My experience in this Nature and Environmental Writing class has been life-changing, to say the least. It has certainly been one of the best classes I've ever taken. It has not changed much about my relationship to nature, merely the ways in which I go about expressing it, approaching it. But it has certainly been profound.
I have loved this blog. I have loved the excuse to get out of my apartment and really experience-- in-depth-- a part of the city which I might otherwise have cast aside. I have loved the opportunity to create a new home for myself, something I was unable to do in the past two years until now, when this blog helped me give fully to that commitment. I have loved the words and emotions this blog has generated from within me.
I have learned a lot about myself and my relationship with nature. For one, I realized that childlike intensity is still inside my heart and mind. I can bring it forth, delve into that mindset, with the right environment. I have realized that I got burnt-out on nature. I liken it to working in a doughnut shop. The longer you work there, the more likely you are to start hating doughnuts (hard as that may be to process!). I have worked outside for most of my adult life, and I just stopped seeing it, experiencing it, relishing in it, at least completely consciously. While I always enjoyed it, I rarely focused on that. This class has given me a chance to express a lot which has been supressed within me.
I have also learned that, yes, I am a nature writer. I remember receiving word that I had been accepted to Chatham's MFA program. I wondered, for a brief, insecure moment, how ithad happened. How did I get into a program which focuses on place-based, nature and environmental writing? I brushed it aside, but never really answered that for myself until this semester, what with putting together my thesis and taking this class. Now I know. I am a nature writer!
I have also learned how to approach nature, a place, on the terms of a writer. I have had the luxury of getting to know an unfamiliar place, of discovering its quirks as it has allowed me. Now, I remember the quirks of South Carolina. I want to go home, to see it from a fresh perspective. I want to see and know every place in the world in the same way I've been able to see and know Homewood Cemetery here.
I have also learned that my colleagues (including you, Mel!) are incredible. Their writing and discussion comments have been inspiring. They have pushed me to see differently than what I might see myself. They have pushed me to reconsider and rethink my own views, whether to reinforce them or to alter them. They have listened to me and allowed me to open up, supported me and nurtured me, allowed me to grow in all the ways I most needed at this important juncture of academia and Life.
And finally, I have learned that this is indeed what I love. This discussion, this writing, these readings have been some of the best I've had in graduate school. As if I needed it, my passion has been solidified.
I am not sure if I will keep this blog going. I would like to, as it has been invaluable. But I know myself, and I may not be able to keep up. If I do, I might move it to a different platform, and I will certainly open it up to more than just these few perspectives, ideas, and issues. It will encompass all of me.
Frankly, this is the class of the semester which makes me mourn my graduation. I'm going to miss it so much. I have loved it beyond these pitiful words. Thank you all for everything you have done for me and brought forth from me. I will truly never forget!
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Cemetery Cycle - Place Prompt #7
**Author's Note: Pictures will be added to this post at a later date. For now, enjoy the words.**
Let's do away with the formalities, shall we? None of that date here, time there, weather and temp this and that. We are old friends now, and instead of shaking hands, we hug and kiss cheeks.
Life is a series of patterns. The general way of things happens. Things flow forward, seemingly straight and horizontal. One day, the general way ends up back where it once began. Things repeat their flow, even with a bit of a skew, even with a lot of skew. They are still the same things as before. The cycle is circular. Sometimes I wonder why we cannot feel it when we slide down the far side.
Today the cycle is complete. It is not my last time here, but rather it is the beginning of a new relationship outside of this blog required for a grade in one of the last academic classes I'll ever take. I will return, this time without external motivation, because Homewood Cemetery is a new sort of home, a new sort of retreat, a place which envelopes me in its nature and gives to me when I rarely give back anything but my presence, my thoughts, my typed words. Things will move forward and I will continue to visit, without external motivators. There will be a slightly altered state between us, but not for the worst. It shall go on.
So it makes sense to me that today I see Homewood in the glory of what I first saw it in: precipitation. That first visit those short, quick months ago was in snow. The second in rain. Today, we embrace the tears of the sky again. Perhaps this time the sky weeps for the change in our relationship, never easy, but not always bad. And today it is good.
I finally see what this is all for. There is a funeral which disbands soon after I drive through the black wrought-iron gates by the discolored, weathered bricks of a building. In the distance there is a hearse, guests dressed in black with heads bowed, a fresh plot of dirt in the otherwise green curve of the hill's hip. Maybe this is what the sky mourns. It is the first funeral I've seen since coming to visit. And still, the cycle of peeling apart layers continues. One would think this relatively obvious layer would have been one of the first to be discovered, not the last. Or the last for now. I long to take a photo-- I am far away and the scene is movie-esque, beautiful in that intimate way, but I resist. I respect this place as it shows me perhaps the innermost part of itself.
Instead, I drive on, unsure of where to go. I realize that I no longer fear getting lost. These narrow roads, sometimes crumbling, have all become familiar. I know my way around without a map now. I have been here. And here. And here. I remember this. And this. And this. I stop to photograph an amazing green-tarnished relief on a huge stone behind a pillar surrounded by a circle of graves. It is strange, a crop circle, some odd occult set-up, and superb.
As I drive the roads, listening to mind.in.a.box's Lost Alone, singing just below my breath "I feel sad, so left alone. Words are not enough for me to go on" to the trancy EBM beat, I see it. I see what the cemetery wants to show me today.
It is a large tree, cracked into spiky shards at the very base of its trunk, fallen onto the graves downhill from it. It shrouds these graves, has dislodged some of the stones surrounding it, but is holds them close in its embracing branches. I work my way down the hill. I try not to step on the graves, but I know I do anyway. I rush to this tree. It pulls my heartstrings right to it.
I spend 30 minutes or more photographing this one tree. I get on my knees and peer up through it. I stand at the top of the hill and look down on it. I sit on limbs after I test their stability, photograph gravestones between other limbs. I photograph the little grave stone which sits rightat the base of the trunk, right below the crack. It sinks into the red-brown dirt, muddy from the moisture. I photograph it, the tree bent over it. I photograph the trunk, the bright green moss against the backdrop of grays and browns in the bark. I photograph the age rings of a branch. And then, I look up into the severed trunk of the tree.
This is what the inside of a tree looks like. This is what its organs are made of. This sawdust, this hollow drilled up its spine. It shows me its excruciatingly resplendent bowels, spreads itself wide open before me, a great, organic yaw with a spiked cowl, the most private and personal parts it could ever impress in my mind's eye-- its insides. This is what the cemetery has for me today. We have become this close that I may make love to the very core of its fibers.
And thus the cycle of this cemetery, the tree and funeral offering their death to me after I strove so hard to pick at its life. And this, this is what I came here for. The beauty of the decay. It took a while, but we're finally on that level. I can't wait to continue to discover the nuances of our intimacy from here.
"The world around me starts to spin. Suddenly it starts all over..."
-- "Hold My Ground"
Funker Vogt
Let's do away with the formalities, shall we? None of that date here, time there, weather and temp this and that. We are old friends now, and instead of shaking hands, we hug and kiss cheeks.
Life is a series of patterns. The general way of things happens. Things flow forward, seemingly straight and horizontal. One day, the general way ends up back where it once began. Things repeat their flow, even with a bit of a skew, even with a lot of skew. They are still the same things as before. The cycle is circular. Sometimes I wonder why we cannot feel it when we slide down the far side.
Today the cycle is complete. It is not my last time here, but rather it is the beginning of a new relationship outside of this blog required for a grade in one of the last academic classes I'll ever take. I will return, this time without external motivation, because Homewood Cemetery is a new sort of home, a new sort of retreat, a place which envelopes me in its nature and gives to me when I rarely give back anything but my presence, my thoughts, my typed words. Things will move forward and I will continue to visit, without external motivators. There will be a slightly altered state between us, but not for the worst. It shall go on.
So it makes sense to me that today I see Homewood in the glory of what I first saw it in: precipitation. That first visit those short, quick months ago was in snow. The second in rain. Today, we embrace the tears of the sky again. Perhaps this time the sky weeps for the change in our relationship, never easy, but not always bad. And today it is good.
I finally see what this is all for. There is a funeral which disbands soon after I drive through the black wrought-iron gates by the discolored, weathered bricks of a building. In the distance there is a hearse, guests dressed in black with heads bowed, a fresh plot of dirt in the otherwise green curve of the hill's hip. Maybe this is what the sky mourns. It is the first funeral I've seen since coming to visit. And still, the cycle of peeling apart layers continues. One would think this relatively obvious layer would have been one of the first to be discovered, not the last. Or the last for now. I long to take a photo-- I am far away and the scene is movie-esque, beautiful in that intimate way, but I resist. I respect this place as it shows me perhaps the innermost part of itself.
Instead, I drive on, unsure of where to go. I realize that I no longer fear getting lost. These narrow roads, sometimes crumbling, have all become familiar. I know my way around without a map now. I have been here. And here. And here. I remember this. And this. And this. I stop to photograph an amazing green-tarnished relief on a huge stone behind a pillar surrounded by a circle of graves. It is strange, a crop circle, some odd occult set-up, and superb.
As I drive the roads, listening to mind.in.a.box's Lost Alone, singing just below my breath "I feel sad, so left alone. Words are not enough for me to go on" to the trancy EBM beat, I see it. I see what the cemetery wants to show me today.
It is a large tree, cracked into spiky shards at the very base of its trunk, fallen onto the graves downhill from it. It shrouds these graves, has dislodged some of the stones surrounding it, but is holds them close in its embracing branches. I work my way down the hill. I try not to step on the graves, but I know I do anyway. I rush to this tree. It pulls my heartstrings right to it.
I spend 30 minutes or more photographing this one tree. I get on my knees and peer up through it. I stand at the top of the hill and look down on it. I sit on limbs after I test their stability, photograph gravestones between other limbs. I photograph the little grave stone which sits rightat the base of the trunk, right below the crack. It sinks into the red-brown dirt, muddy from the moisture. I photograph it, the tree bent over it. I photograph the trunk, the bright green moss against the backdrop of grays and browns in the bark. I photograph the age rings of a branch. And then, I look up into the severed trunk of the tree.
This is what the inside of a tree looks like. This is what its organs are made of. This sawdust, this hollow drilled up its spine. It shows me its excruciatingly resplendent bowels, spreads itself wide open before me, a great, organic yaw with a spiked cowl, the most private and personal parts it could ever impress in my mind's eye-- its insides. This is what the cemetery has for me today. We have become this close that I may make love to the very core of its fibers.
And thus the cycle of this cemetery, the tree and funeral offering their death to me after I strove so hard to pick at its life. And this, this is what I came here for. The beauty of the decay. It took a while, but we're finally on that level. I can't wait to continue to discover the nuances of our intimacy from here.
"The world around me starts to spin. Suddenly it starts all over..."
-- "Hold My Ground"
Funker Vogt
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