Espacios topológicos no Hausdor

In the following chapters, we too will go on a journey of sorts, meandering through a number of vantage points, all contributing to a drawing of betweenness that will be left as a trace in your mind. Between each of the chapters is an interlude. These interludes are from the sketchbook of my journey that I made each working day between my home and the university. The interludes, while often short in length, are important sites of otherness in the thesis; they provide satellite forms that help the reader to take their mind elsewhere and thereby create the spaces for betweenness in their imaginary.

31 In Chapter 2, the research anchors itself in the dynamic and complex discipline of geography. In this chapter, I explain how I became a geographer and how geography and I have woven together to shape these ideas. In addition, I discuss the qualitative methodological approach I have used to explore the concept of betweenness.

Through the use of autoethnography and in-depth, open-ended and semi-structured interviews I have gathered the evidence to support the key arguments (and mark- making tools) of the thesis.

In Chapter 3, the theoretical base of the research through the concepts of place, representation, non-representation theory, the everyday and the nature of journeying are explored. Each of these subjects helps to construct the conceptual scaffolding for betweenness and point to how and why it might be drawn. The chapter considers the concept of place as “bounded openness” (Malpas 2012), the inherent slipperiness of representation, the not-gone-far-enough non-representation theory, the under- acknowledged everyday and the ways lines, journeying and experience come together and are oriented amongst one another to hint at their role in conveying betweenness.

In Chapter 4, the thesis investigates the concept of creativity, both of itself and as it relates to betweenness. In doing so, the creative practices of poetry, dance and architecture are given presence (in writing) as possible instances where betweenness may be present (and thus drawn). This section functions a little like the interludes in that it seeks to illuminate betweenness in another form; a different shape and texture to the way it has been given presence thus far. It is part of the larger drawing of betweenness and, while discrete, it also functions as part of the whole picture.

Chapter 5 conveys the results of the thesis; it is where the data is woven into three narratives that give some weight and depth to the flightiness and ethereal qualities of betweenness. These, if you like, are the drawing’s heavy textured lines, circular and punchy. They pull at the shading already put down, and seek to ground the thesis in the real worlds of creative people. That said, those creatives lift the lines off the page

32 with every quotation and are held to the page only by the structure, provided by the writer, in which they are cased.

In Chapter 6, the thesis is grounded in what it has done and tried to do. It is rolled and tied in a neat package and handed to the reader. It is here that the reader may relax into the comfort of familiar thesis writing and get a stronger sense of what the journey has been about. The emergent nature of the thesis has been entirely

intentional, just as a journey reveals itself through its own unfolding. I can only hope that it is a pleasant one. Bon voyage.

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Interlude: I journey by boat…

Heading up-river in the tinny I’m almost always the passenger of late – since the birth of our second child. The first-born is curled up in his little nook in the bow, out of the wind, straight to sleep on the floor pretty much as soon as the motor starts. He’s got his life jacket on which makes a kind of portable bed. The baby’s too small for a life jacket, so I keep her close to my chest. It’s easiest just to feed her while we’re going along. Plucking her off my nipple brings great relief, though she looks for it again... I’m a human dummy.

Ben is watching the path of the river in front, keeping an eye out for any other boats... and their wake, and negotiating the various buoys and signs along the way. I can relax with great trust – we’ve done this journey many times. And this evening there are no complicating extras like an electrical storm, heavy rain, strong wind, or wind against tide. The sky is clear and the air is still. It’s that time of day where the sky seems soft, the colours merging into each other.

We’ve spent lots of time on different parts of the river at different times. Moving house more than twelve times over several years, all offshore houses. Some of those boat journeys linger in my mind. Moving house the first time, when it was just Ben and I in a six foot tinny with a four-horsepower motor, we were loaded to the hilt, with so little freeboard we were doomed had we passed another boat. I think back for a moment to all the various boats we’ve had… always getting bigger as our family grows. Ben has a lovely thing of setting me up with an armchair in the middle of the piles of boxes and bags like some Cleopatra of the river – or Lucinda Leplastrier.

It’s always windy in the moving boat and often sunny. The boat is open to the weather. Facing backwards the wind is less, though the motor sounds are quite clear. Sometimes I make vocal sounds in harmony with the motor. I forget that the distinction between the two sounds is quite clear from a distance. When we are at

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home we hear people going past in their boats, shouting over the din of the motor and barely able to hear each other – but we can hear every word clear as a bell.

Facing backwards towards where we’ve been is a nice thing to do. On perfectly still days the water is a millpond and various shades of matt green, curving around the hills and trailing off into small bays and rivulets. Scallops of land push into the river, some of them cleared of trees. It’s so easy to imagine groups of people – families – resting, talking, on the earthen nodes. It would be a good place to sit; you can see both ways up the river and often for some distance. It makes me sad to see the absence.

As the boat moves along, its natural shape pushes water out of our way. It makes ripples that fan out, but it also makes a single line that is continuous over a distance. The water that is the wake is a different colour to the river. The line is white. As we move along the river, the line that we leave follows the bends in the river – a long white line that slowly dissipates; the frothy bubbles subside and the line turns back to the colour and form of the river.

Figure 4. Lines on the river (Edmont 2009)

Making a mark on the river as we do reminds me how fleeting all things are. We are here now, drawing a line, pushing water out of the way. I’ve kept this in mind.

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Chapter 2: Research origins and

design