Field Study Proposal

In many traditions, the temple summarizes the creation of the universe (the cosmogeny) seen as a divine unit that has exploded into pieces. The Tarot can be seen as such a temple. Alejandro Jodorowsky calls it a nomadic cathedral, whose mirrors reflect the multifaceted nature of the soul. The Tarot is a mandala, with its own spatial orientation, architecture, and symbolic structure. It has been used as a tool of self discovery for centuries. Through examining the history and symbolism of the Tarot, and by practicing the language of reflection in its mirrors, I hope to gain insight into the complex, multidimensional nature of the unconscious. Perhaps it is only through the study of “beauty” that one may grasp the ineffable and the divine. The study of Tarot can therefore be undertaken as a study of “beauty”. In many ways, the plasticity and complexity of the Tarot reflects the nature of the human brain. If poetry is one way to recycle neurons, it occurs to me that Tarot must certainly be another; as it too is a language that begs for differential interpretations of its words. In The Way of Tarot, Jodoroswky writes, “You start with a pack of cards, you mix up the arcana and lay them flat, which is to say you cut god into pieces. You interpret them and put them back together in sentences. It is a sacred quest that the initiate reader must perform. God is resuscitated not in immaterial form, but in the material world.”.

Read complete field study proposal

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• Ta- Week 8 Log March 7, 2013 10 hours reading – The Way of Tarot, The Metabarons (A. Jodorowsky);  Our Dreaming Mind (R. van de Castle); The Sacred and the Profane, The Forge and the Crucible (M. ...
• Ta – Week 7 Log March 7, 2013 12 hours reading – The Way of Tarot, The Metabarons (A. Jodorowsky); Interpreting the Signs of the Times: Beyond Jung, The Magician in the World: Becoming, Creativity, and Transversal Communication ...
• Ta – Week 6 Log February 21, 2013 14 hours reading – The Way of Tarot, The Metabarons (A. Jodorowsky); Interpreting the Signs of the Times: Beyond Jung, The Magician in the World: Becoming, Creativity, and Transversal Communication ...
• Ta – Week 5 Log January 23, 2013 16 hours reading – The Way of Tarot (A. Jodorowsky), The Castle of Crossed Destinies (Italo Calvino), The Mirror and the Mask, The Garden of Forking Paths (L. Borges), Creative ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• Ta – Week 8 Bachelardian Reverie March 4, 2013 “Reverie is an oneiric activity in which a glimmer of consciousness subsists. The dreamer of reverie is present in his reverie. Even when the reverie gives the impression of a ...
• Ta – Week 7 Bachelardian Reverie March 4, 2013 “A glimmer of eternity descends upon the beauty of the world. We are standing before a great lake who’s name is familiar to geographers, high in the mountains, and suddenly ...
• Ta – Week 6 Bachelardian Reverie February 19, 2013   “Androgeneity is not buried away in some indistinct bestiality at the obscure origins of life. It is a dialectic at the summit. Coming from one and the same being, it ...
• Ta – Week 5 Bachelardian Reverie February 14, 2013 “The poet’s room is full of words, words which move about in the shadows. Sometimes the words are unfaithful to the things. They try to establish oneiric synoymies between things. ...

Poetry

• Ta – Week 8 Poetry   The Magician The Magician points to Earth and Sky; a banded piece of agate – a looking glass – rests in hand. I am cradled between a nurse log and the tangled roots ...
• Ta – Week 7 Poetry The Tower
• Ta – Week 6 Poetry Le Mat
• Ta – Week 5 Poetry The Syzygy A braided river runs through the secret garden of my mind. Whose hand dost paint this river? It’s banks, by which The Aeons come and go, are muddy and fertile. This is ...

Poetry Observed

Term Paper Abstract

Read full term paper

 Field Study Proposal

Michael Doughty will spend a month immersing himself in the intersection between transgender narratives and how reading can change the way that people view the world. He will use this knowledge and experience to create a narrative that is designed to give the reader the experience of coming out as a transgender person and then transitioning.

Read complete field study proposal

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• E – Week 8 Log March 3, 2013 February 25th Seminar paper: 2 hours Reading: 4 hours Total: 6 hours Weekly total: 6 hours Texts: Reading and the Brain, Unoriginal Genius February 26th Seminar participation: 1 hour Editing: 4 hours Reading: .5 hour Total: 5.5 hours Weekly total: 11.5 hours February 27th Discussion ...
• E – Week 7 Log February 25, 2013 February 17th Seminar paper: 1 hour Research: 1 hour Reading: 4 hours Editing: 2 hours Total: 8 hours Weekly total: 8 hours Texts: Reading and the Brain, Unoriginal Genius February 18th Seminar participation: 1 hour Editing: 4 hours Meeting: 1 hour Total:6 hours Weekly total: ...
• E – Week 6 Log February 17, 2013 February 11th Seminar paper: 1 hour Research: 1 hour Reading: 4 hours Total: 6 hours Weekly total: 6 hours Texts: Reading and the Brain, Unoriginal Genius, Luna February 12th Seminar participation: 1 hours Writing: 11 hours Total: 12 Weekly total: 18 hours February 13th Discussion ...
• E – Week 5 Log February 10, 2013 Cumulative writing total January 21st – February 3rd 32 hours Master total hours: 32 February 4th Seminar paper: .5 hour Research: 1 hour Reading: 6 hours Total: 7.5 hours Weekly total: 7.5 hours Texts: Reading and the Brain, Unoriginal Genius, I ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• E – Reverie Week 8 February 27, 2013 History of the Stars Listen little one And the stars will speak Though the tales they tell Aren’t pretty or pleasing Earth’s history wasn’t always Quite so bathed in blood. But the stories of the stars Tell of ...
• E – Week 7 Reverie February 21, 2013 Waterfall, peaceful running water But as a scent Tight chest, pain, anxious Mom nagging, mom nagging Don’t pick that don’t touch that Hungry, can’t feed myself Chest pain, surgery drains Tired, so tired, watching the clock For my ...
• E – Reverie Week 6 February 13, 2013 Wo/man cannot live on bread alone And it is passion that drives me, Passion that fuels me. It is not my body That propels me up mountains, no. My body is an obstacle, hauled Huffing ...
• E – Bachelard Reverie Week 5 February 6, 2013 Opposites Aren’t really opposite. We oppose ourselves but are Ourselves, opposite selves All at once. Reverie is in This opposition, this contrast. Accepting two opposite ideas And letting them be, letting them Exist Side by side, overlapping, tumbling over.   You ...

Poetry

• E – Final Presentation Poem When I write I Recreate the stars Giving them a rhythm Absent in the real world Life doesn’t flow but story flows.   Still, the starts they are And here in this tiny world, Though I create it, I ...
• E – Week 8 Poetry Apparently I write well. This comes as something of a surprise Because I feel out of practice And I so seldom write what I like to read.   But somehow I manage to capture People, struggle, emotion ...
• E – Week 7 Poetry If the pen is mightier than the sword Why do I feel so helpless? But my words are not alone I am fighting the words of others The writs and laws of culture   “You’re worth ...
• E – Week 6 Poetry I pray while I write Or maybe writing is a prayer. I have hope for these words That they will make a difference I pray they will move a nation Move people, move hearts, move ...
• E – Week 5 Poetry Transition looks like courage (or stupidity, but aren’t those often the same) To people on the outside. But is a drowning man courageous For trying to swim? It’s not the noble courage That leads trans* people to ...

Poetry Observed

Your Journey Home Introduction

Poetry Observed

Holdrege Paper

Abstract: Every person has a conversation with culture. They take in ideas, ideologies, and contribute a piece of themselves in return. This paper is about my conversation with culture. It is about what literature thinks of transgender people and the rebuttal of my own experiences. It is the story of my story, how my narrative designed to give people the sensation of being trans* was born.

Read full Winter Term Paper

 Novella

This is the story that was the goal of my project

Your Journey Home Through the Boyhood that Wasn’t

Field Study Proposal

How tightly woven are language and gender? Body and environment? During this four week field study, entitled B is for Body Mapping, the student will explore the effects of environment, language, and gender on the body through use of Derives (drifts through a city), writing/reading poetry, and letterpress. The student will keep a field study journal for observatory notes to craft into poems and create visual text-art via Letterpress. The student will develop a bibliography and put her ideas, questions and writing in conversation with multiple authors and text that have explored similar themes such as: Beyond The Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life, Gaston Bachelard, Michel De Certeau, Helene Cixous and various poets. The student will also help curate an anthology of the programs collective work.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• B – Week 8 Logs March 4, 2013 Week 8 Logs:  Monday February 25th .5 hours – researching Charles Bernstine. 2 hours – writing and posting seminar pass. 1 hour – spent time in sauna thinking about breath, body and journaling about ...
• B – Week 7 Logs February 24, 2013 Monday February 18th 2.5 hours – working on seminar pass poem. .5 hours – walking by the water and through the city. .5 hours – journaling about how to find my body ...
• B – Week 6 Logs February 17, 2013 Week 6 logs:  Monday February 11th 2 hours – Derive. Took descriptive notes and journaled about my surroundings, and what I was attracted to and why (notes for a poem!) 2 hours – ...
• B – Week 5 Logs January 23, 2013 Monday February 4th .5 hours – read New York Times article. 
 2 hours – yoga and peer-editing. 1.5 hours – wrote seminar pass. .5 hours – worked on mid-quarter self evaluation. Tuesday February ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• B – Reverie #4 Week 8 February 27, 2013 Marisa Malone Bachelardian Reverie #4 Winter qt. wk.8 Word Count: 100 “If there are ‘gorges’ (French = ‘throats’) in the mountains, isn’t it because the wind, long ago, spoke there?” In Bachelard’s understanding of ...
• B – Reverie #3 Week 7 February 20, 2013 Word Count:168  “Then there lives within us not a memory of history but a memory of the cosmos. Times when nothing happened come back.” (Bachelard, 119) “The pure memory has no date. ...
• B – Reverie #2 Week. 6 February 13, 2013 Reverie on Reveries on Reverie: “There are reveries where I am less than myself. Then the shadow is a rich being.” – (Bachelard, 80) I’ve always known that I contain multiples. I’ve ...
• B – Reverie #1 Week 5 January 30, 2013 Reverie Prompt: In your experience does a romance language such as French do a “great service” by being a “passionate language” that has not wanted to preserve a neuter gender, ...

Poetry

• B – Final Performance Poems Mind Like Letters. my mind like letters sits shelved and quiet, collecting dust, degenerating, dreaming of the time it will feel the rumble of the cabinet cracking open, the sliver of light passing over, becoming active from the hand that selects ...
• B – Poem – Mind Like Letters Mind Like Letters my mind like letters sits shelved and quiet, collecting dust, degenerating, dreaming of the time it will feel the rumble of the cabinet cracking open, the sliver of light passing over and becoming active from the hand ...
• B – Poem – Untitled #2 Untitled Trace the body to understand, memorize a memory transparent and rubbed with charcoal to be revealed. 
• B – Poem – Untitled #1 Untitled I dream for a moment and my skin slides off my muscles as they drop away from my bones as they loosen my joints as my mind exceeds my body ...
• B – Poem – Embodiment Embodiment I am house I am host I am post I am sign I am line I am rhythm I am traffic I am breath I am wind I am window ...
• B – Poem – Untitled #3 Untitled my eyes trace a memory real and imagined— my hands are full of text, drinking letters while my mind pours out thoughts— and the letters are still, only alive in the body that reads them.
• B – Poem – Untitled #4 Untitled I lie fractions apart from imagined beings and tangible bodies His head and shoulders curl into my lap. Like a child he finds comfort in the deep, old warmth of womb. ...
• B – Poem – A Conversation Between Walls. A Conversation Between Walls. She looks lost most the time. Maybe not lost but confused or bored. Sometimes the lack of light burns her out. I’ve seen her move from the bed to the floor and back again. She stands ...

Poetry Observed

Authors Note:

This stop motion film is meant to capture my process of setting up and printing with letterpress. I chose this form because I wanted the object to speak for itself, or rather, speak for me as I have given it the language. Though this is a short video it took me about 2 hours to complete.

Fall Term Paper

Fall Term Paper Abstract:

I recognize that I am part of a culture that values materials more than basic human rights, a culture that views humans as objects, a culture of material worth. In such an environment I have become detached from my body, my multitude and nature. I have since seen this fracture as an opportunity to rebuild myself the way I see true. This paper is that exploration.

Read full Fall Term Paper

Winter Term Paper

Winter Term Paper Abstract:

This paper is modeled after Craig Holdreges seven steps of “Delicate Empiricism” from his essay addressing science as a conversation between observer and observed. What follows is the conversation I had with the language surrounding, inscribing, and labeling the body. I will talk about my search for my body through language, urban environments, letterpress, gender, poetry and science. Knowing that these conversations are far from over this collection of findings and metaphors does not end with a conclusion but an invitation to go deeper. The voices I have peppered in with my own range from feminist theorists, philosophers, scientists and poets, and I encourage you to question, to add your voice, to join in reverie with those speaking here.

Read full Winter Term Paper

The Meditation of Craftsmanship 

The meditation of craftsmanship is a firsthand investigation into the shared qualities of Buddhist and Yoga meditation with traditional Japanese woodcraft and to see how these techniques create a physical space that facilitates an integral sensory experience between mind, body, and spirit, all encompassed in the Chanoyu tea ceremony.  The student will show how practicing Japanese woodcraft and participating in the Chanoyu tea ceremony invite meditation that “recycles neurons”, an essential process in further developing critical thinking skills.  Working with the Chanoyu: Traditional Japanese Culture and the Way of Tea program, the student will join in the construction of a traditional Japanese tea house on campus and practice Chanoyu tea ceremonies with the class.  Conclusions drawn from the investigation will be presented in a final 5-7 page paper that integrates weekly field observations and poetry posted to an online forum.  The paper will be presented week 10 along with a demonstration of woodworking and an interactive component using Chanoyu and haiku.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• Wo week 7 February 25, 2013 February 17th – February 23rd 10 hours – in shop 8 hours – in class 6 hours – reading the Dhammapada, In Praise of Shadows, What Is Japanese Architecture?, Tea in Japan, Reading ...
• Wo week 6 February 18, 2013 February 10th to 16th 4 hours – in shop 8 hours – in class learning tea prep and drinking 3 hours – reading Dhammapada, Ma (Insterstice) and Rubble, Ma: Space and Time, In ...
• Wo week 5 January 23, 2013 February 3rd – 9th 4 hours – in class learning and practicing Chanoyu 8 hours – in wood shop 2 hours – reading Dhammapada, What is Japanese Architecture, Reading in the Brain We began ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• Wo bachelard #2 February 13, 2013 “And in free reverie, they (man and woman) speak in order to admit their desires, to communicate in the tranquility of a well harmonized double nature.” – 59 “…the human psychism ...

Poetry

• wo – poetry week 8 – Emergence emerge from within settle back down to earth adjusting your eyes what do you see now? did you build what dreams may come? there, sits a tea house i see it scatter each piece beautifully diverse individual i see ...
• Wo poetry week 7 – Meditation Meditation It moves slowly through eye of the eye seeing you Blank stares, darkened blue If thoughts are the flames casting shadows in our lives embrace the darkness Flickering light beams still pass through shadows of night what dreams ...
• Wo poetry week 6 – Building Building elements lift up latice work locked into place what secrets lie hidden here? in the joint, the truss complexity lies hidden humbly holding us we build little cells blood and flesh, within which dwell trillions of other stories ...
• Wo poetry week 5 – Forming Forming Saw teeth cut wood grain Apoptosis shaves away Sculpting forms in space Chisels peel and pierce Ancient sculptures of flesh Revealing (hidden) layers Ghostly blueprints find Themselves laid down onto wood Hinting what will come Moving from carelessness To vigilance, ...

Poetry Observed

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJleRRj4-Vw]

Term Paper Abstract

Read full term paper here

[http://blogs.evergreen.edu/ealphabet/wo-term-paper-winter/]

Field Study Proposal

In this project, entitled P(r) is for Presence the student intends to explore the connection between the body and the
mind and to put various theories on movement and meditation into practice in an effort to reconnect both to her
physical self and the world around her. At the end of the project, the student will have amassed a collection of
poetry and photographs, as well as a Holdrege-style research paper detailing her efforts and experiences during this
project.

Read the complete field study proposal (pdf)

Gallery of captured moments

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• P(r) – Week 8 Log March 2, 2013 Monday 2-25-13:  1/4 hr e-cises, 1/4 hr vocal exercise, 1/2 hr belly dance, 3 1/2 hr reading Grandmother’s Secrets, 1/2 hr Wordpress, 2 hr seminar.  Total:  7 hours Tuesday 2-26-13:  1/2 ...
• P(r) – Week 7 Log February 25, 2013 Sunday 2-17-13:  2 hr Vagina Monologues, 2 hr reading Bachelard, Affect Theory Reader, 2 hr writing.  Total:  6 hours Monday 2-18-13:  2 hr writing, 1/4 hr e-cises, 1/2 hr belly dance, ...
• P(r) – Week 6 Log February 18, 2013 Monday, 2-11-13 1/2 hr fighting with Wordpress, 1 hr writing, 2 hr Sherman Alexie reading at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, 3 hr reading Perloff, Dehaene, Cixous.  Total:  6.5 hours Tuesday, ...
• P(r) – Week 5 Log January 23, 2013 2.1.13–Friday 1/2 hr meditation 3 hrs Tai Chi Seminar 1 hr reading 2.2.13–Saturday 4 hrs Tai Chi Seminar 2 hrs reading 1 hr bellydance 2.4.13–Monday 6 hr reading 3 hr writing 2.5.13–Tuesday 1/2 hr Morning Pages 1/2 hr E-cises & meditation 3/4 hr bellydance 4 ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• Week 8 – Bachelardian Reverie #4 March 2, 2013 **sorry for the lateness, I lost my book and just acquired a new one “What an invitation to dream what one sees and to dream what one is…Who is existing?  What ...
• P(r) – Bachelardian Reverie #3 February 21, 2013 “Attached to its odor memories, a childhood smells good.”  (Bachelard, 140) Pipe tobacco.  Scratchy brown sofas in every room, green wallpaper always made me think of Napolean.  The front room with ...
• P(r) – Bachelardian Reverie #2 February 14, 2013 “The man who loves a woman “projects” upon that woman all the values which he venerates in his own anima.  And in the same way, the woman “projects” upon the ...
• P(r) – Bachelardian Reverie 1 January 30, 2013 “…when will-o’-the-wisps–beings of very indeterminate sex–are to seduce men or women, they become precisely, according to the person to be led astray, flambettes (f.) or flamboires (m.).”  (Bachelard, 38) Everything is ...

Poetry

• P(r) – Final Poem These movements that seem to move themselves with a grace that hides the strength that brings ease of movement as we manipulate ourselves into achieving what should be impossible. The lines of the ...
• P(r) – Week 8 Poetry – On Finding My Waist On Finding My Waist An unexpected rearrangement of atoms has rendered an in where there was an out as mysterious curves emerge joyfully from captivity.
• P(r) – Poem #3 – Week 7 silence turning and turning in the widening gyre, seeking a silence I find lacking, my center will not hold a black hole and so I must fill it with things windchimes and nail polish ...
• P(r) – Poem #2 – Week 6 Because of formatting issues, this poem has been embedded as a Google document.
• P(r) – Poem 1 – The Chinese Restaurant Ignored By Time Passing Present but not really here a 1960s Chinese restaurant like David Lynch deliciously drunk on tastes like dangerous candy words flowing off my back like water the warm buzz of people safe in private conversations the scent of childhood in lemon-lime ...

Poetry Observed

Term Paper Abstract

In our current culture of excess, materialism and gratification few people live in the moment, and even fewer live in their bodies. They live in the past and dream of the future. The closest they come to the present is thinking about what they want right now but even that is a dream of the future, never an acceptance of what is. Bodies are a nuisance, objects to be tamed and altered, decorated and abhorred, rarely appreciated for the extraordinary machines that they are or thanked for the physical and emotional abuse they endure daily. If our bodies could talk, what would they say? But our bodies do talk, all the time. They are constantly telling us about ourselves internally, and give us moment-to-moment updates on the spaces we inhabit, each moment shaped by the preceding moment and shaping the next. Our bodies put 24-hour news feeds to shame. What a wealth of real-time information is available to us if we would only listen. That is my aim: to learn to access the information my body holds, to become a presence in my body and in the present moment, not watching them both from the outside.

Read full term paper

Field Study Proposal

Why does the ocean and water in general have such a powerful resonance for our imagination and attraction for our bodies? Using the Goethean-inspired practice of direct perception and delicate empiricism, the student will investigate the movement, reflection, horizon, diffusion and luminosity inherent in the ocean and in art about the ocean. The student will conduct field studies during which she will write, draw and photograph as a way to record and investigate these qualities of the sea and what effects they have on the imagination and body. She will also explore how other painters, poets, photographers, artists and scientists explain and study the poetic aspects of the ocean and will compile her research at luminoussea.tumblr.com as ‘an anthology of the ocean’ through poetic, artistic and scientific lenses alike. As a supplement to her study of the ocean and art, the student will also study creativity, the process of delicate empiricism, and how “an object well-contemplated opens an organ of perception within us” (Goethe); what processes and techniques do curious people use to translate the essence of a phenomenon into art with love, openness and well-crafted poetry, image and research? The month’s research will provide the basis for a short winter term paper explaining the process of delicate empiricism. The student will then create a manual for conducting this process of sensitive  science, supplemented with her poetry and photography into a small, beautifully formatted booklet as a spring quarter project. This ocean study is about body-knowledge and water-knowledge, is about how art can show us where our selves overlap with the phenomena of the world, and how creativity is rooted in and resonates with the world.

Read complete field study proposal here

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• O – Week 8 Log March 6, 2013 Week 8 Monday, February 25 traveled to Olympia 3 hours reading and writing seminar pass Tuesday, February 26 2 hours water surface study and meditation 2 hours online reading interview about poetry/science memoir of orcas, uploading ...
• O – Week 7 Log February 25, 2013 Week 7 Monday, February 18 1 hour perusing ealphabet site and posting logs traveled to Corvallis 2 hours writing seminar pass 1 hour writing poetry (4) Tuesday, February 19 .5 hour reading sem passes and responding 4 hours walking, ...
• O – Week 6 Log February 18, 2013 Week 6 Monday, February 11 1 hours re-reading mauve sea-orchids out loud 2 hours skimming and sorting stack of library books into these categories: art and creativity (interview with Ran Ortner, Art & Soul, ...
• O – Week 5 Log January 23, 2013 Monday, February 4th 2 hours field study to Evergreen beach: journaled and photographed 2 hours reading 2 hours reading and seminar pass Tuesday, February 5th 1 hour reading 3 hours writing, planning and brainstorming Wednesday, February 6th 2 ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• O – the Cosmicizing I March 6, 2013 “For every appetite, there is a world. The dreamer then participates in the world by nourishing himself from one of the substances of the world, a dense or rare, warm ...
• O – Week 8 Reverie February 28, 2013 “A poetic force leads these phantoms of reverie. This poetic force animates all the senses; reverie becomes polysensorial.” (Bachelard 162) “Ah! how a passage which pleases us can make us live! ...
• O – Week 7 Reverie February 20, 2013           “In memories it is always blue, slow, light. Why?” (Bachelard 127)   Franz Hellens: “My memory is fragile; I quickly forget the contour, the feature; only the melody remains within me. I have ...
• O – Week 6 Reverie February 14, 2013 “Constantly moving in a dance that mirrors the tempo of the human body, waves break in time with the beating of our hearts, the in and out of our breaths, ...
• O – Week 5 Reverie February 7, 2013 “The paradoxes of life are all there in the sea. The ocean is often referred to as feminine, but the waves arrive in a masculine surge. As soon as they ...

Poetry

• O – Studies in Gesture, Nuance and Diffusion O - Studies in Gesture, Nuance and Diffusion
• O – waterbodies III Of the body, the belly identifies best with the sea. The belly identifies best with the sea, where the closed-sphere skull and the rib-cage gradually open, one unfurling rib-finger by one to ...
• O – waterbodies II waterbodies II The river nodes of my wrist flip cross direct when they feel the sea near. Blue tributaries that rush to tingle fingerpads at the humidity of salt air. The blue blood sea blush traces the ...
• O – waterbodies Our body is a temporary membrane, necessary to hold our waters. Our body is a body of water that breathes in and out as a watery lung. Liquid environment in, altered water ...

Poetry Observed

Fall Term Paper Abstract: The Bracken Fern

The language of scientific research is increasingly divorced from the poetic experience of observation. Descriptions are often stale and highly specific in a way that doesn’t encompass the entire character of the organism. By practicing Goethean science, one can use science and art to describe specific scientific findings with the subjective experience of being in contact with phenomena. The body emits electromagnetic frequencies from the heart that are constantly in flux with its environment. These waves manifest as emotions: in short, the sensory input from the heart as emotions is important data to use when perceiving phenomena. It is difficult to translate emotions into linear language, which is why poetic language and art can be more effective tools for conveying the sensory input of experience. This paper is about the search for knowledge about the Bracken fern through observation of the plant and observation of the observer as she observes. It strives to use poetic language alongside specific facts to compose a holistic portrait of the bracken.

Read full fall term paper here

Winter Term Paper Abstract: Seven Steps Towards a Delicate Empiricism

These seven steps are an attempt to illustrate a process of “delicate empiricism” as a way to conduct creative and scientific investigations. The process is based in the phenomenological experience of the senses paired with imagination, research, and creation that results in discoveries that may be communicated to others through art and science. These seven steps urge the observer to recognize the merits of using both the heart and the mind when exploring the world, and are a way to bring together the inquisitive nature of science with the subjective experience of art. These are the steps used by the student during a month long field study during which she studied the ocean, and are a part of a larger paper that explores the power of art as a means of expressing truths about the sea. Delicate empiricism is a process that illuminates how love can be translated from a phenomenon through the senses into art, which is a new phenomenon in itself. It starts: passion, observation, imagination, conversation, context, and organs of perception. It begins anew in love. 

Read full winter term paper here

Spring Term Booklet: waterbodies

This booklet is a manual to the methods I lived while sensing through art, the ocean, my body and memory during my winter term field study of the sea. The regular type poses the prompts I asked myself; the italicized type is the poetic voice of my experience with the wide, churning, sensual, somatic, deep, horizontal, salty subject of the sea, encompassed in the oceanic whisperings of parenthesis.
This project began with a question: How does the ocean affect the body and the imagination?
(Why does the opening from vertical land to horizontal sea seem to mimic a shift from brain analyzing to belly sensing?
Why does it feel that thoughts turn to substance and churn, settle, spread when in the presence of the sea?
What do artists render in art about the sea? How does art then illuminate ocean-experience in turn?)

This booklet explains some of how and what I learned.

Read waterbodies here

Field Study Proposal

I wish to study the poetry and other media works of Jim Morrison to find out what draws me (and many others) to Morrison. I will also argue why and how I am a modern day version of him by using his work for inspiration and recycling his works through my own style. Along with my backround in his musical career in The Doors, (entire discography) I have purchased his 4 published poetry books along with the known Biography ‘No one gets out of here alive’ and will be citing them accordingly. I will also be viewing his media works such as ‘The lost Paris tapes’ and will review some interviews. His poetry books include: The Lords, New Creatures, Wilderness and The American Night. I will be in between Lynnwood and Olympia to work with location for my poems, busing where I cannot get a ride from friends and family. My living expenses will be minimal, if I am not living on campus I will be at my parents house. I’ll have my laptop, access to Sno-isle Libraries and the Evergreen computers/internet and Media Loans.

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

• L – Week 8 log March 5, 2013   February 25th 5 hours: Reading 1 hours: Listening to The Doors 2 hours: Drafting February 26th 2 hours: Reading 2hours: Working on Holdrege 1 hours: Drafting 3 hours: Watching Interviews February 27th 11/2 hours: Working on Holdrege 2 hours: Drafting 3 hours: ...
• L – Week 7 Log February 25, 2013 February 17th       4 hours: Reading 2 hours: Listening to The Doors 11/2 hours: Drafting February 18th 2 hours: Reading 1 hours: Notes about Jim 1 hours: Outlining Holdrege 2 hours: Listening to The Doors February 19th 2 hours: ...
• L – Week 6 log February 18, 2013 February 10th 1.5 hour: Reading 2 hours: drafting 1 hour: listening to the doors February 11th 3 hours: Reading 4 hours: Drafting 1.5 hours: watching Documentaries February 12th 1 hour: Watching interviews 2 hours: Reading 2 hours: drafting February 13th 1 hour: Reading 3 ...
• L – Week 5 log January 23, 2013 February 3rd ½ hour(s): Compiling Documentary Titles (Bookmarking them, seeing worth my time etc.) February 4th 2 ½ hours: Watching Documentaries 2 hours: Reading, underlining significant or jolting bits and copying inspiring bits  11/2 hours: Notes ...

Bachelardian Reverie

• L – Week 8 Reverie February 27, 2013 (Word count is 146 but 39 are Doors lyrics so I didn’t count them) “‘The forest shivers under the caresses of the cristal-fingered delirium..’ That which is electric in the shiver—whether ...
• L – Week 7 Reverie February 21, 2013 “A whole vanished universe is preserved by an odor. Lucile Delarue-Mardrus, the beautiful Norman poetess writes: “The odor of my country was an apple.”” (Bachelard, Poetic Reverie; 139) My dad is an old truck filled ...
• L – Week 6 reverie February 13, 2013 “The dreamer can easily project his own anima upon the beloved. But in doing that, there is no simple egotism of the imagination. The dreamer wants his projected anima to have a ...
• L – Week 5 Reverie February 6, 2013 “”The army of flowers answers the call of its queen” so that floral life may triumph over accursed life.” (Bachelard, Poetic Reverie; 40)   Why must I be the river twisting around your banks The ...

Poetry

• L – Week 8 Poetry He screams wake up I am awake! and i’m terrified those who have awoken prefer the bliss of ignorant sleep ——————— Through my lips sleeps the tongue of a lizard beneath these heavy lids reptile eyes, blood cool and skin sleek I cannot ...
• L – Week 7 Poetry I applaud these soldiers of the land for claiming this metal monster of a boat as its own in a cage of roots just close enough to the shore to freedom, for spite. ________________ Evolution spilled across ...
• L – Week 6 poetry What in love drives this awkward cruel wordplay ———————– I see the whites in your eyes Target acquired Fire at will! Just shoot. why won’t you shoot Inspired from page 106 of The New Creatures Trees shade the dark thoughts of the trudging youth below Inspired ...
• L – Week 5 poetry Inspired from page 81 of The Lords I sit at this window into Suburbia. We’ve domesticated our own mother to lawn accessories and lifeless products In the distance, crows feast by the roadside on our plastic constantly ...

Poetry Observed

Fall Term Paper 

Fall term paper (Orcas pear tree)

Winter Term Paper

Lizard King, erotic politician, electric shaman, poet, existentialist, Rock God and mortal man.
Jim Morrison was on a rampage to live and push everyone around him to do the same by any means necessary. He had all sides of the spectrum as well, a sweet philosopher concerned with the issues of the world and capable of much kindness and a sadistic asshole with concerning alcoholism issues and random violent actions. His poetry is a sometimes confusing raw glimpse into his mind. It reflects his drug use, fame, love, his time and thoughts that plagued him enough to end up on paper. In recycling his work I have re-evaluated parts of my conscience previously known but also confronted thoughts and other parts that I believe have created a new me.

Read full Winter Term Paper

 Photoshoots

Mr Mojo Risin pictures

Serene Lone Girl pictures