Creatures and Not-Knowing
What I know about creatures comes from a place of not-knowing. What I know about not-knowing comes from my noticing of creatures.
For me, creatures include any living being. My sense of living includes animals, plants, minerals, natural objects. My sense of animism in all objects often creates a blur between what I might name as creature or object. I often feel an alive-ness with pieces of plastic I find on the sidewalk and I call such things creature, too.
I appreciate how Robin Wall Kimmerer inspires us to use the pronouns “ki” and “kin” to speak of all that comes from earth that we might otherwise refer to using the words “it” or “they.”
My learning from creatures always feels new. I am continuously a novice. Whether watching the brilliance of octopuses in a film, noticing the rabbit (I named Beatrix) who visits my garden, holding a small gemstone in my hand, marveling at a bit of moss, staring at my cat Willow’s face, my noticing often lifts, loops, lingers into a beautiful open floaty space of not-knowing.
Not-knowing isn’t the opposite of knowing. It’s another way of knowing. A way of knowing outside of the mind, beyond intuition, often found in dreams or meditations, sometimes as glimpses through writing, a space that feels grounded and expansive, like a letting go, a surrender into being.
A few weeks ago I watched the documentary film “My Octopus Teacher.” I sobbed throughout the film. I felt grateful for such a heart-opening experience. To bear witness to a relationship of wonder and not-knowing, one of unconditional love and trust.
Right now in this moment of 2020, I keep circling back to what it means to practice trust, especially trust in not-knowing. Trust isn’t passive. It isn’t surrendering like giving up or washing away responsibility. It isn’t a blind optimism or shallow hope. Trust is a surrender to fully experience and embody not-knowing.
Noticing creatures, or any kin of nature (including ourselves), is a beautiful way forward into learning how to more fully embody not-knowing as daily practice.
When we notice (observe, spend time with, breathe in, touch, wonder about) in a way that brings us into a place of drift outside of what we think we know—this is our place of practice.
How might we find more opportunities to experience this expanse of not-knowing and allow ourselves to stay with such moments for longer stretches?
Not-knowing is a space of transformation. It’s where we shed old ways of being and doing, release old identities and practices, let go of structures and labels that have held us long enough. We need to grow our practice with not-knowing so we can embody this transformation in who we are and what we do in the world.
A practice of noticing for not-knowing is how we re-connect with earth, who is kin, who is us.
Not-knowing isn’t the opposite of knowing. It’s another way of knowing.
Beautiful gifts from others…
My Octopus Teacher, documentary film, Netflix
The Intelligence of Plants, interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer, On Being with Krista Tippett
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard
A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning by Jakob von Uexküll
The View from the Oak by Judith and Herbert Kohl
The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor
The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben
How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery, illustrated by Rebecca Green
Becoming a Good Creature, picture book, by Sy Montgomery, illustrated by Rebecca Green
Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation by Shari Tishman
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
Things That Are: Essays by Amy Leach
The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson (all other Rachel Carson books, too)
What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems by Mary Oliver (and anything else by Mary Oliver)
Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock
