Welcome to Our Blog...

Hi, my “name” is KiMo, and I’m from a coastal locality between the Atlantic and Caribbean sea. I have a BA in general social science, I love to surf and generally be in the ocean or outdoors. Luckily, my island paradise has plenty of waves, and beautiful landscapes to enjoy all year round. The one thing I like, almost as much as surfing, and being a part of the landscape; is analyzing this beautiful coastal space as a geographic object. I enjoy looking at current; uses and distributions of space, notions of place (whose place/ whose culture?) class and property relations, all pondered through; a historico-geographic (maybe critical?) perspective…

Ok so if you haven’t noticed by now I want to be a grad student, probably in geography, but I don’t necessarily respect disciplinary boundaries. Unfortunately, I spent the past year getting the crap beat out of me by life, during my first year of graduate study in the US. While I’ll admit the past year was not my greatest academic effort, I have come to realize that; 1) graduate school and working "in academia" is a total lifestyle change, from what I’m accustomed to, and 2) I need to read a lot more (and faster), because even though grad school is suppose to be my “introduction” into this lifestyle, and an opportunity to “read more than ever before,” there is still so much that I want to read, (and need to read) to achieve the level of scholarship this magical coastal space deserves (and needs); in order to preserve its memory and maybe in some(positive) way “impact” its’ future.

Last year (while I was getting my ass kicked by life), I was slightly disheartened by the readings we were doing in my classes. Don’t get me wrong, some of it was important stuff, (most of it was relevant), and we were (obviously) allowed to do some research, where we got to read interesting stuff of our choice. Nonetheless, in general I felt my; philosophical, epistemological and theoretical roots had not been firmly set by those readings. Through the course of the year (specially the second semester) I began perusing the library for books I felt, I NEEDED to read in order to become a better geographer/scholar. At first, some “very important” books were not in the library shelves (at least not the ones I looked in), plus it became increasingly clear that I would not be returning to grad school next year. So I began to buy some of the books I really wanted to read.

At this point in my “academic journey,” I’ve acquired, a small yet diverse collection of books, some of which are; fundamental geography texts, others more general philosophy or social theory, and yet others, very specific, sub-disciplinary edited article readings. In any case, these are some of the books that I believe will "ground" my future analysis in critical thought. I still haven’t read most of them, so in order to motivate myself to read and write; more, better, faster, (stronger…) I have decided to start this blog.

I don’t know how often I’ll be able to post new entries but my goal is to reach a minimum of one post per week. I might not read some of the books all the way through, I might write more than one post about the same book, or I might write about something that has nothing to do with any book in particular (or I might write stuff in spanish), but the point (of the exercise) is to read (a lot) and write (even more), about everything (in general, and) especially about what I read, in order to keep my brain active and agile during this year of meditation.

Another reason for starting up this blog is; to try and generate discussion about the topics that I would like to research, and how I could “use” these readings to interpret my particular research interests. Having this page be an open discussion forum for whoever reads it will undoubtedly improve my writing by reading and responding to comments made about my posts.

I would like to end this rant by announcing that this is; an Open Space! Open to diversity, difference, eclecticism and especially critical, radical, or incomplete ideas. And hopefully it will also “become” a Dialectic Space, where conversations, ideas, thoughts, words and phrases, collide in conflict and distortion, in order to emerge (like a phoenix from the ashes), in the form of new ideas, thoughts, words, or phrases, which should also be scrutinized and criticized, in order to continue (endlessly) improving….

Long Live Plurality!

P A Z