Deepest regrets...

I still have this.

I sent it to my friend Terry.








It represents regret.

At the time it was an expression of romantic regret.

Looking at it now, I can see that it also speaks to me of educational regret.

Regret that we put teachers and lessons and kids in little boxes.

Regret that we ask kids to choose 'subjects' so that they may become useful objects.

"Oh he's a square peg in a round hole..."

"What are you going to do for 'A' levels, What you going to do at university?"

Ad infinitum.

"Well if you want a job, you shouldn't do art." 
"Nobody makes a career out of art." 
"Well, if you want a job, you shouldn't do theatre."
 "Nobody makes a career out of theatre..." 

Ad infinitum.

We talk of jobs, of careers when we might be speaking about purpose.

There was a song Regrets written and performed in the classroom by Etienne and Loic here:

Over a week the song, shared on Youtube and Twitter, became a transmedia remix thanks to Kevin, Ron, Maha, Bryan and Terry here in his post 'Regrets.'
http://impedagogy.com/wp/blog/2015/11/29/regrets/

Maha wondered about the ethics of remixing Etienne and Loic's song in her blog:

'Here's a gift now wait while we party.'
http://alwayslearning-maha.blogspot.com.eg/2015/11/reflections-gift-followed-by-closed-door.html

Kevin responded with:
'The song is theirs not ours.'
http://dogtrax.edublogs.org/2015/11/30/digiwrimo-reflection-the-song-is-theirs-not-ours/


One of the images in Terry's Z33ga was this one:

I was reading John Stepper's book this morning "Working out loud" and was introduced to Amanda Palmer's TED talk here:

Amanda Palmer talks of her art as a gift of herself, she talks of inviting others to participate in her art.

She talks of the vulnerability of the artist who stretches out to others...

I thought of the gifts in play here.

The gift of the opportunity to play music in English and get graded on it.
The gift of the song and the performance.
The gift of those who listened and gave of themselves to remix the song.
The gift of those who thought about the ethics of sharing, of remixing, of invitation...
The gift of those who introduced me to Working out Loud.
The gift of the author of the book Workign out Loud.

I thought about the music business, the education business and decided that we do indeed have ethical questions to raise.

Are kids to be reduced to numbers in international league tables for maths?

Do we have international league tables for guitar playing or art?

Is Shanghai doing well on drawing, on creativity?

I went to find the source of the statistics which appeared in Terry's Z33ga and I found it here in this article:
"What we regret most and why"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394712/#!po=7.67045

I come back to that top regret - that of education.


I wonder what I might have gained if others around the world had paid attention to my drawing, my writing, my acting at an early age.

I wonder what I might have gained had I been invited to communicate with passionate artists, writers, actors at an early age.

I thought of High Tech High.

I wonder what I might have gained if had been encouraged more to follow my passions rather than worry about 'subjects' to get into 'university'.

I consider myself lucky.

I was able to follow my path without pressure from parents wherever it would lead me.

I remember meeting a top marketing manager who told me how he hated his job, his existence despite the expensive car, the big salary.

I don't have those regrets.

I did have great teachers who encouraged me in acting, writing, art.

I do remember the frustration of my art teacher who asked me why I was giving up art.

I remember telling him that I had been told that it was not a serious subject, that it wouldn't get me a good job....

I remembered tweeting a passage of "Working out Loud" and a question to John Stepper

via @johnstepper Q. What is the cost of disengaged students? #wolweek #wol pic.twitter.com/mxoqPJi3Lz

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) November 27, 2015

 I wondered what regrets you had about education...

The darkness.

Writing Lest we forget kept me awake at night.

In the morning I remembered that the story of my great uncle Wilfred C. Hunter, victim of the Great War, had moved me to create visual imagery in the past.

The image 'The darkness' was produced using Paper by 53 on iPad.


It was drawn after a photo taken in my garden in summer and then modified with filters.

I find rather scary and appropriate, considering the theme, how we can transform a beautiful summery day into a vision from hell.

I had used PicPlayPost  and Strip Designer to create collages which were then assembled in Steller here:

And here

I had used the much lamented defunct Zeega to mash up the images with a soundtrack here.

The Darkness on Zeega  http://zeega.com/167193

Finally, I was moved to read Wilfed Owen, war poetry. I chose one:

Dulce et Decorum Est and decided to record an interpretation of the poem. I uploaded to SoundCloud here:

After recording the first version, I realised that I had missed lines, the most terrifying lines.

On relistening, I felt that the second complete version missed something.

I prefer the first version with the missing lines...

I put that second version here for future reference.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917  and March, 1918

Lest we forget.

Yes, they were still there on my phone.

His photos were there.

They were the last of the very few I had kept from those taken while clearing out my uncle's house.

He refused to be buried, to be trashed.

I had only been vaguely aware of his existence when I was younger.

He was one of those half-remembered names among those half-remembered lists of family names. 

He was my grandfather's brother.

He was the one brother who didn't get through the war. 

In the last years of my parents life I was driven to capture every last story. 

I spent hours going through names, relationships, addresses, anecdotes... 

Before they spoke no more.

Who are those sepia people staring so blankly at us?

What are they trying to say?

Why do they refuse to be forgotten?

Rekindling memories

I left messages on forums, in the hope that someone, somewhere might give me a scrap which might rekindle long forgotten story.

A distant relation emerged in Canada, an Irish second cousin,  I can never remember how many times removed, responded too.

Suddenly, I had my name connected to 14 generations. 

I had an Excel file with a family tree.

I was discovering my plot among the stories. 

I started to make more sense to myself. 

I was one among many, so many.

Our crosses on a map

A visit to a war cemetery in Flanders on a website brought me face to face with a stone cross bearing my great uncle's name, age, rank and regiment.

It was him. 

"His" stone cross, was one among many to scroll.

Wilfred C. Hunter. 24. 2nd Lieutenant. 121st Heavy Battery. Royal Garrison Artillery.

He was 24. 

Grief salvage

Sorting through my uncle's papers, a few years on, my parents long gone, I came upon his name again.

I took a photo of a document before filing it away with others salvaged in the grief. 

He was there, resolute, on my phone.

I find it hard to let go.

2015 seems so much closer now to 1915.

Histoires d'identification

2014, he appears in my writing, for an article for a French teaching  journal.

In the article I speak of how digital tools enable us to give new life to the past.

Noman's land

2012, he appears as inspiration for a blog post written here three years ago: 

http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/2012/03/nomans-land.html

"Dust to digits" 

2015, he appears here again on reading a blog post written by Michelle Pacansky-Brock with a memorable title:

"Dust to digits"

http://www.digitalwritingmonth.com/2015/11/10/dust-to-digits-writing-our-stories-through-family-photographs/

These stories of loss are alive still. 

"Befallen" 

"Fallen"

Lest we forget.

Stop Turning the Pages.

Stop turning the pages.

Has it been unseen by another?

I never remember.

It has taken route.

Since I wrote it, the rhythm is write.

Is < better or  > worse?

I never remember.

Where next? What next? Who next?

We are becoming meme, from capturing the unexpected.

Is all not well in this multiverse?

I never remember.

Is this text sacred
(he asks after already embedding it)?

It is only what you perceive.

.....................

That last chord fades away.

Since I wrote it, the rhythm is write.

Don't you prefer to listen at full volume?

I never remember.

Footnote.

So much that is written in Twitter exchanges is never remembered.
I took ten minutes to stroll down a stream...turning the pages.
 I added a line which stuck me from Wendy Taleo.
I scribbled down some lines on a piece of paper (rare for me).
I looked at the jumble.
I reassembled and muddled around until the above emerged.
What is hidden here?
The source tweets.
The original meaning.
The people.
The contexts.
The times.
All  lost.
Perhaps never to be remembered.

Our eyes connected.

“ESTRAGON: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.
VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think.
VLADIMIR: We have that excuse.
ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear.
VLADIMIR: We have our reasons.
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.” 

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

I stood as if in a trance, my gaze fixed upon that lion. 

In all my life, I had never been so close to such a beast.

I was in awe.

We were silent. 

The babbling tourists suddenly backgrounded.

It happened quite unexpectedly.

I felt a shudder go through me.

Our eyes connected.

I couldn't figure what the lion was thinking, nor what they lion might be wanting to say. 

I wasn't at all sure how to address the lion, nor whether to do more than wish it well.

Our eyes connected.

We were as one in our lot.

There was nothing more to say.

"A Domain of my own", "Fedwiki",  "Blog",  "Equity", "Research", "Inequality", "Privilege", "CSS", "Elite", "Font", "Tenure", "Retired academic," "Tinker", "Tailor," "Beggarman," "Thief," "Stanmore", "Stanford", "Colorado Springs", "Agency", "Profession of faith", "Serendipity", "Rhizo14", "DS106", "Clermont Ferrand", "Pied de porc", "Peer Review", "Flower", "Good Golly Miss Molly","Pffft." "DLRN15", "Slack?", "God Save the Queen", "Mine!" "Yours!", "Whateva".

She was following the letters with her pencil.

She vocalised the consonants: D-D-D.
She vocalised  the vowels: O-O-O.
She connected the sounds: D-O-O-G.

She said the word: dog.  

She had said the word: DOG.

There was a look of triumph in her eye.   

Our eyes connected.

We met each other with a knowing look.

She had felt the power. 

She saw the sounds everywhere. 

She vocalised the letters, the consonants, the vowels, the words, everywhere.

We write, we speak, we code, we build, we assemble, we aggregate, we search, we search...

I saw a photo of a family beneath an ancient tree. 

Its roots were stretched deep down in the ground.

They were looking up.

There was a moment of silence.

We gasp.
We laugh.
We babble. 
We weep.

There is nothing more to say.


 



 

A field of sound.

My sound investigation continues...

I am beginning to get a better idea of how my composition is most often dependent on visualisation with the page acting as a window to imagination.

When I am writing here I leave my immediate context, I escape to other places.

Yes, that's how it feels in 'Touches of Sense..." - each new page is a door to an adventure. It is very rarely a piece of paper or a table on which I can sort through ready made ideas.

Ideas gradually emerge through my fingers.  Ideas are for me most often visual scenes.

This is what makes trying to compose with sound so destabilising and so revealing.

When I am writing orally, my immediate context is foregrounded, I escape within the place.

There appears, bizarrely to be more introspection.

I wonder if this will last?

Perhaps I am able to ignore the page in a way that I am incapable of ignoring the sound of my voice, the sound field in which I am immersed, the novelty of the sound recording interfaces?

In order to really grasp what is going on, I resort to typing out transcripts of my audio captures.

That's it - to grasp it, to touch it, to objectify my thought.

I see myself a different light.

I've been reading widely recently to map out my research.

I shall make a few notes to come back to.

I am putting together pieces to sort in a Flipboard.

I shall return to the pieces along the way...

View my Flipboard Magazine.


Aside the Field

ONG: "The field of sound is not spread out before me but is all around me." #digiwrimo

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) October 9, 2015

Immediately, I am faced with a decision: shall I try to describe the foregrounded/backgrounded sound? I decide not....

Shall I italicise my spoken words? I think I shall...


Transcription

So here I am, I'm writing somewhere else. I'm walking...
So I've been thinking through this business of sound recording, while walking along a bridelway aside a ploughed field, in beautiful autumn sunshine....

I had to move aside a 4x4 nearly run us over. 

So clearly the running over bit wasn't scripted.

Jazz is pulling at the lead wants us to hurry up.

I have that feeling that I should be taking photos.
I have that feeling that I want to find out where those birds are. 

I wonder if you have an impression of the geography, of the topography.

I wonder if you can hear the breeze that I can feel on my skin.

This is writing differently. 

I'm more aware of the listening.
I'm more aware of wanting to listen...to myself while I am recording.

There's that light breeze which is picking up a bit of strength.

Walking along between the ploughed field and the stream.

It's very difficult to get an over-view.

I can't see a page.

I can't see the words...

There's a bird of prey circling above the field.

Let's wait. 
Let's wait.

Will it plunge?

It's circling.

That's Jazz getting impatient.

He runs back to me.
He runs into me.
He wants to go.

I suppose we had better move on...

Strange.

My writing has never been (pause as he remembers another walk described here) that often rythmed by dogs.

He's writing this too.


Post script. 

The time and the wealth of the recording are reduced to words...

A world is feebly annotated.


"senses make place and places make sense" Feld.

Our silenced voices.

I am only too aware of how I have silenced my voice.

How ironic that you might confuse this, my writing, with my voice!





The kids are back from school, they are watching 'Face off' on TV.

I've been gagged.

Can't you hear the mutilation in my written "voice"?

I could never interrupt the TV now.

Shh...they will never know that I am "speaking" to you.

Even the dog is unconcerned by my ham-fisted typing.

“The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!”

Allen Ginsberg


A little while ago, I was venturing into new alien territories.

How do I "write" with my voice?

Here, I am blogging blasé.

Give me danger!

A few moments before, I was lost in Garageband, quite by accident, trying to give voice to my voice.

It is a question that I have been asking myself for some time now.

What is this voice that speaks through my fingers?

I think it through:

• What is this voice constrained in this dialogue box?
• What is this silent voice which moves me? 
• What becomes of the words of others once spoken by myself?
• What becomes of my words once written? 
• Do you hear my voice? 
• Do you hear your voice?
• Do we hear our voices?

So there I was, lost in Garageband, quite by accident, a Metronome (I capitalise without quite knowing why) took over "my" space.

Ha ha ha, "MY SPACE"!

You can listen to that Metronome if you click here.

How does giving voice to my thoughts aloud alter my thoughts?

How does giving voice to my voice alter my voice?

It is a medium with which I am yet unfamiliar.

This is ironic, really.

How silenced are those who write?

This is where Terry Elliott came along to help my reflection.

His 'voice' was there in the comment box.

And now it is here with us:

"Do you know the myth of Philomela and the shuttle? I think it applies: http://vos.ucsb.edu/myth.asp#cut2"

How reverential are we towards our written selves?

How disabled are we to hear our silence, our...punctuation once spoken, once given breath - our heart beats?

This is the challenge that I give you:

WRITE ALOUD!

Don't write before you have listened to your VOICE ALOUD!

I can hear another 'voice' echoing, that of Chris Friend:

"Make some noise: Voicing our written words."

Yes!

Give voice to your written words certainly... but that is not what I am proposing.

"We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter."
Allen Ginsberg.

Make some noise, write your SPOKEN words!

Open a sound recorder, open Garageband, SPEAK!!

Yes!

A sound recorder will be your blank page.

Ha ha ha!

"BLANK PAGE" !!

Don't stop it. Do we stop silence? Do we stop nonsense? Do we stop hesitation?

Write what emerges if you will, if you can, if you dare...

Isn't that how it was historically?

Isn't that what we have forgotten?

We have power in our voices.

There is power in our silence.

Whose power does our silent writing maintain?

Have you ever tried speaking aloud in a library?

SHHHH!

Whose agents are there in this noisy silence?

Speak out now.

Write what you hear.

Write what you hear now.

Gridlock unmasked.

Writing takes me naturally rightwards.  

I wonder in an instant what might go on in a writer's head who habitually writes leftwards, or downwards, once asked to compose in what for me seems a natural direction.

Presented with a page, or at least this blog's page arranged in portrait, I lose myself in landscape, in emotion, in dialogue...

The page becomes an abstraction. It is a lure.  The page has more presence than we can imagine.

Ceci n'est pas une page.

An indication of how a blog page is far from neutral shrieked out at me when when I was invited to write for Edcontexts.

I was writing in unfamiliar surroundings.

It was like playing cello on a borrowed instrument.

Something was wrong.

OK, it was a blog editor pretty much like any other blog editor, but the formating was all wrong.

I was away from home.

The title which emerged can be read on a number of levels: 'Writing to order.'

So all of this is background for my current foregrounded dialogue with Kevin Hodgson which concerns what it is to write in  a digital context.

Exploring this question, a number of blog posts, scribbles and sketches are emerging.

They are a continuation of exploratory work that I have been doing since Rhizo14.

• Volatile
• Distant Voices
• Stolen Words
• No maps for these territories
• Zero visibility 
• Cell formating.

Artistic constraints

I have been lurking on the periphery of #digiwrimo, which I have understood to be an investigation into digital storytelling or writing.

Browsing hashtags (that seems so natural to me now) I came across #25wordstory.

I have to say that Twitter and haiku both appeal to me for their imposed length constraints, so #25wordstory seemed like fun.

The #25wordstory which came out of this challenge was an investigation into the feeling of constraint.  It was the spark for a new story game, based on a Soduku grid sort of affair.

I set up a #25word by #25word Google spreadsheet and wrote my story across the top of the sheet.

The fact of each word being separated in a self-contained cell distorted the flow of the writing.

The movement of the cursor from cell to cell changed the relationship with the story.

Immediately a range of questions and emotions were provoked:

C'est du Kafka

I felt emprisoned by the frame.
I felt crab-like or insect-like in my movement.
Images of Kafkaesque metamorphosis crept out of the page.

“What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream.” 

F.Kafka

I felt a certain degree of claustrophobia.

I felt a sudden paranoia when I was joined in the page by a number of anonymous animals.

The arrival of Kevin in the sheet, lifted the feeling of paranoia. It is extraordinary how a recognisable avatar can give a feeling of security.

Kevin started playing with the constaints, writing stories diagonally, changing unannounced rules.

Yes, the rules what were the rules?

Caught in the grid, it seemed that we were indeed in a game with implicit rules.

This impression was confirmed to me when Susan Watson, I think it was, asked me whether there were any rules?

Following the explorations of Kevin in real time, I saw steps, moutains, slopes, appear graphically across the sheet.

The grid now had contours. What the hell was/is the story?

The story/ies climbed 'up' the sheet.

This is one of the reasons that when Kevin talked of it being a "view from above" I was not at all sure that I was looking from above or was inside the story, or whether the sheet was struggling to find a third or fourth dimension.  If pushed, I would venture fourth dimension.

Maybe I'm amazed?

Tanya appeared in the Twitter stream, and joined in the fun, and discussion sparked around what on earth we were doing in a spreadsheet.

Well I had not really thought  through the choice of a spreadsheet, it just appealed to me.

It was like trying to walk, write or read, through a maze, she said.

I myself had a similar impression as words appeared to connect vertically down columns, across rows and diagonally up and down yellow hills.

Fragments of stories, unusual combinations of verbs, feelings, prepositions stuck incongrously together hitting up against the frame of grammar, sense, and the spreadsheet enclosure.

I suddenly started seeing how apparently absurd constraints were releasing more creative possibilities.

Always the same questions of convention, language, writing, game-play, puzzle, authorship, presence and freedom rose up out of the cells.

What was/is freedom?

Kevin wrote of considering these stories as landscapes. I feel that these spaces are more than landscapes, they are strange actors in a Greek play, masked, choral, disturbing.

We are haphazard intruders in a strangely unfamiliar land, a narrative land that we take too much and too quickly as read.

I feel we are bumping up against the constraints of our prisons, our homes?

This is perhaps a first and an only step that we can knowingly take towards a relative and unsatisfactory freedom.

Someone, I don't know who, had written a word...

 "C-H-A-O-S "

across five columns.

I suspect the fifth column. [find hidden link]

OMG it is, we are, they are, he/she is the FIFTH COLUMN.

"I had no choice except to write myself out."

William Burroughs.

Amphibian epistle.

amphibian epistle

submerged swirling streams. 

fearful undertow.

data

dancing 

cusp

thundering 

beatwave

dada

dumb

dumb

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

scratchy 

waveform

voice 

over.

"It wasn't, it wasn't..."

diving

downwards

indelible

deletion

amphibian apostle

gifting, gill-free, leapt migrator

one word after another

unexpected 

emergence.

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

subtext

sementic

submarine

substance

pebbleroll

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 standing edge wave theory


inspired by 
Terry Elliott's raindrum and backgrounded William Gibson. 

Cell formating.

Twenty five words, by twenty five words...

He sized up the cell's dimensions...

No, there was no doubt about it.


Writing was the only escape.

Never before, had it been so clear to him; the blank page itself was the plot.

Words slid down its surface like drops of blood.

He laid out the sheet, only to be met with the disturbing presence of eighteen anonymous animals.

He longed for the reassurance of recognisable companions.

Was there no peace here?

Pages turned slowly, fluttering in the wind, affronted, assaulted, apeing sense.

What if the story was cyclical?

Words were sized, seized, surface shrapnel.

They were no more than fragments, cuttings, of broken narrative.

Whose narrative was this?

His eyes struggled for focus, blurred by text and movement.

Numbers, hours, days, weeks, words.

25, 24, 7, 52, 365, 25

Numbers, not random, patterned a narrative flow.

Whose narrative was this?

There was not enough time.

He heard a key-stroke, from outside the margins.

"I never count words, I just write." 

Kevin was there.

Something was transformed.

The story became a foothold...

This was the way out.

A co-authored exploration of digital inarrative 

Twitter hashtag, #25wordstory, 

Google Spreadsheets, 

@sensor63

@dogtrax 

18 anonymous animals

To contribute to futher episodes, come and play here on this spreadsheet

[click on hidden link]

Zero visibility.

Nothing could have prepared me for cultural meltdown.

One moment I was dressed in a suit, failing an interview for a secure job in sales.

The next moment, I was standing in a warehouse in North London peopled by androids.




Zero experience.

"Do you have any experience in the music industry?"

"No."

"Do you have any experience in the film industry?"

"No."

"Do you have any experience in the computer industry?"
"No."

After the third question, they were apparently satisfied that I had all the competences required.

I was hired.

I had no idea why.

Do androids dream of electric sheep?

I liked the androids.

Jim Whiting Installation

My friends asked me what job I had found. I didn't know what to answer.

How do you explain to other people what you are doing, when you yourself have not the slightest idea?

How do you plan for new worlds?



I only had plans for a world which no longer existed.

How do you communicate via media that you have never ever imagined?

I was completely in the dark.

I like the dark. 

The dark was intensely stimulating.

I imagined new worlds.
I drew new worlds.
I was living in a new world.

We were creating a 'psycho-sensory experience'.

What does that mean? I can not start to explain.

I found some of the original publicity. I think it is worth quoting.

"We have been asked many questions in the past about what you will be seeing.... Unfortunately, we will be unable to answer your questions."

As I was dialoguing with my friend Kevin Hodgson,  he introduced me to a documentary via Terry Elliott about the writer William Gibson.

I had never heard of him, or at least I don't remember hearing of him.

What I saw seemed all strangely familiar to me.

"No maps for these territories."

Watching the video, I was brought back to a warehouse in North London.

We talked of robots, of mind-expanding culture, of technofear, of networks, of societal change.

I fell upon an interview of a friend of mine from that period, the artist Richard Brown, interviewed here.

Zero visibility

I have no idea where we are heading. 

I have no idea what forms of expression we will experience a century from now.  

What I am sure of is that we have for the moment zero visibility.  

That is a source of hope, a source of fear, a source of excitement. 

For those of us working in education, these are challenging times.

I reckon Eric Hoffer says it better than anyone.

I am not sure past experience is going to be of much use here in these stange landscapes. 

We have no maps, we need to map, to trace our steps...

No maps for these territories.

 
Even nonsense once expressed is no longer nonsense.

No Maps for These Territories

I remember going by bus from New York to Las Vegas

 I had forgotten I wanted to write.

No Maps for These Territories

 I wanted to write nothing this morning,

  It's been a few days now, 

 I listened again to the remix,

 Words stole away from the page

No Maps for These Territories  

A stream of words spoke to me through the static.

 They needed to be slowed down.

 Then an image came to me...

No Maps for These Territories

They are here in the next room.

I have sort of ignored their call for help

I may or may not bother to go back

Maybe I will ...

I feel there is danger here.

I just have to ignore them.

What do you think?

a irhizo-collage of 

@dogtrax @telliowkuwp @sensor63

Stolen words.

  

I don't feel as if the ground is shifting

Here, it is morning. The house is dark. 

The kids are sleeping. 

My older son has friends over, so there are five 16 year old boys in the next room. 

The dog got walked and is now curled up asleep. 

Snow fell all day yesterday, 

The shadows of the moon are flickering across trees weighed down by heavy snow. 

I heard a tree branch crack and fall a few minutes ago.

And I am writing to you, elsewhere in the world...

I feel calm in doing it. 

My mind and my thoughts are both here with me, there with you...

And falling into this page with very little plan for what I want to write about. 

Yet, I don't feel disjointed by that

We are our Audience. 

We make sense of it, more or less.



Groundshifting written by @dogtrax 

We are our audience.