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This screenshot is my chosen visual because it scratches an itch in my brain and puts words and colors to the feelings of being overwhelmed by a reality where we are bombarded by everything all the time. Visually, this quote is red and white to reflect the album cover and the articulation of a chaotic world (a theme in this album). This screenshot encapsulates a sentence that smells like smoke, and alcohol, sounds like a warning siren, and feels damp, anxiously hot, and unbound.

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Beige with dark brown orb  eyes and a nose that resembles a large blueberry. He doesn’t smell like a ‘dog’ and he  feels like a wooly, boney stuffed animal.

Moose represents more than just his physical self. My friend describes the core of every person as their ‘white light’; a pure self that exists underneath the ego. She suggests that Moose engages and expresses these vulnerable aspects of people in a way that disarms the mask we present and I think that is poetic.

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I practiced this reflection in the library at Emily Carr after visiting my friend here

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This exercise made me realize that we often do activities that pacify us through comfort and familiarity. I suspect a large part of my continued consumption of comfort foods like KD and bubble gum, and going out (which includes dress-up) is something familiar to me because of my home environment. writing and reflecting on these moments in time felt like an effective processing technique

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Notes:

see: purple through my sunglasses, vibrant room hear: adults chattering, van morrison music, dishes and kitchen sounds taste: hubba bubba bubble gum, lays bbq chips, a glass of milk, kraft dinner touch: itchy dresses and stockings, dollar store tiaras scratching my head and squeezing the back of my ears, beaded necklaces rattling together, my hair being pulled by my bobbles, carpet smell: perfumes, alcohol breath, cooking

Ten objects/artifacts:

the little white ball in bacci ball (smooth, small, egg-like, cold), frozen eggo waffle (satisfying, cold, pasty, sweet, dull, filling) , kraft dinner (squishy, tasty, bright orange, cheesy, warm), ornament of a sailor (a little christmas ornament my mom bought for me - his legs are attached by little links so they rattle and dangle), cabbage patch doll (smells like plastic, ugly, hard, creepy eyes), bobbles (sparkly, purple, clear, bubbles inside the plastic), rocks (size of a quarter, smooth, spotted, colorful, round), gumboots (pink with purple polka dots, squishy, cold, smooth, little handles to carry them), dough (mixed flour and water because I loved the texture and smell, squishy, sticky)

Lyric moment:

my dad picks me up. My bobbles and various necklaces rattle with the motion. His breath smells like alcohol, it’s kinda comforting. My breath smells like hubba bubba bubble gum because I’m chewing an entire pack at once. A great post-kraft dinner dessert.

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Notes:

see: bright camera flash, club washrooms hear: girls talking, the weeknd and drake music, toilets flushing, glass breaking, doors opening/closing, water running taste: hubba bubba bubble gum, smoke, alcohol, lipstick touch: crowds, sticky floors, body heat smell: weed, alcohol, perfume, sweat

10 artifacts/objects:

phone (bright, intense, hot, awkward, mostly used for camera), my dog (small, bony, fluffy, warm, malleable), my rabbit (round, fluffy, squishy, unpredictable, insanely soft), my python (cool body temperature, smooth, strong, muscular, scaly, 4ft, constrictor), vintage cameras (intricate, old, leather, compactable, fragile), weed (green, scented, sticky, fluffy, tasty), laptop (bright, stressful, intense, slow, dented, important), car keys (battery-powered, loud rattling, too many keys, ladybug key, bottle-opener keychain, essentially a fidget object), kraft dinner (squishy, tasty, bright orange, cheesy, warm)

Lyric moment:

I pop a piece of hubba bubba in my mouth after smoking a joint outside, I don’t really drink but I smell it everywhere and feel it stick to the bottom of my shoes and I smell it on my friend’s breath, it’s still comforting. I keep rubbing the pink butterfly sticker on my chest to make sure it’s in place. The joint makes me crave a warm bowl of kraft dinner.

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Personal Universe Deck - environmental inspiration while creating my deck

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Personal Universe Deck - environmental inspiration while creating my deck

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My room filled with many of the objects in my personal universe deck

https://quizlet.com/ca/767509977/crwr-personal-universe-deck-flash-cards/?i=4wviro&x=1jqY

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Personal universe deck - reflection: What surprising but true combinations emerge from play with your Personal Universe Deck?

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Personal universe deck - reflection: What surprising but true combinations emerge from play with your Personal Universe Deck?

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These are my favorite combinations from the exercise of using my personal universe deck

1. Restless looks like cigarettes and unsatisfying breaths

2. Restless is the vinyl that spins before the needle drops

3. Restless is my burnt hand on a scolding mug

4. Restless keys jingle in my jacket pocket

5. Restless is a tv that changes every twenty minutes

6. Restless is my phone screen flashing on and off

7. Restless are the ashes that hover in my ashtray

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Other (poetic) stuff I'm noticing right now

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Other (poetic) stuff I'm noticing right now

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Every feature of my space compliments the rest, including living beings like Worm, my python

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Personal Universe Deck: A poem I love and that moves me (share poem or link)

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Personal Universe Deck: A poem I love and that moves me (share poem or link)

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This poetic excerpt moves me because it speaks to the fragility of our points of insecurity and vulnerability. The use of the word ‘motif’ in this regard is so beautiful to me because it identifies the ‘bone’ I pick with myself as a recursive subject.

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Gastown at night is a cold space that can feel warm because of the music, chatter, the deep toon of the steam clock, and sounds of footsteps and car tires on the cobblestone roads.

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There’s a certain level of comfort that comes with recognizing and even anticipating every sound in a familiar or safe space. My home is noisy - from my rabbit thumping around to my dog’s barks and my fridge’s hum- but the noises are comforting because I know them.

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The forest sounds are beautiful and mysterious. They echo in all directions and range in familiarity. But not all unfamiliar sounds in the forest are unsettling. New bird songs are always exciting to come across.

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When I first sat down, the sounds I missed were sounds that my mind initially just tunes out as white noise, from the sound of cars rolling by on wet cobblestone, to water rushing in the forest, and my little dog’s nails on my floor at home as he wanders around. My noticing changed from the first time practicing deep listening to the third time mainly in how quickly I began to hear everything. In the first space, I felt I was in more of an autopilot mode, it took time for me to hear the sounds in Gastown because I was only listening for the sounds I expected rather than keeping myself open to hearing the environment as a whole. As I continued the exercise with each location, I found it was easier and easier to immerse myself into a deep listening state. I think these changes also have to do with the three spaces. Starting this practice in a public space made it harder to get into a vulnerable enough mindset to hear everything instead of blocking things out to avoid overstimulation. The challenge with deep listening in my home is that I often forget about certain sounds that I’m familiar with because they exist as background noise for most of my day therefore, I needed to be extra attentive to make sure i wasn’t missing any. The forest was the easiest to listen to because it is where I usually practice mindfulness and where I find the most peace in sound.

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Illustration, dark, comic

Fact - this artwork tells a story

My world is cold

This comic starts lonely

I have all my animals around me

The artwork's bird is trying to communicate

My neighborhood crows are kawing

This bird makes intense eye contact

My world is slightly drizzly

There’s no rain in the comic

The neighbourhood animals sound happy

The man in this comic ends happy

But this cold, drizzly day doesn’t make me happy

The comic is black and white

The sky in my world is white too

The illustrator didn’t draw their sky either
My world is cold

Reflection

This practice of ekphrasis was challenging for me because it asked me to jump back and forth between myself and the art work. This almost felt like ekphrasis whiplash! However, this practice made projection and engagement more possible for me to initiate between the artwork and my world.

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I smell graphite and drywall. It reminds me of my person.

I hear crumpled paper and unsettled breaths. This sound reminds me of the restless papers that cover my body and wave like flags when I swing open and closed.

I see my person’s studio, it is contained by single-pane windows and cracked drywall, covered with paint and charcoal. The smallest thing I see is a fallen thumbtack that lays on the floor next to the paper it held. The biggest thing I see is a fiddle-leaf fig that stands in the corner, reaching for the window. When close up, I see the bumpy texture of this old building’s popcorn ceiling, the splintered and fibrous wooden flooring, the crumbs of a gum eraser on her drawing desk.

My person just left, slamming me into the doorframe. She was mumbling dissatisfaction with herself thinking nobody could hear. She feels like she is a failure. She feels unworthy of being in our space. She left. She didn’t just leave, she exited like the air in here was toxic; holding her breath, rigid body, and brisk motions.

Last night, I dreamt of her. She’s so beautiful when she works. She was painting the walls into a forest. And I watched her as I always do. She moves to paint me into the forest too. Her eyes scan my body but she doesn’t see me. She sees a canvas. My body is a canvas and I like it.

Outside of this room is not important. It’s cold and broken. Its walls are chipped and the structure of this building is mostly asbestos. I can hear faraway footsteps and car doors slamming beyond my frame of this world.

She will return. She always returns. She will come back and continue whatever she failed to create earlier. When she has her vision, she can’t be released from it until it’s fulfilled.

The weather seeps into our space. Single-pane windows keep nothing out. It’s cold, wet, and gray. There’s mold developing along the windowsill from the chronic rain. As uncomfortable as it seems, this space makes you feel connected to the outside world while still being somewhat protected.

Secretly, I have always wanted to be the window.

Reflection

This practice of ekphrasis made personification a lot more possible for me to exercise because it encouraged me to BE the subject of the painting. I loved what I came up with because it helped me access deeper feelings that were prompted by the painting.

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The form of poetic attention that made the most significant impact on my writing practice was Ekphrasis because it helped me to reimagine poetry through another subject instead of limiting myself to a more self-centered writing style. This practice is not diminishing my own feelings and experiences, it just helps me engage those emotions with the painting. I almost felt as if I was empathizing with the subject to produce a hybrid poetic story between myself and the painting. An example of how this process encouraged me to write this way is in the second ekphrasis exercise where I was asked a series of questions from the subject’s perspective instead of my own. I came up with a love story between a studio door and the artist that works in the studio. To conclude the poem, I wanted to circle back to the fact that the narrator of the poem was an inanimate object. In the last line, I tied this reminder in with my own feelings of longing to be somewhere or someone else so I said “Secretly, I have always wanted to be the window”. I wasn’t even aware of those insights about myself until I tried to relate to a door painting.

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Final Reflections: What are you noticing now that you weren't noticing before you took up this practice? Be specific and give three examples.

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Final Reflections: What are you noticing now that you weren't noticing before you took up this practice? Be specific and give three examples.

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Before I took up this practice of attention, I felt more attached to the world around me. Between my loud brain and the louder world, it becomes second-nature to block overstimulation out and to feel overwhelmed. By removing these barriers between myself and my environment, it became a lot easier to empathize and ground my writing practice. I noticed a huge shift once beginning these practices of attention because I became much more aware of three things:

1. Every subject in my environment is emotional and can help me access different thoughts and feelings in my own mind. Eg. When relating to the studio door painting, I identified a sense of admiration and longing within myself.

2. My present feelings and associations are strongly shaped by my past. Eg. During my practice of recollection, I learned that my interest in going out is fueled by pursuing familiar sensations such as smells of alcohol or smoke, sounds of people chattering, and ‘playing dress-up’.

3. The world is very loud. When exercising deep listening skills, I learned about censored sounds and how loud an environment is when your brain acknowledges them. The loudest environment is (funnily enough) my own home. I think this is because I tune out so much ambient noise inside that when I choose to listen, it feels like a very different space from the perceived silent home.

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In the world outside of myself, I notice a lot more noise. This rediscovery is important because I address this noise in a very different way than I originally did: noise informs actions and events within my world. By acknowledging sound more deeply, I can gain better insight into my environment and become more attuned to what is happening around me. To train my attention to continue to observe this, I have already begun to practice deep listening on a regular basis. I use it as a grounding technique to feel more connected and aware of my surroundings. A prompt I can use to heighten and orchestrate my attention more intentionally would be to notice and list every sound I hear and then aim to identify the source of each one. This can encourage me to relate each aspect of my environment to each other, addressing the world as cohesive and recursive rather than filled with abstract sounds, actions, and visuals.

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Moose