At the Threshold of a Yearlong Fieldwork
The bus from Rome to Ostuni takes 7 hours. It is a coast to coast ride and, hourly speaking, it would for many be quite some time to spend on a bus. I sense it as going by in the instance of a second. I just sat down and, all of a sudden, I find myself hit by a surrealistic and chaotic feeling of total happiness and extreme jitters, by a simultaneous existence of excitement and nerve-racking anxiety. The landscape on both sides of the road is, as far as eye can sight, lush of olive trees and I realize that we have entered the region of Apulia — the home of roughly 60 million olive trees and, for the upcoming year, also the home of mine. The beginning of a journey takes place as the end of a bus ride approaches.
Delightful to be here, settled in and unpacked in a house in Città Bianca and some bureaucratic procedures later, I can finally go for my first walk through the olive orchards. From the hilly top of Ostuni they seemingly cover the landscape like a green blanket down to the ocean. Walking through them, variances are noted, such as in plantation distances, and I think about how different things occur from above and from within, about how a shifting of perspective enable expansion of perceptions, about how planting strategies have changed from Roman to current times, and about what has impacted the reasons for doing one thing then, another now, and what else this has or will influence. It is a most pleasant walk in terms of the weather and surrounding, a stressful one in terms of thoughts. It is an uneasy feeling to cope with, the stress that is, as I usually experience my daily walks as a way to get my head straight and thoughts sorted. This day though, thoughts are not sorted, but swarmed, bursting my mind like nothing before. So much to do, so many things to consider, where to start. I do not know where to start. Corrective reflection. Note to self: you do know where to start, for you are aware of that you have a year of fieldwork ahead, that things have their times, and that most of the all-at-once thoughts that now clogs up in your head are months away to be thought about. I keep walking. Make a stop every once in a while, so to take in that which surrounds me. Bodily. Emotionally. Be here. Be Present. I stop regularly to take photographs. Visually documenting the surrounding through framed lens. Think about what I take note of. Think about how these photographs will act as sparks to the experience I had walking here today. More thoughts. More photos. Deep breaths. Feel a need to get ordered – in a physical sense get thoughts sorted out from mind to paper – and decide to already today buy large colored sheets to start putting up notes on the wall. My momentarily disorientation equally momentarily eased, for this is a feeling I need to get used to. How else could I manage a year of immersing myself in unfamiliar settings, learning about unfamiliar practices, from the point of view of unfamiliar perspectives, worldviews, value-landscapes, and what have you.
I am a meticulously structured character, interested to have a particular and highly arranged order to things. It is an embodied feature of my being. Interestingly enough, I also have the habit of questioning orderings of things, poking their constitution by asking why, twisting and turning the details of any given ordering, correlating it to other orders – structures – twisting and turning the details of them too. I do this also when engaging ordering practices myself. It is in my backbone, both the ordering and the constant questioning of orders. No escape from that trait. It should therefore come as no surprise that I have the habit of organizing photos and videos on a daily basis. I do so for the sake of remembering what I have specifically photographed and for what reason, for the sake of making sure to work through my thoughts in a simultaneous writing of fieldnotes and labeling of images, and for the sake of keeping a correlated order to my work at once on a daily basis and under the umbrella of a dissertation project. As I sat down after my walk that first day to do this, I started to compile a photo-index, which, while following the same pattern, is yet another way of sorting and working through thoughts and experiences. Speaking of patterns and indexing, I have bought several notebooks in different sizes and designs. I find them beautiful. It might sound silly, and maybe it is, but their coverages inspire me and while I am in no need of inspiration at this point of time – got plenty of that just initiating this research – I know that I down the road, as I write my thesis, most probably will need to read through notebooks that I find inspirational of sorts. A good reason as that is, at least to my mind, for days will come when I need inspirational boosting, it is not the most important one for purchasing distinct looking books though. No, the main reason for that is once again the ordering habit, for in a most curious way, distinct looking notebooks afford order to my notes in my mind, as memories of what I have written where are evoked by imagining the cover of the book it was written in. In case that does not work as wished all the time, I have bought myself a diary as well. It is mainly for jotting down thoughts of more personal character, but also to write highlights of each day. Got myself a book about the monumental olive trees of Apulia too, and what a delightful read that is! I have only started reading it, but it is thus far great indeed. Not least as it features Italian and English side-by-side, for which reason I get to practice my Italian while immersing myself in the patrimonial legacy of the landscape in which I now work.
La prima settimana has gone by, almost as quick as the bus ride from Rome, and I gather that my sensation of stress during that first walk through the orchards is founded in an ephemeral sensation of time. This year will fly by in no time. I have a year of fieldwork awaiting now, but shortly, it will be a year that passed all too quickly. At least I have primed myself to the idea and to the experiences to come by devoting this week to settling in of different sorts. I still have jitters, and it is all in order.
