Web Paper or Special Event

In order to negotiate the silences and opportunities for voice, one cannot ignore the power inherent in language. Race, class, religion, and all other aspects of one’s identity and background construct the shape of language. In choosing to forge the distance through sliding doors, elevators, and body checks, I am implicated in the dialogue of justifying and questioning our words at the prison. I am redefining and manipulating the power of language through deciding to communicate with voice and claiming that it has reason and should be acknowledged. I am unsure, inarticulate, and maneuvering through the unexplained implications of “teaching” and designing a “classroom setting.”

 often struggle to focus during extended periods of conventional talking and listening conversation, so I wanted to do an out-of-the-box experimental essay. In class, we had a conversation with our hands, with water colors and colored pencils and markers and pens. I began by sharing my “essay,” a watercolor I painted that was inspired by DuBois. To get our minds going, I opened the space for us to share some texts from DuBois--anything that stood out to us or inspired us--and then make lists of the phrases and words that stuck with us from what our classmates shared. Mine are posted below. With the text rendering for inspiration, I offered art supplies, music by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (referenced by DuBois), and fifteen minutes to contemplate, write and/or do art.

Sasha Moiseyev-Foster

ESEM: Changing Our Story

Professor J.  Cohen

October 8, 2015

Wildness and Wilderness in Wild: From Lost to Found on the PCT

Journey to the Sacred

When summoned to my mind, the term ‘sacred’ often carries along the image of a formal religious space. The Oxford dictionary tells me that the sacred lies within that which is holy, and that which is holy is “dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose”. This binding of terms – sacred and religious – furthers the twist that serves as a mechanism to ‘other’ people who do not identify with any religion. In doing so, usage and application of the term ‘sacred’ is taken away from those who do not identify with the religious connotation.

Is it possible—can the sacred exist without religious power? Cheryl Strayed’s journey goes to show that sacredness transcends the ancient paradigm.

To survive three months of hiking mostly alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed needed physical and emotional strength. At the beginning of her journey, she didn’t have either, or at least, not as much as she needed. She could barely lift her backpack, and she didn’t walk nearly as far as she had expected to each day (Strayed 43, 87). She was getting over a heroin addiction that had been helping her cope with the death of her mother (Strayed 53). She was often depressed, tired, or absent-minded. In short, she did not hike the PCT because she was strong; she hiked it to become strong.

We were asked to choose a keyword as a lens through which to analyze Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. The word alone stuck out to me as while I was reading the memoir because I felt like it was deeply connected with her emotions and motivations. The etymological definition of alone is “unaccompanied, all by ones self” stemming from the words “all, wholly” and “one.” In Strayed’s memoir, the meaning behind “alone” is a catalyst for her decisions to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, and her decisions during her journey on the trail. Strayed believes that she is alone, and thus undertakes this grueling journey on the Pacific Crest Trail partially because she feels she has nothing left to lose.

Warmth is interesting to me because it can have so many varied manifestations, and come from so many sources, but it is almost always a feeling of comfort, of relaxation. Being cold is tense, being hot is restless. Even being cool, often not unpleasant, is evocative of aloofness and distance. But there’s something languid and easy about warmth, something one wants to continue returning to. Cheryl Strayed’s novel Wild is one in which she undertakes an uncomfortable trek to begin finding comfort within herself again; by analyzing the story through a lens of looking for where she feels warm, emotionally or physically, I hope to explore how her sense of comfort, belonging, and ease develops over her journey.

Two years before I was born, in the summer of 1995, Cheryl Strayed sat in a hotel room, filled a gigantic pack, and began her journey.

The book opens as Strayed has just lost one of her boots—it’s catapulted into the air and disappeared into the wilderness below. Realizing the futility of keeping only one boot, she throws the other after it and comes to another realization as well; she has to keep walking. As Strayed concludes, “It didn’t matter… I was in this alone” (6).

Alone.

To Tree

Alison
ESem Paper #6
October 9, 2015

A Step Forward in Life

Forward is an objective word describing a motion or intention “towards a place or position that is in front” in English, and it includes more positive emotions nowadays. “Forward” is always used to indicate that things are happened in a promising way or things are in progress. The memoir “Wild," written by Cheryl Strayed, is a story about going forward.