The Soap Bubble
In the field, on this Journey, I understand myself as a participant observer; I read my surroundings and their tenants as they read me. Nothing more. The plane for effecting, for molecular exchange, is a democratic one. My notes from the field offer one cross section, one moment, one story of an always changing, ceaselessly multivalent world. The 19th century Baltic biologist Jakob von Uexküll employed the ‘soap bubble’ as a tool for understanding the distinct perceptual worlds of flora and fauna being observed. Likewise, I offer my soap bubble, my ‘planetary vitrine,’ as I put it months ago, and it’s collision with the bubbles of other matters, as the motivating substance of this travel log.
