This weekend I had the misfortune to not be able to visit my location of choice on the Bryn Mawr campus, the moon bench. I chose this spot because I think its position gives it a unique and enticing view of the campus. You can look right up senior row through the Pembroke arch, over the valley of athletic fields to Cambrien row, and survey the Merion green. Sadly I wasn’t able to do any of these things, I was however able to attend a picturesque wedding in the Adirondacks of New York, specifically in Saranac Lake. My cousin Adrien and his wife Julia were married on September 22, 2012 at 3 pm in a little white chapel in the middle of the woods. It was perfect; there was no cell phone reception, no noise of the highway, a city, or anything other than the noise of the woods and of the people gathered to celebrate this momentous event. The wedding placed emphasis on the union between Adrien and Julia, as all weddings place emphasis on the couple, however Adrien and Julia made it clear from the start that although this event celebrated them, their relationship would not be possible without the support and love they received from members of their community. This was reflected in the interactive ceremony they had, the potluck, and the contra dancing that all took place that night. Julia is a park ranger in the Adirondacks and her appreciation and care for the environment shown through in their eco-friendly, environmentally conscious ceremony and reception.

The thing that struck me most about my experience in my spot today was coming back inside.  Outside, my hour was peaceful.  It was sunny and there was a light breeze.  I was for the most part left alone by the labrynth, just relaxing and observing nature.  As soon as I started to walk back to my dorm, though, my inner monologue started reciting all of the things I had to do when I got back.  I stepped back into my technology and my homework without a thought, leaving the peace I experienced back where I found it.  I had an epiphany while reading my art history textbook that it did not have to be this way.  I could bring the good feelings I had outside into my attitude even when I was doing work.  Needless to say, I was much less stressful after that thought.  

      The more time that passes --- the more time I have to process the "restorative justice" mural tour yesterday, the more problematic I find it... and the mural arts program in general (plus someof the comments made by our tour guide). The question I'm contemplating most now is about the difference between these murals and street art/graffiti. Especially if one (the mural) is combatting/silencing the other.

          Although I want to respond to my first web event on active listening, I don’t think I will be able to. I’ve learned so much about communication and how communication is affected by privilege since that reflection that I have to move in another direction.

            This past week in the 360 has been an emotionally charged one – challenging, frustrating, belief shaking. After Tuesday’s class, I felt so confused about my voice, about my place in the world and my privilege that I walked out of class in a daze, and ended up screaming in the woods with Johanna. After Thursday’s class on academia, rationality, and coherence, I was flooded with doubts about how I speak and write. My classes have never left me feeling so vulnerable and uncertain about everything – so I’m in a place of utter confusion.

Why am I the only one in class who adopted an indoor campus site at first? I must admit I have long been “suffering “ from “natural deficit disorder” coined by Richard Louv in his book: Last Child in the woods 2005. I remembered how I causally read that book and didn’t buy his words at all. I have been so comfortable residing within the concrete walls of human creations that I rarely try to look up to the sky.

Sitting on the bench on the plain grass platform behind Thomas Great Hall on Friday night, so how, maybe out of boredom, I looked up the sky. The star were amazing, more beautiful than the night sky I watched in document films, and more approachable. How much more I am missing?

New site I chose

One issue I’ve really been struggling with in class is the question of “who is allowed to represent who?”  I contemplated this in my post after reading the article by Dimitriadis in our class on Silence, and during our discussions of Anna Deveare Smith’s acting in our class on Voice.  In jhunter’s reply to my post, she raised some important points about who has the authority to speak for whom, and how characteristics beyond race and culture may impact this authority.  I want to push back on this idea though, and demonstrate why I believe race and culture alone are such important factors.  I want to display this by attempting to represent Uninhibited’s paper, which she titled “I Choose to be Silent You Don’t Make Me Silent”.

            Uninhibited and I grew up in the same town (although she was born in the Dominican Republic).  Though we have never actually discussed how much money our father’s make, I believe we are of a somewhat similar socioeconomic status, at least in simple terms of finances and what is deemed “working class” in America.  Both of us are currently being raised by a single father and both of us have experienced the death of our mother’s.  We met in December of 2008 when we were chosen to be members of Bryn Mawr Posse 9.  We are both interested in social justice issues.   We are close friends.  I believe it is safe to say we have a good amount in common. 

Maybe it's because I find myself biting off more than I have before, in activities, projects, and jobs outside the classroom (not more than I can chew, though--once I develop that attitude, I'll be swallowed whole by my own onslaught of thoughts and anxieties). Maybe it's because I've been entirely overwhelmed by this course, especially in the past week and a half or so, with the complexities of silence, voice, vision, intermingling as I try to quiet myself to better listen to others voices and see their points of view--I've been thinking about this Swedish (?) proverb. 

I chose to revisit the image I chose as my BMC representation. I am going to list the guidewords that are fitting to my representation and some that are not before discussing how I now see my representation.

This image is:

Permaculture

Footprint

Foliage

Campus

Native

See

Adaptation

Green

Ecological

Pattern

Wanderlust

This image is not:

Garden

Country

City

Interaction

Know

Anthropocentric

It would be very hard I think for a representation of our campus to be all of the guidewords that we collected as part of our ecological imaginings… as we discussed in class, our campus is much more than the ecological representations that most of our class posted. Our campus is all that plus the people, the buildings, the history, the man-made infrastructure; until we embrace the idea of rheomode (or perhaps, more likely, Goatly’s call for a less Newtonian reality where the “observing instrument and the observed object cannot be wholly separated”) I do not think that we have the language to describe everything all at once. My lens, camera or otherwise, is simply not wide enough.

How can you grow as an individual in a family that has defined your role even before you begin to walk? How do you strip yourself of inhibitions because of whom you are told you are or need to be in order to keep the family together?  What do you do when your responsibility to the world, to your family, and to yourself stand in opposition, ready to battle for the crown? My life since coming to the United States has been a constant push and pull between reaching for new opportunities and holding on to traditions. It has been a constant imagining and reimagining of how I can use voice and silence to define who I am in relation to others.