Making the Memory

I thought I needed to include a diversity of readings in this independent study so that I could be most knowledgeable about the potential identities and experiences that would be represented in the Collective Breathing space, and so that I could be best equipped to facilitate a space in which people's needs could vary based on their experiences, but now I realize that for a space situated most intentionally in praxis and experimentation (even while it is a space of theorization), I could not prepare.

I have gained knowledge from individual's telling of their experiences, rather than the written knowledge that I thought was supposed to educate me about experiences. I've learned how to facilitate space based on my encounters with individual's needs throughout the process, and the various ways that they have communicated their needs. This is not to say that I did not gain from the materials that I read, I benefited from them greatly, just not in the manner I had intended. I chose the readings on the syllabus with no real understanding of what I hoped to take from them, although I knew I would benefit. I see now that each reading, or at least what I wanted each reading to be, was in conversation with some part of my personal process of "memory and making"/memory making. Each reading brings light to a theme/experience/idea that I wanted to spend more time with in this last season of my formal education (that I know of), either because it represents a topic/issue I re-member that has made me, or a topic I have been exposed to and am trying to make intentional sense of.

As a senior in my last semester at Colgate, the reflection process has crept into every aspect of my life and work, in a manner that is seemingly more paramount than at any other point in my educational experience. Starting something new in a season that was supposed to be about reflecting put two seemingly dichotomous actions intimately together, and that brought forth much anxiety and uncertainty in my understanding of what I was supposed to be doing, how, and why. I've been thriving in classrooms for (at least) the past two years, and all of a sudden a freeform blog post, defined entirely by me, for a class I created, with readings I chose, seemed an intimidating, impossible task. The feeling of impossibility was a symptom of being uncomfortably wedged between what I thought were forces moving in equal but opposite directions. As I emerge from the thick of this semester, and in anticipation of a new season, I see that the two do not have to oppose one another. Education/creating/community building is a continuous process of experimenting and reflecting. It is using the memory in the process of making, and recognizing the making process as another memory for that which will be made in the future. This independent study has focused on memory-work specifically, while the Collective Breathing praxis focuses on the making, yet the two are part of the same larger process. They've both come together to define my semester, and serve as evidence that we can create the classes/collectives/performances/communities that we want. These small manifestations give us the hope, ultimately, that we can create the world we want.

In this manner, I suppose I have done what I set out to do, and yet want to acknowledge that I did not know what I was doing. Yet, even that was part of the process. The process was the desired outcome, and the unexpected outcome was exactly what was needed. It has been beautiful, consistently insecure, unsettled, anxious, but beautiful.