In politicized work, I align my values and actions...

Appendices

I’m here writing this because I am interested in how materiality (i.e. artifacts, material objects) and embodied (non-verbal) experience intersect. What does it mean to offer language to an intangible experience through a material form? Do different kinds of materials afford different nuances to our intangible first-person experiences?

I’m here writing this because I am one of the many who have a hunch about the way (material) things and people are related.7 I just had a conversation about romantic relationships last week with a couple of old friends asking, ‘How do you know when you’re overworking things to keep a relationship together, and not just being invested, engaging all the options? How do you know when to let go? To stop?’ It’s a hard question to answer.

We were walking from the houses,
through the mangroves,
to the river.
As we walked, M’dou moved me
from his right hand side to his left hand side.
He told me that for a long time,
the forest has dedicated areas.
He was protecting the area
of the forest
and protecting me

Centering the way M’dou guided me made the design facilitation toolkits on my bookshelf peripheral.

I recognized the meditative sitting I did as a small defiance; I had crafted an exercise for myself that let me listen to my body and physically, literally lean into sensations rather than keep still in them or plow through them.

I feel totally tiny but dense and heavy as I walk up the street, into the
building and up the elevator.

I was struggling to keep the company I wanted in my mind’s eye as I worked. That effort felt heavy and concentrated right behind my eyes.

What she offered me was wide. It funnelled towards me—a narrow opening only just starting to expand. Those few messages written back and forth over several weeks felt to me like a quiet channel running between us.

I sometimes point out where our
experiences overlap.

Without exaggerating the importance or being overly-fixated, it was one of several moments that made me aware of my role as a guest in her home and as a researcher.

How flimsy was this, in contrast to the theory I know. How spare were my questions and modes of working. How thin was my relationship with each participant in the hour we had.

Getting down what I’ve written on this page is so uncomfortable and sweaty. It’s like a passage too tight to squeeze into.

It was a weight at the bottom of my spine. It felt like it was anchoring me there in the horizontal block at the bottom of the page