......animacy

Yogis,
“Good morning robin! What are you up to today?” My morning greeting to the robin that keeps hopping a few feet forward every time I take a step with the hose as I water the garden. Not flying away but not quite ready to have me in her personal space. She makes eye contact. “It’s ok,” I say.

Its then that I remember the workman from the gas company quietly working a few feet away behind the lattice. Hmmmm….. He probably thinks I’m nuts. Oh well.

You all know that I talk to nature. Trees, squirrels, bugs and the wind have all been acknowledged many times over. The moon feels like a best friend and I recognize individual rocks.  At this point it feels so natural I can’t imagine not letting them know that I see them. Disrespectful. It would be as uncomfortable as the person who passes two feet from me but won’t make eye contact.

So imagine how excited I was to read an essay that gives this not only a name, but an entire world view!

I am still pouring through ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, a collection of essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist of Native American heritage who weaves together the practicality of science with the mystery of spirit in words that read like poetry. It was in her essay ‘Learning the Grammar of Animacy’ that my heart skipped a beat. She says what I feel.

By diving into learning the language of her tribe, of which there are only 9 native speakers left in the world, she discovers that learning nouns, while challenging, is doable. Memorization. Replace our word with their word. But when it came to verbs, a new world cracked open.

She came upon a verb and read the definition. ‘To be a bay’ it said. To be a bay??? Isn’t that a person, place or thing, in that way that we love to neatly categorize everything? A bay, not being human is therefore a thing in English. An it.  She sat there frustrated but the image of a bay suddenly flowed through her. The smell of the water. The rhythm of it lapping against the rocky shore. The breeze. This alive water could have become a river, creek or stream, but it decided to ‘be a bay’.

In her Native American culture, the worldview is that everything is either animate or inanimate, and the inanimate is reserved primarily for manmade items. Those without life force. Language then takes that view and gives it voice.

What we call things influences how we think about them.

I am now finding myself imagining the feeling of ‘to be a’ with whatever passes my way. To be a peony…… To be the sky……. To be fire…….. To be a rainbow……

I decide to set my alarm even earlier on Monday to head to the beach and experience the sunrise. There was a slight nip in the air and the sky was clear. Phoebe and I walked and watched. Reds, oranges and pinks streaked the sky to announce her impending arrival. She was stunning. 

To be a sunrise……. Clearly not a noun.

Words are powerful,
SARAH