Autoethnography

Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that combines elements from autobiography and ethnography in order to reflect on lived experiences and to understand the broader cultural, social, or institutional context.

Autoethnography is a vehicle towards seeing omnipoetics in action - a symposium of the whole, that includes the individual and how they interact and create the world.

“…we have witnessed an upsurge of new or revisited nationalisms and racisms, directed most often against that diversity of mind and spirit of which our lifetime projects were so clearly a part. To confront this implicit, sometimes rampant ethnic and ecological devastation, there is the need for a kind of omnipoetics that tests the range of our threatened natures wherever found and looks toward an ever-greater assemblage of words and thoughts as a singular buttress against those forces that would divide and diminish us. It is in this sens that we are attempting here an omnipoetics of the American hemisphere, as an experimental instance of what might be attempted further on a worldwide scale, toward what one of us once described as 'an anthrology of everything.'” (xli)

Omnipoetics provides the groundwork for a pathway towards the realization of a continually growing, “symposium of the whole,” but that symposium is incomplete without the work continuing to create a bridge between the individual and the past. Through autoethnography, the individual can gain a better sense of personal experience while also investigating how this intersects with cultural, social, and institutional contexts. The last part of the omnipoetics manifesto leaves the reader with the opportunity to become a part of this collective ever-expanding consciousness, “Omnipoetics as a contemporary attempt to project anew a primal (=complex) consciousness of the whole. As in the Kumeyaay myth of creation: 'The great snake absorbed all knowledge,/all the arts were inside her/When the fire reached her,/she exploded:/all knowledge gushed from her,/was scattered everywhere” (xliii). This last line points to the imperative and unsaid point of the manifesto, omnipoetics requires us - not just as scholars and academics that dig into the past to continue building the symposium, but as individuals with personal experiences and intersecting identities that are a necessary part of the ever expanding whole - this collective consciousness that is necessary to explore, the way that reading a poem sparks thoughts and change and movement inside of you; capture this, reflect on it, and write yourself into the narrative.

Part of reading the Serpent and the Fire, is learning how to take all of these poems, to listen to the life-givers singing the song, and to translate that into your own creation. The indigenous tribes thought of life as a circle with each of us filling our role within this, if there is no beginning and no end, then the individual creating right here and now, is the vehicle to learning to sing the song. There are no high or low forms of art and poetry, there is not a standard of a work being 'good' enough, there is simply the act of creation, and the act of creation is the way to internalize and live an omnipoetic life. A life that is filled with the experience of living alive, in reconnecting to technicians of the sacred and looking backward to look forward, to experience life as an individual, but to translate that into the collective, to become a part of the symposium.

An example in my own life came from reading a poem by E.E. Cummings (546), while reading his poem in SaF, I decided to check out a collection of his works from the library. When my dad saw the E.E. Cummings book, he said, “My favorite poem is an E.E. Cummings poem,” I asked him which one it was before I began to read, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” He first heard the poem during a painting course that was a part of his MFA. The professor read it outloud and had them sketch different images and ideas that came into their head from the reading. For most of the poem, my dad said, he didn't really know what was going on, but there was one line that stood out, “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?” He took a large piece of cardboard, leftover from milk carton printing that was donated to the art school since they didn't use the end of the rolls, and he began to sketch himself. He sketched himself peering down with an upward angle to the viewer, a large version of him overlooking the viewer of the sketch. Later he came back to finish the work, and gathered some of his art school friends to help him hang it. The professor's office was located next to the studio, with his windows facing towards the overlooking space. They hung this painting of my dad looking down from an almost god-like perspective, pointed towards the professor's office. The next time the professor came in, he was greeted with this overlooking image, the only thing visible from the windows of his office. As my dad walked away after telling me this story, he said, “There was a time in my life when I had something to say.”

For the Artist;

flight from one mind to another
across an invisible current
the waves wash in & pull the seaweed
back to sea
water on glass
magnifying the space between
the stars, the gap wanting to
transform into a bridge
progress ticking alongside
a minute hand clicks to track
soul drifting sailing through
sea, looking for the guidance
clouds condense
light leaks like a faucet drip,
drip
drip
click click click
the drops of light are enough
to keep from dying, dehydrated
life lingers longer
drip drip
drip
light only in dew drops
perched upon morning sunbeams
a field of glossy grass
waiting for another drip
the waves work
bashing the vessel from
either side
condense the soul into
a small ball of what was

— there was a time in my life
when I had something to say

time tucked into spots
remnants and reminders
left upon the ship
a pen that explodes
leaving stains on
the soul
—
there was once a time —
he says —
I say
time is now

do I dare disturb
the universe?
he taught me
how.

When my brother and I were younger, my dad stayed home to take care of us while my mom worked at IUP as a professor. He has never worked as an artist in my memorable life-time. While he doesn't work as an artist, I've watched him express the artistic eye in many different forms throughout my life. Most recently is the construction of a disc golf course that he designed and continues to work on during every available non-inclimate weather day. That doesn't stop my wishing for him to make art again, and even though he expresses it in different ways, I see the paintings of my early childhood, from before I can remember, and I can't help but wish the paintings continued. A poem for my dad, and a poem for me - do I dare disturb the universe? he taught me how.

Throughout this course, I have found myself rediscover what is like to feel alive, to learn how to play, to learn how to encompass child-like joy that provides the sustenance of life. While reading various poems throughout SaF, I found myself driven to write poems and to paint watercolors. I learned how to encompass an approach to a world that is particularly difficult to live in. I felt my feelings and thoughts echoed forward and backward, hearing others sing the same song that was playing in my own mind.

The reading of SaF, I believe, is incomplete without letting yourself and giving the space to play freely. The way to live and breath the book, the way to omnipoetics in action, is to give yourself the time and ability to create. Creation in order to live, and creation to truly feel and understand what the individual is within the symposium.

Here are some things that I did while reading the anthology that made me feel like I was truly encompassing and hearing the “life giver's song,” while also continuously journaling, writing poems, and creating artworks (Remember, there are no high and low forms, so even though my modern brain wanted to criticize my lack of painting ability or my poetry writing skills, it is not the right question to ask yourself, “Is this good enough?” but rather, the purpose and the beauty comes from the act of creation) -

• Walking barefoot through mossy grass, feeling the mud squish between my toes while watching the sun set slowly behind a chestnut tree that I planted in middle school, now much taller than me, I see the time in both of our lines.
• Staying outside when I feel the air turn, watch the clouds roll in, and become completely and utterly soaked, to feel myself getting watered as the plants get watered, to melt into the earth, to realize the ability to dance in the rain - to truly dance like no one is watching
• Taking bird seeds to Blue Spruce and to contemplate the thousands of people that must have had to have fed them before me for them to be so willing to perch upon my hand, to contemplate my existence the same way I do theirs.
• To swing, to feel the air on my face, to feel the way the pump of my legs back and forth brings me higher and higher, to feel the joy from doing something so simple, yet so freeing.
• Meditating on a tree stump, sunflowering my head towards the sky, to feel the light and warmth on my skin - to feel the interconnected between us all, to realize and understand that my connection to the earth and to mother nature is only a fraction of what they felt, and yet, it is enough to remind me of the sacred and to allow the breath to life inside of me.