Reflex on Legs

Dear Kate,

I take long walk with my dog Sumi every morning.

I suspect she perceives the world, including me, as a mass of undifferentiated sensations; there is no "attention" in her to speak of, but automatic reaction, she a bundle of reflex on four legs.

I suspect also scientists could tell me the "truth" about my dog, not least because, as human beings, they have taken the decisive evolutionary step to take in the world as distinct objects—and more, to have actually mastered the world by using them.

However, I am not going to read scientific journals about Sumi.  Because I further suspect the knowing I shall gain from them would not improve upon my knowing of her.

As a distinct object every bit of Sumi I observed; I too am a scientist.  I shall ask for help when I can't (such as when she gets sick and I don't know why).  The risk of objectifying what we perceive as "mere" objects outweighs the reward (as if I am even asking for one).  I don't think I am overstating the case.  After all, a most celebrated genius scientist told us "the human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet..."

What science can't help me enough, though, is to put the distinct objects back together, including Sumi and every step of our walk from here to eternity, back into a world that is more than a mass of undifferentiated sensations.

As human beings, we are both blessed and cursed by the primate-ive urge to not only break things apart and also put them back together.  We want to see each thing "in the scheme of (every)thing."  We want to "make sense of it all."  Without any openness to transcendence, we are mostly cursed.

Less than a fortnight ago what happened in Ottawa weighed heavy on the Canadian mind.  With the newer and bigger story now happening in Ukraine, we quickly and thankfully weaned ourselves of the prior anxiety and moved on to our next sensation, more urgent as we are feeling it now, just as mundane when the headline recedes, as it always would, to the murky mass of our consciousness, which also, hard to believe now, would be soon enough.

Then the objects, countless human objects, "shining artifact of the past," will be buried with a mess of once-sensation now objectified as "history," recorded in journals and consecrated in some public domain for future generations' quick retrieval.  As for ourselves, there is no "attention" in us to speak of, but automatic reaction.  Too much to take in.  No time and space to make sense of anything.

Like we are a bundle of reflex on two legs.

Yours, Alex