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One issue I’ve really been struggling with in class is the question of “who is allowed to represent who?”  I contemplated this in my post after reading the article by Dimitriadis in our class on Silence, and during our discussions of Anna Deveare Smith’s acting in our class on Voice.  In jhunter’s reply to my post, she raised some important points about who has the authority to speak for whom, and how characteristics beyond race and culture may impact this authority.  I want to push back on this idea though, and demonstrate why I believe race and culture alone are such important factors.  I want to display this by attempting to represent Uninhibited’s paper, which she titled “I Choose to be Silent You Don’t Make Me Silent”.

            Uninhibited and I grew up in the same town (although she was born in the Dominican Republic).  Though we have never actually discussed how much money our father’s make, I believe we are of a somewhat similar socioeconomic status, at least in simple terms of finances and what is deemed “working class” in America.  Both of us are currently being raised by a single father and both of us have experienced the death of our mother’s.  We met in December of 2008 when we were chosen to be members of Bryn Mawr Posse 9.  We are both interested in social justice issues.   We are close friends.  I believe it is safe to say we have a good amount in common. 

Maybe it's because I find myself biting off more than I have before, in activities, projects, and jobs outside the classroom (not more than I can chew, though--once I develop that attitude, I'll be swallowed whole by my own onslaught of thoughts and anxieties). Maybe it's because I've been entirely overwhelmed by this course, especially in the past week and a half or so, with the complexities of silence, voice, vision, intermingling as I try to quiet myself to better listen to others voices and see their points of view--I've been thinking about this Swedish (?) proverb. 

I chose to revisit the image I chose as my BMC representation. I am going to list the guidewords that are fitting to my representation and some that are not before discussing how I now see my representation.

This image is:

Permaculture

Footprint

Foliage

Campus

Native

See

Adaptation

Green

Ecological

Pattern

Wanderlust

This image is not:

Garden

Country

City

Interaction

Know

Anthropocentric

It would be very hard I think for a representation of our campus to be all of the guidewords that we collected as part of our ecological imaginings… as we discussed in class, our campus is much more than the ecological representations that most of our class posted. Our campus is all that plus the people, the buildings, the history, the man-made infrastructure; until we embrace the idea of rheomode (or perhaps, more likely, Goatly’s call for a less Newtonian reality where the “observing instrument and the observed object cannot be wholly separated”) I do not think that we have the language to describe everything all at once. My lens, camera or otherwise, is simply not wide enough.

How can you grow as an individual in a family that has defined your role even before you begin to walk? How do you strip yourself of inhibitions because of whom you are told you are or need to be in order to keep the family together?  What do you do when your responsibility to the world, to your family, and to yourself stand in opposition, ready to battle for the crown? My life since coming to the United States has been a constant push and pull between reaching for new opportunities and holding on to traditions. It has been a constant imagining and reimagining of how I can use voice and silence to define who I am in relation to others.

Many of you probably saw (if you didn't, please read!) the lead article in this morning's NYTimes, Power, Pollution and the Internet, which makes it clear that our thinking we are being "green" in this class, by being paperless, is worse than an illusion; what we are actually doing, as we meet virtually each weekend, is helping to waste vast amounts of energy: "what’s driving that massive growth" is "the end-user expectation of anything, anytime, anywhere.”

The most intriguing part of our Saturday trip was the mural arts tour. A lot of feelings and questions came up for me as we drove from one mural to the other with our tour guide.  I was curious and somewhat taken aback by our tour guide who was also a former teacher in the public education system. If we think in terms of power in our society, his identity as a white male symbolizes the epitome of white privilege and supremacy. So, I was really surprised when he choked up while reading a student-written poem about despair and the harsh impact  inner-city neighborhoods have on the minds and actions of young people. I was touched that he was touched and so, as I tried to play it cool and not tear up from the break in his voice, a streamline of questions popped intomy  mind. Why did he care so much as a white man about students of color and this neighborhood? What reaction was he trying to get out of us? If he cared so much, why wasn't he still teaching? What exaclty moved him about this student's words...voice? Did he see a reflectionof himself? What's his background?

You'll find here the photos I took during our visit to Eastern State y'day. Very evocative…and troubling.
So much to think through (for me as a Quaker, especially....), about a vision gone wrong in so many ways…

I didn't take any photos during the mural tour, though--in part because I found it hard to see, and assumed I could find better images on-line than I could take from the trolley. But there's lots more I'd like to discuss about that whole experience--from what it means to ride around on a trolley through poor neighborhoods (while being urged to "wave @ everyone!"); through getting off the trolley and viewing murals, while the neighbors are making music across the street; to what it really means to "make art that represents a community."

I'm hoping that Jody, Sarah and Uninhibited will be able tell us something about the process that went into making the mural about women's education, which they helped to create in the first 360°. I attended one of the early concepting sessions; saw Jody, Sarah and Jomaira and Sharaai posed @ work on the front page of the Alumnae Bulletin...

While brainstorming what to write for this second web event, an image, similar to the way Irene’s bedroom struck me, kept popping up in my head from the mural arts tour in Philly.  It was the mural of the iron butterflies protruding and ascending up the body of an African-American man holding fire in the palm of one of his hands. If I am not mistaken, the mural was created on the back of a men’s shelter that no longer existed and the butterflies symbolized the great changes—the metamorphosis—the sheltered men made in their own lives. I, too, had written about the concept of metamorphosis and had described the role silence had played in my life as an evolution. However, as I began to think more about the nature of the word, metamorphosis, I grew dissatisfied with my word choice in describing the role of silence in my life.

Detached Moment

Cold in the morning.
Hammock was damp.
Bench was in shade.
Grass was thick and green, nourished by last night's rain.
Sunshine was soft and clear,
and the sun was hiding from me behind the huge pine-like tree.

Walking in the Labyrinth,
not thinking about the route.
Each step brings me to a new angle of view.

Athletic training was going on at the Applebee.
Sunshine gloriously projected on the wall of Rhoads.
Squirrels sneakily jump up and down the trees.

My hot drink was cooled.
I walked faster to keep myself warm.
One part of the Labyrinth was in the sun:
just like the most inviting slice of pizza - tempting.

I ignored the route I was walking on
and indulged in the gentle slow air flow,
the clear sky
the grass dew
the walk
the pleasant quiet alone hour
the meditation. 

*Side notes:

I spent six minutes walking from the start to the terminal, which was way less time than one time that I cheated. But I felt the course of time should be longer. It reminds me of the Wellness course of last week where we closed our eyes and followed the instruction to breath in and out, which was an extremely relaxing exercise. That was another time when the psychological time I experienced was longer than the physical time. Whenever I am indulged in something, I feel I am doing more with my time.