Field Study proposal excerpt

This student will be more fully realizing her connections to cycles – inhalation and exhalation, consumption and elimination, solitude and community, inspiration and disillusion, night and day, spring and autumn, gathering and dispersing, and listening, holding and creating. In this contract, C is for Cycling, the student will gain new perspective on her basic needs and passions through bicycle travel, and immersion in Intentional Communities, Eco-Villages, and small farms across the United States.She will interview the people who live in these communities that live closely with cycles. In order to conduct interviews with the people she visits, and to share with others what she learns, the student will be completing a Human Subjects Review, learning basic interviewing, camera and sound recording skills. After she returns, this student intends to share what she has gathered by weaving these pieces into a cohesive whole, in the form of a short film.

My Blog: cyclingandrecyclingblog.wordpress.com

See full proposal and weekly logs

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• Time log week 10 June 9, 2013 5/27 – Monday 3 hours – writing/compiling poetry 2 hours – wrote a song 2 hours – preparing and sharing food 1.5 hours – played piano, listened to a sweet jam session 5/28 – Tuesday 1.5 ...
• Time log week 9 June 9, 2013 5/20 – Monday 2 hours – Massage and Reiki Trade (a little cycle of skill exchanging) 4 hours – preparing and sharing food with a beautiful community of people. Monday nights, “Late ...
• Time log week 8 May 27, 2013 Monday – BB 3 hours – hiking to white bear mine, finding peace in a place ravaged by greed and lack of forethought 2 hours – hiking up to the gulch – ...
• Time log week 6 (in progress) May 8, 2013 Monday –  at 7 Seeds – Thunder Storm 1 hour – helping friends clean up old home and move out stuff 1.5 hours – reading Neuro, working on Sem pass 4 hours – ...
• Time log week 5 May 8, 2013 Monday – Wolf Creek to Grants Pass 5 hours – cycling of inhalation and exhalation 4 hours – listening, holding, and digging deeper Got my second flat of the trip today. It only ...
• Time log week 3 May 8, 2013 Friday – Leaving Olympia… arriving back in Olympia! 6 hours – biking and eating, expending and consuming energy, solitude 3 hours  – disordering, ordering It was my intention of making it to Chehalis ...
• Time Log week 4 May 8, 2013 Saturday – a visit to Tryon Life Community Farm 1.5 hr – biking there; a lot of deep inhalation and rapid exhalation 7 hrs – at Tryon Life in a cycle between ...
• C: my blog site April 30, 2013 cyclingandrecyclingblog.wordpress.com Enjoy! <3

Bachelardian Reverie

• Bachelard week 8 May 28, 2013 “They have argued that the human brain… is evolved for a collective form of life… and the formation of groups both small and large to ...
• Bachelard week 8 May 25, 2013 “Most mysteriously, your brain turns its view back on itself to generate your sense of self-awareness.” Rose, N. Abi-Rached, J., 2012. Neuro: the new brain sciences and the management of the ...
• Bachelardian reverie week 7 May 22, 2013 “Strategies week to create the kinds of persons who can take responsibility for their actions, and they attempt to enhance self-control by acting on the brain” pg 196 “The boat inside ...

Poetry

• Bachelard week 8 “They have argued that the human brain… is evolved for a collective form of life… and the formation of groups both small and large to ...
• The light of the storm – Poetry week 7 The rain it pours and the lightning lashes. Each season comes and each season passes. The cycle of life, the cycle of death, neither will stop, neither will rest. The tree, it stands tall. The branches, they sway. The tree, ...
• Cathedrals of fractals Cathedrals of fractals The new sapphire glass glows in petals of iridescent fractals refracting into the spirals of the unfurling fern fronds. The honey sun rises slow over the redwood ridges Sounds of sleep ...
• Haikus of Evening Darkness drifts down now Silence flows into my soul I find peace in breath Whole, I meditate A star blinks through the trees My thoughts are now still Water leaps through rocks Trees dig deep to find ...
• Sun in the Storm The rain it pours and the lightning lashes. Each season comes and each season passes. The cycle of life, the cycle of death, neither will stop, neither will rest. The tree, it stands tall. The branches, they sway. The tree ...
• C: Poetry week 4 – I am the needle stitching I am the needle stitching The point of my body pulls The thread of energy behind me as my legs pump They go up and down Round and round Synchronized with the beat Of my lungs ...
• C: Poetry week 3 – Dream fabric I once heard that when caterpillars turn into butterflies, they dissolve entirely inside of the cocoons. Their bodies become liquid and energy and memory, which takes on new form, an ...
• C: my blog site cyclingandrecyclingblog.wordpress.com Enjoy! <3

Poetry Observed

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Term Paper Abstract

Goethean science is an approach to observation that allows the observer to see the connections between him or herself and the chosen phenomenon; to acknowledge and explore the environment’s effect on the observer, and the observer’s effect on what is observed. Through a field study in the class As Poetry Recycles Neurons at The Evergreen State College, I have used this phenomenological method to study cycles. I have spent the last two months bicycling down the west coast of the United States, visiting places where people choose to live more closely with cycles – including farms, intentional communities, and retreat centers. While cycling around to these various communities, I have used this approach, as described in Craig Holdrege’s paper Doing Goethean Science, to observe and interact with many cycles. I use his ideas along with the model of Buhner’s blend of poetry and prose in The Secret Teachings of Plants as a framework for this paper, as I seek to explain and illustrate this method. The Goethean practice begins with curiosity, a riddle, moves into observation or conversation with the phenomena, recycles the mind through exact picture building, and finds its completion in seeing the whole. Throughout this paper I have sought to bring my prose (in standard font) and poetic voices (centered and in Italics) into conversation with the voices of experts. Through this paper, it is my hope that the reader is able to understand and grasp Goethean science, and then apply this method of engaging the world to more deeply understand any question or phenomenon.

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