spin. The actual science behind it has to do with thermal gas pressure, but the idea that light creates movement is spectacular. Sunflower heads following the sun, houseplants reaching towards the window-light, the edges of the day ripe with the busy activity of birdsong, the pull of the moon and stars on our gaze.
Being outdoors orients me to time and space in a way that places me honestly in the web of life. Our current lifestyles are dishonest; we rarely perceive the truth of our place on Earth. When we isolate our senses, like we so often do in our day-to-day, the unfocused direction of doing, we are robbing ourselves of our totality and the potentiality of experience. We live so heavily in one sense at a time. What would it feel like to open up more the perceptions of our full somatic experience? To the push and pull of the light of the cosmos, the cleansing wind, the clarity and peace of rivers and oceans. The summer sun beckons a reprieve in the shade of a tree; an invitation to rest and witness the world through opening up our sense-perception and allowing ourselves to be moved.
What would it feel like to follow our intuition, our gut instinct? Would we all open our front doors and disappear into the wilderness? Or wander until we found ourselves at the doorstep of a dear friend or family member and fall into a deep embrace? Would we stand in city centers and weep? How have we come here?
The earth is calling us back. How will you respond?
Ephemeral Movement 