In Emerson’s poem, Waldeinsamkeit, he describes his feelings when he is in seclusion in the woods. He says that when he goes there he does not think about time, it is a place where he can always go, and it takes care of him. He says that the forest is a place where one can be completely one’s self and one doesn’t have to hold back. There is something magical about being there that just makes everything work. It gives you company; its where you belong. Emerson found all these things in the forest; I found them in love.

 

I decided to base my book on the idea that my place where I have these feelings. Though seclusion is usually thought about as one being alone, isolated and disconnected from everything, why can’t it be about two people? In relationships, the feelings of love are only between two people and thus in a way, the two are secluded, separated from the rest.

 

I created this book about the relationship that I have with my boyfriend. The pages are circles, which represents unity. The words are written with fortune cookies that I collected from our Chinese food dinners throughout our relationship. Every Monday my boyfriend, myself and usually a few more friends go out to Chinese food after having gone for a walk in our town forest. The words on the fortunes tell the story of our relationship. On the back of the pages there is a tree that represents our relationship and expresses how everything that happens in our lives affects it. I placed the pages inside a Pringles can that I painted; we also often eat pringles together. The painting on the can both looks like a mountain range (nature) and expresses the ups and downs of a relationship. How the pages are taken out of the can expresses how we took each other out of the darkness and into the light. There is a lot of extra space left in the can, which shows that there is room to grow and there are pages to be added to our story.