The Eden of Animals

THE EDEN of ANIMALS jason blasso

THE EDEN of ANIMALS jason blasso

Published by Charybdis Press New York 2017 Charybdis Press Some rights reserved Printed and bound in the USA 15 14 13 12 4 3 2 1 First Edition http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Photos taken of photos from Editions Recontre, layout and design by Jason Blasso The Eden of Animals is set in MetaPlus, CiscoSerif, Rockwell & Whitman by Ken Lew www.charybdispress.com

for all my animals, with love

The Eden of Animals Growing up I was always curious about how animals perceived themselves and saw their world. No doubt, our eyes may function the same physiologically, and we may, for all intents and purposes, see the world the same, but once our seeing becomes perceiving, the divide of consciousness creates an unbridgable gap between us and our animal ancestors. If our self-awareness maintains our state of being, then the animal, on the other hand, maintains a perpetual state of becoming, which means it does not die a True Death as we do. Therefore, when we see an animal escaping a predator, we naturally, and erroneously, assume that the animal is fleeing from death. This is, of course, not the case. We have incorrectly assumed that the animal’s instincts of preservation are instincts of self-preservation. The prey does not flee from death because death, as a non-state of the self, does not exist for animals.

Likewise, we cannot say that the prey flees towards life, because this too assumes that it possesses awareness of its self as a living being. Since most of us identify ourselves with our image, the photos here represent the animals’ inability for selfreflection and the Eden of becoming that they exist in.

THE EDEN of ANIMALS