Professor Kaminski,
This class and the lessons it taught me about somatic practice, writing through and around huge, complex problems, and my relationship to nature, have forever changed how I exist in this world.
As I mentioned on the first day of class, I learned to love writing by reading my father's poetry books. Great American poets who wrote about birch trees and white-tailed deer taught me to have humility in the face of nature, and to be curious as I observe and translate the world around me. This class fell in line with those teachings, and in many ways felt like a continuation of my childhood fascination with how nature makes us feel known. Though this year of my life has upended much of what I knew about myself, I've been restored over and over again by the readings and writing assignments in this class. My favorite part of this work has been that none of it really felt like learning. It felt more like remembering.
As for my goals, I don't know what they were but I'm certain I didn't reach them, and that's okay. I only achieved two things this semester: listening to my body and being curious. I learned to approach my fear for the world, my loss of self, my anger, loneliness - all of it - with curiosity. I had took some time to write for just myself, to stand in the grass each morning, and to start moving from curiosity to whatever comes next.
When I came back to this work over the summer, I brought with me all that was unresolved in my world, and I think it only gave the lessons more meaning. I hope in my journals and projects, you've been able to see glimpses of that heaviness I still carry, but also some lightness too. I hope you can tell that neither one is easy for me to hold, and that I brought both into this space with love.
As I move into a new season, I'm eager to continue studying many of the authors and works I was introduced to in this class. The respect for Indigenous ways of engaging with the earth that Robin Wall Kimmerer writes are endlessly encouraging me to interrogate the White colonialist lessons I was raised on. I'm thrilled by how difficult it still is for me to explain Adrienne Maree Brown's Emergent Strategy to people, and yet also how often I'm compelled to try. In true form, I think the only way to better understand that concept is to embody it. These teachings, and so many more small inspirations and questions I've collected along the way will continue to guide me as I yearn and yearn for a better world. Slowly, or maybe all at once, that yearning will take form and I hope to see you on the other side.
<3 Madison
