Becoming Wildlife

Salma Nathoo

 

‘Becoming Wildlife’ is an outcome of movement meditation in nature; a process of listening to inner impulses and outer landscape, and responding. Becoming empty enough for the land to speak through me, so that there is the experience of unification. It is generally a visceral and non-verbal conversation, although sounds and words often arise.

I have visited this beach many times before because I love its wildness; I feel alive there. The cameraman is a friend and I am at ease in his presence. I am sleeping on the land nearby. Morning yoga practice has enlivened my body and I have meditated for a calmer, more concentrated and receptive mind. I allow my self to be drawn to an area and delineate it. I have walked for around an hour over different beach landscapes including huge rocks, so I have a sense of how my body needs to move in relationship to the environment. I have a heightened sense of gravity: weight and balance.

I check in with myself: how do I feel in this place? What is the overall emotional tone? What sensations are alive in my body? What is the content of my thoughts? Having a continued intention of coming back to the present moment. What are the physical impulses to respond?

BECOMING
an active process
transitioning
treading an unknown path
a process of re-finding, without ever arriving
becoming: not imitation, but entering into its logic
unforseen and non-pre existent

‘A becoming is neither one nor two, nor the relation of the two, it is the inbetween, the border of line of flight’ Gilles Deleuze

becoming: an entering into composition with something else, challenging boundaries

becoming: a form of ‘attunement’ or ‘correspondance’ that amounts to a form of ‘contagion’
through our connection to our land, through allowing it to be contagious, we can allow its self-harmonising and self-sustaining aspects to deeply affect our actions.

WILDLIFE
instinct – knowing, listening and responding to the true being
in harmony with it all
in an unhewn natural state
unfolding, emerging, returning
shapeshifting
sweet intimacy with the unknown
explosive, raw, ordinary, subtle, tender. Stillness, sweetness,
rage.
primal being
in tune living life fully, freely, uncomfortable, ugly and beautifully alive in body. A bodily presence, now, influences the mind.
Naturally our being is drawn into a more unified state