In expanding upon the associated fields of my original verb word "remember" and my thing word "narrative", and the different types of containers "boxes" that these two terms could be conveyed in, I thought about human perceptions of our world and the three dimensions that we live in, (up / down, left / right, back and forth). It seems that the constructs of our worldly dimensions are defined by a type of box, one which is constrained by our perceptions of what is and what is not considered physical reality.

With this second experiment, I have shifted within associated fields to two new words. Instead of remember, I will use ritual and in place of narrative, I will use epithet. In conveying how the two new words are related to one another, I will change the closed box/book container that I presented in class to the open container of possible inter-dimensions. I am determined that in the process of combining epithet with ritual, that I can create a shift in realities, and though I might not be able to see the shift take place with my own sensory perceptions, it might be felt or seen in another dimension, just as well and none the less.

How this all came about: In contemplating the concept of realities and dimensions as boxes, I thought of a walk I'd had taken last summer at a cemetery in Orono, and the memory of a headstone that I had come across, of a twenty-six year-old man named, John Jackson. Some research into John's life revealed that he had been a graduate student who was teaching at the University at the time of his death, in 1870. According to the History of the Maine State College and the University of Maine, by Merritt Caldwell Fernald, John Jackson had been harvesting a field of wheat for the agricultural school on a hot July afternoon, when he and some of his students decided to go for a swim in the Stillwater River, not far from where the Beta house is now. John was swept under when he missed a ford in the river and drowned. His students and friends searched for his body into the night and finally pulled him from the river the next day. It seemed, John had no one in the world close to him except his mother who lived in Northern Canada, and she was unable to attend to his funeral arrangements. Sadly, his friends, students, and colleagues buried John in the Riverside Cemetery on a high, wooded ridge that overlooks the river. His epithet reads:

John Jackson, Aged 26, Drowned at Orono July 19, 1870, “I know my Redeemer liveth.” Erected in memory of a good and faithful teacher by members of his school in Dennysville.

This story of the drowning and the narrative of John's epithet, got me to wondering if the river might possibly be holding the physical memory of John’s drowning and if this were true, it must be a terrible thing for John to be forever trapped in the memory of his struggle by the river’s place memory. I've heard of place memories before, existing as a type of haunting, and I am quite sure that I have experienced a place memory, myself. I once clearly heard dresser drawers being pulled open and shut in my own bedroom, but I had no such a dresser to make that type of noise, so the only explanation, as far as I was concerned, was that I was experiencing a "place memory", or an event memory that exists in another dimension.

I am convinced by this experience that memories of things, happenings, noises and events can be moved in and out of dimensions, so with this conviction in mind I decided to go to the river today, and collect the memory of John's drowning out of the water. I took a jar with a copy of the epithet inside of it to the river and filled it with water. I used the epithet as a way to attract and direct John’s memory energies into the jar. When I got home later on, I put a small stone in the jar with the water. The type of stone I used is believed to resonate at such a frequency in the universe, that it calms stresses and disturbances inter-dimensionally. I plan to let the river's and John’s memory of the drowning, set in the jar at my house with the stone for a week or two. During that time, I will offer calming and reassuring prayers to the jar, and I will read John's epithet frequently in order to keep his memory active and moving within its dimension.

When the time is right, I will go back to the river and pour the water from the jar back into the river. It is my hope that when I pour the water back into the river, that the river will release the memory of the drowning and in the same way, if John's memory of his drowning is also still in the river, that it will be released by the new energies that I’ve poured into it.