Encountering “Gerald”: Experiments With Meandering Methodologies and Experiences Beyond Our “Selves” in a Collaborative Writing Group

Abstract

This article describes a process of moving in and out of a place of “ordinary, transient and sustainable community” within a collaborative writing group. The group meets together both on- and offline. Over the last 5 years, the authors have developed an every day, meandering, and nomadic practice of being, talking, and writing. This enables frequent encounters with a very precious, precarious, and particular sense of collective energy. The group came to describe this experience of moving beyond, in, out of, and through their individual and collective selves as “Gerald.” This article comprises a narrating text in which quotations from the authors’ writing archives are embedded.