10.4225/03/5850962e9fb6e Ingold, Tim Tim Ingold On place and the atmosphere Monash University 2016 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice Phenomenology Ecology Social ecology 2016 2016-12-14 00:45:31 Journal contribution https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/On_place_and_the_atmosphere/4315112 <strong>Abstract: </strong>It is a fine summer's day, and as you stretch out in the sun, you find yourself contemplating the blue of the sky. Could anything be more mysterious, you wonder? Remote, untouchable, seemingly empty, without surface or limit, the sky seems nevertheless to have swamped your visual awareness. You tap your forehead and are reassured to feel its hard surface. Yes, you are still there, and have not yet melted into the ether. Yet in the visual field the tapping finger strikes no surface but looms like a ghostly, intruding presence that casts its shadow in the void. 'Are you there?' you ask of yourself again, perhaps with a hint of anxiety. How can you be at once here, in place and at home in your body, and at the same time inhabit an atmospheric world that returns the body to you as a spectre?