Umwelt

Umwelt:

it’s a German word, umwelt, and it designates a specific world, an environment unique to every organism, keeping us self-centered in way as to what we’re capable of experiencing outside of our limited point of view, our personal worlds. My umwelt is different than yours, and as a human it’s completely inaccessible to another species. More so, it would seem, it goes even further to cells of the body, perhaps even molecules, each possessing a world entirely of their own while still belonging as part of a much larger body.

worlds…

within worlds.

perhaps infinitely so.

of course it seems there’s some crossover, an overlap of worlds — I will never really know the umwelt of my dog’s experience, with its rich environment of smells and the sharpness of sounds that remain unheard by my own ears. Yet I note her joy of exploration, sniffing information, listening to sounds that are so obvious to her but still beyond my comprehension. That joy crosses over to me, giving me pleasure to watch her roam and explore, and with that we create another world, one completely of our own, a world made entirely of what we share together.

an umwelt made by love, joy, an experience of different worlds…

that’s now shared between us.