I have been thinking a lot about how I can incorporate silence into my daily routine.  I think if I can be more comfortable in silence I will be able to experience more fully, rather than distancing myself from an experience by constantly reflecting, interpreting and assigning it language.

Saturday was a very long exhausting day for me. I loved the mural tour; even though I found myself paying more attention to the people I saw rather than the murals itself. My favorite part of the day though, was the Eastern State Pen tour. As the tour continued I kept getting more and more frustrated, not with the tour, not with the tour guide – but with society. Walking around hearing the stories reminded me of how someway somehow society finds a way to turn good into bad.

I kept imagining these prisoners in those cells and kept connecting it to modern day incarceration and how inhumane it has become. The numbers of incarcerated people still shocks me no matter how many times I hear them. It also made me think about how prisoners first started being all White, and then there was a complete 180-degree turn that flipped the population in prisons from White to those of color. It makes me wonder if there will ever be a way of stopping this without giving birth to another type of modern day slavery.

The one key term that I kept coming back to when re-reading the beginning of my web-paper was “anthropocentric.” I freely admit in my first paragraph that I am the lens that I use to observe the campus on my walk. I use the words “I” and “my” fourteen times in the first paragraph alone.

In order to re-focus my thoughts, I chose three entirely new words through which to view this experience. These words are: “interaction”, “resilience”, and “community.”

I've always thought a lot about "what gets left at the door" when entering (or leaving) a classroom that fosters growth, enrichment, education.  To frame question in a different way, a way that reveals how I believe this topic is pertinent to our class theme, I’ve thought a lot about what topics and at what times we should remain silent in the classroom.  This post is to express my thoughts on this in relation to our experience together this past week.

As I think we all know, a type of objectivity, lack of emotion and personal investment, and reason is valued in the classroom.  The reasons are easy to point out: doing so allows us to remain concentrated on the subject matter at hand.  What’s more, this allows the classroom a freedom to discuss and debate without the worry that sentimental opinions and feelings will hinder the intellectual pursuit.  Phrases and thoughts like “Leave your baggage at the door, otherwise, you won’t contribute to the classroom appropriately” or  “Don’t speak about how you’re sad or about your personal life, that has nothing to do with our readings”, to the  “Well, shit, now I definitely can’t say anything; I’m just going to hurt your feelings” all hopefully elucidate what I mean.  Academia believes that emotions and our personal self get in the way of intellectual pursuit.

Looking back and rereading my initial essay, silence has since taken on a bigger definition, a wider range of activities and has also become a more comfortable topic for me. When I was writing my first essay, my thoughts of silence and being silenced all strung back to events of feeling silenced or silencing because it would be more convenient for others and me to not speak up. In my history of silence, it has been more convenient for me to stay silent because I felt I was wasting my breath and thoughts on attempts to comment on people’s comments. I don’t think I was trying to “correct them” but I guess I felt like it could sound like it. But with that, I didn’t feel like I was being listened to, I felt like they would be waiting for their turn to speak.

After I posted this image, Anne directed me to the “Women in walled communities” 360. I’ve been thinking more about the school as an institution (which, for me, has negative connotations), keeping us walled in. Is there an invisible wall in my 'Sound of Music' image? The mountains as a geographical/physical/visible obstacle, the convent as ideological/mental/invisible obstacle?

Am I resilient to these walls? By selecting an image that shows some sort of twisted freedom, I think that, perhaps, I am actively resisting that invisible structure.

On another note, I would categorize my image as anthropocentric – I chose an image centered on my human experience of Bryn Mawr; that is, one of emotional constraints and freedoms, imposed by other humans and the physical structures that house this campus/institution. Even though I chose to foreground and background different aspects, the campus is still designed (tweaked and treated with specific regard to human life and convenience) around people, so why shouldn’t I map it in this way?

As I re-read the prompt for this paper (which was about a thousand times), I still have trouble understanding it and even coming up with an answer. Ever since we started class, I have been having trouble visualizing silence. I understand it to be the inability to speak/express yourself, either because you do not want to or because someone/something won’t let you. I read almost all the papers that are already posted to see if I can get an idea of what to write about, or what the question is asking. After reading the papers, I still do not have an answer, which (with a little help from Sarah) led me to conclude that the openness/vagueness of the question is silencing me.

 I guess I can relate this predicament to my academic life here at Bryn Mawr. A lot of the times, if not all the time, when there is an assignment, it takes me a while to completely comprehend what is being asked. This makes me think of our last class when we spoke about the different levels of comprehension and “education” in all of my classes. If there were a time where I am silenced in a classroom, it would definitely be when I am being asked to reason or think about something that is fairly foreign to me.

Looking back at my images, this one does seem more anthropocentric than the second, if I view it from a smaller animal's perspective. Around Rhoad's Pond, there aren't many animals that would be able to see the grass, blossoms, and lake from the angle this photo takes. I was kneeling on my knees when I took this picture, because I wanted to get the trees, grass, petals, fence, and lake all in one image. I wanted to encompass the surroundings in this photo. In deciding which pict to post the first time, I had a hard time deciding between this and the second, because I had a feeling somehow that this one  was not as specific to the sight, or seemed to not fit somehow. Now I realize perhaps why I felt that way.

This weekend I had the misfortune to not be able to visit my location of choice on the Bryn Mawr campus, the moon bench. I chose this spot because I think its position gives it a unique and enticing view of the campus. You can look right up senior row through the Pembroke arch, over the valley of athletic fields to Cambrien row, and survey the Merion green. Sadly I wasn’t able to do any of these things, I was however able to attend a picturesque wedding in the Adirondacks of New York, specifically in Saranac Lake. My cousin Adrien and his wife Julia were married on September 22, 2012 at 3 pm in a little white chapel in the middle of the woods. It was perfect; there was no cell phone reception, no noise of the highway, a city, or anything other than the noise of the woods and of the people gathered to celebrate this momentous event. The wedding placed emphasis on the union between Adrien and Julia, as all weddings place emphasis on the couple, however Adrien and Julia made it clear from the start that although this event celebrated them, their relationship would not be possible without the support and love they received from members of their community. This was reflected in the interactive ceremony they had, the potluck, and the contra dancing that all took place that night. Julia is a park ranger in the Adirondacks and her appreciation and care for the environment shown through in their eco-friendly, environmentally conscious ceremony and reception.

The thing that struck me most about my experience in my spot today was coming back inside.  Outside, my hour was peaceful.  It was sunny and there was a light breeze.  I was for the most part left alone by the labrynth, just relaxing and observing nature.  As soon as I started to walk back to my dorm, though, my inner monologue started reciting all of the things I had to do when I got back.  I stepped back into my technology and my homework without a thought, leaving the peace I experienced back where I found it.  I had an epiphany while reading my art history textbook that it did not have to be this way.  I could bring the good feelings I had outside into my attitude even when I was doing work.  Needless to say, I was much less stressful after that thought.