Scientists say we are increasingly biased visually and neuronally against some sensory aspects of our own perceptions and experience. We don’t let awareness linger in fragrances because we head frequently toward sight and thoughts. In other words, we spend a lot of our time in cognitions and visual experiences, but not so much enjoying our other senses and experiences.
So when I had the chance recently to stand so close to a buffalo, I could hear him tearing grass from the ground and sliding it back and forth across his massive teeth and tongue, I lunged at the opportunity to keep my awareness in my ears and resisted the temptation to flit through thoughts about buffalo, danger, my non-working leg or even to appreciate the rich brown of his ear. For a good chunk of time it was just me taking in the tearing and chewing, which, unfortunately, I can’t share in words. The sequence of sounds went something like: tch-glm-sss-ngm-tsh-tsh-zszszszs. It was a non-vowel moment. It was also a bunch of stretchy moments with no markers of time. I have no idea how long I took in the munching of the buffalo sounds. Time slows and stops when I truly switch to a different sense perception. Buffalo time maybe.
Having my awareness seized by new sounds and smells is a reason to leave home and journey to unfamiliar places. The birds sing different songs. The air carries no highway hum only the chorus of crickets or frogs. And when I walk in the sage, the penetrating fragrance prompts an urge to rub myself in a bush and carry its pungent caress on my body always.
My travels in the Northwest are not just for the purpose of seeing new vistas. They are to unhook me from living a biased life. A life lived mostly in my head would be a tragedy. Stale, self-referential, repetitive, boring. The world offers much beyond what the eye can see or the prefrontal cortex throws together in thoughts: the chatter of aspen leaves in the breeze, the click of a crow’s feet walking on rock, or raspy demands from its chicks, the warm mustiness of a wood floor, the juice of a strawberry grown in far away soil.
In the moment I am writing this, I am squarely back in my cortical experience, thinking about what it meant to me to take in new sounds, long sounds, nothing but sounds, or a certain sound as a chosen focus for experience. My decision in this moment is to expand the moments of bliss beside the bison and the sage.
My stored memories are more than just sequential thoughts. They are mini reproductions of the presence I chose in those moments. I didn’t command the buffalo or the crow. The world offered them to me and I brought my awareness to them. And now I feel my thankfulness for all that they stored within me. My knee jerk processes have received a good shake up and reset. “What is that sweet tweet?” asks my ear before my head turns to bring the bird in sight or its species to mind. Let me lounge in the lavender and breathe in smells that have no words.
Images of buffalo and crows by Andrea Blose Dobkin
