I found the play we read for class today ("Footfalls") incredibly silencing and frustrating because I couldn't understand what was happening and what I could take from it. When I read the play last night, I got angrier and angrier because I felt like I was being shut out. I hoped the experience of watching the play might be more enlightening, but was disappointed to realize I felt just as confused about the play at the end of it. I felt dumb for having to ask, especially because the attitude I got from Mark was that the theme was obvious – and for me, that definitely wasn't the case. I also didn't find his explanation of the actual happenings of the play helpful because I wanted to know what that meant.

I wanted this experience to be a learning experience for me. Listening to Mark and Katherine's explanations of their process and their thoughts on silence, I was really hopeful for a breakthrough in the play – instead, I struggled to connect their thoughts on silence back to what I was viewing in the play. I still don't know what the theme of the play even is. 

I know this is a late post about a voice visualization but I wanted to post regardless.

As you know, Christine Sun Kim will be joining our class on Thursday, and we're attending the opening of the exhibit, What Can a Body Do? @ HC's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery on Friday evening. I'm writing to tell you about a screening event that's part of WCaBD?  Filmmaker Alison O'Daniel will visit on November 7th and 8th.  Her film Night Sky will screen Wednesday night in Chase Auditorium at 8pm.  The next day, Thursday, she will visit John Muse's Visual Studies class, which meets at 10am in Stokes 102.  Both of these events, the screening and John's class are open to the public. As students of "silence," you are all most welcome @ both.

Here's a blurb from http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/alison-o-daniel-night-sky/2644

After class today I found myself thinking more about what it means to be ecological and movement.  I do think that to truly realize our interconnected-ness with the natural world around us we need to incorporate more movement into our study. Being still or stationary in nature has its value, but I think movement has more.  How often is anything in nature motionless?

Throughout high school and college, I've used writing as a form of personal expression. Personal essays have been my way of coming to moments of self discovery and reflection. I don't often think of my creative writing pieces, at least, as for some purpose other than the personal. On the other hand, when reading the work of others I find myself consciously and subconsciously making connections back to the text. I expect the texts to help me improve or learn in some way and I often expect that growth or understanding to come immediately. 

It's hypocritical of me to expect to have to do something after I read these trauma novels, or Wideman's memoir about his brother. Perhaps, in regards to my own writing, I'm simply being selfish because I don't expect others to need to understand my work in some significant way – the writing process has always been about just that: the process. However, it's also selfish of me to assume that other writing is for my benefit – and not the work of someone who thinks in much the same way I do about the process. I've been struggling with the idea that perhaps what we need to do after reading these heavy works is to step back and let them sit with us when what I want to do is take some kind of action. 

This NYTimes article caught my eye, mostly for its assumptions about predictability (and human responsibility for geological events):
"Seven prominent Italian earthquake experts were convicted of manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years for failing to give adequate warning to the residents of a seismically active area in the months preceding a fatal earthquake that killed more than 300 people...."

Here's an interesting piece about taking the practice of restorative justice from prisons and using it instead of other disciplinary practices in schools...

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/10/17/08restorative_ep.h32.html?tkn=SUTF2jciDTH8F91y7avjwzZdnR%2B%2BCKn%2Fxmuw&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

This post is doubtless going to be a little scattered because I wanted to sum up some of the thoughts that I had at the end of class today. Firstly, I was thinking about the ideas of ecology and dystopia as interconnected literary genres. I read a book over the summer called The Age of Miracles (See link to the NPR review: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/02/155098886/the-age-of-miracles-considers-earths-fragility) This is a strange title for a book which is exclusively about the end of nature as we know it. The premise of the book is that our interference with the earth had affected gravity, and thus slowed the spinning of the earth, causing a myriad of problems. The genre of the novel is science fiction (as per our discussion a few weeks ago about representations of the ecological crisis.) But I also think that the book could fit into a new and emerging literary classification, ecological dystopia.

Today, I sat in on an interview in Admissions and I think I may just have solidified a prospective transfer student's choice of Bryn Mawr by gushing about our 360 and how awesome it is. She told me after that our 360 sounded exactly like what she was looking for. Just thought I'd share. Wheee!