Reflection: Tench

When asked to write about my journey through this course I am reminded of the importance of placing one’s self in the context of their writing. So in preparation for the final blog post, I thought it would be apt to take a look at the first thing I submitted for this course, a brief introduction of myself and contemplation over “watching nothing happen”. Watching nothing happen is a concept introduced by one of our first texts, Awake in the Anthropocene by Jill Schneiderman, in which she describes a relationship geologists have with the environment that allows them to see the connections and formations of a landscape through geologic time periods that span millions of years. Even when she is moving through a seemingly inert landscape, she saw multiple temporalities melded together into one unified whole (Schneiderman, 84). My response to this was a rather confused one, I thought the question itself was posed in such a way that it centered the human temporality as the primary one and that even though the geologic temporality was addressed, it was simply a supplement to our notions of time. 

Now I find myself questioning my assumptions about it. As a human, my primary conception of time is never going to be geologic. I’d starve to death without blinking an eye. That doesn’t mean that there is no hope though, that means that any new frame of time I look at will be influenced by and influence my human understanding of time. Moving through the course time was a central theme, and similarly, time as a concept has been relegated to a tiny confusing box in my life and many others, especially for the past year. In Religion in the Anthropocene however, I reveled at time and played with it, exploring the interrelation between the human and the more-than-human. Whyte’s explanation of Māori ontologies gave a clear example that I had a very stagnant notion of time that was due for a change. He quotes Makere Stewart-Harawira regarding the interplay between the past, present, and future in Māori thought. “Within Maori ontological and cosmological paradigms it is impossible to conceive of the present and the future as separate and distinct from the past, for the past is constitutive of the present and, as such, is inherently reconstituted within the future.” (Stewart-Harawira, 2005: 42). Reading about a different focal point of time made me start to question what presuppositions I had about time, and how much control I had to shape them. I realized I had put very little value on my past, both as an individual and my generational past. Reframing my own history and its continuous influence on me helped me come to terms with many of the issues that were plaguing my personal and academic life. At the risk of being overdramatic, a quarter of the conversations I’ve had in the last 4 months have involved time. 

Grappling between linear and non-linear time is particularly challenging for me. Spiraling time once again opened up my mind to different ways in which the past and the future are beautifully knotted into the present. Whyte gave details about his experiences talking with Anishinaabe scholars Sherry Copenace and Dylan Miner about aanikoobijigan, which is an Anishinaabemowin expression for an ancestor and descendant at the same time. He writes “This meaning suggests an Anishinaabe perspective on intergenerational time—a perspective embedded in a spiraling temporality (sense of time) in which it makes sense to consider ourselves as living alongside future and past relatives simultaneously as we walk through life. Spiraling time, for me in this essay, actually refers to the varied experiences of time that we have as participants within living narratives involving our ancestors and descendants. Experiences of spiraling time, then, may be lived through narratives of cyclicality, reversal, dream-like scenarios, simultaneity, counter-factuality, irregular rhythms, ironic un-cyclicality, slipstream, parodies of linear pragmatism, eternality, among many others.” (Whyte, 228-229). Spirals of time are constantly unfolding narratives that we interact with, reflecting on, and interacting with past/present/future actions of our ancestors, descendants, and ourselves. The spirals continue longer than our brains can even understand. Ancestors stretching back to micro bacteria and descendants stretching towards an ambiguous infinity put a completely different perspective on what was important in my personal life. Trying to create a dialogue between myself and those ancestors and descendants was and still is challenging for me. Addressing colonizer power relations, environmental justice, hope for a future of life on Earth, and many other interrelations all start with time. What happened, what is happening, what will happen.  

So in the spirit of time, I ask you to sit still for as long as you possibly can and take time out of that tiny virus shaped box, let it expand and contract with your breath, and feel the totality of it. 

(TC)