The big picture.

Preamble.

I hadn't blogged twice in a day for months. Then Maha made a comment on Twitter. It was a response and a appreciative comment to a blog post I shared with her.

There isn’t and never has been “A big picture” only ever moving, solitary and ephemeral collages... “A big picture” is a lie.

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) April 8, 2019

The big picture

Sorry this is an inane rant.


So this (the map above) is the (a) big picture.

This is a perspective that I was brought up with.

This is a perspective that I was educated with.

My father was born in 1907, the year on the map of the World.

It's a big world made smaller with all of that pink.

The pink here represents the British Empire.

The pink represents the worldview of some people in 2019, they still hark back to it in their attitudes, arrogance, their bank balances and their politics.

[BREXIT]

[JOHNSON, FARRAGE, REES AND MOGG]

[THE COMMON (cough) WEALTH]

There is this idea that all of this and all of that land belongs to "us" and not to "them".

That is the big picture - power.

[POWER AND CRICKET AND AFTERNOON TEA AND GREENWICH MEAN TIME]

BIG PICTURE = BIG POWER.

Power built on military domination, torture, slavery, expropriation, exploitation, land of hope and glory, "Christianity", Inanity, songs, prayers and lies.

"OUR HISTORY" - THE BIG PICTURE.

PROGRESS THROUGH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.

PROGRESS THROUGH FREE MARKET EXCHANGE.

PROGRESS THROUGH DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM.

(Altenatively: progress through Chinese Communist Party etc )

PROGRESS THROUGH SUPERIOR VALUES.

There are still people who hold onto an irrational reverence to science being an explanation for all.

[I had a class with people who told me this only a few days ago...]

There are still people who hold onto an irrational hope in strong men being an answer to politics.

[TRUMP, PUTIN, BOLSONARO, ORBAN, MUSSOLINI, NETANYAHU, HITLER, etc]

There are still people who hold onto an irrational bigotry that white people are innately superior.

[WHITE SUPREMACISTS, KKK, etc]

There are still people who hold onto an irrational belief in their "god" granting them the right to kill.

[TOO MANY TO MENTION]

There are still people who hold onto an irrational belief that humans are simply men and women and nothing in between.

[TOILETS, GENDER CORRECTION SURGERY]

There are still people who hold onto an irrational belief that Western societies are built on meritocracies or goodwill.

[LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE, THE STATUE OF LIBERTY]

There are still people who hold onto an irrational belief in "individual success", the primacy of the individual.

We love stories of good and evil.

[AXIS OF EVIL, GOD the DEVIL]

We love ideas of heroes and villains.

[MANDELA - MANDELA]

We talk of saints and monsters.

[POPE(S)]

The big picture is a comforting lie....for those who like the picture.

[GOD SAVE THE QUEEN THE FASCIST REGIME, THEY MADE YOU A MORON]

We love our myths, our legends, our narratives, our plays with neat beginnings and endings.

POWER NOW INCLUDES PINK POWER!!!

Of course now, if we wear rose tinted spectacles,  we might think of pink representing a new trendy, liberal, more caring Britain.

Uncomforting Exceptions to the big picture...

Somewhere in all of that pink there is a little land called Brunei.

"The British" no doubt found support for a pet exotic, a Sultan convenient.

They kept him sweet over the years with Eton, baubles, bullets and flattery.

They oiled the wheels of his Rolls Royces, with the oil that came cheap.

They fêted his presence in their big picture with our majestic Queen.

Now that ex-pink has it in for all the pinks present.

Brunei introduces death by stoning as punishment for gay sex

Big picture of big building.

Post scriptum

Sigh. Yes Simon. I meant the context :) I think I can get my head around your writing when I interact with you for longer periods of time, more immersive... but when it's decontextualized, it's beauty i don't fully understand but still appreciate

— ℳąhą Bąℓi, PhD مها بالي 🏵 (@Bali_Maha) April 8, 2019

Sigh, sometimes, often even, we get sparked by comments and words taken out of context.


(It's been too long a while that Maha and I have not interacted)

Sparks can light candles or bonfires.

I fear that the story in the Guardian about a tiny country and its tyrant will spark more islamophobia and more "big pictures" with more big headlines.

I wonder when we will be able to appreciate the beauty in people's expression of spirituality, or sexuality, the value of all people over that of oil, pf the value of life over material possessions, of the reality of our common humanity, and to accept a more equitable, more complex, less graspable, less controlled, more moving collage.

Post post scriptum.

The big picture is that this post is a mark of individual privilege and servitude- a few data points for those who have access to the means to interpret "big data" and use it for their ends.

Looking at all that blue doesn't make me yearn for the pink but makes me wonder how it will affect the stories people will tell their children...

Footnote and conclusion.

We are indeed slaves to what brings us freedom....

Great explorations.

"Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux."

Marcel Proust.




Birthrights...

The massive, tortuously carved, ebony sideboard stood against the wall in the dining room.

It's drawers resisted a small child's curiosity.

It was flanked by a pair of lions on pedestals.

I had no idea of these objects' provenance.

To me, they were just family heirlooms.

I would later learn that the furniture was "Anglo-Indian."

Abridged histories...

I pored for hours over the collection of Ladybird histories.

I became well versed in the kings and queens.

I prided myself in my ability to recite lists of monarchs and the six wives of Henry VIII.

I had some difficulty in remembering which ones were beheaded.

Great explorations...

I knew of the great explorations of Cook, Raleigh, Livingstone

Each page of text was accompanied by a colour illustration of the deeds of a great man.

Great swathes of ocean, war, people, and civilisation appear as painted backdrop to each page.

There was Columbus.

I was somehow less interested in him.

Was it that he was Spanish?

Rare women depicted seemed weirdly sacrificial.

Joan of Arc, Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale.

I found them difficult to fathom.

Unclaimed territory.

I leaf through a Ladybird odyssey of Captain James Cook, "An adventure from history."

"One of the greatest of all the famous sailors who have set out from the shores of England to discover new lands."

I so loved "adventures from history" with their pictures on every other page.

I met Cook as a young boy.

I was left in no doubt of the acuity of his fine moral compass...

Take your telescope now and gaze with Captain Cook towards uncharted waters.

And gaze.

And gaze.

And gaze.

And raise another Union Jack.

And take your hat off.

And your crew cries: 

"Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray."

Another page, another discovery.

Take your oars and row to another shore.

Seeing with new eyes.

And we reach this group of islands that...

"no one had seen before.

[I deduce the word native is a synonym of "no one", as "no one had seen" the islands before.]

Then. They bow in awe.

"Nor had the natives ever seen a white man."

A. White. Man.  Is.  Not. A. God!!

No! Not at all!

Cook is

"only a man like themselves."

But!

Be careful now!

Natives are "great thieves" (unlike you, Cook, who wouldn't steal a shilling).

Their friendship is inconstant.

Alas!

Natives become ungrateful, unfriendly even.

They bash your brains out.

Seeing with new eyes...

"New Zealand’s maritime history has struck rocks with revelations made by a University of Aotearoa professor, Professor Ika Pounamu, during a dinner speech to the Royal New Zealand Sail-Tub Club. The shock was not simply that a university professor would say something forthright about New Zealand’s colonial past to the Royal New Zealand Sail-Tub Club in Auckland on April 8.

The shock was that the professor laid bare the secret mechanisms of empire to a host audience that knew more about knots, sails and navigational signals than the secret meanings behind ‘discovery rituals’ performed by Captain James Cook."

"At the highest point of a small island in Queen Charlotte Sound, located at the top of Te Wai-Pounamu, Captain James Cook cast my ancestors as inferior savages, unworthy of political rights over their bushy and coasty lands. Through his Tahitian navigator and interpreter, Tupaia, Cook actually asked a so-called ‘old Indian man’ if it was alright to erect two wooden poles with flags so that any ships that may pass would know these sailors had been there. Upon raising the Union flag, Cook then had the cheek to claim to take possession of the southern Māoriland in the name of King George III. Cook brazenly toasted with Māori and he gave the ‘old Indian man’ – a Māori chief – the empty wine bottle, to whom he had already given a threepence coin, which was the going rate for purchasing an acre of land off natives throughout the empire, and some spike nails with the King’s arrow cut deep upon them”.

"Captain Cook was a sissily-costumed Masonic puppet, and a sly-as-a-City-of-London-Corporation-bond-trading trickster, who ‘gained consent’ of ‘the natives’ by a deceptive construction upon the circumstances based on the absence of full disclosure”.

http://snoopman.net.nz/2016/04/09/captain-cook-was-a-sissily-costumed-masonic-puppet-says-maori-historian/

I turn the pages.

I discover new eyes.

I do so love an adventure from history.

The end of the world.

I had that uneasy post-Brexit feeling.

I woke before five, went to look at my phone.

It took me a while to take in the news.

TRUMP to win.

I went back to bed.

I didn't sleep.

I got up and turned on the TV.

TRUMP wins another state.

My son came down to breakfast, followed by my daughter

TRUMP has won.

They couldn't believe it.

They didn't have many words, they dropped their heads and ate breakfast.

I went to the university, the students were sitting, muttering in the gloom, lights unlit.

My colleague arrived.

She had not slept.

She had received a message from her young grandchild.

TRUMP NO.

There is that feeling that we as adults have not done enough to protect our children from this.

We have let down the kids.

How did we let this happen?

What else can happen now?

Huddling in the dark.

Students huddled together preparing themselves for their class.

One or two stopped me to ask for a few words.

Some were speaking about war.

I couldn't find the words in English.

I spoke French.

I felt they needed reassurance.

I wasn't much of a reassurance.

They couldn't believe it.

TRUMP won.

I found two student blog posts in my RSS reader.

"The end of the world"  Mael had written.

There was a picture of TRUMP and then it was blank.

I flipped it into a Flipboard magazine and then saw there were some words.

I opened it.

There were no words.

I suppose sometimes no words are better than nothing.

I opened it up again on the PC.

I found a black page, with writing which shone out.

This morning, we are in mourning.

A world just collapsed, one that will succeed it gives hardly want to know we can still believe and yet it will live with, is to show the challenges he proposes, show uncompromising on our values and ways of thinking, continue to affirm our faith in the belief of a carrier humanism of hope and progress.

We do not have the choice.

Mael maybe thought that he couldn't write in English, he had never blogged before.

Christ!

Mael's meaning shines through his unpolished English.

MOURNING.  BELIEVE. LIVE.
UNCOMPROMISING OUR VALUES. 
FAITH.  HOPE.
We don't have the choice.


"Slippery Slope."  Maxime had written.

I noted the word  'hangover.'

There was a strange feeling of the day after in the classroom.

An American election and the young in a terrible state in France!

I went back and read Maxime's post.

Far from being paralysed by the news, Maxime was thinking of the action to take.

If TRUMP won.

Le PEN can win.

"What is a big part of my hangover too is that I think about 2017 in France. If a racist man could be president of the USA why not in France ? The Front National party could be access to the Elysée. 

I can uderstand that people vote because a Fed up but why vote to the extreme. I believe that 1936 is a good exemple to say that's not the solution. The solution is in part of everybody. 

So my french friends and all people I know who live in a democratic country, I'm happy to see you hit by the news of D. Trump president, but don't stop here ! Engage you, participate of politics debates, vote!" 

A sneeze in Bamako and France gets cold.

A few hours later, I overheard a vigorous conversation going on between a group of students.

One of them, Abba, from Bamako, Mali, was busy educating his friends on global politics and colonialism.

"Where do you think the French Nuclear Industry gets its uranium from?" He asked

"There aren't many uranium mines in the Massif Central."

"'What do you think the French army is doing in Mali?"

"Have you heard of Areva?"

"Did you hear that they have found oil in Senegal?"

Time out to think.

The students were preparing 'gap year projects'.

It occurred to me that this might be a fruitless task for someone from Mali.

"No, it's ok he said, I have a diplomatic passport."

I was somewhat relieved...

He would indeed be able to get to New Zealand.

"I have always dreamt of going to New Zealand." he said.

We spoke of the injustice of "freedom of movement."

The other students were attentive, listening.

Whose stories count?

We spoke of how histories are weapons of the powerful.

"This is not the American Dream, this is the American Nightmare," I quipped.

"Oh yes that's a movie" one of the students chipped in.

"American Nightmare One, American Nightmare Two."

I fear that I shall sleep badly.

I blog to mark the day.

Fuck it.

I go and find Abba's card trick tutorial.

He'd never made a video before.

It took him hours.

If you listen carefully you can hear him, you can hear them speak.

BELIEVE. LIVE.
UNCOMPROMISING OUR VALUES. 
FAITH.  HOPE.
We don't have the choice.

Losing bearings...

There is something immensely reassuring about recognisable ritual.


We take our bearings from those around us.

"Oh I wish I had such bearing..."

Belonging anchors us.

We play the ferryman, going from port to port, paying little attention to the sea, our eyes fixed on the destination.

For those who would set sail into the unknown, we are plagued by dreams of sea-monsters, wrecks, mutinies, being forced to walk the plank.

Look, I really shouldn't be here with you writing this, but bear with me, you, you have been pressganged as a member of this crew.

There are moments when I think to myself:

"Simon, you haven't got a bloody clue what you are playing at."

At moments such as these, I gaze back longingly to dry docks.

"What the hell are you playing at?"

I am lost in a bloody ocean of uncertainty - actually a classroom.
(or The open space as one colleague named it today.)

Actually that is in itself unusual if I think about it.

In most classrooms who do you see apart from the students?

Today, I spoke with teachers and students and they all seemed to be rather the same like me...a bit lost.

I started off the day with emails to teachers in France and the UK, Facebook messages to students, a Twitter DM to a colleague in Poland.

I find myself a node in networks involved in

• Online/offline learning across various online/offline CLAVIER spaces.
• Learning projects between three departments in France and the UK.
• Organisation of trips between France and the UK and between France and Poland.
• Connecting people to existing online and offline communities/individuals.

The students arrived for the afternoon "class".

Four students were talking of their trip to Amsterdam and their plans to write about it in their blog.

One student was asking for advice to learn about working as a teacher in the USA.

Another one was working on a project in schools to reduce sendentarity and thereby obesity while munching crisps and a chocolate bar.

Another one had been communicating with a friend in Nepal that I had enabled him to meet.

He, the friend in Nepal,  had shared the work of his association which builds schools and works for peace.

He, the student, seemed to be contemplating while watching magic trick demonstrations on Youtube.

If I hadn't spoken to him, I would never have guessed.

Another group were in agitated conversation - in English (one was playing some video game on his phone) about the interest of a steady relationship over a new, exciting one.

Oh, the moral issues raised!

One of the students mentioned that he had really enjoyed working on his English the day before at home.

He was busy playing video games on his phone.

Another student was struggling with a request of doing a video-conference with a person that I had introduced her to in London.

She preferred chat, she dreaded being seen to be speaking.

She added her name to a list to meet up with some Polish students for tutoring.

Losing bearings...

That is not how classes used to be.

There used to be a list of objectives, a series of planned activities, everything was concentrated in the classroom.

There was even a course book with answers.

Everybody used to be doing the same thing at the same time, like so many scribes in a monastery.

The door used to be closed.

No other teachers wandered in.

I used to address everybody from a distance.

TEACHER to STUDENT and things were clear.

Now everybody is doing their own thing.

I seem to spend a good deal of time in real dialogue with real people.

Frankly, at times, I am all at sea, I honestly find that I am losing my bearings.

I had the feeling today, that there was something missing - that feeling of community.

I am not sure that I feel comfortable with what feels like atomised groups.

I instinctively feel there needed to be more cohesion.

Maybe that is just nostalgia?  Maybe that is just insecurity?

Maybe my perspective is not helplful, maybe I needed to try and get a different view?

Maybe I need to include here a link to another post which concerned the same group of students, where there was indeed a clear sense of community - perhaps again that was entirely dependent on my perspective, on where I was standing?

An Indian Summer.

I wonder an instant:  "Whose community?"

I think to myself: "You must trust yourself Simon."

I think back to the Talking Heads.

Well we know where we're going
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what we're knowing
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

I think "Nah..."

I think of the fucking absurdity of much which is recognisable ritual of education.

That Talking Heads song suits my dark humour.

Yes, we're on the road to nowhere.

I much prefer song and surprise and magic tricks to sexy stats and graphs,  quack science and ....drear.

Drear...the doldrums...wasn't that what motivated the fucking voyage?

"Sod it, Sail on, Simon into the unknown."

Opened16

Meanwhile there are people discussing stuff on the other side of the planet.

How did it happen that I listen to them?

They are mostly in some state of America for Christ Sake.

I wouldn't be able to point to it on a map.

Why should I care about these people?

Isn't TV enough?

I never used to be learning along with a crowd of people all over the place.

Whatever happened to the good old days?

Over the past couple of days, I have dropped in to listen to a few conversations.

There are number of scenes which marked me and pop up here haphazardly.

1) Open exploration and clear destinations.

There was a conversation with George Station and some students about freedom.

It came in the Virtually Connecting Session below.




"Do you like freedom, or do you prefer clear outcomes?" was the question I retained.

I find myself nodding, yes that is a recognisable situation.

What to do when you are the only weird teacher in the students educational lives?

Do we just abandon our difference and conform?

What do we do about drowning - learners and learner teachers?

How do you differentiate drowning learners from those who are simply treading water?

There are enormous issues of trust and no doubt questions of ethics.

We need to question ourselves as to the courses we chart.

I think back to a comment of Frances Bell et al and the ethics of pedagogical experimentation...

We need to wonder whether it's reasonable or ethical to prepare people for high seas navigation when some are just wanting a pedalo to spin around the pond...

As learner/educators we need to trust ourselves when out in an ocean, far from recognisable land.

We need to trust learners to learn while being all at sea.

We need to reflect on what we consider to be the most important means to assess direction.

We need to reflect on appropriate means to share our presence as more experienced navigators.

How and when do we signal existing trade routes, or known reefs?

2) Mentoring and storytelling.

I have to admit to feeling nostalgia on watching Dave Cormier's video on mentoring and storytelling.

I miss rhizo-stories around the camp-fire.

What I appreciated was his willingness to document failure in his attempts to improve undergraduate integration and orientation at his university.

I myself enjoy narrating stories of epic adventures from which we gain much learning however rough the journey.

It is always easier to talk about such epics with bravado after a little while...





Immediately, this connected with my interest in story, culture, change, and learning.

I tweeted

@davecormier that sounds suspiciously like conclusions that I am reaching. @ken_bauer @bonstewart

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 3, 2016

Story and culture change @mcrustan @WarwickLanguage @telliowkuwp @tutormentorteam @snowded #OpenEd16 https://t.co/1Wpk5U5LSM

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 3, 2016

I fell upon this tweet of Dave Cormier a while later:

Story as learning. It's the content, the outcome, the syllabus... or, rather, it's learning in its pure form. https://t.co/hBDEEnGHO7

— dave cormier (@davecormier) November 4, 2016

I hear myself say:

"Why the fuck is he always going on about Odyssey?"


Whose stories?

Education, it seems to me at this instant is a ritualised story of power.

I wonder whose stories are dominant in our classrooms, our institutions?

I wonder whose perspectives carry the most weight?

I wonder about a remark made during a conversation at #opened16 about the absence of students.

I wonder how we are to imagine a new education which is really open to newly heard, newly entangled stories.

I wonder about how culture is woven from stories.

I wonder an instant about enlightenment.

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
 
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

I wonder if reason is enough?

I wonder whose reason is enough?

I wonder if reason alone is ever ethical?

What is it I have been reading recently about science and the humanities?

I think about some of the conversations that I have had recently with students.

I rather think that they are less concerned with reason and more with the soul.

Can education be ethical if reason is divorced from soul?

Where the hell am I heading?

"Maybe I should just settle for not knowing. Maybe it's just good to know that you're not the only one who doesn't know.” 

― Bryan Lee O'Malley, Lost at Sea

Puzzling memory loss?

Piece 1. 

I read a blog post about True openness in education here: https://differentreadings.wordpress.com/2015/07/14/true-openness/

It mentioned blog posts of @timbuckteeth

I commented.

Piece 2.

I went and investigated the idea of being a "global educator" here: 

http://www.scoop.it/t/touch-to-learn

https://twitter.com/sensor63/status/622805267714048000

Piece 3.

I wondered what @timbuckteeth had been writing about recently. 

I found this here: 

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/off-rails.html

It was a blog post in reply to a challenge to @amyburvall to blog from her picture prompt.

Piece 4.

I posted a comment and a photo to challenge @timbuckteeth to write a blog post via Twitter https://twitter.com/sensor63/status/622738451163676672

Piece 5.

@timbuckteeth responded to challenge with new blog post here:

https://twitter.com/timbuckteeth/status/622824274018086912

Piece 6.

(I respond to piece 5)

It's been about two jours...

(blimey I wrote unintended French!)

that I have been trying to find the (imaginary, intended, trashed?) blog post which was (wholly, partly, indirectly??) inspired by the photo above.

WTF!! 

I can't find it and my patience is not greater than my desire to write something here.

 (Oh dear...never mind)

You see I know the context within which this photo was taken. 

It's recognizable.

It's close to home.

It has (our) history.

Rule Britannia. 

Britannia rules the waves...

That lost (or can't be bothered to find blog post) included my youngest daughter and by way of association myself at a similar age.

I had not tried to piece together this puzzle for over 45 years or so. 

I can assure you 

(because I have the privilege of experience) 

that it is a puzzling but rather satisfyingly simplified representation of Britain and its major sights and traditions. 

It dates. 

Er...(me) from the sixties.

If I remember rightly, there are various examples of nineteenth century interpretations of regional attire. 

There are monuments - the Forth Bridge, Caernarvon Castle, Bath baths and rather satisfying oval place names for important towns.

There are the island boundaries - 

The rugged coastline and blue patches of sea give it a feeling of uniqueness...

This 'sceptred isle' (Bloody Shakespeare reverence) is asail, triumphantly on the (coughs) bright blue sea.

It is topographically remarkably discernible from the blank (blue) sea.

The continent, Greece, the euro is nowhere to be seen.

It is an 'isle' nobly united (before those Scots let the side down). 

It was meant to be together. 

When you get all the pieces to fit together, one feels a sense of triumph. 

You look at the model, you look at the picture on the front of the box and they match.

Yippee!!

Nobody ever gave me a puzzle of India or  Egypt (why would they?) and certainly not the Artic (not enough distinguishing features and too much white).

A world map would have been no doubt too complicated to complete.

I would've got stuck in the Balkans or South East Asia. 

Where the hell is the border between Russia and the Ukraine?

Now all of this has me thinking that any number of educators and associated parasitic politicians have these fixed pictures in their heads of how they would like to fit pieces together.  

The politicians don't care that their picture doesn't correspond to the pieces that the poor educators are trying to fit together.

The educators stick bits hurriedly together to correspond. 

The bits (the students) yell or silently moan that they don't fit in the scheme of things but feel that they should just get on with it.

Maybe we need to allow that learners might be allowed to puzzle out their own maps which may not correspond to existing pictures of territory??

I am thinking that I have adopted a chuck all the pieces on the table approach to blogging. 

This writing is typical of my disjointed strategy.

I shall go back and sort through the pieces and see what shapes appear when I have a moment.

I am faily sure that noone else is qualified (or payed enough) to make sense of this jumble. 

Wow did you get as far as reading that?

Piece 7.

I like learning when it doesn't fit into preconceived models or plans.

I invariably learn much more.

I think you can imagine new uses, new combinations for bits and pieces of ancient puzzles. 

I decided to share the challenge to blog from the prompt of a puzzle picture. 

https://twitter.com/sensor63/status/622861109314330624

As the evening continued (to Storify) a hashtag emerged: #blimage.

Piece 8.

Phew. 

All this will give me some time to find that bloody blog post which was inspired from the above photo. 

I wonder what it was about? 

Order from chaos.

As I walked into the room, I became aware that my appearance was unwelcome.

The hostility was palpable.

There was no suspicion of a smile.

I was greeted with hatred.

While over the months the outright hostility seemed to lessen, my presence was never accepted.

I simply had to accept the fact that as a man, I was the enemy.

We become blind to all possibilities of reconciliation.

At each turn we look for patterns of aggression. 

We become in our turn defensive.
We become in our turn aggressors.

Forbidden fruit?
I see an apple; this is food.
I see an apple; this is temptation.
I see an apple; this is love.
I see an apple; this is poison.

Flailing around in our darkness, we look for security, we look for patterns.

The Red Lion, was just along the road, each time we drove past it was presented as a den of iniquity.

This was something to do with alcohol.  I didn't understand that word.  I wasn't at all sure what it was.

I do remember that I didn't like the smell of beer on my grandfather's breath.  I didn't like beer-smell.

I do remember that his trips down the road to the pub were greeted with scorn.

I had no means of understanding the emotional subplot.

We forget or we are unaware of the reasons for the patterns chosen for us.

We are told stories, we are given histories, which bring some sort of order to our chaos.

 "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the imperfections of documentation."
Julien Barnes

I have just realised that the multitude of constraints with which I was educated increased the opportunities for me in my life to have adventures.

Going to a pub, normal for many people, for me became a heroic adventure. I was going into a  beast's lair, a mythogical creature's den.

The Red Lion might just have well been Hades.

When we are educated with what for us are an absurd multitude of meaningless constaints it is at times easier to start again from scratch.

Chaos for my parents for me seemed like freedom.

Meaning for me was to go beyond their fearful framing to imagine a new culture...my own remix.

I was fortunate, my parents were forgiving, their hope, their love never lessened.

They had faith.

I was able to spare them the gory details of my quest for meaning.

They wouldn't have understood.

It was not their fault.

Veils of freedom, veils of tears.

I am struck with how a veil might be seen by some women as submission but to others a declaration of freedom.  I am struck with how a veil might be seen by some as a weapon.

I met a friend of mine at a conference.

She seemed distracted, like me she was frustrated by the conference.

We agreed we didn't fit in.

We went out to talk.

How can one be scientific when one is confronted by impossible choices?

Her parents had prepared a homecoming for her - an arranged marriage.

Her parents were unaware that she already had a home, a love, a hybrid culture of her own.

She was presented with an impossible dilemna, she was torn apart by love.

An inflexible frame is a corpse.

A religion for some might be seen as a means of self-determination for others as a prison.

I have been thinking about 'objectivity' in 'human sciences', and I am struck at how a 'scientific lens' may be be used as a tool for repression or used as a tool of liberation.   

Seen from afar, people are objectified, they have no means to evidence complexity of their interaction of their behaviour of their belief.

The scientific perspective of the world has risen us, some of us, up onto a/our/their pedestal of 'progress'.

'Progress' is our  apple.

We see a 'truth' we are blind to 'our lies'. 

Rhizomatic learning ~ WMD...

It all started so well. Swimmingly. Massive participation, fervour, willingness to serve. We were so impatient to tear down the walls, we were so aware of the short-comings of their education.

#RHIZO14 Call to arms! Hurrah!
Then the clearly voiced instructions started to grate. "I want you to investigate how you can use Rhizomatic Learning as a Weapon." was what I remembered him saying. I, like the others, had had this planned for years. Revenge was nigh, the years of humiliation were coming to an end.

Not so hasty mates!


It dawned on me, draftily,  I can not sleep, God damn you Cormier! We all have bloody work to do, and this is an unwelcome distraction. We have to educate them, for God's sake, for the country's sake, for the planet's sake.

Not so hasty mates!

I was hastier than most, so eager to wield newly found weapons, powerful weapons, massively cons/des/ins/tructive weapons.

Awesome!!! 

Tired, in front of the Experts, I browsed the columns of the Guardian.

Madness!!  

Those bloody rhizomatic connections led me here, at 5 o'clock in the morning, half-dressed, half awake. Fuck it.

Thanks a lot mate!

Lest we forget...
2014 is not so far away from 1914, that I can remember the boys, my ancestors who served. They flew, my friends, the first aeroplanes, they signed up, they bore their weapons with pride. Heroism beckoned them to dig their trenches. They ducked, they duck-boarded, they made brave faces of it, together... until disillusion struck.

The telegram arrived, I have the copy, I have the despatches, I have images of the tidily cared for plot. He was the age of my son.

Poetry, war poets.
#Rhizo14 started so well, already friends met, poems written, new lands glimpsed. But, I am here, at 5:13 this morning to announce with regret that I shall not be following orders, I shall show patience where before I had the hot-head of my own unfettered passion.

Fight not over the ruins of a crumbling sand-castle. Its time is numbered by the coming tides.
The Rhizome is a pathetic weapon, used in the wrong hands, to impress the locals, to impress the girls. Pick the irises if you will. Decorate your offices, if you must. But don't miss the point. There is no point. Leave them alone, the dinosaurs will disappear without our willing. Let's use our time well.

Sing, dance, be merry while we can. There is much good company to be had.
When I am gone, the boys will lay down their arms, will sing their songs, and will drill past the weapons of the past barely noticed.

They will drill to plant seeds, they will see the seasons turn, they will learn, living together apart from us.

Let the ivory tower crumble, the massively 'open' 'online' courses run their course, cheat the system if you must but don't forget the others, or we are the system we despise.

No Mr Cormier I shall not. I shall be patient in my passion.

Bah!  humbug...

I no longer believe in Santa Claus.