Taped to the wall above my desk is a promotional postcard from Poetry Magazine. A quote from the editor, Christian Wiman, reads: “Let us remember that in the end we go to poetry [or art] for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. “ It feels increasingly challenging to fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them. Robert Pogue Harrison argues that Western civilization promotes ‘institutions of dislocation [I would add disconnection] in every dimension of both social and cultural existence’, and this has led to an ‘aggravated confusion about what it means to dwell on the earth’(198-9). In attempts to negotiate this confusion, I am exploring ways of knowing, documenting, sensitizing, and measuring to enrich my understanding of the space between myself and what we have come to accept as ‘the natural.’ To “more fully inhabit” seems to necessitate firsthand experience and a heightened sensory awareness of surroundings. This idea of full inhabitation is something I am exploring in my work. I would like to consider, speculate, and reflect on larger issues using my particular relationship to the natural world as a point at which to begin. I am grounding my investigations in two sites, which comprise one place for me. One site is my backyard from ages three to eighteen, and resides in my memory. The other site is a few blocks away from my current San Francisco apartment and is also functioning as a surrogate for that initial stomping ground, and the site for my project field research.

Wednesday, April 4

Day 1: Obscuring Reason

I enter the park off of 19th avenue and begin to follow one of the inroads. The air is clear and crisp and bright. What I see looks like the Disney nature scenes I used to attempt to inhabit while looking through my red Viewmaster. The vivid intensity of the trees and sky was overwhelming. I remember being slightly afraid of, if not intimidated by the trees upon first moving to Northern California. The size and visual intensity of the cypress trees was something new to me. A little concerned about and intrigued by this irrational fear, I left the park to do some research. I was relieved to read of forests’ long symbolic history.



Forests have traditionally had a strong association with the subconscious, the mysterious, and the unknown. Entering the dark forest is a threshold symbol. It represents the soul entering the perils of the unknown, a quest for the secrets of nature, and the spiritual world which man must penetrate to find the meaning. Common children’s tales (such as Snow White, Goldilocks, or Hansel & Gretel) reveal one way these associations are perpetuated. Jung maintains that that the sylvan terrors that figure so prominently in these children’s tales symbolize the perilous aspects of the subconscious, or its tendency to devour and obscure reason (Fraim).

Mark*, a man who has lived in a hole dug in the ground in one of the park’s meadows talks about the fear he has felt in the park, and its forests in particular.

“It’s just a neat place all together, but it’s scary. It really is, because I’ve never been afraid in the woods in my life, even when I was a little kid. And I’ve traveled all over the country following the Dead. I’ve been in a lot of different woods, but here … its like, um, it’s some unknown fear, it’s like fear of the unknown or whatever. I can’t explain it... I don’t know.”

*names have been changed to preserve anonymity
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