Critical Reflection 3

Now that you’re three weeks (half way) into your senior project experience, are you answering your essential question?

1. How are you exploring your essential question; is it different from what you expected? If you don’t feel like you’re answering your essential question, what is happening that’s different from what you expected?
2. Are you surprised by any of the challenges that you’ve faced so far? How have you met those challenges and what can you do going forward to deal with them?
3. Writing on your essential question: What have you learned about your essential question so far? What further questions do you have? and/or Has your essential question changed? If so, how?  What do you want to know more about?

In my exploration of my essential question, I have found that it is almost impossible to define what this sense of peace means because it is subjective to many outer situations. I have also found that nature roughens up your skin in a much different way than modern civilization does, which Thoreau writes about. In general, I do think I have been able to explore my essential question by reading more about ecofeminism and nature and exploring parks in NYC. I have been to Central Park, Prospect Park, Tompkins Square Park, Washington Square Park, the piers, and Pelham Bay Park. I’ve been able to bring my film camera and take photos.

I haven’t been too surprised by the challenges I’ve faced, but one thing I didn’t expect was to be short in time. Going to parks and walking for hours is, obviously, more time-consuming than I had expected. The whole point of walking, in the sense that Thoreau put it, is to get somewhat lost in time. I have spent some days lost in timeless walks, and other days with a more clear cut schedule, but I think to truly engage in this I need to devote myself to reading and art as much as I am walking. Another thing is that I underestimated how crowded NYC parks are.

On my essential question, I have been journaling and reflecting quite a lot. I think one of the key things I’ve learned about is an idea in the book “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass, which explores Buddhist concepts through art. I think peace of mind is truly something that, as Thoreau puts it, modern civilization has led us astray from. I have also learned a lot about the connections between spirituality, nature, literature and feminism. I found a book, La Feminisme ou La Mort, was the first to coin the term ecofeminism, and since then it has been used by various feminist writers. One concept I’ve been exploring as well is the idea of What IS natural? And aren’t we, within our own bodies, some sort of manifestation of this “divine” concept of God and nature? Our bodies are in themselves nature in human form. Even in all of our sickness and death, we are an ongoing part of a natural cycle of change, which is nature in its purest. These are just concepts that have come up for me, however many of the questions are sort of unanswerable, they are more rhetorical and up to interpretation. I still think I can interpret this into an artistic project in the lens of an ecofeminist vision.