this cacophonous profusion....................

      Corporeal life is indeed difficult.  To identify with the sheer physicality of one's flesh may well seem lunatic.  The body is an imperfect and breakable entity vulnerable to a thousand and one insults—to scars and the scorn of others, to disease, decay, and death.  And the material world that our body inhabits is hardly a gentle place.  The shuddering beauty of this biosphere is bristling with thorns: generosity and abundance often seem scant ingredients compared with prevalence of predation, sudden pain, and racking loss.  Carnally embedded in the depths of this cacophonous profusion of forms, we commonly can't even predict just what's lurking behind the near boulder, let alone get enough distance to fathom and figure out all the workings of this world.  We simply can't get it under our control. . . .Only by welcoming uncertainty from the get-go can we acclimate ourselves to the shattering wonder that enfolds us.  This animal body, for all its susceptibility and vertigo, remains the primary instrument of all our knowing, as the capricious earth remains our primary cosmos.

-David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology