building intimacy with nature, noticing each moment of the season.
Rotting pumpkin, my hand, the natural world and humans aren't separate, yet we are, yet we aren't.
Belonging, longing to belong, feeling, presence, searching, listening, slowing down, solicitude. What is true to me? What is my relationship with the natural world?
I started by observing the natural world, observing how I feel based on where I am and what I am tuning into.
While sitting with Goldenrod one day, at a pause point in my senior study, a simple hum came to me. I put this recorded hum to some other video footage in a short video I call The Sound of Listening. The images in the short video are moments of contemplation and luxurious slowness. The days when my body was able to settle and I could hum along with the wind and sun. There is so much life in these moments for me. I titled it The Sound of Listening as goldenrod was a plant that helped me tune into myself, as the natural world does, as the song does.
the sound of listening
In a way this video represents where the essence of my senior study settled into me. really began. I set out to ask large political questions, using my body as a tool and a guide post. I didn't account for how my own longings would surface., yet it became crucial to listen to them. To orient out of white supremacy, to unravel white supremacy, to be honest, to love myself, to connect back to the earth again and again.