Throw Off the Bowlines: Walking About & School

Bruised (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

I. Opening

In writing about dream states, Rebecca Solnitt says that, "Nothing is lost but you yourself, wanderer in a terrain where even the most familiar places aren’t quite themselves and open onto the impossible" (p. 182).

I spent the morning walking with a camera in hand.  And after weeks of very steady work, I was delighted to see the fog and light this morning-- a dream place of sorts where the ordinary is recast in unfamiliar cloth.  It was a morning for getting lost and coming to know and unknow.

Light (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

II. Making

In looking at the images I made this morning, I thought about how much I learn by simply being, walking outdoors and seeing--as well as how these experiences will (in)form others I have yet to name.  It gives me pause when I think about the millions of children who at the same time I was out walking were seated at desks.

Is it not out of balance that we keep children inside in order to learn?  It feels counter intuitive and a bit arrogant to house students inside permanent structures as a means to ensure learning.  The physical world beyond the school represents potential places of learning.  I'd like to see school be less a matter of indoor sitting.

III. Recording

There's a quote I have memorized that is attributed to Mark Twain although it hardly seems like something he would utter. Nonetheless, it is wise and was with me this morning as I set out.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Lush (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Some days, I too throw off bowlines, not in a flashy manner you would most notice, but rather through small, almost imperceptible acts.  Like walking about.  Some mornings are meant for getting lost, for ditching work and school and the hundred things you meant to do and instead catching the trade winds in your sails. I wish school was more like this in spirit and less pressed and constant.

Reservoir (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

The Start of Autumn (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Wires (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Sunlight Falling (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Two Birds, One Tree (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Getting Lost

Along the Way (2.11.13, by M.A. Reilly)

On my way home from visiting friends in Connecticut on Saturday, I got off the highway and took roads in a random fashion. This is a multimodal record of getting lost while on my way home. The music is performed by the Belgian choir Scala who perform U2's With or Without You. I used this selection as it was a gift from Jane and Robyn whose home I was visiting.

Losing Oneself: Past the End of the Road

What does it mean to wander? To get lost? To get found? To live deliberately in both states: lost and found? In Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost she tells us:

"Movies are made out of darkness as well as light; it is the surpassingly brief intervals of darkness between each luminous still image that make it possible to assemble the many images into one moving picture. Without that darkness, there would only be a blur." (p. 175).

This seems an apt metaphor for what it means to wander without purpose and purposefully; to do so with certain aim and without conscious thought. Along the continuum of light and dark we stand ready to not know, to unlearn, to dream in darkness.

Once at Grand Central (Manhattan, 2010)

"Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance--nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city--as one loses oneself in a forest-- that calls for quite a different schooling." - Walter Benjamin

To Lose Oneself in a City (Wall Street, NYC. 2010)

The Familiar Falling Away (Ringwood, NJ 2010)

"Lost really has two disparate meanings: Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing" (p. 22, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit).

The Unfamiliar Appearing (Ringwood, NJ, 2010)

The Space Between (Yuma, California, 2010)

"Once I loved a man who was a lot like the desert, and before that I loved the desert. It wasn't particular things but the space between them, that abundance of absence, that is the desert's invitation" (p. 129, A Field Guide To Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit).

Out in the Desert (Yuma, California, 2010)

Terrible Things Happened in that House (South Dakota, 2010)

"In dreams nothing is lost. Childhood homes, the dead, lost toys all appear with a vividness your waking mind could not achieve. Nothing is lost but yourself, wanderer in a terrain where even the most familiar places aren't quite themselves and open onto the impossible" (p.182, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit).

Flâneur (Warwick, NY 2010)