Map: Final

A few notes before reading:

The pieces I have written are all memories associated with parts of my body, so I have drawn in my body as the guiding map to our story. 

If you can read while music is playing, I have made this playlist to accompany my piece: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKYEFbYlkWnm1gFyRoITvtWzDNj14OK-r 

There are only three songs, but these are the songs I wrote to. Make sure you have the settings on repeat for the whole playlist because it will need to play twice to cover the whole span of your reading time. 

Thank you for everything- here's a little piece of my heart:

Reflective Practioner

https://drive.google.com/a/tramhiggins.com/file/d/0Bze-Wewe-VOgU2lJcnB5RFNlQlE/view?usp=sharing

Here's to the Search of the Great Something #8

For my last something, I share this quote because it perfectly describes the dichotomous nature of my world at the current moment. On one hand, it is nearly impossible to wake up and not feel some great weight on my shoulders- whether this weight is the world's grief or your personal troubles, there will always be weight. On the other hand, I always wake-up to some sense of sunlight- whether it's the pre-light obscurity of dawn, the rosy rays of sunrise or the deep warmth of late morning, there will always be light and that in itself must be a thread of hope.

Image

photo credit of underlying photo to camwelchphotography

In my image, a picture of a collection of lights is superimposed upon a photo of a mountain ridge in which two large rock features are connected by a bridge. I chose to combine these two images because I like the contrast between the solid connection of the bridge between two separate structures and the muted, clustered connection of the lights. In the photo of physical, real nature, the connection between two structures is clear and linear. In contrast, with the digitally fabricated cluster of lights, the connection seems to arrive in more of a ‘bursting’ effect. When I think of where my big ideas come from, I think of two systems of knowledge and thought at play. I have a linear side, a thought process that depends on words and phrases to draw greater connections amongst the fragments of my knowledge. However, I also have a strongly emotional side that encourages rash exuberances of thoughts that are often rooted in the cognitive version of magical realism. These two systems do not exist separate. I depend on both my linear side to push my knowledge to new boundaries, while I depend on my emotional side to constantly check that my thoughts and knowledge are foremost rooted in humanity. In Bolivia, a teacher once introduced the concept of sentipensamientos. In English, this word is a combination of ‘feelings’ and ‘thoughts’. In the West, we often like to separate the two, but I believe my good ideas arise when the passion from my gut whirs the gears in my brain to spin faster toward better horizons. I think, I feel, together.

One of the most compelling components of the reading is the idea of ‘transfer’. While the concept of ‘transfer’ was used to articulate the difficulties of bringing and drawing upon knowledge achieved in one context to a new context, I also think the process of transferring knowledge from one’s internal state to others is a crucial step in developing expertise. In the chapter, distinction arises between experts in content and experts who have the pedagogic capacity to transfer this knowledge to others. Expert teachers also “know how to tap into their students’ existing knowledge in order to make new information meaningful plus assess their students’ progress” (50). I think this is not only an important pedagogical consideration, but a crucial social function. ‘Big ideas’ should be shared- but they must also be able to be adapted to meet various knowledge levels. Particularly in social justice contexts, discussions of privilege and oppression can often be divisive even when ‘big ideas’ are rooted in valid personal experiences and empirical evidence. If social change is to be enacted, pedagogic expertise must be achieved alongside the mastery of content on these issues. Big ideas, like stories, have the capacity to be transformative. Even revolutionary, perhaps:

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us? A revolution of the heart is a paradigm shift in which our collective deck, our model of the world, gets reshuffled, changing the story for everyone. In a revolution of the heart, those who have put themselves to sleep awaken and healing begins to emerge where there has been harm” (Goldblard, 2005, p.5).

::

Goldblard, A. (2005). The Story Revolution: How Telling Our Stories Transforms the World. Community Arts Network Reading Room. http://wayback.archive-it.org/2077/20100906202511

Here's to the Search of the Great Something #7

For my 'something' this week, I have decided to share a letter written by one of my favorite authors, Caitlin Moran. The letter is a letter of advice for Moran's daughter, who has just turned 13. I share this for a few reasons:
1) The format of the letter here is extremely powerful because Moran is able to reflect on many components of life in the form of advice-giving; thus, she turns her inner thoughts and wisdom into an outward reflection that has the potential to guide and aide her daughter. The format of the letter converges wit and compassion into something truly uplifting.

2) In addition, all of the advice Moran gives in the letter- advice ranging from niceness to love to body image- could be transformed into special mantras.. From her paragraph on love, I have made the mantra: "I am so much more than a mender."

3) It is now hanging on my fridge, and I love it.

http://www.trueactivist.com/caitlin-morans-posthumous-advice-for-her-daughter/?utm_source=je&utm_medium=am&utm_campaign=antimedia

Mantra

My mantra is: a week is more than enough time to . I left the end portion blank on purpose because after my very difficult weekend, I needed to feel like I could just be again after much in my life has changed unexpectedly. I decided I needed my mantra to affirm that it’s okay to take things one step at a time, acknowledging that a lot can change over short periods of time. My growth in the meditation experience was a difficult process. My primary obstacles were images- dreaming back to past memories that would affect my emotional state, and consequently, my ability to stay focused during the meditation. In order to overcome this, my mantra ended up taking on a musical/rhythmic element in my head; in many ways, I sang it to myself so that it would consume me and keep me focused in a way that simply saying it couldn’t achieve. For my reflection this week, I tried my hand at a form of poetry that I hope reflects these challenges and my adjustments to my practice. It has a slight stream of consciousness element to it, but I hope it still conveys something effective. I know that the process of writing this poem was cathartic for me.

"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” 

~ Paulo Coelho

A week is more than enough time to .

(1)

Today.

A week is more than enough time to fidget profusely.

Yesterday, there was pain like converging raindrops on windowsills.

All condensation falling then grouping and then staying

to be an ocean in finite spaces.

Today,

I fidget because words cannot form.

I see no letters, and

I feel no full articulat    .

I just see your face- and it does not come to me in words or phrases.

A week is more than enough time to fidget profusely because

seeing faces makes my stomach drop.

I blink my eyes shut,

hands clasped-

Please go away,

I want the face to go away.

Leave.

I am jittering, wound to escape this rigid embrace.

The ocean is there to wash over and through my suspended piece of time.

Today,

I must tell you that a week is more than enough time to

fidget profusely.

(2)

Today.

A week is more than enough time to say I’m sorry.

I’m sorry devotion has its limits, and

that I am shy in the face of this.

The wheeling leaves me nauseous

So I place my hands on the floor on either side of me to stay still.

Today, a week is more than enough time to say I’m sorry because

the apology is empowering-

rendering vulnerability as acceptance

to move a more selfless love elsewhere.

I’m sorry slows my pitter-patter heartbeat.

I’m sorry makes my back sit a little straighter.

I’m sorry

moves me toward becoming elation on edge.

I have a limited capacity for devotion.

I hear myself, and

Today,

I must tell you that a week is more than enough time to say

I’m sorry.

(3)

Today.

A week is more than enough time to eat chocolate without remorse.

Humming hmming yessing mmming.

The aches in my body do not take over this time.

Humming hmming yessing mmming.

I am floating on those coattails.

My mantra is so concrete this time,

slight but edgy enough to

send me flying,

to send me humming hmming yessing mmming.

Today,

a week is more than enough time to

eat chocolate without remorse.

(4)

Today.

A week is more than enough time to throw my hands way up high.

A week is more than enough time to throw those hands so so high,

oh yes oh yes oh yes yes it is.

A week is more than enough time to throw my hands way up high.

A week is more than enough time to throw those hands so so high,

higher higher higher higher

That face breaks in,

stomach drops.

This kink-

I’m coming back I’m coming back I’m coming back because

A week is more than enough time to throw my hands way up high.

A week is more than enough time to throw my hands so so high,

oh yes oh yes oh yes yes it is.

Hello my dearest heartbeat.

Today,

A week is more than enough time to

reach such great heights.

Here's to the Search of the Great Something #6

I am having a bit of a rough week, and this ad always makes me smile. Plus, it shows a great time-lapse of a growing relationship- displaying strength and change over time which I think is fitting in the world of reflection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLpDiIVX0Wo

Gaze

I have the worst posture. Crooked, curved, hunched- a walking enclave I remain.

So, when I go to a tucked-away staircase to reflect, the first thing I notice is my back. I stretch along the marble stairs and all the bones begin to creak. They tell ghost stories. The corridor is dark and cold, but I fix my gaze on an upper right corner to let the outer lights fade away.

I have been thinking a lot about place recently. Maybe it's the senior year bug- in which everyone keeps asking what I am going to do after graduation yet no one acknowledges that the various where will we be after graduation is actually the force that is going to spread relationships- hearts, lopsided souls, comfortable giggles- far and wide. I keep wanting to tell everyone that the where matters because I think place can influence everything.

I have always been curiously obsessed with the aesthetic space around me; perhaps this is an effect of the creative deprivation wrought on by an upbringing in mundane suburbia, but outside surroundings have always been able to send my thoughts and dreams spiraling. Place is just so full of potential (its capacity so in beheld in the eyes of the creator). People are also full of potential, and while I have fallen in love with the potential of others many times, the potential for space and for place to alter something deep within me has always been astounding in a more magical way.

So yes, place matters a lot to me right now because places are going to change a lot in this upcoming year. However, places also matter because they beat within me. I look inside and look! There under my left lung is my childhood home. On the tips of my shoulder I can see my Cochabamba apartment. In the wrinkles on my toes I hold my current room and turquoise bed frame. Places are always with me and exist in transient affections- spurring my other passions in the democratization of public space, gentrification and housing rights. In both the physical and metaphysical sense, places drive me to bring my inner outward- and to carry a reflective lightness to whatever journey I embark on next.

https://www.tumblr.com/explore/gifs

https://www.tumblr.com/explore/gifs

(also I completely forgot to take a photo!!! I will go tomorrow and add one tomorrow!)

The Letter

1334 S. Galloway Street

New York, NY 99756

October 27, 2015

Maddy Bodell

5567 Downing Street

Denver, CO 80210

Dear Maddy,

I was walking through downtown center yesterday morning at an early hour. It was that calm before the storm- you know, early enough that world seems to have slowed down for just a moment. It was so quiet, so very close to silent. Anyways, it was the silence that reminded me of you, Maddy; I had a flush of memories from all those times we attempted to be philosophers, laying in the grass just outside the library just to think about the silence. I know we have lost touch over the years, but I was reminded of you in the silence yesterday morning, so I thought I would send you this letter.

How have you been? The last time we talked we were both finishing up school, and I think the busyness was truly consuming us. Where are you working now? Have you kept in touch with anyone from back home? I am thinking of you and cannot wait to hear about how far you have come!

As for me, I am still a little stuck in our philosopher phase. I have taken to writing notebooks, so I think you’d be happy to know reflection is still a large piece of my life. While completing reflections now, I often think back to seventh grade. Ms. Namath started a book-writing club during lunch period, and I remember giving up every Monday and Wednesday lunch to sit in her classroom and write a short novel. Even then, I think I was fascinated with words and the power they conveyed. For a very happy seventh grader, I wrote a tragic novel; it was a collection of short poems about the death of the main character’s family friend. Then, I understood writing as a form of escapism- imaginative and transcendent. The process of writing always conveyed something fictional. I think back to this understanding of writing because it sparked my love for words, but my understanding of their power then was blurry and unfocused. I had perceived words as inward forces, but no transferred them to how I could grow in the outside world. I still hold on to this use of creativity as a form of catharsis in my reflections today, but I am also working “to think of writing not only as… [a] descent into self but also as the ascent from chaos to cosmos… [an understanding that] through ordering this chaos, we may use composition to achieve composure” (Moffett 234).

I remember in that class we took together, we wrote many reflections; that was probably my first time exploring these topics formally. Many of my reflections were works of fiction. I particularly remember writing my own obituary because that somehow seemed safer than just transcribing my thoughts directly. I often reflected by writing in flowy, metaphorical terms and while part of me knows I will always be a fanatic for aesthetics, I think I chose to write all those reflections in metaphorical terms because it gave me distance to hide and to avoid the task of practically applying my reflections to something greater. They could be beautiful, and thus, a tool of distraction rather than critical reflection.

In the future, as I continue to build on the reflective practices I learned in that course we shared together, I hope I can render the beauty of words into something useful for my future. Just to update you, I just got back from spending a year in New Zealand. Now, I am starting graduate school pursuing a degree in Rhetoric and Composition. I hope to go on to receive my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition while intersecting research and community work on the housing crisis and gentrification into my dissertation. Therefore, I am embarking on a long journey of writing- but this time with greater purpose. I think the greatest take-away I still hold from that class is that writing serves both an internal and external purpose. It can be used to understand inner chaos, but when it is shared, it must examine greater topics and connect to others in a way that is encouraging and transformative. Thus, in my work toward my PhD, I am writing because it still something within me, but I have an academic goal that pushes me to critically reflect on my identity and role in this world while making sense of forces in the greater community.

I remember our university’s motto was ‘to transform passion in purpose’. As someone who likes to stay within her own daydreams, I never understood the value in this phrase- why couldn’t I just have passion? Why couldn’t I just think to myself without connecting those thoughts to something greater? To answer these questions, I actually reflected on my physical state when I was deep in a daydream. When daydreaming, I am still and gone to the outside world- I am floating free of obligations. This state is sometimes necessary to keep me feeling human, but this is not reflection nor is it useful in propelling me into something greater. I may be happy in this; however, I am stagnant. Therefore, passion should be transformed into purpose because purpose requires you to be connected to those around you, to build relationships, to learn more and to create goals that compel you to critically engage with the world around you. To briefly resort back to lyrical terms, it allows you to ascend as cosmos.

This is where I am at, Maddy. I wanted to share a bit of my journey after spending those moments in silence with you. I hope to hear more about your passions and purpose and to hear how you have grown. I will be traveling through Colorado next month and would love to grab lunch sometime.

I hope to hear from you soon! I am wishing you only the best.

Sincerely,

Aly

Here's to the Search of the Great Something #6

Our doodling activity this week reminded me of a teaching technique my favorite International Studies professor employed multiple times during my international development course work. The YouTube video below is a part of a series of RSA Animations. Many of the talks discuss sociological, cultural, political or economic questions and controversies, but what makes them truly intriguing is the accompanying animation; as the lecture develops, the viewer watches the drawing happen before his/her/their eyes. The topics of these videos are often radical and challenge the common viewpoint of many institutions of our world today. The viewer is pulled along on this critically reflective journey with the aid of a fascinating, expanding, complex 'doodle'.

The video  I chose to include below ("First as Tragedy, Then as Farce") critically engages topics of capitalism, charity and 'corporate responsibility'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g

The Doodle: Intimacy

Intimacy

1) Where am I now, 6 weeks into this exceedingly orange and yellow fall quarter? More than anything, I have come to really appreciate being pushed to write. In my original blog post, I described feeling lost in the face of a key board. As a writer, I have been able to progress again as I have become in touch with a part of myself I thought I lost after returning from Bolivia. When I write, I often don't think ahead of writing words- they spill out and splatter the page. When I finish, I feel like I am returning from a far away journey. In this way, I think my identity as a thinker and my identity as a writer collide. I am a constant daydreamer; I think in circles and in lyrics as memories from the past usually dominate my focus. I am spacey because I think in long, wave-like patterns. When I engage with people or the physical environment around me after a long dream away, I feel like I am returning from a far away journey. Therefore, during the remaining four weeks in this course, I want to become more deliberate in my reflective process. I tend to not plan it out ahead of time and can stay stuck in cyclical thinking and writing processes. To become more deliberate, I want to be more present in my interactions with others; perhaps, by sharing more reflections out loud so that my reflections do remain just 'inward'. I also want to try reflecting in non-writing formats because my identity as a writer is so sporadic and unstructured. The meditation class this week will be an important starting point for that, and I also plan on setting apart 30 minutes every day to go on a walk to reflect in a more active manner away from the distractions and stressors of my everyday life.

2) My map reflects the sporadic nature of my thinking and writing styles. When I was doodling, I thought a lot about what was inside of me (in more metaphorical terms). The outline of the person on the right side of the paper is filled with the Universe, which shows that I think all of us have a little piece of the Universe within us. This piece of Universe connects us to something larger and makes us aware of our potential for greatness. Looking at my doodle now, I see many themes of interconnectedness. I chose the word 'intimacy' because I believe reflection is first and foremost a process of becoming vulnerable. Whether reflections are shared or not, the act of thinking deeply about something renders you still and stillness is necessarily vulnerable. Vulnerability relates to the theme of interconnectedness because I believe we form relationships-with others, ourselves and the world- when we are vulnerable enough to let people in. On the map, you can see the interconnectedness in the link of people climbing into my heart, in the large connection between the eye, magnifying glass and tree and between the roots of the tree and the drawing of myself.

3) One conclusion I can draw after completing three iterations of my map is that I hold a very strong connection between reflection and the process of self-care. I made this connection the most clear in Map 2, but I think this theme is so important as we move through this course because reflection is counter-intuitive to most popular narratives I have heard about 'what constitutes success'. Success is fast, aggressive, competitive, restless. It is a ever-changing horizon reserved for those who can categorically be considered 'the best'. The narratives I heard about success were never lyrical, slow, cyclical, vulnerable or intimate- all the things I consider reflection to be. Therefore, I believe it is crucial that we revision reflection not as something that holds us back, but rather as a mechanism to care for ourselves so that we all can leader fuller lives. Reflection as self-care does not call for avoidance of critical thought or difficult times; it encourages these practices as a necessary step for growth, change and self-empowerment.

Girl, Confounded: My *Literal Set of Unwashed Sheets

A little tidbit about me, when life begins to spiral a little out of control, my room tends to get very very messy. Like piles of things everywhere messy. Thus, in tribute to this messy week, I have photos of my mess, my attempts to clean it up, my eventual distractedness, my cleaning of the living room instead (and it's inevitable re-messyness), and finally my resolve to sip tea in the midst of chaos. Think of it as a metaphor, for let’s say ‘reflection’- the most profound reflections can happen in the messiest of times, sometimes we never quite figure everything out and others might just mess it up, but in the end, we always continue in the midst of inevitable chaos.