budding scholar

Christina has been an artist and writer as long as I’ve known her. We met at a pottery class in the summer before 6th grade, and became friends as we learned to push and pull terra cotta clay into small bowls and cups. In high school, we wrote letters to each other at night and she drew me pictures I still have. When I went over to her house, I remember admiring her art table, in a corner of the living room. One sister played the cello, the other painted too, and I was jealous and wanted to be like her. In college she inspired me with her writing, her stories, essays, papers. She also marched me to the computer lab after finding me in tears with scribbled piles of papers, and showed me how to use Word to write myself. We took a class together our last year where we wrote “mini-ethnographies”, and explored writing, identity, and the moments of life that thread together into stories.

In the years we’ve been friends, Christina has always believed in me, pushed me to tap my own creativity. When I ask her for advice, or just complain about what’s bothering me, she has this uncanny ability to ask questions that get at the heart of things, nudge at the edges of self doubt and gently make me see what I’ve been kind of ignoring all along. Most recently, we were talking on the phone and I was telling her about my project in Barcelona, complaining about how I couldn’t seem to get away from national identity, but that I was so tired of thinking about nationalism. And she started with her questions: What does it mean to people, really mean, to live with these language and identity issues? What part of the human experience is this about, this identity struggle between Catalan and Spanish? And what’s your story in this? Maybe there’s a story beyond your dissertation, beyond the academic story. As you can probably imagine, it was her questions and encouragement that got me writing again, and pushed me towards the eureka moment I wrote about the other day.

When Christina started her blog five years ago, I remember thinking “great, a way to read her writing more often!”. In the years since, as she’s continued writing, publishing, painting, photographing, I’ve seen how her creative work touches people far and wide. How she writes, what she sees, who she notices. She inspires all she touches, and I’ve never believed in her more.

Which is why I’m writing this post, now, on a clear, cold, February day in Toledo. Last week, Christina launched A Field Guide to Now on Kickstarter, an innovative site where people can get support for creative projects. She is seeking backers, small and large alike, to help fund her time and materials while she finishes her first book, a collection of essays and art. Her goal is $10,000 by May 15th. I hope you’ll pledge ($1 or more), and maybe tell a friend or two. Because this is a person whose work inspires all it touches. One day you will walk to your gate in an airport, or come across a paperback on a vacation, or notice someone reading one of her books on the train, and will be able to say “I helped Christina Rosalie publish her first book!”.

Thank you for considering, for reading, for supporting a writer, artist, friend.

Like the sudden way I notice the contours of stone through the camera lens, I notice the way a conversation about coffee can become a discussion of national identity. And like the layers of mountains fading across the end of Spain and into France, I notice layers of questions and future projects in my daily fieldwork with schools and education policy in Barcelona.

What does it mean to belong as a new immigrant in a school? What does the work of governments and policies have to do with belonging to a place, our identity as “people from here”? When do we belong to a place, and when do we know someone doesn’t belong? How do people navigate the small interactions across cultural boundaries that happen in cities, schools, trains, marketplaces? Does government action have anything to do with how we interact with each other?

A page has turned with my work. I’ve been writing a lot, about what I see in schools, what I learn in interviews, and all kinds of other things. I am speaking better and better Catalan, and with this comes more insight into the way people think here, how they see these questions. A dissertation, a study, something that will become a real body of work still feels far away. But the project is beginning to feel like it has legs and might someday walk.

And another thing is happening, a surprising and exciting shift. Put simply, I’ve realized that a dissertation is not all that will come out of this work I’m doing. The Ph.D. is important training, and it’s helping me do a project with all kinds of good things like strong research methods. But I’m taking more than academic papers from this. The questions I’m uncovering, encountering–about identity, culture, language, and crossing boundaries of difference–they will be braided into my dissertation. But they can also become other writing projects (non-academic work? op-eds? future blog posts?) , or art, or advocacy work, or something else entirely. In other words, the thesis and the contribution I make to academia as a result of this year is not the sum total of what I can take from having spent this time in Barcelona. There are other stories, other meanings, other ways to work with what I’m uncovering here as I watch and listen and learn.

It’s wonderful to feel such creative possibility in this work. Welcome after months of plodding, wondering, trying, failing.

***

Where are you with your creative projects? If you’re plodding, or trying, or failing, what keeps you going? How does the feeling of creative possibility spark to life for you?

The birds swoop over our heads as we walk by, diving towards bread tossed from the small boy’s hand. They fly down and linger a moment, trying to fill their bellies with bits of bread. The bread blankets the beach, and the birds must quickly find as many grains of sand as crumbs of bread because they sail back to the breaking edges of waves and settle down upon the water again. But their bellies call them again, and the instinct to seek food, and once again they burst toward the bread and peck away in the sand.

We walk with shoes off, toes curling around pink, gray and brown rocks that spot the grainy sand. My nose is filled with the smell of fried food, myseriously blanketing the beach though I see no fast food joint in sight. The smell, and the loud roar of traffic in the distance remind us that we are on an urban beach, on the edge of a teaming city.

I hold my breath, stare into the foam, feel the cold Mediterranean water on my toes, and hope to follow the birds this week, bursting forth again and again, pecking in the sand, flying on inertia and instinct. My bread is my research. I am here, in this city, knocking on doors, calling for interviews, looking for people who will talk with me and share their stories. Like the smell of fast food as we walked down the beach, the weight of the project is ever present, nagging at me, sometimes scraping and grinding, sometimes sparkling into inspiration. I wonder what I’ll find in the sand this week.

***

How’s the week looking to you, dear readers? Thank you for your thoughts, reactions, comments. I love hearing what my writing and photos bring to mind for you.

The goal was to write 700 words a day this November. The result: an average of 678 per day, with the most being 2120, and several days of 0 (yes I kept track, in a spreadsheet!). On the whole it felt like an attainable goal, and I almost met it. Some days I used the writing time as a way of pushing forward on things like interview guides that had felt tedious and difficult (and thus led to procrastination). Other days it was a way of taking notes and reflecting on experiences, like the trip to meet a group of researchers in Jaén. Many days I wrote about research methodology, a necessary thing to think about right now. This feels like an important step in my career, becoming a regular writer. The goal for December is the same, 700 words a day, with a new focus: work on context/background material for my dissertation.

What are you working on, writing-wise this month? How’s it going?

Looking ahead, the week is full. Work in the morning, snatches of time in the library, visits to Gaudi architecture with my parents, meals at home. Looking back, the weekend was fuller. Walks along harbors, roads, parks and waterfalls; a 90th birthday celebration.

My 700 words a day has been a challenge, made just 3 days of the goal so far. But I think of them as October practice. Now it’s really November, and a Monday, and I’m excited about keeping up the writing this month. I find there is rhythm and flow to writing with a goal of 700 words a day. So my next hour includes a warm cup of Chai tea and writing. And each morning this week will be the same.

Do you ever write with a goal in mind? What kind of goal works for you?

I’d seen a few yellow-splashed trees around campus and the city, but hadn’t yet seen a deep red fall leaf. And finally, a month into the autumn, I’m feeling fall here in Barcelona. Maybe it’s because along the Mediterranean it comes later. Or maybe because without classes, I didn’t have that feeling of settling into school. But now here I am, sitting at my desk at the university, looking out on pines and spots of yellow-dotted poplars. My project papers are spread around me, and the idea of research design is starting to feel less like something other people do and more like something I might get good at.

I’ve got a long list of things to do (people to contact, websites to read…) in this first week of real fall work on my research project. And I’m going to work on these. But I have one simple goal that is at the top of the list, part of a long-term goal of becoming a writer and researcher in my field: start writing 700 words every day. At first. And then once I settle into that, perhaps a bit more. The goal is to work on making daily writing a routine during the next month. I’ve tried this before, but it’s usually fizzled if I don’t have a deadline. So I’m trying anew, inspired by writer blogs I follow and their efforts to write furiously during the month of November.

What are you working on this Fall? How’s it going?