Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

From one dot to another...

Dear Dot...er dot...er whoever....

I realise that you may not recognise yourself as Dot or dot.

But, whether you do or whether you don't...





I mean.

You mean?

That's already quite a lot...

Enough?

It will have to do...

I mean.

What are we on the grander scale of things?

Are we anything more than mere specks...dots...star dust?



NOT.

Even BOWIE.

And he was GOD.

To put an over fine point on it.

Or a comma, a semi fucking colon;

Huh?

Well.

I mean.

You don't understand.

Me neither.

You mean.

We are punctuation to posterity.

(What might it mean? He doesn't know. He leaves it as a véhicule for divertissement.)

Ha ha.

That's French.

Yes.

Entertainment.

Ooh. la. la.

Ah?

Là.

A question mark?

Ha!

An exclamation mark!

A colon:

A mad dash -

ONwards...


SHIT...
-ASH.
DUST!


Shh.... (a final acronym...)

Written off, or laid down.

FLAT.

R.I.P.

Underscore _

CHANGE PARAGRAPH

I mean.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” 

Carl Sagan



We are the world.



Well...a bit of it.

Punctuation to posterity.

Beat it...Michael.

Dot to dot.

DOTS...



A dot, I spent hours going dotting a page.

WHAT THE FUCK FOR?




I know not why.

I mean.

That is enough.

But there was something in the dots.

There was a connection.

Prosaic!

Prozac?

A hashtag. 

Does that have a dash?

#decdoodle.

Whatever.

Just a link.

#  (absurd when you think about it...on a grander scale of things)

There was a feeling.

It sparked creativity.

I suspect it is what is essential here.



What did you say Carl?


"FOR SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE 
THE VASTNESS IS ONLY BEARABLE 
THROUGH LOVE"

Carl Sagan


I suppose that is what creativity stems from.

What connects?

YES!

What connects? God damn it!

TEDx

OH HI!

X now?

Amy...?




Love learning or its pendants: 
Love yearning 
Love mourning 

Drives us.
CRAZY!


YOU
CRAZY
FUCK!

What else is there to do?

Here....



So I connect dots.




With a hashtag.

#decdoodle.




And I groan at Despacito.



And then the dog says...















Monday, December 4, 2017

Out on a limb without a leg to stand on.



It's 9:30 in the morning and this wasn't supposed to be happening.

I had other things planned. 

And yet.

Here I am live-blogging a process with all of it's pauses and....history. 
(he adds as an after-thought at 9:38)

Well I find myself leaving this twine of Ariadne. 

God knows why. I don't believe in God.

I come here and intersperse a line...forgetting why.

I take a few deep breaths. 

Other things jump in via DM.

10:34 I spend forty five minutes speaking with my friend Marcin over in Poland about two conference submissions.

I return to this page...to what had already been written.


9:38 


I read through it and come back to CFP's (I interpret that as call for publications)

I select "The Scholarly and the Digital." rather gingerly. 

Rather gingerly? 

Yes. 

The term "Scholarly" is not one that I would associate as one of my preoccupations.

But I suppose it is time to reassess that.

10:40

Indeed what does it mean to be "scholarly" in complex digitally saturated times.

How do we pull "this" together?

Who pulls "what" together?

This "pulling together"....

What if it means "pushing apart"?

What it it means "letting it flow"?

What if it means "constantly reassessing" boundaries?

What if "scholarly and the digital" "loosely, momentarily hangs together"?

What if we left the centuries built "church walls  of academia" to rediscover "an ambulatory perhaps heretical oralistic dialogue"?

What if we break down the altar to the written word?

What if truth is negotiable, context bound, often provisional but essentially timeless?

What is truth if more than love?

How can love be anything more than intensely personal?

I find myself returning to Jesse Stommel. 

He was in a sense my starting point here, when reflecting on a slide count: 73 slides for 30 minutes.

I found myself stripping away any hope that I might have had for a comforting, timed, rehearsed, linear script.  

I was out on a limb, without a leg to stand on.

I find myself returning to Jesse Stommel.

I plonk a quote here:

“Digital pedagogy is becoming, for me, coterminous with critical pedagogy, given the degree to which the digital can function both as a tool for and an obstacle to liberation.”
~ Jesse Stommel, “Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain”

Blimey, "(Un)Mapping... [(Un)Mining?] the Terrain?

Where is that link to the page I had?

I end up tweeting the link to myself from my phone.


"To queer Open is to imagine it as an emergent space always in process. Open Education is not confirmed by courses, platforms, syllabi, hierarchies, but exactly resists those containers, imagining a space for marginalized representation — a space that recognizes our unique embodied contexts and offers opportunities for liberation from them."

Jesse's words above will accompany me in my reflection.

Fluidity in thought, in identity, in containers, in dialogue, in contexts, in scholarship.

Fluidity....I find myself connecting to #lesmauxdesmots.

There are those words which, if small, become battlefields.

LIFE, DEATH, 

BE LONGING, 

i, I, MY, MINE, ME, YOU, YOURS, HE, HIS, HIM, SHE, HER, HERS, IT, ITS, THEY, THEM, THEIRS, WE, US, OURS.

RIGHTS, MEANING, VALUES.

LOVE, FAITH, HOPE, 

Fluidity, scholarity, solidity...

I embed Jesse's keynote from Digital Pedagogy Lab's Vancouver 2017 iteration.

I prepare for more close reading, listening, watching and put this on pause to head towards a class. 11:30

Click on more info to see video with all comments, log in to Vialogues to comment.














Saturday, May 20, 2017

Spring flowers.



"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” 

FELT. 

FLOWER. 

FIELD.

FENCE.

FARM.

FELDGANG.

"It's the greenest spring that I can ever remember. It's just incredible right now. It's stunning. You walk outside when it's sunny and it's like O-M-G! W-T-F! And then there are no words...."

Terry Elliott.




OPEN


CARE

Maha Bali


LOVE


bell hooks.


BOND






FRIEND


"This could be part of story...when you ruminate."

Terry Elliott.

Terry, Maha, Kevin, Sarah, Laura, Mary Ann, Wendy, Suzan, Bruno, et al.


SPRING



OPEN 


STORY.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Love you to bits.


Fake me.
Brand me.
Spam me.
Fuck me.

Love you to bits. 

I am retouched.

Love you to bits.


Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Scratching around... Les Maux des Mots

I am losing the plot.

I never had a plot.

I had a few seeds and then wonder...










I am scratching around.

Coming up strawberries.

It wasn't until Laura wrote "Teaching like strawberries" this morning that I saw my mother's allotment garden...


Be attentive to gifts of love.

I am kneeling down close to the ground, turning over strawberry runners looking for ripe fruit.

She is scraping about with a hoe.

I can smell the soil.

It sticks to the palm of my hand.

The sun is bright, high clouds glide by.

I hadn't been down to the allotment for a few years now.

There was no reason to do so since my parents were buried.

It comes back to me now.

In an instant we are alive.

"What is for lunch?"

I am thinking of whether the fishmonger's there today.

"Memory is never a precise duplicate of the original...it is a continuing act of creation." 

Rosalind Cartwright.

I planted a few cuttings more in faith than hope.

How they are growing...wildly!

There will be fruit.

Fragile flowers...

I don't want morbid collections of pressed flowers.

It is the act of giving freely which interests me.



I don't want design, I want dialogue.

I don't want factory farming, I want wild meadows.

I don't want deadlines, I want lifelines.

I want joy and wonder at learning.


Lifelines.

I sent a few seeds to Autumm.

It felt like what I had to do.

I don't know why.

I had no idea what they were or whether they might still grow.

Half of them were French.

They were seemingly dormant.

I sent the seeds to Autumm.



Lo and behold, she does some sort of magic, talk'in her language and they come up strawberries in Laura's garden.


What sense can one make of that?



Autumm's started speaking French.

She has Salons d'Automne. (of course she would...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salon_d%27Automne



How the hell did that happen?

We've gone from strawberries to Fauvisme.

Scratching the surface.

It all started...(that is not true)

Are strawberries rhizomes?

"A rhizome, on the other hand, "ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles" 

"rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo"

Deleuze and Guattari.

It all started when Torn Halves talked of Kubrick.  (is that true?)

Sod it! My memory is not Storify.

If I find it written is it true?



It all started when Terry framed my scratching.

Is that true?



It all started when Terry shared his sun-rise.

That is true.

The rooster knows.



He reminded me that it...this... we...they... you....are exquisite corpses...

We are not finished any more than we started.

It all started when I scratched my flailing around in the dark onto a page.

I have been scratching around for years...



It all connects with MONOLITH.



It is blank.

Wonder is a black box.

Technology won't save us other than to amplify our screams.

Now I have an expression for a blank page.

Wonder is a black box.




Science taught me much.

We know so much...so little.


I have become attentive of scratching the surface.


Love and scratching.

I was reminded of Mary Ann's work.



As she scratches her soul, wild birds build nests in her porch.

Spring is come.

Life flows strong as body is frail.

It is curious.

Be attentive to gifts of love.



Zombie Pedagogy.

I am suddenly reminded of a word Jesse Stommel uses to talk of his pedagogy.

The word suddenly turns up in an article entitled: "Pity Poor Flesh: Terrible Bodies in the work of Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Romero."

'Tis an exquisite zombie corpse indeed...

http://brightlightsfilm.com/pity-poor-flesh-terrible-bodies-films-carpenter-cronenberg-romero/#.VzsDU5F97IV

“We are always already in a state of being on the cusp of an unraveling, a violent deconstruction, an explosive discharge of disruption and freeplay …”

We are unravelling...as we weave.

We are weaving...as we are unravelling.



Oh you wanted to know the word?

Sorry my memory fails me.

Jesse's word is: 


VISCERAL.

Our will is strong the body frail.

Ours...

I visit Chauvet Cave and am immersed in wilderness.

I am both caught up in wonder and lost in the 36,000 years of plot.


It is not the trampling herd of rhinoceros' that stun me.

It is the scratched claws of cave bears imitated by man.

Bear by autumn, man by summer.

It is the smudge of a red palm.

It is the bulging rock-formation become horse flank.

Listen to it breathe fire.

It is the stampede at torch-light.

It is a skull of a cave bear.



Is it science?
Is it art?
Is it sacred?

Please let us mean more than bloody words.

There is a scream of fear, longing, and fraility in the void.
It is ours...



"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."

Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Friday, April 1, 2016

Be kind to monsters.

I am sorry.

It's ingrained.
It's under my skin.

It comes from my education.

We were open to the parish.

The local witch comes to tea.

We had witch biscuits and scones and jam.

A week goes by.

Monday comes.


She is found hanging from a tree.

How do you make sense of this?

Local alcoholic comes for respite from the bottle.

He will never hit his wife that one time too many.

He loves the kids so.

He love the kids so.

He loves the bottle more.

He hates himself.

He sobs.

How will they make sense of this?

Grieving family comes to bury their differences.

Troubled souls share their distress.

Dead Papa drums his thumbs on the kitchen table, the time of the evening dinner.

Mama shivers, kiddies shake, won't Papa be at peace yet?

Be silent, be still, be gone, please be gone.

How will they make sense of this?

Lost, infirm, insane, abusers, addicts, losers. rusers, terminally ill all.

We come to find counselling.

We come to mark our births.

Another page turns.

I am born.

I sat on the stairs at the age of four tapping my feet and waiting for the bloody hymn-singers to go home.

Won't they go home now?

"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty."

I felt wholly not at home.

I didn't swear when I was four.

I would have done, if I could have done.

Those bloody hymn-singers.

Won't they go home now?

How to make sense of this?

Lighted windows rush by, the time of a train journey, to school.

I feel the cold window, pain on my cheek, condensation streams down

Lives flash by.

Lives flash by.

What sense do I make of this?

I have no home.

Little homes, little people, big dreams little means, short lives, sadness and joy,

They fly past, too fast to know, slow enough to reflect some home I miss.

They will miss those little lights when they are far, I think.

"I love working with people," my father said.

"I love working with people," I say to my father now.

He is long gone.

He is dead.

He is here by my side.

We are at peace.

How do I make sense of this?

So here we are.

So here we are now.

We are here together.

What lies behind your smile, your tears, that grin, that bravado, that triumph, that despair?

I feel for you.

I feel for us.

I believe in kindness.

Throw that stone at the monster.

Will it hurt?

Will it scream?

How shall we make sense of it?

Don't you recognise yourself?

It is you, that monster.

Deny, deride, delete.

Go on. Go on. Go on now.

I drum my fingers on the kitchen table.

It shall haunt you yet.

"I was taunted and sneered at so that I would not go home to my meals, and used to stay in the streets with an hungry belly rather than return for anything to eat, what few half-meals I did have, I was taunted with the remark—'That's more than you have earned.'"
"The Autobiography of Joseph Carey Merrick

Joseph Merrick.





Love,Terror & Forgiveness.




They are wrong. He is wrong. She is wrong. I am wrong. You are wrong. It is wrong.
We are wronged.

It came from discussions, conversations,
tangled monologues, challenges, squabbles,
crossed swords,
that alienating platform 
and 
ended in
feelings of hurt
and
hard words. 

We are right.
It is written.

Striving for moral high ground we crash
Icarus wings flaming
to Stygian mire.

Nobody is listening.

Nobody knows.

Nobody cares.

We feel bad.

We think, and we think, and we think, and we think, and we think and we are lost to our thoughts.

We can not think freedom.
We feel bad.


“ if I do not love the world if I do not love life if I do not love people I cannot enter into dialogue.” 

― Paulo FreirePedagogy of the Oppressed


Does freedom lie in love?

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.” 
― Maximilien de Robespierre

Does freedom lie in dialogue?


“To defend the oppressed against their oppressors, to plead the cause of the weak against the strong who exploit and crush them, this is the duty of all hearts that have not been spoiled by egoism and corruption… It is so sweet to devote oneself to one’s fellows that I do not know how there can be so many unfortunates still without support or defenders. As for me, my life’s task will be to help those who suffer and to pursue through my avenging speech those who take pleasure in the pain of others. How happy I will be if my feeble efforts are crowned with success and if, at the price of my devotion and sacrifices, my reputation is not tarnished by the crimes of the oppressors I will fight.” 

― Maximilien de Robespierre


Who are our oppressors?

Is there justice in vengeance?


“This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.” 

― Paulo FreirePedagogy of the Oppressed


Does liberation lie in forgiveness?


“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.” 

― Maximilien de Robespierre


Oppression lies in terror.


“[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.” 

― Paulo FreirePedagogy of the Oppressed


I steal words of others.

Others remain silent.

Am I oppressor?
Am I oppressed?

Who will name me?
Who will love?
Who will listen?
Who will forgive?











Thursday, March 24, 2016

Love is foolhardy.






"The earth has music for those who listen."

William Shakespeare.


It was foolhardy...
[Middle English: from Old French folhardi, from fol 'foolish' + hardi 'bold' (see hardy).]

It came from reading Sean Michael Morris's post

"On love, critical pedagogy, and the work we must do."

It was his final paragraph which really touched me:

"As I finish writing this post, I can hear the distant call to prayer carried on the breeze over Cairo. I pause to listen, to wonder at why it stirs me. I must always allow myself to be stirred -- by learners, by teachers, by pedagogy, by the weird transpersonal nature of digital networks -- and I must always let that stirring call me to critical practice in my teaching."

I not so much thought but was captured by this instant.  I took a piece of paper and scribbled some words and some lines and some shading.



"What is most precious?" I wonder.

Love - that is present - in the moment.

Giving-forgiving.

To be attentive to ourselves, to others, so that we may move beyond ourselves.

To be alive to silence, to words, to meaning.

To accept our common vulnerability, our inability to communicate, our ability to not quite communicate...

To be alive to our common humanity and our relationship with time...

The time that is counted which counts for all but nothing.

What is knowledge without love?

It is foolhardy.

I put in the word "Love" in the search box of this blog.

I couldn't contain the word...it was beyond me.

I strived and I failed.

I gave up. 

There were too many occurrences for me to contain them here.

I browsed through the posts, picking up pieces which caught my attention.

Other pieces will capture my attention tomorrow.

I make some sort of order of this.

It is vain.

We cannot be contained my friends, neither love, neither learning, neither education.

We are for ever in movement, spirit more than bones.

We are ether with a voice.

Educare
Making space is the most important role for the teacher,

In MemorIam
"There is no sense if there is no love.
There is no education if there is no love.
There is no learning worth learning if there is no love."


So that we may be alive.

"A light breeze is dancing on my skin.
I can feel the hairs on my arms moving.
I can hear the leaves in the trees..."


Educational Complex
"There is this idea of always striving, never arriving, of being authentic in our relations with the other...in this our lives."

Remember Stormier Days
"Hacking 'On the shore', I discover hidden waves, hidden rhythms.
I am swept out to sea.
I love the sea."

Feint intention.
"Scrawl etched on surface
Criss-crossing haphazard lines;
Feint intention felt."

In a Different Light
"I contemplate photos in no particular order.
I am not looking to do anything.
I let myself wander.
I love this feeling of freedom.
Where will I be taken today?" 


"We are thrown out and there we lie, helpless.
Little by little we try to make sense of our lot.
I think we all come to the same conclusion: Alone we are meaningless."

Dear Maha
"We must unpick the colonisation of our minds, bodies, spirit, as children of the slaves and the slave-owners, as mothers, as fathers, as sisters and as brothers." 

Distance Learning
“Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.” 

― Paulo FreirePedagogy of the Oppressed

Being Here.
"The word content is beginning to feel like a pervasive prison.
We have all the content in the world but we appear to be unhappily self-contained.


I am coming to the impression that the concept'content' hides a distinct world view...the politics, the economics of enclosure, of appropriation, of extraction, of individual isolation/wealth/poverty/identity, of identifiable authors, of 'scientific progress', of superiority over nature.."

Order from chaos.
"An inflexible frame is a corpse"

The Fear of Silence
"Colossal rigidity, whether in dinosaurs or dictatorships, has a very poor record of evolutionary survival."
Carl Rogers


Souk
"Navigating through formatted academic wasteland where orderly discussion is the order of the day, 
I soon start tapping my fingers, looking out of the window, find any distraction from the monotony."


Learning is a mechanism.
"We need STANDARDS to stand for.
We need STANDARDS to brandish.
We need STANDARDS to rally the troops."

"There's always some clever clogs who shows off his obsessionally finicketedly constructed plastic scale model."

"non-feeling of being undead one can get when one looks at one's watch every two minutes to see when the working day will be finished."

Time is not money.
"While it lasts...
Take your little paper envelope.
"Now hush!"
I shall not just take."

"Critical moments, of connecting with others uncritically, semenly critically, a mass of bodies, a mire."

Eclosuredisclosurenclosure
"The definition of scholarship seems to be open to negotiation.
I prefer to be called Simon anyway.
If that name gives me no authority to be curious and to be heard...why?
Wasn't that the idea of democracy?"



"When I hear 'it is generally accepted that we need to be raising a generation of life-long learners', I fear that what we may be saying is that we need to have a generation who will have to accept geographic mobility, instability, constant retraining, for ever diminishing returns." 

Fear of flying.
"I don't believe that we can progress as communities, as societies, without play, without taking risks.
I don't believe that we can work with people as if they were disconnected parts to be machined.
I believe that we are in the dark ages of human social development." 

The Fear of Silence
"The degree to which I can create relationships which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself."
How on earth can our growth be measured?
Can pedagogy be sustainable if it does not accept change?
Are we really concerned about the growth of others or are we too full of our empty selves?
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
Carl Rogers

Ajar
"There were so many silent years.
I am beginning to miss listening.
There are so many unexplored avenues." 

Nature, Nurture, Network
"I think my educational world changed when I started viewing myself and my fellow learners as one of these 'little guys', part of a wilder, wider learning ecology."

Summer Holiday
"They begin to realise that the real interest of the holiday was not the bus, was not the destinations, was not the surf-boards, the bucket and spades and the whole palaver but the shared story.

The man with the umbrella joins them again in St Tropez, they sit down on the beach, they exchange stories around a glowing camp-fire, they laugh about the madness of the venture, the absurd sight of seeing Mildred trying to waterski, they sing songs, they plan new trips.

Finally, those instants spent around the camp-fire make the rest of it all seem worth it.

From afar, young kids hear the laughter, see the glow, and dream.



"Joyfully sow seeds narrowly and widely, nurture saplings, tell stories, share fruit...have a laugh." 


"There was a gleam in his eye.
There was a connection.
I suddenly felt a spark run through me.

I suddenly felt a whole lot less tired.

Joy rises. 
This is joy.
This is spring.
This is love. 

It is infectious."

From Mobs to Communities
"People care, people are generous, they would love a better lot for them, for us, they are awaiting a lead not a promise. We are not all maggots."

I thought back to Maxime's lines:
"Fermez vos ordinateurs, allez courir, allez rire, serrez vos proches dans vos bras, envoyez un message d'amour."

"Let us weep. 
These sheets are tagged with our humanity.
Let it bleed my friends, it is that which binds us. 

Let us laugh out loud at this madness.
Laughter gives us strength.
While we may..."

"Whatever they had done, however many steps they had taken, however many places they had seen, they had all disappeared into some black hole."

"I suppose that when I am absent other people might imagine or say that I have 'presence'.
Well I suppose I have presence in my absence."

"I have proof that they have ceased to exist now...of sorts.
They still talk to me.
Maybe I am in touch with the spirit world.
I am still deeply attached."

"I am becoming unable to follow their traces. I am now reliant on others who will be able to tell their part of the story, a part in which I am now absent." 

"We are unfinished monsters....


We are alone, at the mercy of others, helpless...

What is needed my friends is not passion driven learning but compassion driven learning."


"Perhaps that is the most important thing to try to learn from these courses: how to push ones' own limits and continue to live peacefully with others who challenge them."

"If there is no one 'COMMUNITY' then there can only ever be personal ethics and desires which will vary and fluctuate according to who, with whom and when and where people interact." 


Random Eyes
"No matter. I am now looking at this page anew.
It is blank,  crying out for a release from its mutism.
It is a dumb waiter.
I am flying down to a basement.
If only the top will keep spinning.
I will write before it is too late."


"How did my voice escape? 
It is living on borrowed time."

"There is power in our silence."


"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see."