Shifting Sands: Writing Across Time

Abstract

This chapter seeks to leave habitual thinking behind by taking up the practice of walking-writing with my local landscape: the shifting sands of a beach. Engaging in acts of daily walking with this local landscape I experiment with the mo(ve)ment of walking-writing . The act of walking generates rhythmic mo(ve)ments across time: body, waves, sand, wind, rain, heat, cold, salt, life and death. Connecting with this rhythmic mo(ve)ment, I ask if it is possible to disrupt thinking, that is always tied to representation, and instead, allow thought to creep up behind one’s back in the writing process. Does seeking to engage in rhythmic walking offer potential for writing to become something other? Can walking-writing open up creative opportunities for writing to connect with the free mo(ve)ments of concepts infused with affect ? Will the practice of walking-writing permit writing to become intensive, even monstrous ? In asking these questions, the practice of walking-writing leads to a series of creative interventions into the writing process. The creative interventions are presented as a series of becomings : becoming -bird, becoming -unhinged, becoming -animal and becoming -differently productive. Mo(ve)ments are entered into and each one a creative intervention of writing . Finally, inviting the reader to engage in a rhythmic reading of this chapter—walking-reading mo(ve)ments—I offer up the opportunity to slow down and engage in the task of academic writing differently. To find ways that purposefully engage with creative interventions, exposing the fragility of knowledge in all its beauty.