Who buys the ferryman?

Everything was going to plan.

The suitcase was ready, the washbag packed, the papers checked, the boarding card downloaded.

I stepped across the thresh-hold and was hit by a gust of cold air.

The low-slung black-cab drew up, the boot opened...

I stepped down to sit on the leather seats and almost found myself sliding off onto the floor.

It was a new car.

The driver glanced back, checked the final instructions:

"Go to the end of the street, turn hard right, cross the main road, and then continue up there."

After passing the lights halting the absent dawn traffic we arrived in front of the gates.

We waited.
We waited.
We waited.

No colleague.

Telephone call.

"I am still in bed. I am really sorry. What do I do?"

"Try getting up and getting dressed." I offered helpfully...

All of this...this unexpected diversion, the emotion in the air, broke the scripted discourse.

Plan, phone, park, put bags in car, pointless pitiful...patter...paying...parting...(de)parture....

"It's cold, isn't it." "It's early, isn't it." "Can I have a receipt?"  "Thanks." "Have a nice flight." "Bye."

I and Charon (let's call him that) were brought together.

We spoke of how paying passengers abused their roles.

Who buys the ferryman?

"It's cold, turn up the heater. It's too hot now, turn down the heater. Change the music. I hate music."

They would do well to wonder who the driver is.

They would do well to wonder who the driver might be for their last flight.

They might seek more humility.

"People don't understand the work of a taxi driver." he said.

"We are like psychologists." he said.

"People open up to us."

"People tell us all sorts of things."

We spoke of constraint and separation, of birth, life, and death.

We spoke of the desire of the young to depart the home, the desire of parents to maintain control beyond the door.

"I fell out with my parents," he said.

"I found myself sleeping for nights in my car...alone."

We spoke of these liminal spaces....grief...flight...birth...life...taxi rides.

Who pays the ferryman?

I thanked him for the moment that we had spent together.

We shook hands warmly.

There was a feeling of mutual respect.

He disappeared into the night.

Meanwhile, my colleague had arrived.

We spoke on the phone.

Her baggage was oversized for the cabin.

She was terribly apologetic.

They wouldn't let her onto the plane.

"There are a number of ways of seeing it." I said.

"You are upset that you missed the flight."

"If this plane falls out of the sky, you will evoke divine intervention."

 I was caught between facile phrase and anxiety an instant.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

KEYNOTE

R.E.S.E.A.R.C.H.

I found the conference keynote carefully filed away in my bedside table.

This is its story.

"WHAT ARE YOU?"

"I'm not a what, 

I'm a who.

Why do you ask?"

I remembered  where it was thanks to Sean Michael Morris.

I read his article:

"Digital Humanities and the Erosion of Inquiry."

I quote a little bit...

"The perfect unfairness of this is that when we limit another’s voice, we create an ecosystem reliant upon limitation. And that’s the ecosystem in which we now swim. We can’t ask for freedom to take risks, to follow our own curiosity — to be scholars — if we don’t offer that freedom to others."

THE TITLE IS ACADEMIC NOW.

"Oh so sorry.

Professor."

"Digital Inquiry and the Erosion of Humanity?"

WE FORGET SO EASILY

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

FOOTNOTE.

I decided he merited a more prominent frame.

A ramblers guide?

The sight across the valley was breath-taking.

We felt simultaneously insignificant and unique; witnesses to wonder! How twee!

Without us the world was. (:-)
meaningless?
unreadable?
unworded?
inexistant?

A point of view is a lie.
We may be standing on a point but we are immersed in a wealth of sensory information crying out for attention. Fix a point; all dies. God, I love a semi-colon.

We are crying out for attention. 
We are in a privileged position.
We forget the others.

LOOK. LISTEN. BREATHE IN. FEEL. HERE. THERE. UP. HERE.

Capture sensation.

Too late. too late.

Life flows, time ticks...

We are moved to poetry, to lyricism.

We are one with Wordsworth (or maybe not).
We are alone and yet universal (or certainly not).

What sense is there in analysing beauty?
Is it not enough to share it silently?

He hums. 

He hums a melody.
Zippety do dah.


What has science got to do with humming to oneself?
What is the sense of speaking with fells?


And yet. And yet we do.

We attempt to appropriate.
These are mine.
Those are ours.
We are human.

We need landmarks.
We need points on maps.
We need memory.
We need fiction.

We annotate, we paragraph nature. 
We take our photos and disappoint.
We miss the point.
No a photo will not do at all.
No a photo is a lie.

We must be more generous with our readers.
We are moved.
We move.
Writing moves and then dies.

What is the sense of reification of rhizome? 
#Rhizo14 is not dead anymore than it was alive.
It is a nonsense waiting for traces of humanity.

Let us reflect.

Might we write sincerely of rhizome and encourage others to get lost in its complexity.

Might we invite to ramble.

A guide might offer the rambler clues of  things to look out for.
A guide might offer some stories.
A guide might offer some line drawing.

A rambling guide offers nothing for a person who is only interested in going from point A - B in the fastest possible way.

That is not its point.

You are better off with Sat Nav.

In the introduction to a ramblers' guide there are clear explanations as to its role, as to how it may or may not be used, as to its limitations.

It invites others to annotate, to draw, to colour in details, to dream about future adventure.

It may offer a few reputable addresses.
It is soon out of date.

It's only purpose is to invite to venture  into the wilds be it only in  a person's dreams.

"What are you?"

I worked night and day to be ready for the linguistics conference.

The series of "papers" to which I offered my presence have left no mark on my memory.

The incidental ethnographic study of my betters and peers has left the following:

On arriving at the university building I was confronted by a mingling of badged people.

Closed circles indicated that they clearly knew each other and were busy talking up their schemes.

I knew nobody.  What does one do in such surroundings? Is there a secret handshake?

Go boldly up to the first person and offer to speak to them, I thought, would be my opening gambit.

Abstract
"Bonjour", I offered jovially, to a bejacketed French gentleman.

He studied me head to toe over his serious reading spectacles. Peering blankly at me, he suddenly ejected,

"What are you?"

He clearly didn't recognize my face or my badge. (I later remarked that my badge was pinned on back to front.)

Momentarily stunned, I ran through appropriate and less appropriate responses; had I suddenly grown fish-scales and a giraffe's neck?

Definition of terms
"I am not sure that I understand your question, could you explain what you mean by 'what are you?" I ventured.

"Yes what are you?"

He really wasn't giving anything much away.

Greeted by silence he stammered,  "I mean are you a researcher, a professor, a lecturer?"?

"Oh, I understand..." The "what" was my academic status.

"No, I am a teacher."

"And what are you?"

He was taken aback by my ignorance, or my affrontery.

"I am a professor."

"Oh and what is that?" I asked, seriously intrigued how he would define himself.

"Well, I do research projects, I have written in many top-class journals, I edit them..."

"Oh, good, and do you find anything?" I asked.

The man was clearly getting impatient with me and hurried off to find succour from his learned colleagues with whom he could be recognised for what he was.

The conference proceedings proceeded.

The gala dinner was an excruciating evening of self-congratulation and foie-gras. It left me feeling distinctly nauseous.

The following morning for the "hangover" session, for which  I was due to speak, I was feverish, suffering from gastro-enteritis and absolutely furious.

Six or seven unfortunates were seated in a classroom to hear me talk of  "Compagnie d'apprenants."  I refused to give them any information about the contents of my "abstract" and preferred to experiment with performance art.

They were most displeased.

I crossed the gentlemen on my way to the railway station and gave him quite a few pieces of my mind.

Keynote
A few kilometres later, I was stopped by a young beggar, clearly the worst for wear.

For reasons which escape me, I invited him to lunch. He refused to go to a proper restaurant, despite my urging. He preferred the anonymity of junk food.

He told me of his young daughter, for whom he was begging to buy milk powder, he told me of his heroin addiction, his difficult relationship with his mother. He offered to do me a drawing to repay me for my attention.

I kept his drawing. Written on conference sponsored note-pad, he drew an elaborate tag.  In the centre of the page, a keyword was clearly legible:

"RESPECT"

He thanked me again for the "Macdonalds' Best of Chicken MacNuggets Menu" and signed  his "paper".

The meal was paid for by university expenses.

My journey into academia had not been in vain.