Reflections: A stone’s throw
Reflections: A stone’s throw
This is a stone's throw. This is standing at the shore of the ocean, picking up a pebble, aiming at somewhere out there in the waves and hauling the rock in that direction. Letting go. It is those moments before the stone hits the surface and disappears out of view, it is the seconds you follow it with your eyes and trace where it is going. Finding the place where it is going to land in your mind's eye. This is research diary number two. I've gone for a walk. It feels like a spring day although it is actually only January 11th, 2012. Some of the trees have already put buds out thinking spring has come. Birds are chirping. Yesterday Umiaq was born. My little niece, a wonder of this world.
These are the words that started off my diary and this is where I must begin. Because… I've observed that there are two stone throws that converge in my life at the moment. One is my personal thoughts about the world. How it is constituted and what it is made from, who we are, where we are going. All of this kind of questions which are natural to any human being. The other one is reading about narratives and how we narrate the world, how the world is transformed, constituted at some level, and performed through stories.
See, the words I included in the first paragraph was all information which took you, the reader, to this place, these words, to my research. And… not only does that put you, the reader, in a certain position, in a place or a space, which I make up through words. It allows you to peep into this research that I am doing. But it also poses a question to me as a speaker. Because who do I imagine you are? Are you Gill Seyfang, my supervisor - my main supervisor of three. Tom and Jason are you there? And what about the two people who are eventually going to read the end product of which these words are a part. Are you there?
Insofar as these words are vocalised as an online research diary, it is also how I can imagine who I am writing for - widening the circle. Making these words 'public' makes writing them more dangerous: it is opening up my research to what I imagine is the public eye. This imagined public is a purely fictional audience which could be made up of potentially seven billion pairs of eyes. The circle could be even wider. I could decide to write for what we call 'aliens', creatures from outer space, for beings not of this world. I could be writing for the deer. For deers right to have a place to live.
And I am also writing within a culture and I am choosing my culture. In a manner of speaking, everything is 'choice edited' in that regard. Of course I am… on thin ice when I say I choose my culture. But the events of my life have also forced me to constantly seek out people with whom I share something. I have been thrown… well, not thrown. See, this is what language does. If I now narrate my story as having been thrown into something, well what images does that give you? Did i believe, then, I was the master of my circumstances? Did I have free will? Let me use a different word. I chose to move between opportunities, to move between potentialities. I was not fully aware of what I was doing at the time I made those moves and I still am not (how could I have known that my past would take me into this conversation)?
Free will is perhaps, as they say in Buddhism, a gradient, one that traces the gradual opening of your eyes to your situation and to the world. To what's happening. Because a lot of stuff is happening! And a lot of it, well say most of it, is choice edited. It's got to the point where you are doing the editing and choosing yourself pretty much by virtue of being alive. Very few environments are left that are not designed by humans, where there is no intention, motive, or function built into our surroundings. This is not always obvious although it is accelerating. Every google search is personalised depending on different factors like where you are sitting, your browser, your search history, which computer you are using, etc. What you find online is tailored to your history, tastes, and interests, making the process of choice editing invisible. We know it happens in the supermarket but it is less apparent when we navigate through the ocean of information.
Even the experience of living is becoming more and more talked about within the frame of choice. We now speak of how we choose to live, where we choose to live, what lifestyles we like or aspire to, this is all over our language. I am now, as I am walking, choosing to look up at the trees. And now I am looking down. Am I constantly making choices? Am I following a greater road? If so, how do I know when to choose it? Well, in writing this [giggles] as a research diary I am, well, making choices. I am choosing my words.
The thesis itself is limited by numbers of words, by capabilities, by time, by mood, by serendipity, but this research diary does not have such limitations. Here I can speak freely and here I can reflect. It is a free space. It is also a space that other people can reach into. It is how I might be able to resolve the precarious circumstance of having supervisors. Of having people who guide you and in some way choose with you, or help to make the choices. And in writing this I invite them into my process. And whoever else is reading.
11/01/2012