Reconstruction 5.3 (Summer 2005)
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Joel Weishaus. Forest Park: A Journal. 2005
<1> How do we define place? How do we develop our sense of identity and how do we recognize that development? With our constantly changing locations and with our locations themselves constantly changing into more urbanized areas, how do we locate and understand ourselves within our idea of place? How does our relationship with 'nature' touch our lives? In essence, how do we live, with - and within - ourselves?
<2> Joel Weishaus's latest piece, Forest Park: A Journal, is an open conversation in which those questions, and many others, are subtly posed and discussed. The journal draws its spirit, as Weishaus stated in the introduction, from Forest Park, a 5,000 acre park surrounded by the city of Portland, Oregon where Weishaus "work[s] at living deliberately the last quarter of [his] life." Throughout the journal, he attempts to track "psychological and mythological exegesis into complexity and depth." Does he succeed? That would be the wrong question to pose. More importantly, one should ask: how does he conduct such an analysis, and what can I, the reader, gather from such an analysis for my own life and my own continuous journey towards greater self-awareness.
<3> To discuss the journal, the style of the journal cannot be separated from its content and its many inter-related themes, and the most dominant style in this work is the development of 'invagination.' In Forest Park, Weishaus builds upon this trope he calls 'invagination,' which he first used in his autobiography Reality Dreams [1]. "The idea," he writes in a recent interview, "is to inject fragments from other writing into one's sentences so that the reader is suddenly reading someone else, and then you again. Technically, this is done by changing font style and size. Sometimes there is another voice within the appropriated voice" [2].
<4> In contrast to Reality Dreams, where the quoted text takes the reader directly to the bibliography, in Forest Park the quoted text opens to text boxes. This hyper-linking style results in the voices quoted merging even more with the voice of Weishaus, and the interruptions become more fluid [3]. Nevertheless, the fluidity of the text is generally not powerful enough to overcome the greater sense of disjointedness and jumpiness. Consequently, the reader may be left feeling unrooted and not fully embraced by the text. In other words, in contrast to the more dominant form of literature, the reader may not be taken to the images and stories that the writer presents, but rather left neither fully where she is, in her own place (both physically and spiritually), nor completely walking alongside the writer in his journey. Perhaps, however, this sense of displacement is what Weishaus deliberately wanted to convey. Perhaps it is only when we are feeling displaced that our senses and perceptions become more acute and we allow ourselves to critically examine our surroundings and our relationships to those surroundings. Perhaps it is also during those times that we feel a greater sense of freedom.
<5> In Forest Park, Weishaus definitely does not hold the reader by both hands and drag her along with him in his journey. Rather, it feels, from the start, like a conversation that encourages digressions and interruptions from the reader. The connections, for example, between the ideas and thoughts presented in the journal are typically quite loose; the transitions from one point to another are left for the reader to make. Consequently, this is a journey that the reader is encouraged to traverse slowly, leisurely, and with the encouragement to bring one's own injections and interruptions into the text. Weishaus' invagination further encourages the reader to read the text differently each time the text is read. Read it through one time, following Weishaus from his own thoughts to the embedded quotes, and then read it again skipping the interruption and reading just Weishaus text.
A poet experiences the world as language: there is no separation between one's senses and one's style, like a hermit who can no longer be distinguished from real places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society---which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in the face of a cliff. [4] [The bolded text is from Joel Weishaus. The unbolded text is from M. Foucault, 'Of Other Spaces.' Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986). p. 22]It is through this style that Weishaus explores the themes of home, human relationships, and religion - and all within the embrace of nature. Throughout this journey, there is an aching sense of reaching for more.
After eons of worship and grief, why is wisdom still elusive? [5]As well, there is humility in this yearning, a subdued recognition that the search is everlasting.
<6> One beauty of this text is in its similarity to life itself: there is no one overarching theme, but rather many themes that intersect and play upon each other, just as our life is not merely one path towards one goal no matter how controlling or issue-focused we choose to be. Consequently, the text can be examined and dissected from many different angles, from one of the broad themes of place and identity or from a more specific examination of, for example, the sexual discourse interspersed throughout the text or the visual images that accompany the text. There is depth to this writing, and to the project itself. And this depth complements the invagination style itself since it further encourages the reader's freedom. There are gems in this text - from Weishaus' words to the quotes he chose to the presentation of the material itself, and each reader finds the gems that speak to her at that moment in time.
<7> There is not enough time in this article to critically and accurately review the many themes in the text. Instead, and in the spirit of Weishaus' journey, here is a selection of gems that the reader of this article can jump from - as one skips from stone to stone in a calm lake - to gather one sense of the presentation in Forest Park alone one of the running themes.
<8> In his opening paragraph, one of the gems of identity is presented through a poem from Japanese Zen Master Soen Nakagawa.
Touching one anotherOne's identity as connected to others is touched upon throughout the text. Weishaus connects with this issue again when he later writes:
each becomes
a pebble of the world [6]
I am seated in a large audience. My name is called. I walk to the stage, shaking hands along the way. At the podium, looking into a mass of blurry faces, I say: "A minute ago I was one of you. Now I'm up here, facing you. In a few minutes, I will take my seat again. Even when one of us steps forth, we are always only a part of each other." [7]And how is our sense of identity impacted by the natural world around us, especially when this natural world is diminishing?
What is a city?What happens to us when we are thus displaced from our native environment?
A paved-over
forest peeking through
the cracks. [8]
Like with captured animals and plants, humans are deracinated from the rhizomic world; however, with us it has more to do with the breadth of insight than where the body resides [9].And if:
Trapped in civilization, captured animals absorb the violence of the human world. The Stockholm Syndrome: "The captives begin [10] to identify with their captors. At least at first this is a mechanism, based on the (often unconscious) idea that the captor will not hurt the captive if he is cooperative and even positively supportive. The captive seeks to win the favor of the captor in an almost childlike way." [11]Then do humans also absorb the violence in the manner of the Stockholm Syndrome captives? And, if so, who are our captors? Or, are we both the captives and the captors? And, if so, how do we break the chains that we have created?
<9> One strength of Weishaus' journey is the questions that it brings to the forefront, and the varied ways and angles through which an oft-considered subject can be reconsidered.
<10> From a technical perspective, although it reads like an open and, at times, welcoming conversation, Forest Park also reads like an unfinished draft, one throughout which editing and typographic errors are scattered. These mistakes leave the reader wondering if the text is actually finished, especially since the last page of the journal still concludes with a 'next' click, which, if one clicks on it leads her back to the Introduction.
<11> Then again, perhaps this is a deliberate maneuver on the part of Joel Weishaus.
Rania Masri [*]
Endnotes
[*] Assistant Professor, Environmental Science Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Balamand; and Director, Environmental Communication Program, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Balamand. rania.masri@balamand.edu.lb [^]
[1] http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/weishaus/cont-r.htm [^]
[2] Highland, August. "Interview with Joel Weishaus." The Muse Apprentice Guild. Winter 2004. http://www.muse-apprentice-guild.com/fall_2003/1interviews/joel_weishaus/home.html [^]
[3] One minor negative consequence of this hyper-linking style is that if the reader wishes to know the reference of the embedded, quoted text, she would be forced to read the journal online, and thus, most likely, within the confines of internet accessibility, confines which are typically indoors. [^]
[4]http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Page-1/text-1.htm [^]
[5] http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Page-8/text-8.htm [^]
[6] http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Intro.htm [^]
[7] http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Page-4/text-4.htm [^]
[8] http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Page-4/text-4.htm [^]
[9] http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Page-3/text-3.htm [^]
[10] http://www.yahoodi.com/peace/stockholm.html [^]
[11] http://web.pdx.edu/~pdx00282/Forest/Page-1/text-1.htm [^]
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