Know Thy Self!
We had an exercise in one of my classes to think about ourselves as 7-9 year old's and try to express the experience of place we had at that age. The idea was to understand where we come from as designers and where our relationship to place came from. Studies, evidentially, say that largely it comes from this time in our development (7-9 years old).
I have previously written, though without explicitly stating, about this exact time in my life. My fondest memories date from then (I now know I am not remotely singular in that) and indeed my enduring desire to relate to the landscape on ever deeper levels stems from this time and the place that most inspired it in me.
I was living in an ant infested house (I loved it still) in Hockley Valley, Ontario at that point in my life and it's the only house I lived in for any amount of time (4-5 years) that I can remember (technically I lived in Caledon, Ontario in Robinson Hall for closer to 7 years but I was born there and I don't really remember consciously most of my infanthood). The Hockley house was on 100 acres going from the top of the hill all the way into the valley and through all sorts of forests; maple and beech, ceder, poplar etc...
The bulk of my years spent in this house I was homeschooled, and when I say homeschooled I mean I was primarily self schooled. My brothers and I never followed a strict curriculum that I can recall, though we had various workbooks at times, mostly Waldorf. The only "formal" class I can remember my father inventing was on mythology. This explains a lot about me. Anyway, I was a very independent little girl and I spent most of my time off exploring the land alone. In thinking about this exercise a whole host of places and experiences and memories come to mind all situated within that property. I was trying to figure how best to represent those images and the feelings they left within me but I kept returning to one in particular and it is a memory of a place I found that has returned to me many times throughout my life. However, I have never really been able to fully express it or represent it visually to someone else. So rather than try to represent specific images from my childhood I began to think about what the character of my interaction with those places was and I realized that no matter what memory I recalled the answer was largely the same. I was looking for transformation. Though I didn't understand it in quite so abstract a way at the time that was what I was doing.
For example: a favorite pastime of mine was to look for natural arches or holes in the landscape; caves, split trees, roots coming out of the ground and whatnot. I was looking for doorways and whenever I found something like that I would go through allowing (hoping) for the possibility that I may be transported to some other realm or magically transformed somehow. Generally in my imagination I would become a wolf, an animal which I am still utterly romanced by. So I explored my environment with an eye for it to change me somehow and it did every day in ways I am still coming to understand.
I interact with places and landscapes in the same way now albeit with, slightly, more realistic expectations. My childhood desire to explore nature has manifested in my adult self as a kind of wanderlust because in travel and new experience I am most lucid and present and I come to know myself better as a result. Taking ourselves out of the everyday context that we live in, the familiar, I think we can achieve a level of objectivity about ourselves (I do not believe true objectivity is possible really unless perhaps through enlightenment) and often we are surprised by how different we can be in new situations. The more experiences like this we have the more complex and holistic our understanding of ourselves and our motivations becomes. Travel for me is a pilgrimage toward self understanding.
It can also be a curse at times as I am restless and tend to blame all problems on wherever I happen to be, the solutions always being that I should go somewhere else, the "grass is always greener" scenario. Nevertheless everybody is driven by something and for many that something is a thirst for knowledge. I thirst most after knowledge of myself. This may seem arrogant but all humanity is selfish whether we attempt to ennoble it or not, we cannot help it. Except perhaps through intense spiritual dedicaition and ego denial... but that is another matter.
In sumary, it was a fascinating mental exploration brought about by a simple studio assignment and now I must figure out some way in which to express all of these ramblings concisely and with a point! The moral of the story? Focus.
I will leave you with my personal mantra from "Meditations on the Tarot"; "Learn at first concentration without effort, transform work into play, make every yoke you have accepted easy, and every burden that you carry light."
Love.
I have previously written, though without explicitly stating, about this exact time in my life. My fondest memories date from then (I now know I am not remotely singular in that) and indeed my enduring desire to relate to the landscape on ever deeper levels stems from this time and the place that most inspired it in me.
I was living in an ant infested house (I loved it still) in Hockley Valley, Ontario at that point in my life and it's the only house I lived in for any amount of time (4-5 years) that I can remember (technically I lived in Caledon, Ontario in Robinson Hall for closer to 7 years but I was born there and I don't really remember consciously most of my infanthood). The Hockley house was on 100 acres going from the top of the hill all the way into the valley and through all sorts of forests; maple and beech, ceder, poplar etc...
The bulk of my years spent in this house I was homeschooled, and when I say homeschooled I mean I was primarily self schooled. My brothers and I never followed a strict curriculum that I can recall, though we had various workbooks at times, mostly Waldorf. The only "formal" class I can remember my father inventing was on mythology. This explains a lot about me. Anyway, I was a very independent little girl and I spent most of my time off exploring the land alone. In thinking about this exercise a whole host of places and experiences and memories come to mind all situated within that property. I was trying to figure how best to represent those images and the feelings they left within me but I kept returning to one in particular and it is a memory of a place I found that has returned to me many times throughout my life. However, I have never really been able to fully express it or represent it visually to someone else. So rather than try to represent specific images from my childhood I began to think about what the character of my interaction with those places was and I realized that no matter what memory I recalled the answer was largely the same. I was looking for transformation. Though I didn't understand it in quite so abstract a way at the time that was what I was doing.
For example: a favorite pastime of mine was to look for natural arches or holes in the landscape; caves, split trees, roots coming out of the ground and whatnot. I was looking for doorways and whenever I found something like that I would go through allowing (hoping) for the possibility that I may be transported to some other realm or magically transformed somehow. Generally in my imagination I would become a wolf, an animal which I am still utterly romanced by. So I explored my environment with an eye for it to change me somehow and it did every day in ways I am still coming to understand.
I interact with places and landscapes in the same way now albeit with, slightly, more realistic expectations. My childhood desire to explore nature has manifested in my adult self as a kind of wanderlust because in travel and new experience I am most lucid and present and I come to know myself better as a result. Taking ourselves out of the everyday context that we live in, the familiar, I think we can achieve a level of objectivity about ourselves (I do not believe true objectivity is possible really unless perhaps through enlightenment) and often we are surprised by how different we can be in new situations. The more experiences like this we have the more complex and holistic our understanding of ourselves and our motivations becomes. Travel for me is a pilgrimage toward self understanding.
It can also be a curse at times as I am restless and tend to blame all problems on wherever I happen to be, the solutions always being that I should go somewhere else, the "grass is always greener" scenario. Nevertheless everybody is driven by something and for many that something is a thirst for knowledge. I thirst most after knowledge of myself. This may seem arrogant but all humanity is selfish whether we attempt to ennoble it or not, we cannot help it. Except perhaps through intense spiritual dedicaition and ego denial... but that is another matter.
In sumary, it was a fascinating mental exploration brought about by a simple studio assignment and now I must figure out some way in which to express all of these ramblings concisely and with a point! The moral of the story? Focus.
I will leave you with my personal mantra from "Meditations on the Tarot"; "Learn at first concentration without effort, transform work into play, make every yoke you have accepted easy, and every burden that you carry light."
Love.
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