The botanical and geological exploration of Bryn Mawr campus I experienced with three “Sarahs”, Wanhong and Emily was quite interesting.

We started with a group of 5, Emily Tong, Sarah Macholdt, Sarah Cummingham and Wanghong  Zou. We talked about our experience of our two different Ecological Imaging classes so far. We went on the geological exploration first. We identifyied the rocks, went to the Mills creek… Fast forward, fast forward. And we met three other ecological imaginers basking in the sun in front of the English house, which was when the trip got more interesting.

The eight of us first argued about whether the leaning beech tree in front of the English house would fell down at any point. One of us tried to push the tree down, but didn’t succeed, of course. Finally, we looked up high in the sky and found out the top of the tree was more branches on the opposite side of the direction the tree was leaning to. So the tree was in fact in perfect balance! I wonder if the tree had known about the laws of physics that it decided to grown in such special “gesture”.

Then our interest shifted to the vines that were grown on the beech tree. One of us did “vine swinging”!! A dangerous thing to do, I must say. The vine broke, and fell down an inch beside her! Sarah Cummingham said the tree was expressing its anger. I say we don’t have the skills of Tashan to do vine swinging. We had overestimated the strength of the vine. Eventually Sarah decided to take the broken vine home and make an art creation out of it. (Have you finished it, Sarah?)

I was really intrigued this past week by Jen Rajchel's visit, especially the silent exercise that she led us in, "Tattoo Parlor". It was a really cool way to learn more about Sasha, and to think about what kind of visual image would best represent her, and so I enjoyed it from a playful (ha) perspective. But I also think that it correlates more fully to my ideal of silence--one in which you spend time actively listening to another person, to music, to the world around you--and not so much focused just on not talking. I don't mean to say that I think the silences that we have started (or ended, in some cases) our class with have not been valuable, just that I appreciate that we are moving beyond the notion that everyone must refrain from speaking for it to be a "real" silent activity. 

My word this week from our exercise at the Cannery was "listen". I really value it when others actively listen to me, and I am working on becoming the best listener that I can be, with my friends, family, the larger world (BMC and otherwise), and even myself, and listening to my own needs. I really enjoyed the teaching exercise that my group planned in Jody's class on Thursday, encouraging people to partner up and listen silently while another person told a story about their adolescence. These kinds of exercises can help us all become better listeners, and truly engage in what our partner is saying, similar to in the Tattoo Parlor game. 

Minh, Barbara and I visited with two upperclassmen, Sruthi and Hira on an ecological tour of the campus.. This is my account

In class we discussed "Ecology without Nature"(12-13+a paragraph on top of P14), and these are some answers from Barbara and I. Barbara and I shared opinions with each other in class and came up with these ideas:

1. What is truely theoretical approach?

According to the reading material we think it means thinking slowly, carefully in a aesthetic, appreciative way and question the original idea instead of putting it into action immediately.

It actually reminds me of an old Chinese saying: "thinking thrice before proceding".  

2. What is "deconstruction" in ecological thinking?

To be honest, at first I thought it was "destruction"...then I looked at it again and realized that it meant something different! From the context, Morton's idea was "thoroughly examines how nature is set up as a transcendental, unified, independent category". I think this means the opposite of thinking the ecosystem as interconnected. In fact, "deconstruction" was also a type of medical teaching, meaning to learn human body system by parts, rather than viewing as a whole.

Yesterday morning I woke up prepared to do work...sike. I ended up wacthing a few shows and then I stumbled upon a documentary entitled The Falling Man. For my vision post, I wanted to share a journal entry I wrote right after watching it.

Dear 360 Vision Journal,

After two hours spent aimlessly searching the web for something to watch, luck would have it that I would come across a documentary on Hulu.com entitled, The Falling Man. In the context of the horrific events that happened on September 11, 2001, the documentary explores the mixed public responses and the story of a man who is headed 100 stories to his death from the World Trade Tower. As I tearfully watched the falling man’s picture, heard his stories and digested the public’s disgust and seemingly justified ignoring of the cohort  200-something individuals who plummeted to their deaths, I couldn’t help but think about my experience with the 360/women of the Cannery.

The thing that struck me most about the last reading was the writer's devotion to God and how she understood this devotion to be essential to learning.  I'm so used to "separation of church and state" that being asked to "pray" as part of our class on Thursday caught me off guard.  As someone who is not religious, I wasn't really sure how to pray or what to expect in response if I don't believe there is a God.  At one point she discusses how difficult it is to learn from text alone rather than a teacher and says "yet I suffered these trial most gladly for the love of learning.  Oh, if only this had been done for the love of God, as was rightful, think what I should have merited!" (53).  I think this is so interesting because the general message I receive on Bryn Mawr campus is that learning for the sake of learning is one of the best/most admirable attitudes to have, but the writer of this piece is left feeling guilty for her personal love of learning because she feels as though she is being selfish and giving proper respect to God.  The writer's tone of humility or even unworthiness also struck me; she states "all that I have said can do no more than other that letter to you in recompense for the failure to apply myself which you must have inferred (and reasonably so) from my other writings." (45)  I wonder if this tone has to do with her religious beliefs, or her gender.  From what I gathered, she seemed highly educated and this was written at a time when women didn't have much access to education.

It was a foggy Sunday morning. The fog actually began to envelop the campus since last night, I realized it as I was walking back from Park to my dorm. Fog wrapped everything with a coat of mysterious white. All that have been familiar to me on this campus suddenly became unfamiliar. Everything adopted an air of mystery. I could not see really far. Things only became familiar when I got closer to it. Walking along the road, any approaching tree seemed to be gradually revealing itself from behind a curtain, secretly and mysteriously, and ambiguously disappeared again as I walked pass it.

In the dark and foggy night, reality and unreality mixed. These two concepts are often approached in arts and literature as some kind of beauty that stimulates curiosity and admiration. But in nature, or in life, the unclear and mysterious seemed more frightening, at least to me... Or perhaps, there is no such thing as unreality, just my own fear of the unknown reality. Perhaps, unreality is just a presentation of possibilities, or even magic. Who knows what might emerge from our unpredictable nature ~

The Fog by William Henry Davies

I have been wondering why we haven't encountered much poetry in class. Rabindranath Tagore is my favourite poet, and he wrote beautiful words such as "We live in this world when we love it"

(For more about short poems in Stray Birds: <http://www.poetseers.org/nobel-prize-for-literature/tagore/stray/>.)

I encountered a small book called "Stray Birds" when I was in junior middle school. One of the main reasons that I like many his poems is that he merged emotions into nature and vice versa in such a smooth way that there were no such conflicts, arguments, but plain feeling of peace and being surrounded by love. His words are immortal, because he talks about the eternal universe. When he looked at something and described it, he did so with such appreciation, and respect.

His attitude to readers was also different from that of any authors of our in-class material(--I am not "complaining" because we do need to do lots of work on academic writing)--He was teaching you something, but not with the strong feeling of having to tell the reader "listen to me, I am right! I am the authority!",or with a list of scientific facts--he simply told short stories in his poems, but making readers feel that your imagination has just began to float when the story ended. His gentle, warm words about nature could for many times release me somehow for tense academic readings.

After I missed the group botanical and geogical tour, I started to question what was important to me. All the different things that were going through my head at once was overwhelming so I only focused on what was at the forefront of my mind happening right then and there. I forgot to email to let my group members know I wouldnt be able to make it. And that was 100 percent my fault. However, it makes me wonder whether or not we need to focus on the present or prepare and remember for the future. If we never made plans would things in life still get done. In the Bible we are supposed to leave our lives up to God and be able to completely surrender to him and not worry about the past or future only the present. Can we do that with nature? What about the reprocussions of the future? Would we have an enviroment to go back to if we keep destroying it as we do now? It seems to me that living in the moment and not thinking about our actions and consequences would be a negative affect on ourselves as well as on the environment and others.