Non-Fictional Prose Course

 I'm writing these notes as a condensed conversation. I'm sorry that it doesn't flow very well...

Discussion on Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost

- Students learn best with what they're interested in, but the problem is that students don't get to ask about what they're interested in with our current education system

- Have you been in environments that don't allow you to ask your own questions?

- Yes, but I prefer that, because that's how life is outside of school as well.

- I'm a better worker when I take control of the situation and ask questions myself

- Kids only pay attention to grades, not feedback. Grades are distracting

 After our discussion of maps in class on Tuesday I began to think about GPS.  With GPS one is unable to get lost without a computerized voice yelling at you.  At least maps require human interpretation.  GPS only requires the address of your final destination, and the rest relies on your trust of directions from a satellite in space.  How many times has GPS led someone the roundabout way to a familiar location?  In that instance, am I "lost" because I do not take the determined course for me, even though I know the destination better than the GPS?  Which raises the question, who dictates "lost"? 

In Solnit's "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" she has a quote on page 5 saying, "But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea." They being scientists. She describes everything in terms of being lost and quite frankly reading the book provides that emotion for you sufficiently. She describes scientists beginning their journey in the dark sea but making their way back by transforming that unknown into the knows, I'm assuming this means discoveries and experimental data. I don't see it that way at all since many of todays science is based on theories and hypothesis' which aren't the known, but more like the assumed.

 We started the class by wrapping up Reality Hunger.  It was decided that the book was oxymoronic, with the search for the 'real' paradoxically reveals the constructed-ness of Shields' book.  Some of the ideas we talked about included:  Organizing the world around ourselves, and reconsidering the ideas of shared sources, along with the implications of copyrights and copyright violations.  Deciding whether or not to take Shields seriously was also discussed a bit more.  

 Reading further into A Field Guide, I enjoyed Solnit's parallels between our lives and a physical landscape. I was able to appreciate this parallel even more after our class activity on the connection between geologic maps and our lives. Solnit works this theme into the book in a few ways. She talks about country songs references to specific places, and she talks about properties of geologic maps.

 The title of Rebecca Sonlit's book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost,  indicates that in some way, Sonlit is going to try to map the unknown. In a sense, this is what she does - she presents unorganized, conversational prose intended to inform the reader of what, exactly, is the most effective and fulfilling way to get lost, and what one can expect to find if he does take her advice. But I'm wondering if her literary undertaking is effective - can one really map the unknown? or is she simply suggesting ways in which venturing into the unknown might be useful? It seems like the latter of these two is more likely, and that in respect to suggesting why getting lost is useful, Sonlit comes up short.

We began the class discussion on the topic of our recently submitted web papers. The four page limit felt too short for some, but Anne encouraged us to take the space we needed. Some raised the issue of how a publically posted paper caused them to write differently, as for a different audience. These papers are allowed to have more of our personal touch in them, yet are not just for our classmates but for a larger and unknown audience. Anne encouraged us all to take more advantage of the internet for our papers for both audio and visual stimuli.

When I started reading "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" by Rebecca Solnit, I did have to read some pages more than once because I found myself getting lost at some parts. From our discussion in class today about what Solnit meant when she said on page 14: "Never to get lost is not to live," I had more time to think about it after class. I went back to page 14 and I re-read that paragraph. On page 15, she also says: "...Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves...Not till we are completely lost, or turned round...do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature." I agree with what Solnit is saying here because I think that people learn when they experience things they don't know.

In continuing to read A Field Guide to Getting Lost after class, I focused my attention on figuring out what Solnit's argument is about getting lost. I think that when she says that you can't truly live unless you are lost she is assuming that living life without getting lost is impossible because everyone is lost, at least mentally, at one time or another. In fact, I would make the argument that people are born "lost" because a person is lost (how Solnit defines the word) until a person finds his or her place in the world...which can only come with maturity. With this assumption, I think her book is not telling us to necessarily lose ourselves but telling us HOW to be lost, when we inevitably are, and how to grow from it.