In the tradition of Karen Romano Young, I'm doodling (digitally) to capture one scene a day (hula hooping, and STEAMing ahead). Ranger Kristin offered a list of words she heard teachers using at Weir Farm National Historical Park during our first day. She offered them to us and asked, "Why not create a list poem from the words -- so I tried to use them all.
Coincidences
Plot it out, they say,
look out the window
& strategize locally
what we writers do globally --
engineered by scientific brains,
to creatively doodle
with a bit of words.
Let the tug-o-war begin.
The secret is,
at least in America,
that language is chemistry,
a critical link to the art of learning,
for getting STEAMy
amongst a species,
rambling in
linguistic motion,
multimodal re-seeing,
& the literacy of our social endeavors.
I can’t help this walking –
it’s the age thing,
the Big Bang surprise
of athletic mistakes.
My sneakers say,
listen to your body,
slow your journey down.
But I hear Ger
walking Toward the Rising Sun.
Absorbing his rays of thought
on a journey,
another coincidence,
stepping ahead for insight,
for whatever grabs one’s attention.
(this is negotiation
with the outdoor world,
wandering
meandering
of being open to being lost)…
whatever I find curious,
is authentic to an intensive life.
It must be funny
watching me wobble
with a plastic orb
hooped over a shoulder,
a circle of time
as if I’m an architect
& activist of Eden,
able to fill the gaps with
dreams,
while trying to stay calm & centered:
observing, measuring, noticing
a place, this space,
& the geography
of what is special.
I learn in layers.
I daydream.
I wonder.
Movement for happy accidents --
the interconnectedness
of what’s below the surface,
& the simmering breakthroughs
of free-writing with
digital paint tubes.
I’m an archeologist finding
the self,
wide-eared and listening,
thinking, drawing, storytelling,
noticing, collecting, inquiring,
respecting, measuring,
& experiencing this senselessness,
trying to invest in something good.
I man environmental crisis,
a fragment of the technological overload of a digital world.
But I am outside
with the squirrels, nuts,
using my voice as a life science,
a windspeed mass
on a curvy road
adapting to the Long Island sounds,
trying to grow with paper
& pen,
and engineering myself anew,
meta-dumb (…) ah,
overwhelmed by the ecology
of growth.
Seagulls have perspective –
world language spun
with divine intervention
& flight,
sharing the sand, ocean, & sky,
as bobbing sponges
in aviary thought
upon this road I choose to take.
This philosophical la la la
(blah blah blah)
is disciplined with symbols…
…and every day, there’s something new.
Happy people get outside…
stay balanced & bountiful
in the reconnection
of relationships
& the genius
of community.
Sharing is innovation,
and if I label it beautiful –
its ingenious growth,
a gravity of boundless energy,
the physical science
of a passion…
an ecosystem of students
who are happy…
who teach one another
with access and equity…
with hearts mind, & muscle.
Dynamic days do not let go,
but get going,
creating better havens
for monarchs,
bees, & trees
(every leaf a hallelujah.).
~Bryan Ripley Crandall