Campus Walk

Today I attended a workshop in sustainability education through the Center for Sustainability at the University of West Georgia.  It was an incredible and synchronistic experience, as I also met two people I had been hoping to contact over the next few weeks regarding their work, which I experienced as an uprush of fatedness or a sense of being exactly where I'm supposed to be.

During the workshop, we watched a Ted Talk about the "Ghastly Tragedy of the Suburbs" by James Howard Kunstler, which is a hilarious exploration about the relationship between architecture and citizenship.  He argues that the structures in our public realm correlate with the decline of our cultural civilization.  We then took a walk through the campus in silence as we contemplated whether the places we inhabit are "worth caring about."

I greatly enjoyed the deepening of the group field as we walked in a respectful distance from each other while also staying close enough together to maintain a spacious cohesion.  We seemed to be looking up more than usual, and I noticed several participants seemed to gaze into the distance without focusing on anything in particular.  I appreciated the way we created a generous, exploratory, reflective mood together.

I noticed that my associations with place are largely comprised of the emotional or ideological context in which humans occupy the space.  Though I typically enjoy my walks on campus, eyeing red-tailed hawks, feral cats, squirrels, and all the varieties of plants and trees, today I found myself gazing at the buildings, windows, walkways, and parking lots through my emotional response to the overarching institutional goals housed in these structures.  Amidst growing confusion and doubt about the value of the educational system and the scholarly enterprise, I felt a sinking despair as if this vibrant land was somehow being tortured by disingenuous and egocentric thinking that permeated the space.  I found myself wanting to withdraw my energy from the institution so that I would not be contributing to this misuse of land and space.