OCA drawing 1.1

 Reading as research / Writing as idea generation

For this exercise you will need to read a short essay Robert Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (1967)  Holt / Smithson Foundation [online].

Using Smithson’s essay as inspiration, you should produce a piece of short writing where you describe an everyday journey that you make.

Think about how you experience this journey and how you might describe it through writing. Imagine yourself as a stranger in a strange land – what jumps out to you and catches your eye? What are the important details you want to record? You might find that thinking about your senses might help give colour and texture to your writing; what are the smells and sounds you taste, hear and witness and what are the textures you see and feel? Your writing should be speculative, creative and imaginative, responding to an environment, as if you are seeing it for the first time.

A DAILY WALK BY KAY FLOCKHART

I had changed and I started to change the story I told myself about how I am supposed to be. I wanted to be in a place where sights and sounds, smells and flowers and trees and streets and paths were so familiar that every cell in my body would go quiet. I wanted to be in a place where there was nothing to fight or flee from.

The world got smaller and bigger at the same time.  There is the mundane repetition of things, and then on the other hand the vast mountains and tent of a sky. I stopped thinking about my existence and its significance.  The longer I live in proximity to this mysterious earth, the mountains, elements and their violent outbursts, the more I feel existence is significant.

The sunset reflected the many layers of the deep valley walls.  Now the storm had passed the rock faces were revealed and so were the little carpets of corn and grass that lay between each forrest mass or rocky outcrop.

The lights from the houses shone like little vigils.  Signalling life after the lightning explosions.

The mountain pass that runs through the depths, leads to remoteness, that then becomes the eye of remoteness, and then a community again.  A familiar rhythm amongst the peaks.  

The boarder was not far away and for some this brought the possibility of adventure, but for me, I settle at wonder.  I like to be here, nestled into the village.  It was adventure that brought me here, but with an aim to find a place of peace.

No more voids to fill, not more searching.  To be somewhere that made me whole and content.

As yet I can’t explain why this intense and varied tapestry brings a calm to my inners.  A sense of  relief.  It’s highly textured, over powering, changeable.  It is a contradiction that it’s a place of peace and stillness for me.

(Flockhart 2024)

List of Images

Cover Image Flockhart, K. (2024) Detail From Scroll Piece. [Biro and ink on paper] In possession of: The author: Volleges.

Bibliography

Flockhart, K. (2024) ‘A Daily Walk’