Tag Archives: ps-logs

P – Week 8 Log

5.20.13:  1 morning pages, 1/2 meditation, 2 walking meditation/nature hike, 2 poetry workbook, 1 WordPress, 1 Neuro/reverie

5.21.13:  3/4 morning pages, 1 walking meditation, 3 writing paper, 2 reading Everything Being Is Dancing, 2 reading & notes on House of Incest

“My first vision of earth was water veiled.  I am of that race of men and women who see all things through this curtain of sea, and my eyes are the color of water.”  –House of Incest, Anais Nin

5.22.13:  1 morning pages, 3/4 yoga, 1/2 chat with Sarah, 3 David Seamon’s website, 2 notes for paper

“…a lived reciprocity whereby house and inhabitants mutually sustain and reflect each other, sometimes in positive ways that facilitate engagement and care; at other times, in negative ways that intimate or spur personal or social dissolution.”  –From David Seamons’ article “Gaston Bachelard’s Topoanalysis”

5.23.13:  1 morning pages, sudden move to Indiana and loss of internet access, 2 writing poetry

5.24.13:  3/4 morning pages, 1 Bodystories, 5 writing paper, 2 notes on Seamon articles

5.25.13:  1/2 morning pages, 1 yoga, 4 3/4 writing paper,

5.26.13:  last trip back to Kentucky

Total:  41.5 hours

P – Week 7 – Log & Update

5.13.13:  1 morning pages, 1/2 Bodystories, 1/2 meditation, 2 nature hike, 1/2 Neuro reverie, 2 WordPress

5.14.14:  1 morning pages, 2 notes for paper, 1 writing poetry

5.15.14:  1 morning pages, 1 walking meditation around lake, 5 WordPress, 6.5 finishing Place & Experience and notetaking, 2 finishing Perloff (it seemed wrong not to)

5.16.13:  3/4 morning pages, 4 reading Seamon articles on KSU website, 2 WordPress, 3 notes on Poetics of Space

“…though the character and quality of the inhabitants shape their house, the house contributes to the character, experience, and world of the inhabitants, partly through its nature as a physical thing and partly through the history of earlier inhabitants who found comfort or discomfort there.”  (David Seamon’s article on Poetics of Space)

5.17.13:  1 morning pages, 1 writing poetry, 3 Perceptual Experience, 1 trailer meditation

“…in normal perceptual experience the ‘things themselves’ seem much closer to us than a ‘throng of sensations.’ This does not by itself imply that we are not in any way aware of a throng of sensations in perceptual experience…even if the things themselves are ‘closer’ to us than sensations, this still implies that the sensations are somewhere to be found…It is obvious that perceptual experience is sensory in a way that thought is not…” (Perceptual Experience,
127)

5.18.13:  day off–catching up on laundry and other housewifely duties including experimental brownie recipes and amazingly delicious pork chops (J has put on a little weight since I’ve been here)

“Objects that are cherished in this way really are born of intimate light, and they attain to a higher degree of reality than indifferent objects, or those that are defined by geometric reality. For they produce a new reality of being, and they take their place not only in an order but in a community of order. From one object in a room to another, housewifely care weaves the ties that unite a very ancient past to the new epoch. The housewife awakens furniture that was asleep.” (Bachelard, 68)

5.19.13:  1 morning pages, 2 writing poetry, 2 notes and reverie from a boat on Lake Huron

Total:  46.75

P – Week 6 – Log & Update

5.6.12:  1 somatics/meditation, 2 Poetics of Space, 2 notes for paper, 3/4 Morning Pages, 1/2 revise seminar pass, 1 log/update, 2 poetry writing, 1/2 walking meditation

“It is a strange situation. The space we love is unwilling to remain permanently enclosed. It deploys and appears to move elsewhere without difficulty; into other times, and on different planes of dream and memory.” (Bachelard, 54)

5.7.13:  1 Morning Pages, 1/2 Bodystories, 1/2 meditation, 1 reverie, 1 WordPress

5.8.13:  1 Poetics of Space, 2 rereading The Midnight, 1 morning pages, 1 notes for paper, 2 Place & Experience, 1 catching up on Not Knowing Notebook (NKN)

“Concepts of place are often not distinguished at all from notions of simply physical location, while sometimes discussions that seem implicitly to call upon notion of place refer explicitly only to a narrower concept of space. Is Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, for example, really about place or space? It surely cannot be about the same space as that of which Newton or Einstein speak—or can it?” (Malpas, 19)

5.9.13: 1 morning pages, 1 somatics/meditation,

5.10.13:  1 morning pages, 1 tai chi, 3 Body & City, 3 writing poetry/workbook, 2 paper, 1 reading seminar passes

5.11.13:  1 morning pages, 1/2 meditation, 5 reading Neuro & Perloff, 1 sem pass

Total:  44.25

P – Week 5 log and update

So, I have not been keeping up with my updates lately like a good girl, so here goes:

I have driven back and forth across the midwest several times in the past month, both as a passenger and a driver, helping my friend to ferry his many vehicles and plethora of work equipment to his new house in Kentucky, where we were staying in between jaunts, although for the first few weeks we were actually living in his travel trailer parked next to the house, as the house had been empty for a year and was not habitable.  I have been to Houston, Texarkana, Nashville, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Davenport, Iowa, as well as all of the rural spaces in between.  I have slept in a trailer parked in various locations (next to a house, in rv parks, at truck stops and rest stops and once in a Walmart parking lot for a few hours), houses, cheap motels and nicer hotels.  I helped my friend make his house livable, turning an uninhabited space into a place–a home.  I drove a gigantic pickup truck, pulling a gigantic travel trailer from Texarkana to a tiny town in western Kentucky, and then from the tiny town in Kentucky to a tiny town in Michigan, which is where I am now and should be for the next couple weeks, until I get back to Olympia in time for the week 10 presentations.

While riding around the country as a passenger, waiting in the truck in various pipeyards and mechanic shops, at truck stops, late at night in hotels and motels, and in my “office” on J’s front porch in Kentucky, I have done a lot of reading on space and place, including The Eyes of the Skin (really great book, I’ve read it through three times), the Poetics of Space, Place and Experience (available through Evergreen’s e-brary), the Body and the City, and lots and lots of poetry.  I have found that, strangely, I get more work done when I am in places not generally conducive to schoolwork.  I even had a minor breakthrough on what to do for my research paper at a truckstop somewhere in Ohio, where we had stopped for a few hours so J could make some repairs to his work truck, and several truckers came by my table in the cafe/lounge to see what I was doing behind my stack of books and papers, feverishly typing on my laptop.  (I had been planning on doing another Holdrege-style paper, but now I am working on something more in the vein of The Midnight, which fits in much more with Anais Nin’s style in House of Incest, which is something I have been playing with lately.)

Oh, and I think my accent has gotten thicker, but hopefully it will fade pretty quickly when I get back to Oly–my accent has always been very fluid, changing depending on who I’m talking to and where I am.

 

Log of hours:

4-29-13: 2 Poetics of Space, 2 Body & City, 1/2 morning pages, 1/2 yoga at hotel

4-30-13:  1 truck stop free writing

5-1-13:  1 reading seminar passes, 2 wordpress, 2 moodle readings, 2 HOI reading and writing

5-2-13:  1/2 morning pages, 1/2 tai ji, 5 wordpress, 1 poetry observed, 2 “Writing Poetry” wb

5-3-13:  1/2 morning pages, 1/2 Bodystories, 4 wordpress, 1 self-eval, 2 Poetics of Space

5-4-13:  1/2 morning pages, 1 photos for gallery, 2 trailer park poetry, 1.5 nature hike/meditation

5-5-13:  3 Perloff, 3 Neuro, 1 sem pass, 1 NKN (not knowing notebook)

Total:  43 hours

P – Week 4 Log

4-22-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 2 House of Incest (reading & writing), 2 freewriting, 2 reading Body & City, 1 seminar pass

4-23-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 2 Everything Being Is…, 3 writing, 2 House of Incest

4-24-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 meditation, 2 Poetics of Space, 1 Place & Experience, 2 poetry workbook

4-25-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 4 Neuro, 2 Body & City, 2 Perceptual Experience

4-26-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 yoga, 4 Howe, 4 writing, 1/2 Poetry Observed

4-27-13:

4-28-13:  1/2 MP, 2 seminar pass, 2 WordPress

Total:  46 hours

P – Week 3 Log

4-15-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Bodystories, 3 Body & City, 3 Space and Place,

4-16-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 yoga, 1 Space & Place, 1 active observation & notetaking, 2 reading Moodle handouts

4-17-13:  2 1/2 computer time (Moodle, blog, research), 1 voice notes, 3 writing poetry, 2 poetry workbook, 1/2 MP

4-18-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 somatics, 2 Neuro, 2 Not Knowing, 2 seminar pass, 1 writing

4-19-13:  2.5 computer stuff, 1/2 MP, 3 writing, 2 photography

4-20-13:  1/2 MP, 2 House of Incest

4-21-13:  1/2 MP, 2 freewriting (experimenting with “fever dream” style in HOI), 3 Space & Place

Total:  44 Hours

P – Week 2 Log

Monday, 4-8-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Bodystories, 2 reading Space and Place, 2 freewriting, 2 internet research

Tuesday, 4-9-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 4 hours fighting with WordPress, posting to Moodle, resizing photo for e-alphabet icon, trying to figure out how to upload MP3 to WordPress, 3 Perloff, 2 writing

Wednesday, 4-10-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 making chart to keep track of hours, 1 notes from Perloff, 4 My ED, 2 writing by bonfire, 1 “Writing Poetry”

Thursday, 4-11-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 porch Tai Ji, 2 Neuro, 2 “Writing Poetry”, 5 My ED close reading and notetaking

Friday, 4-12-13:  4 Neuro, 2 My ED, 1/2 MP, 1 free write, 1/2 yoga

Saturday, 4-13-13:  1 My ED, 2 Neuro, 1 writing

Sunday, 4-14-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Bodystories

Total:  49 hours (not bad for spending several days driving back and forth across the midwest and sitting in a truck in a pipeyard for several hours)

This week started off in Kentucky.  We were still hanging out at J’s house which had been empty for almost a year, fixing it up and trying to make it habitable.  While doing that we have been living half in the house, half in the trailer.  Kind of annoying and kind of fun at the same time…While getting the house ready, we’ve also been getting ready to move again in case he gets called to a job–usually very little notice–so we are also spring cleaning the trailer and making repairs to both his pickup and gigantic work truck.  As some of you know, I am a terrible procrastinator and tend to put my schoolwork off to the last minute, but J has been really good about reminding me to do some every day, he even set up a desk and chair on the patio so I can work outside when it’s nice.  On Thursday he decided to go to Illinois for the weekend, where he has family and business interests near the Iowa border.  On the drive to Illinois, I did a lot of reading and leaning out the window taking photographs, and J taunted me that I was going to drop my camera on the freeway (I didn’t).  We spent most of Friday driving back and forth between Iowa and Illinois, stopping at various pipeyards and mechanic shops while I sat in the truck doing my schoolwork, with my books spread all over the dash and my laptop on my knees.  For some strange reason I get a lot more work done in less than ideal environments than I do sitting at a desk.  We are probably driving to West Virginia on Monday to pick up even more work equipment, and then back to Kentucky for a few days to regroup.

P – Week 1 Log

Monday, 4-1-13:  1/2 hr morning pages, 2 reading Neuro, 1/2 roadside Tai Ji (I got some very strange looks from the truckers at the rest stop, and J made fun of me the rest of the day), 2 experiential geography (travel and active observation and notetaking)

Tuesday, 4-2-13:  1/2 hr morning pages, 1/2 meditation, 2 freewriting, 6 reading Eyes of the Skin and copious notetaking

Wednesday, 4-3-13:  2 hrs reading Space and Place

Thursday, 4-4-13:  1/2 MP (morning pages), 1/2 Bodystories, 2 notes, 3 re-reading Eyes of the Skine, 1 writing, 2 exploring town, photography, & notetaking

Friday, 4-5-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 meditation, 1/2 recording frogs and birds, 4 blogging & online research, 2 writing

Saturday, 4-6-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 med, 2 reading Writing Poems, 1 1/2 writing poems

Sunday, 4-7-13:  4 reading Neuro & My ED, 1 sem pass, 1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji

Total:  41 hours

Hey you guys!  So my plan was originally to hang out with my friend J in the RV park in East Texas where he has been living the past few months, studying and acting as a platonic housewife in exchange for room and board.  He moves around a lot with his job, usually living in rural areas or small towns, and lives in a travel trailer.  But last week his plans changed unexpectedly and he told me that we were going to be doing some traveling instead.  Because my field study is on space and place and their effects on our consciousness, and because I secretly harbor the heart of a gypsy, this sounded even better than my original plan.

J picked me up on Friday at my mom’s house in Houston where I had been visiting for a few days.  We spent the night in his trailer in an RV park in Jacksonville, TX, then got up early on Saturday to get things ready to go to Kentucky where he inherited a house and wanted to go to check on things.  While we were prepping the truck and trailer, he informed me that I would be driving his pickup, pulling the travel trailer while he drove his big service truck.   I assumed that I would be doing some of the driving but was not really prepared for this.  I grew up with my father doing the same kind of work that J does and was accustomed to the sudden packing up and moving that comes with the lifestyle, but have never driven anything larger than a conversion van, so I was pretty scared.  He rode with me driving for a while, giving me pointers on turning and braking, and how to account for pulling a small house behind the me.  When I got a little more comfortable (I still had a death grip on the steering wheel, but my hands had stopped going numb), we stopped, parked the trailer, and went back for his service truck.  It took a lot longer to get to Texarkana than it should have, but we finally got there and stopped for the night in an RV park with hands-down the nicest bathroom I’ve ever seen at a campground.  We drove for the next two days, making a lot of stops, both to give me a break and to make some repairs on the vehicles.  We finally got to Kentucky on Tuesday morning.  Since then I have been doing a lot of reading, mostly The Eyes of the Skin, Space and Place, and the Tuesday texts, exploring the tiny nearby town, and helping clean up the house and acre of land it’s on.

We are in a fairly rural area, but with so many churches I don’t see how there are enough people to attend, unless they all go to more than one church every week.  Every time I have gone into town so far, someone stops me and asks what church I belong to, assuming that I am Pentecostal because of my long hair and dresses.  Needless to say, they are a little taken aback when I turn and they notice my facial piercings (more common in small towns than they used to be, but still not de rigeur) and dark eyeliner.  It’s kind of funny.

We don’t have any definite plans right now.  There is still some work to be done on the property, and J has business to attend to in Illinois, West Virginia, and New Mexico, as well as having a line on a job in Pennsylvania.  I am trying to learn to be more patient and to be comfortable with uncertainty, so I suppose not knowing where I will sleep tomorrow is good for me.

Houston, seen through a very dirty windshield.

Houston, seen through a very dirty windshield.

20130330_144248

Somewhere in Arkansas.

Welcome to Kentucky.

Welcome to Kentucky.