John Gray’s Straw Dogs is continuing to give me plenty of food for thought about the way humans see the natural world, and the projections they make. He quotes Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet (translated by Richard Zenith):
Only if you don’t know what flowers, stones, and rivers are
Can you talk about their feelings.
To talk about the soul of flowers, stones, and rivers,
Is to talk about yourself, about your delusions.
Thank God stones are just stones,
And rivers just rivers,
And flowers just flowers.
And horses just horses?