My last site-sit post of the semester...

Brain very busy with multiple thought trains. A dark, drizzly December afternoon. 

And when the brain-thoughts get a bit quieter, I melt into the haze, silvery-gray, ripples, drizzles, damp, subdued, non-verbal, non-analytical. Just being. Not figuring out what to say about it. observing. ducks swimming this way, each with v-shaped wake in the still water, then swimming back the other way. not seeming to have a particular purpose. 

There were seagulls today, which I haven't seen at the pond for quite a while. The Canada geese were all up eating on the grass towards the middle of campus.

The other title I thought of for this post: from Shakespeare: 

...or in the heart or in the head?

(tell me, where is fancy bred? Is this Shakespeare?)

Feeling like I think with my whole body, not just with my brain. I like to think with my whole body, not just my brain. Do I sound insane?

(Yes, Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice.)

These are ecological questions...

Then, the seagulls started a bit of screeching-- not too loud-- and one of them flew up and circled, full circle, around above the pond. I got into watching the wingbeats. A drummer I know once told me he always studies birds' wingbeats, as a lesson in grace and in rhythm. The other seagulls flew up too, and watching the rhythm of all those wingbeats at once made me feel quite stoned: another way of entering an altered state, a natural high!

Just being.

For our last reading in the “Ecological Imaginings” Emily Balch Seminar, we read The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee.  In one of the reflections at the end of the book, Marjorie Garber states that the novel The Lives of Animals is not really about the ethics of killing animals.  Rather, that theme is a means by which the author tells us about academic discourse.  Our professor, Anne Dalke, commented that the way Marjorie Garber interprets Coetzee’s work could also describe our class.  The class is meant to teach us how to do academic work, but it is disguised as an environmental studies course (CITE??????).  Looking back at the semester, I find this idea to be true.  Yes, I have gained a new perspective about humanity’s relationship with the rest of the Earth, but what I have accomplished is a better understanding of how to perform on an academic level.  While I have improved since August, I have also learned how I can continue to improve as my time in Bryn Mawr College goes on.