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Complex Structures & memory work
Independent field study Research
Baltimore, Maryland
2018
If you are interested in learning more about memory work and how to pursue your own, please reach out to me.
This is my memory work. my individual lived experience. I studied my own human life path, mapping the geographical land I settled in and traversed. this experience was both symbolic and ironic. being black, girl and woman, being queer and activist and loud, being artist, writer, American, being all of this, and also holding endless possibilities. this experience was symbolic of the complex and chaotic nature of life. uncertainty is the way of the world. mapping my experience helped me to realize that trying to be linear being or what we call "normal" is not possible. perfection requires peace to be possible always, but this is not true to reality. we want this to be, we want to get there, but people are still enjoying the beauty in and of destruction. so how do you we help? we follow the path. we remember where we come from and then we trans(form) ourselves.
"Unlike a maze, with many choice points and many paths, a true labyrinth has only one path in and one path out. The one in leads to the center, and the one out leads back to the starting point. There are no decisions to be made and no blind alleys, and most importantly, you can see the path ahead. There is no reason to be vigilant--you must simply follow the path. Unlike a maze, a labyrinth does not inspire fear or the stress response. It calms......it is calming because it forces you to focus your attention step by step on the way in front of you and on your inner thoughts, and drains your mind of all else...Walking a labyrinth makes you breathe slowly in rhythm with your pace. slow, steady breathing is a very effective way to manage the stress response.
Healing spaces, Esther M. Sternberg pg 103-107 2009
"The Earth is a living mandala--a structural matrix through and from which flow a succession of changes, elemental forms, and primal surges, each surpassing the other in an infinite variety of organic structures and impulses, crowned by the supreme attribute of reflective consciousness. its flow, through working through a relatively well-defined structure, is subject to the infinite processes of growth and transformation by virtue of the ever-changing relationships both internal and external to its basic structure.
a mandala consists of a series of concentric forms, suggestive of a passage between different dimensions. in its essence, it pertains not only to the earth but to the microcosm, the largest structural processes as well as the smallest. it is the gatepost between the two. the mandala is earth and man both the atom that composes the material essence of man, and the galaxy of which the earth is but an atom. through the concept and the structure of the mandala, man may be projected into the universe and the universe into man. such mutual interpretation is the synthesis of the various polarizing tendencies now manifest upon the planet. the universality of the mandala is in its one constant, the principle of the center....the center is symbolic of the eternal potential.
jose and miriam Arguelles, Mandala 1972 pg. 12
To be whole is to be healed and to be self-healing;it is to be able to change and to follow the line of least resistance, assimilating and eschewing according to what is necessary for the maintenance of the organism. maintenance is not staying put, but being able to endure; not a static and a dynamic process. the root of endurance is transformation, change. often the best protection is change, even if it means being no longer what one has been; but then, one never is what one has been, and one never will be what one is. only the source of energy is eternal, and energy maintains itself through transformation. the mandala may be regarded as an engine of change, releasing energy to the extent to which the individual using it and concentrating upon it is capable of identifying [themselves] within it. ultimately, the mandala leads its user to a visualization and realization of the source of energy within [themselves]. the principle of the mandala lies not in the external form, which is unique for each situation, but in the center, the source through which the form-creating energy flows. to be integrated, to be made whole, means to be able to maintain contact with one's center. mandala is a centering technique, a process of consciously following a path to one's center. a fully individualized being, no matter what may occur to him outwardly, is able to maintain contact with this center, to assimilate and recreate all experience without losing touch with the vital source of his very being.
Arguelles, Mandala 1972 pg. 20
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