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 jumped to Hybrid Pedagogy's submission page.

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.

Back to @jessifer and @HybridPed ... https://t.co/NoYnXsUtzy

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 4, 2017

"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.

Flight lines...

It all started out so predictably.

Waiting around for the boarding announcement.

Queueing for boarding by rows.






Showing identity and smartphone with flash-code.

Falling over my sodding suitcase on wheels.

At last, I was walking down the ramp towards the stationary Airbus 320 destination Corsica.

On entering the plane, it was apparent that this was no ordinary flight.

Indeed, this was a very particular flight.

I did notice that the air hostesses and stewards were peculiarly attired.

Regulation uniform had been hidden beneath crudely drawn, hurriedly personalised t shirts.

While their greeting on board was pretty customary, it was clear that their minds just weren't  on the job.

Something bigger than uniform, function and role was visibly bursting out - attachment, nostalgia, thrill, warmth, every day  human emotion.

On sitting down in our under-sized seats, on attaching our seatbelts we were introduced into a pop-up theatre of humanity.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, this flight is a very special occasion for our friend and colleague Poppy (we shall call her Poppy...in remembrance)...after 20 years of loyal service she is giving up her job as an air hostess to change her life."

At the end of the announcement quasi-spontaneous (rather forced) applause broke out around the aircraft.

"Hurrah for Poppy."

The air-safety instructions delivered mechanically beneath a silly t shirt, gaudy head-antenna and glitter were an event too exceptional for me not to note.

I took a photo of the steward's performance.

The steward in the steward immediately came towards me, stood over me and demanded that I delete the offending photo.

"Taking photos is against the rules." he said sternly.

I couldn't not agree with him on a number of levels.

First: I was unable to ask permission before hand. He could quite rightly find that a rude imposition.

Second: I was treating him as an object. (actually it was the strange juxtaposition of discourses which fascinated me).

Third: He had no means of knowing whether I might, not only steal his image, but spread it on social media.

Fourth: The celebration for Poppy, the applause, the silly t shirts may not have been officially sanctionned. Any photo of their transgression might have resulted in punnishment for the perpetrators of the celebrations for Poppy's farewell flight.

I deleted the offending photo...sheepishly.

What I didn't mention to the steward was that I hadn't taken one photo....I had taken two.

During the flight, I felt a moral dilemna: I wondered whether I should confess to the man, ask forgiveness (again) and explain what I wanted to do with the photo, ask for assent, or delete it before his eyes, thank him, and wish him well.

There was at no moment any untransactional dialogue between him and I.

During the flight, it was all steward-speak:

"Would you like savoury or sweet snack?"

"No we don't have any tonic water."

"Thank you."

"Bye bye."

He was much too taken up with his "hen-flight" celebrations to be bothered to speak to me when I stepped off the plane.

I decided to keep the photo.

On leaving the plane, there were the air-crew, champagne in hand,  taking selfies of each other in their glitter glasses, and t shirts with red hearts on them.

Was the fancy dress for Poppy or for the passengers?

I struggle to untie the ethics.

• As passengers, we had no choice but to accept the Poppy theatre.

• As passengers, we were a captive audience to the aircrew's celebration.

• As passengers, we were expected to participate more as a back-drop - as  extras to their party, than invitees.

We were being reduced to the role of audience on reality TV.

On arriving the airport, I went to seek a means of escape.

My connecting flight being in a few hours, I walked up and down trailing my baggage, looking for a bus, taxi, pavement (sidewalk).

I was confronted by transport desert.

Et merde.

I resigned myself to a long stay in the airport.

No transport, rubbish souvenir shop, low battery.

It's extraordinary how electric sockets become oasis in transport desert.

I found the shortest charging cable known to modern man or woman or wilerbeast in a combination safe on a wall.

Who invented that beauty?

BRAVO MATE! (WTF?)

No movable chairs. None. Only fixed chairs. Only fixed metal uncomfortable chairs.

A woman helpfully suggested that I might leave my phone in the safe to charge.

She didn't understand my plight.

I wanted to use the bloody phone to release my soul purgatory not lock it up in a box.

I sat uncomfortably, at an angle on my suitcase, my back suffering, my head throbbing at their fucking security messages which were every ten minutes.

"Your suitcase will be taken away and destroyed if left unattended."

I couldn't leave the suitcase unattended cos it was the thing I was sitting on.

As the time ticked by the onslaught of their loudspeakers drove me progressively madder.

Thank God for "Hyperspektiv" app which is a means of expressing dynamic paranoia like no other.

Hyperspektiv, PicPlayPost,  iMovie,  hours of sitting in alienating airport, bored, Audiocopy, Dynamite...BOOM!!!!!

I noted today in the Guardian that the prisoners of Guantanamo have an art exhibition going on in New York.

The article was entitled:

"I CAN GET MY SOUL OUT OF PRISON"

Well fuck yes.

Pushing the sky away.

Then we were in the car...

We'd found a way out of those little timetabled boxes.

We don't realise how close freedom is.






Four hours to get up to Paris to get to the Nick Cave concert.

There was that feeling of apprehension.

Would we get stuck in a horrendous traffic jam around the Péripherique?

Would we find the right exit off the Péripherique?

Would we find the car park?

Then we had arrived.

We walked hand in hand through the autumn colours on the paths leading up to the Zenith.

And then we were there.

For two hours, we were taken up by the music, the emotion, the rage, the beauty of the performance.

There are moments which mark you.

The four hours drive through the night, through that fatigue that amplified the moment.

Excitement fighting against the will to sleep.

A road flashing by, fog in the Combrailles, eery headlights of anonymous co-travellers.

Pushing the sky away.

I got a Facebook message from Sébastien over in Lima in Peru.

At three o'clock, it was the last hour of the class, for him it was eight o'clock in the morning.

He had just come back down from the mountains.

He had a biblically bearded look.

We grouped around the phone.

Fifteen minutes of freedom...amplified by the small size of the screen.

"People say that I am lucky." he said.

"I'm not. I made a choice. I got a ticket. I was scared. Now I am free."

"When you are in those boxes, and you are surrounded by all those messages which make you feel helpless you don't realise how close freedom is."

"You are young, there is a world out there, there are generous people out there. I am free."

Pushing the sky away.

I was feeling hemmed in.

I tweeted Teresa over in the UK.

We chatted.

As we chatted that hemming feeling was transformed into something quite different.

I walked outside into the garden.

Blue Sky, a light breeze, a friendship.

lovely to hangout with @sensor63 and remotely enjoy the blue sky and sunshine in Clermont Ferrand! #warwler #cmc #oie @UNICollaborate

— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) October 11, 2017

Constraints become canvasses.

We had already moved on.

“All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas.” 
Nick Cave

Treasure maps.

I walk pretty much, every day, that same route, past the pile of free newspapers in the lobby , open a door, walk down a dark corridor.

There, offices each side.

There, people looking at PC screens.

What are they doing?

I really had no idea.






I cross people in the corridor, we nod, smile, say hello, having acknowledged each others' existence, we continue on our route.

How do we discover which person holds clues to the whereabouts of treasure?

I mean you can't go in every office and ask all the people who they are and what they are doing, it would take too long.

That would be ridiculous.

Maybe there are people in offices we need to find?

How do we know which office to choose?

Official charts, organigrams, plans tell us little we need to know....maybe that is their purpose....concealment.

If we sent a message out in a bottle, how many would find it, would read it, would understand it?

Occupation.

We are occupied.

We have so little time.

Fifty five, fifty five, fifty five.

Occupied. Occupied. Occupied.

Occupied, with what...by whom, for what ends?

I went upstairs.

I was met by a stony face.

I don't insist.

Pebbles on the beach.

There are so many pebbles on the beach.

People that is.

I mean, I wasn't looking for anything or anybody in particular.

I bump into a colleague from the library.

Serendipity...really?

Funny, I was just thinking about contacting him.

He is speaking to one of those unknown people from the offices along the corridor.

He is speaking to one of those people with whom I exchange nods and smiles.

He looks vaguely familiar.

I can't for the life of me figure out why.

My library colleague gives us an opportunity, a pretext,  to communicate something other than a nod.

We start talking, as one does around a coffee machine.

It appears that he is interested in the conversations that we are having with my colleague from the library.

I explain  a fair while what I am working on.

I suddenly think of the importance of coffee as a pretext for conversation with strangers.

That recalls a talk of Steve Johnson entitled "Where do good ideas come from?"

I think of the stony look upstairs, of unproductive frosty meeting.

I think of my online friends. They, the ones, who have fuelled much of my creativity.

I think of how these friends have become part of my physical world at this moment.

I explain how these friends know me in a way those who I cross in a teachers' room can not.

What can such "online coffee shops" bring to us locally?

How can we enable people who don't know each other locally to speak together?

How can we signal what we are looking for when we don't know what it is?

I can only think that openness is a prerequisite.

I think of the difficulty of introducing such openness, such ongoing familiarity building such as I have experience via cmoocs and social media, Twitter in particular, to a local institution, to peoples' daily lives.

We speak about maps.

I talk of mapping narratives.

I talk of being able to combine narrative mapping with strategic planning.

I think again of the work of Dave Snowden and Sensemaker.

I think of how in my personal research, I am still looking to use very personal, artisanal means to map.

Merchants, spices, warehouses.

I talk of a university as a port.

Merchant ships bring in wares from afar.

I talk of a book as a port.

Warehouses spring up to stock vittals.

Merchants, help us choose the best rum, the best spices.

Is this blog a ship, a warehouse, a tavern, spice?

I think of my conversations, my journeys, my life online.

I drop into conversations in distant taverns.

They are in my head - conversations fuse, confuse, enlighten, the people, the taverns.

They become part of me...bodily.

I am seeing this/these conversation/s through the lens of a multitude of selves.

How do we open up our minds and those of others to see the interest of virtual taverns?

Treasure maps and occupation.

I talk of looking at a map together, of speaking the same language, of sharing a common understanding.

How do we know which people will be able to see meaning in a map?

Perhaps, I think to myself, it is our occupation which is already mapped.

Perhaps, I reason, it is pointless to offer any alternative map, if it doesn't correspond to existing charts.

Perhaps, I conclude, that is what one must do first, one must fully understand how occupation is mapped in peoples' minds, bodies and spirits.

I talk of my friend Daniel in Chicago.

How do we bring others together to discover treasure in our maps, particularly when they are otherwise occcupied?

Perhaps we don't.

Treasure mapped.

I think of treasure.

For myself, treasure is in personal mapping.

X does not mark the spot, X marks the questions, the curiosity, the wonder.

What is this treasure?

I think of my nephew in Glasgow.

I think of his new project selling beer in Glasgow and building wells in Africa.

I think of how his eyes light up.

I think of the dull gleam of unburnished metal.

That is not his treasure.

Treasure is not a lonely acquisition.

Is treasure meaning and fellowship?

Is meaning fellowship?


Post Scripts.

"Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment."

Marshall McLuhan.

Questions of mapping.

Movements

Where/how do I move/travel, where/how do I walk (to/into/out of/around/up/down) ?

Senses

Who/what do I see/hear/smell/touch/?

Feelings.

How do I feel?

Lenses.

What sense/thoughts/memories/feelings make me see/feel things in a particular way?

Actions

What do I do?

Who do I do these actions with?

Who do I speak to, write to, draw to, sing to, touch and where do I write/speak/draw?

Where do I speak, write, draw, sing, touch, walk, run, fly, eat, drink?

What do I do else?

Speaking their language*

Was it a certificate or a diploma?

I wasn't quite sure.

Nowhere on their list of accepted documents could I find it mentioned.

I couldn't tick a box.



I sighed.

I found the telephone number.

I checked the hours of opening.

Tuesday afternoon: 14:00-16:00.

Thursday morning: 9:30-11:30.

I telephoned at one of the specified times.

"Er, the Ministry of education considers that I am qualified to teach French. Will that do as proof that I can speak French?" I asked.

I was met by a sharp intake of breath, a counted silence and then a surprisingly friendly voice.

"Oh I don't know. I have never come across that question. I shall have to ask the ministry." 

"But I am speaking with you. You can hear that I can speak French."

"Yes, but if I don't have the agreement from the ministry. I can't do anything about it."

I sighed.

I waited.

After much toing and froing with the ministry a response came back.

The friendly voice telephoned me.

"The ministry has accepted that you can include a copy of your teaching of French certificate."

She saved me the 100 euros which it would have cost me to take a computerised test to get a stamped document to prove that I could speak French.

I looked at the boxes on the form.

None of the boxes corresponded to my case.

I sighed.

I telephoned the number.

I explained.

A voice replied.

"Oh I don't know. We have never come across that question. We will have to study the instructions from the ministry."

There was a pause.

"What diplomas do you have?"

"Oh, that's foreign, so you don't have any proof of equivalences for your diploma."

"Well the minstry of education seems to have accepted the equivalence of my diplomas because they have employed me to be a teacher at one of their universities for the past 18 years. Isn't that proof?"

I was met with a sharp intake of breath, and a measured silence.

"We are changing the procedures at the moment. Just complete the form and send a cv."

"Couldn't a teacher evaluate my competences?"

"No teacher will see your application if administratively you don't have the necessary documents."

I put down the phone and set about writing a cv...again.

This, it appears is the story of my life.

I am not adapted to filling in or being filled in official boxes.

I consider myself a hopeless case.

I need to improve my bloody adaptability.

I need to learn to speak their language.

I need to be uniformly square, a correct size, not foreign, easy to file.

Tick, tick, tick, tick. Happiness.

People shouldn't be expected to think.

That's stressful and waste of administrative time.

Am I a nought or a cross?

Maybe I am a goddamned asterisk?*

*trouble.