I went back to the same place again. Same verge, same culvert, same road. And nothing happened. No shift in feeling, no sense of presence—just traffic noise, irritation, and the creeping sense of failure. This is the part of animist practice that rarely gets written about: when a place offers no response, and the work is staying honest anyway.

Animist practice is often framed as connection: listening, dialogue, relationship. But connection can slide into projection. This essay explores a different starting point. One grounded in discipline, restraint, and training attention before interpretation, so that whatever responds does so on its own terms.

I didn’t expect to spend my afternoon sitting with a light pole, but here we are. A chat about new materialism somehow turned into me, a park bench, and a very patient pole trying to see what “co-presence” feels like. No flickering lights, no mystical 'woo', just a surprising sense that the pole and I had… something. And now I’m wondering if this weird little experiment actually scales.