Territories

I've started this blog for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the whole travel blog seems to be the thing to do. As I'm about to start traveling (ok...not for another three weeks), I thought I'd start one. Also, I wanted to be able to make comments on those of my friends already across the sea. I'm going to be studying archaeology at the University of Durham for the entire academic year. Here I'll document my travels, cultural experiences, and cool archaeology stuff I learn. I'm very excited for this adventure, but in my experience adventures are shorter. This seems a bit more like real life; as it turns out, it's much more easy to be scared about real life. Nevertheless, I'm sure it will be fine. I'm sure that the English are very nice, and I'm sure I'll make friends, and I'm sure that I'll even be able to survive the stabs of nostalgia and intense loneliness. I'm anticipating a lot of lonely walks around Durham - apparently a beautiful old English city. Tragic, no? In any case, I'm sure it will help ease any romantic lovesick tendencies I come across, as well as the homesick ones. Despite being terrified, I think this year will be very good for me. I'll be truly on my own, and I'll get to work more on that whole growing up thing.

More important, I'll be able to explore that whole archaeology thing more. I just got back from a month-long dig in Greece, and it was fabulous. However, it also got me thinking about my future in archaeology. At this point I don't even have a culture in mind. I do know about what time period I'm interested in, if by time period you mean "really old". This upcoming year I'll be able to focus in on honing my own interests. Sounds like a pretty enjoyable task to me. I only have a vague idea of the classes I'll be taking, but the various course descriptions I've perused leave me drooling with excitement. A whole class on archaeological illustration? Field archaeology of Britain and Ireland? European pre-history? "Ancient Complex Societies In Action" (Egypt/N.E./India)? Awesome.

The second reason I wanted to start a blog is art. This summer I've gotten into reading blogs, specifically art blogs. The internet is such a fascinating medium. I love being able to see the work of endless artists - artists who do art for money, for pleasure, or for both. It's an endless stream of inspiration, ideas, and crazy beauty. I like it. Anyway, I'd like to participate in that community a little bit more. Something that this world has introduced me to is the concept of art journaling. It's such a release to think of art as journaling; for one thing, art is intensely meditative and personal - the journal medium brings out those qualities. Also, for me, it immediately zapped away any insecurities. I can't be scared of something being weird or looking bad if I'm doing it only for me and my little journal. On the other hand, art is meant to be shared. So that's what I'm working on now. This blog is partly a way for me to get over my insecurities regarding my artwork. One of those insecurities is calling the pictures I draw/paint/doodle art, and myself an artist. But you know what? They are, I am. Anything made by someone is art. If I call it art, it's art. So there. Something one of my blogger inspirations (Suzi Blu) said that really stuck with me is that when we were little we colored and colored. These pictures were put on our fridge, our walls, and no one could tell us it wasn't art. What changed?

Anyway. The point is that this summer I've gone on an art rampage. I'm going to continue with it, and post pictures. I'll also probably write out thoughts that come with rampaging, because let me tell you art rampaging is all about observation and thinking. At least for me, art is less about creation than it is discovery. Ok, that sounds sappy, but what here's kind of what I mean. It's all already there. The paint, the paper, the pencils. What I'm doing is putting them together. If there's something that I want to draw, more or less accurately, it's about observation. It's about looking at something carefully, and paying attention to shadows, lines, and relationships. When I'm doing something that isn't just translation, it's also about observation, but in a different way. When I draw a line, my brain makes all these little explosions of connections telling me where it could go next. Usually, these explosions result in drawing another line without even thinking about it. In order to continue and expand, I need to observe these explosions. I need to figure out where my head's going, so that more explosions happen. I need to sit back, and watch what happens. When I watch, I can remember, and use those same patterns elsewhere. It's a pretty cool process, although I think I failed at describing it. Anyhow - documenting those thought explosions will probably be useful to me.

What it comes down to is this: lots of things are changing, and I want a record of how they change.

And now, some quotes from the book my title comes from, because it's really good and you should read it. Also I feel these quotes are surprisingly relevant. The boundary of twilight separates this world and Elfland. Now, it's important to know that Elfland isn't cute and full of happy dust. The main conflict in the book comes from the clashing of the two worlds, and neither one is shown in a much better light than the other. The contrast of the two worlds is used to highlight how this world is different but equally beautiful. The book deals with time, so I felt it was relevant to archaeology. It's also set in England written by an Englishman, so again, relevant. The art part should be fairly self-explanatory in a moment, but I guess it helps to understand that an art mindset is very different than a normal art mindset for me, so it's like crossing worlds (woo-ooo). I chose the name boundary of twilight because right now I'm about as liminal as it gets - I'm so liminal I'm surprised I don't have a rite (sorry, anthro joke - rather, anthro reference to myself that really isn't very funny). Ahem. Quotes:



"Alveric said over and over to himself farewell to all these things: the cuckoo went on calling, and not for him. And then, as he pushed through a hedge into a field untended, there suddenly close before him in the field was, as his father had told, the frontier of twilight. It stretched across the fields in front of him, blue and dense like water; and things seen through it seemed misshapen and shining. He looked back once over the fields we know; the cuckoo went on calling unconcernedly; a small bird sang about its own affairs; and, nothing seeming to answer or heed his farewells, Alveric strode on boldly into those long masses of twilight.

A man in a filed not far was calling to horses, there were folk talking in a neighbouring lane, as Alveric stepped into the rampart of twilight; at once all these sounds grew dim, humming faintly, as from great distances: in a few strides he was through, and not a murmur at all came then from the fields we know. The fields through which he had come had suddenly ended; there was no trace of its hedges bright with new green; he looked back, and the frontier seemed lowering, cloudy and smoky; he looked all round and saw no familiar thing; in the place of the beauty of May were the wonders and splendours of Elfland"(13).



"And the colour of Elfland, of which I despaired to tell, may yet be told, for we have hints of it here; the deep blue of the night in Summer just as the gloaming has gone, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening with light, the deeps of lakes in the twilight, all these are hints of that colour. And while our sunflowers carefully turned to the sun, some forefathers of the rhododendrons must have turned a little towards Elfland, so that some of that glory dwells with them to this day. And, above all, our painters have had many a glimpse of that country, so that sometimes in pictures we see a glamour too wonderful for our fields; it is a memory of theirs that intruded from some old glimpse of the pale-blue mountains while they sat at easels painting the fields we know.

So Alveric strode on through the luminous air of that land whose glimpses dimly remembered are inspirations here. And at once he felt less lonely. For there is a barrier in the fields we know, drawn sharply between men and all other life, so that if we be but a day away from our kind we are lonlely; but once across the boundary of twilight and Alveric saw this barrier was down" (15).



"He moved three steps and came to the frontier itself; his foot was the furthest that stood in the fields we know; against his face the frontier lay like a mist, in which all the colours of pearls were dancing gravely. A hound stirred as he moved, the pack turned their heads and eyed him; he stood, and they rested again. He tried to see through the barrier, but saw nothing but wandering lights that were made by the massing of twilights from the ending of thousands of days, which had been preserved by magic to build that barrier there. Then he called to his mother across that mighty gap. Then he upon one side Earth and the haunts of men, and the time that we measure by minutes and hours and years, and upon the other Elfland an another way of time. He called to her twice and listened, and called again; and never a cry or a whisper came out of Elfland. He felt then the magnitude of the gulf that divided him from her, and knew it to be vast and dark and strong, like the gulfs that set apart our times from a bygone day, or that stand between daily life and the things of dream, or between folk tilling the Earth and the heroes of song, or between those living yet and those they mourn. And the barrier twinkled and sparkled as though so airy a thing never divided lost years from that fleeing hour called Now" (141).



"For some moments Orion stood thinking among his hounds, trying to decide which way to turn, trying to weigh the easy lazy ages, that hung over untroubled lawns and the listless glories of Elfland, with the good brown plough and the pasture ad the little hedges of Earth" (p. 144).



Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924).