I look back a lot, especially when changing lanes on my bicycle. In this case, I’m not looking back for safety. I’m looking back to see what the path looks like, after having traveled it. It looks a bit different from this perspective. I’m looking down a long tunnel of trees. There is an arch of branches overhead, and plenty of green. I’m standing on the path with a research packet. I look down and see the folder, it holds over 50 pages of material. Yet, I look back and see this path through the woods. I don’t often look around much. How long have I been walking with this packet in my hand?
The transition back from iO and Detroit to U of M and Ann Arbor will be strange. As I worked on my project and participated in this program my unconscious mind was in pottery class. He was making a bowl or maybe a vase, I can’t be too sure yet, the kiln still has to fire it. Perhaps, he’ll give me the final product as a birthday present when I turn 27 this October. I almost just wrote Octubre…Yes, I’ll be back in Spanish by then, working hard on my grammar rules and vocabulary. This time with something new, a pottery wheel, spinning at the back of my mind. Words are what we have to work with. They mold us, we mold them. There’s so much molding going on.
We’ve perhaps molded each other in little ways. Perhaps you are the reason I’ve been able to take a chill pill. And maybe you’re the reason I’ve been able to quit drinking coffee for a few days. Who knows, as Judith Butler says, “I am not fully known to myself because part of what I am is the enigmatic traces of others.” Maybe she is right. How can I really reflect on how I’ve changed? I don’t know if that’s even the right question to be asking. The right question is this, how have I molded this experience and presented it to others…how has this experience been a clay bowl my unconscious has fired in the kiln of pottery 101? Now I’ve given that bowl to you, I wonder what you’ll use it for…
I have a new coffee cup, bowl, pencil and toothbrush holder, and plate. These are things that I didn’t have before… So thank you.
Nate your not on facebook anymore! and i miss you my friend. Billy. goet ahold of me.. i dig the blog btw. you have always had a way to juggle words together. and have always clicked with what you say both in person and in writing.