site sits

This time (for the first time), I took someone else with me who was experiencing a number of emotions. I've taken someone to my site sit before, but it was purely for photography purposes, not to make them feel better. This time, my friend had been having an incredibly rough day/week and I wanted to spend time with her in a place I knew I wasn't going to be disturbed by a crowd of other people. She's someone who has a ton of trouble displaying emotions and tends to bottle them up, so the fact that she wanted to talk to me and share something with me on her own free will concerned me.

I tried to stay at my site. It was slightly less than warm. Half of the flowers behind the arbor were blooming purple, half still little green shots. I sat huddled on the bench—the trees, the grass, the road, all felt worn. Maybe it was the influence of class, of the questions we’d begun to ponder—questions we had been pondering. Should I stay and know that shortly, I would lose focus and turn within? Or should I give into the urge to move, to wander?

I forced myself to stay a few moments more. I found an earthworm, heard a woodpecker, waved at friends. And then I stood, bounded down the stone steps, across the brown green yellow grass, and out into the world.

Williams writes, “There is no defense against an open heart …in dialogue with wildness…I believe that out of an erotics of place, a politics of place is emerging…rooted in empathy.”

I’ve been putting off my site sit for this past week, mainly because I didn’t know what to do…I didn’t know what to write about. Should I keep writing with an unspoken hunger? An unspoken longing for connection and love? An unspoken fear of intimacy? Or should I completely remove my emotions from this final posting? For inspiration, I printed out all of my past site sits (like we did in class) and decided to read them at these four stepping-stones by the Duck Pond.

Here is the highlights reel…that kind of demonstrates how I have changed with semester.

“slowly close my lips around the filter and pull at the deep orange embers”

“ I actually felt pleasantly empty…Maybe the snow just mutes emotions”

I made a home out here. Among sticks and stones, observing things through looks. An abstract painting to be felt and deciphered at the same time. But I found metaphor in things. I waited for epiphany and found only miracles.

I'll let them be.

Running round and round. and round. Slowed but steady.

I wonder if they could feel/see me watching them. 

Such joy. I couldn't quite comprehend.

It seems like the joy appeared with the disappearance of the flags.

Regulated no more. Flowers abundant. Grass sprouting. Paths defining.

Liberated. Free to run round and round. Limitless. Boundless within the optional bounds. 

Round and round. Till infinity.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bckk3z66f04i1xw/Snapchat--3790231277930578164.mp4?dl=0

 https://youtu.be/yleuZDXMr2Q

(belated site sit from last week)

The coal and shale from anthracite Pennsylvania speaks through ages as layers of sediment and plant matter fold on top of one another, pressing leaves together into tight embrace over millions of years until they can no longer define themselves separated; once buried, twice dug up and “liberated” back to atmosphere. Trying to comprehend that, understand it, wrap my head around it until I get distracted and

brace myself against your body,
face sunlight, fall into your limbs;
carbon-carbon collision.
Drifting stillness,
slumped slumber.

It's only a matter of time.

can you see it?

the trees and sky melt into one,

robbing us of the colors of the day.

can you see it?

Here are some notes from my site sit last Friday (that I’m just putting up now) and my musings about ecofeminism.