ekthorp's blog

Last class, when Anne suggested that we maybe move our weekly sitting spot, I was strck distraught by this prospect. I like my spot. I've grown attached to my spot. I feel like there's so much left to do and explore there. I've come to feel  comfortably alone and have even fallen asleep there a couple times. In order to increase my exposure to it, just to make sure it's the place I really want to be, I though it'd be cool to visit it at a very different time of the day. I really wanted to see how sitting there at sunrise would effect my vision of the spot. So this morning, just past 7 am, i trudged myself over to the pond in order to have a look-see at the spot I've visited on the same day at the same time for the past 6 weeks. I took a couple pictures, but they're all pretty lame and dark, or I would show them to you. What I think is more revealing is what I wrote while lying there. 

Sunrise Reflections

Today in class (out of class?) I was excited to see how enraptured we became in our discussion of eco-feminism. I wanted to respond to it some way, and poetry usually is the best wasy I can see to do that. Often another poet voices the exact thoughts that should come to my mind. I thought this one poem was highly relevant to our discussion and notions of overturning systems of patriarchal oppression and turning it into something useful. So I thought I'd share it.

VI

Let the old man lie in the earth
(he has troubled men's thought long enough)
let the old man die,
let the old man be of the earth
he is earth,
Father,
O beloved
you are the earth
he is the earth, Saturn, wisdom,
rock, (O his bones are hard, he is strong, that old man)
let him create a new earth,
and from the rocks of this re-birth
the whole word
must suffer
only we
who are free,
 
may foretell,
may prophesy,
he,
(it is he the old man
who will bring a new world to birth)
it is he,
it is he
who already has formed a new earth.

                ~H.D. "The Master"

Every week, I have tried to do something drastically different with my posting. This week, I feel like I have run out of something different to do. When I was talking to Sara about this, she said that maybe that was the point. To keep returning to our spots until we run out of ways to describe it, and have to innovate a new way. I'm not sure if I achieved this when I went out to just exist in the ourdoors, but it was something very different for me.

Henry Takes a Walk: A Thoreauvian Storybook
 
Written by: Emma Thorp
Illustrated by: Sara Gladwin
 
Henry began to walk at the top of the long hill above the pond. Directions and destinations were not on his mind. He decided to see where this grassy slope would lead.
 
Henry wandered along side the pond’s banks, wondering where the ripples came from below the surface.
 
Several flat, gray paths lead him to a white house hidden among a green jungle. Instead of going through the front door, he followed a steep slope down to a small, muddy bank by a trickling creek.
 

Someone was leaning over the creek, watching the water skim over the slippery pebbles
Henry knelt down beside Someone, as they stared at the water’s clear surface. They wondered where it came from, and where it was in such a rush to get going.

 

So I am not the best artist in the world, as evidenced by this watercolor. However, I really wanted to use the tools Nan put at my disposal. I found, though, that the brush was not the right instrument for me. I ended up using my fingers to create this. It made me feel much more connected to the paper, and was much eaasier to mix the colors I needed. 

I also decided to paint ontop of a page of Gary Snyder's essay. I loved his garden metaphor for good writing, and wanted to incorporate it somehow. I tried painting on just a regular piece of paper, but decided it didn't quite caputer our class notions of language and reprsentation. I'm not quite sure how it connects, seeing as I was painting and not writing, but I like the way it turned out.

So Krys made a comment today about the different sounds nature may make and we are completely inept at hearing. It made me think of a short story written by Rhaod Dahl about a man who tries to develop a machine that translates animal noises into audible human sound. He gets some rather interesting results in the process. I was unable to find an online version of the text, but I was able to find a couple video versions of it, some of which are pretty good. 

Some of the quotes in this one seemed highly relevant to me, and I wanted to share them with you all. Thanks!

Original:

It’s been a while since I’ve heard such words used to describe my interior and exteriors. Most visitors on this side are silent, reflective; these are analytical and there are lots of them. I do not resent visitation, even if only because doing so is futile. But I am a development in and of myself, only an abstraction of human will with the tools of nature at their disposal. I act, I react, I will myself into a tame type of exhibit for their primordial senses. I exist as an example to this tiny collection, but my essence comes from clouds and oceans. I know what salt water tastes like; I know what it is like to rush down a cliff with all the force of physics behind me. I know chemicals; I am not unsoiled. I know it in collection; I know it as every raindrop knows the endless cycle of repetition that water follows. 

Nomilazation, a la Andrew Goatley:

Descriptions of interiors and exteriors are created.

Silence descends from past visitors;

analysis ascends from current ones.

No resentment of visitation from me, as resistance is futile.

Existence is a development of nature’s tools and human will.

Action, Reaction, I do.

For human primordial senses, willing action occurs in me.

Existence of me as example for them;

Existence of me for me originates in clouds and oceans.

Sat water tastes are known.

Chemicals are known, unsoiledness is not.

Knowledge exists in collection; knowledge exists in water’s endless cycle. 

There are people in my spot.

I repeat, there are people in my spot.

At first, I was incredibly disoriented by this. It wasn’t one person, opening up the possibility of bonding, but an entire class of them, not one of which I recognized. I’m upset by it- how could they find this place I had begun to associate with myself. I had found it, I had figmented it in my mind. It was as if they had found me, or at least a piece of me I had been hiding from everyone else.

But now, I am trying to see this is an opportunity. A chance to practice wild writing in an unexpected encounter. How does the pond feel about their presence? I had been hoping to practice some natural writing by writing about alternate personas of the place, but I had begun to practice the words in my head, taking away their spontaneity. Because I was completely surprised by the presence of people at my spot, I can write for nature, from a place of natural.

Let’s see how this goes:

They slip the still, shallow shape onto my surface, insinuating it just above my soul, using it as a vessel to look inward at me. I react, as one does (obviously); little ripples, a path behind their natural intrusion. Newtonian sense I’ve known intrinsically since infanthood; afterall, he based it on my brethren.

In order to fully understand my spot, one has to understand the context in which it lies.The best way i could think to do that was in a video. I wanted everyone to see how my location lies between the borders of our campus. It is far away from the interior castle, yet is not quite on the outside. WHile I feel incredibly isolated there, I am consistenly followed by the presence of people. I can see the Rhoads Patio, where several students emerged while I was sitting, and encoutered several landscape works who cut the grass around me. I am in an indealised locaiton between the exterior and interior of the campus, not quite apart from the center of the school, but not quite away from it either.

Campus:

            OED:

                        Etymology: 

Latin campus: field. First used at Princeton, New Jersey.