ABSTRACT
The movement of animate life, then, is held in the alternation between pushing out and pulling up, or in other words between anticipation and recollection. Merleau-Ponty shows that the essence of perception lies in the alternation of inspiration and expiration, of action and passion. In a sentient world, there are no objects and subjects of perception, rather, perception inheres in the creative movement of emergence, where 'things become things', as Merleau-Ponty put it, and 'the world becomes world'. Being an archaeologist, and like so many of his profession, archaeologist Christopher Tilley is particularly concerned with monuments of stone. Inhaling the atmosphere as it breathes the air, on the outward breath of exhalation it weaves its lines of speech, song, story and handwriting into the fabric of the world. Outside the world of magic and make-believe, the torque of the coil is irreversible.
