et502's blog
In anticipation of our Bryn Mawr rambles next week - Wissahickon Schist
Karl Kirchwey came back to campus last year and read this poem:
Wissahickon Schist
What did you think the color of learning was,
if not mica and hornblende flashing in a long-settled gray?
You look for a plane along which it will cleave
to admit the self, but it is you who are divided
always between resolution and doubt,
having read A small amount of fissile material
was smuggled across, remembering certain islands
long ago, the windblown passages between,
wild thyme on the offshore breeze from Lemnos
or the white slash of a coral runway at Tinian.
You open a book to the stories of changing forms
and see the guts of a mole exploded on the lawn,
a red-tailed hawk balanced, nonchalant, on the railing,
and the day's light cut on such a deep bias,
leave no trace?
So in class yesterday, we talked about how we have both liberal and radical feminist movements, but environmentalism is still in its preliminary stages – still reactionary. As Aliza put it, for many people, the environment/nature is a museum. Leaving no trace, experience is limited in many ways to observation, a surface level brush with “the wild.”
This just made me want to interact with my site! What would a radical environmentalism look like?
I saw this documentary a while ago, called Rivers and Tides. It shows the work of Andy Goldsworthy, who calls himself a ‘landscape artist.’ (it’s available through Tripod – it’s a slow-moving film, but it’s worth the time!) Here's an example of his work:
I like this method of "play" with nature, so I tried it out too (not as intense..)
Other notes: today was my 6th visit to my site. I don’t want to move yet – I heard back from Ed Harmon about Grounds’ plans to change some of the space into a wildflower/conservatory area. So I want to be there, at least for a few more weeks, for further developments.
Revising form, and maybe genre?
Original Paragraph (from "Wandering & Wondering," Section IV): I've been thinking about Yeat's poem, Adam's Curse. Just those few lines - about our labor to be beautiful, the construction of beauty. More specifically, I'm thinking about the post-Garden of Eden collapse, of how, in Genesis, all of Creation becomes wild, is infected with sin. It's uncontrolled, it's imperfect and strange. And the human relationship with nature is uncertain, there is a divide. Thrown out of the Garden, we must work the land in order to produce anything beautiful. We must re-define beauty for ourselves - we must re-create whatever we think beauty should be.
Notes/analysis: Since the paper was called “Wandering and Wondering,” I tried to enact those things in my style of writing – not landing on any one point of view or type of writing, not drawing definite conclusions, but leaving room for changes. With this being a series of observations – not personal reflection – I lost a directed commitment to one view over another. So now I’m struggling with deciding on the ‘genre’ for this piece/paragraph. I think it is more tragic than comedic – with the “we” positioned as a kind of hero, a portion of the “Created” that is actively working against “division.”
Processes - leaves and sweat, heros and songs
encounter #3: The Fear.// one huge mass of flying ants crawling over and upwards // Rambling – the urge to discover – to see what was cut away // What are we trying to create? Harnessing // giant trees in the jumble vs. giant tress on campus, surrounded only by grass
encounter #2: man-made yellow borders sprayed in/onto the ground. little flags, victory over the conquered land, staked claims to the squared off, colonized dead grass. insecticide. In the air: thousands of tiny white bugs. where are they when it’s not humid?
encounter #1: my body in the humidity – leg hairs, sweat behind my knees, gathering at the edge of my forehead, water leaving my body, why? for the sake of preserving, just like the leaves. the purpose of sweat and leaves. mud. barefoot. some of the grass slides in the mud with the pressure of my toes. I imagine that by walking – just walking – I am tearing the away roots’ fragile hold on the saturated ground.
#3 –
disturbed at the power
of trees – gargantuan – so
different in the jumble
gargantuan trees –
their power is in place, a force
contained by mowed grass
#1 –
I re-discover;
My body’s sense of leaving
as leafing. Purpose.
Observation - Rheomode
It seems like a lot of people chose to use the rheomode to re-write/re-levate their paragraphs. Is this the most natural way for us to write? The easiest?
Or perhaps (and I think this may be the case) is it the clearest mode to emulate - the directions for this form are the clearest.
It is leaving, II.
Original: Leaves – I don’t remember much from my HS biology class. But I remember learning about leaves and pigment and autumn – the trees withdraw their support, close/sever ties with the leaves… lack of the connection means gradual death, going out (for some) in a fiery blaze of color – colors that were there under the surface all along, only waiting for enough chloroplasts to die so they could shine through. Something like that.
Comments: prefaced with my memory – my incomplete memory of scientific fact as a lens (can you take this seriously?). Personification of the trees, the colors…
Re-vision: Seeing the leaving is forcing re-levating/re-calling studying biology and the changing of seasons in high school. Leaving is withdrawing support, severing ties. Leaving is lacking connection, moving towards death, going out blazing and firing color. Leaving is dying. Leaving is making space for waiting colors. Now, coloring is happening, shining though.
In/visible mountains
After I posted this image, Anne directed me to the “Women in walled communities” 360. I’ve been thinking more about the school as an institution (which, for me, has negative connotations), keeping us walled in. Is there an invisible wall in my 'Sound of Music' image? The mountains as a geographical/physical/visible obstacle, the convent as ideological/mental/invisible obstacle?
Am I resilient to these walls? By selecting an image that shows some sort of twisted freedom, I think that, perhaps, I am actively resisting that invisible structure.
On another note, I would categorize my image as anthropocentric – I chose an image centered on my human experience of Bryn Mawr; that is, one of emotional constraints and freedoms, imposed by other humans and the physical structures that house this campus/institution. Even though I chose to foreground and background different aspects, the campus is still designed (tweaked and treated with specific regard to human life and convenience) around people, so why shouldn’t I map it in this way?
beyond ideas
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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. (Rumi)
I saw Eternity the other night |
I See Clouds playing tricks on my eyes and disrupting a sense of stability. I am reminded, suddenly, as clouds uniformly pass over - not hurried, but neither are they slow - that we are positioned on a rotating globe - it is only because it is so large (like a carrier ship in the tides of the ocean), that we do not sense the movement. staring at the clouds (which I know are moving) I can, suddenly, reverse, see the negative - as thougth the sky was a backdrop we rolled by. |
