David Abram’s Spell Of The Sensuous
In The Spell of The Sensuous, author David Abrams leads us readers down a deftly woven cobble stone path, lighting the way with his words, like fireflies guiding us through the dark night of the soul.
Abrams seeks us to discover the beauty of the more-than-human world - that of fauna and flora, wind and celestial being- as has been revealed to him over years of intimate research. Even his writing stands as opposition to the western appropriation of beauty, and knowledge, which would seek not to share, but rather, to covet, objectify, and posses, even if in words alone.
Abrams exemplifies natural of generosity - ways, not to posses, but to perceive, and then, in egalitarian pragmatism, to share with anyone who will take the time to listen, not for his own merit, alone, but out of the hope that we will not, as I said, allow these words to fall into the categorical objectification of western thinking, and instead in gifting us with such a delicate and deep understanding of his experiences of the “super” natural, one might almost say even in the vulnerability of sharing his experiences, these words are imbued with an energy that stays alive in one even after the last paragraph is read, and your eyes cast upwards to a clear blue sky, and you truly listen, for perhaps the first time, to the voice of the wind, or the laughter of the trees, and the very grass whispering beneath your feet - all seeking communion with you.
Abrams reminds us, with wit and gravitas, and rather like an old friend, or a long forgotten remnant of our collective wilder selves, that in doing so we manage to heal some existential, suffocating, ennui, that seems to be implicit with consumer driven world views. Like a true trickster, he does so not with data or charts, but rather by revealing to us a secret, natural, hidden space - a meadow of meanings that we are invited to enter, out of affection, trust, adventure, solidarity, and in order to heal these lost parts of ourselves- to grow deeper still, into relation with all of being-kind.
He reflects, through western eyes, that which is near imperceptible to the average North American citizen, his lyrical, literary chantings create astonishingly effective bridges of perception, “shattering habitual ways of seeing and feeling, leaving one open to a world alive, awake, and aware” that is no longer, if it ever was, the norm for the predominant population of consumer-based, western industrial countries.
One must only spend a page or two with this sage to be brought not to a far off, distance time or place, but rather the magic and surrender of realizing that that land where spirits denizens are alive, and dance under with the light of the full moon is here, and now.
