Volume 4 Issue 1

By Cherena Reynolds, University of Cambridge

Citation

Reynolds, C. (2024) Morning Diaries of a Geographer: An Ode to Geography. Routes, 4(1): 66-67.

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I wake up and look out at the morning sky.

I think of cloud formation. Cumulonimbus clouds.

I hear the birds chirping.

I think of biodiversity, of a thriving species. Life forms.

The sounds of the city awakening. The commuters, the delivery drivers, children waking for school.

I think of urbanisation, the ‘myth’ of the urban, globalisation.

Within a moment, I have glimpsed the world and its function. Its processes.

The miniscule cogs that make the world go round, and round.

I make myself breakfast. I pour almond milk.

I read the carton’s packaging and think of the air miles of the Californian almonds. The bee welfare. Pollinators.

I turn on the news, for background noise.

I hear of the world. The very entity that I study.

I hear of people and places. I empathise, I internally debate, and I critique the ‘discourse’ that is presented to me.

I get dressed. I make a selection from my vast second-hand wardrobe.

I think of rejecting capitalism, and its consumerist culture.

I think of a world where ‘less is more, and more is less’.

I think of the mountains of textile waste in Ghana.

Fast fashion, forsaken.

I think of how my experience in the Global North, differs so greatly to the Global South.

I think of colonial legacies. Musings, all sparked by the contents of a wardrobe.

Musings, in fact, shaped by the very subject that I have the privilege of studying.

Geography.

The subject that has altered the way I think.

Altered the lens through which I look at the morning sky, or the almond milk in my fridge.

I long to share this lens with society; a critical lens which questions everything.

Feminism, Decolonisation, Marxism, Environmentalism.

Every ‘-ism’ should be welcome here.

Geography may just be ahead of society?

For some, perhaps, a world of Geographers would be reason for cheer.

Acknowledgements

My poem is inspired by the ‘Geographical’ conversations I have had at great length with Tom Moran, a fellow undergraduate Geographer. I have to thank the discussions that have not always had clear conclusions, but have nonetheless fuelled a curiosity and questioning of the world.

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