From one dot to another...

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

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

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





I mean.

You mean?

That's already quite a lot...

Enough?

It will have to do...

I mean.

What are we on the grander scale of things?

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

NOT.

Even BOWIE.

And he was GOD.

To put an over fine point on it.

Or a comma, a semi fucking colon;

Huh?

Well.

I mean.

You don't understand.

Me neither.

You mean.

We are punctuation to posterity.

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

Ha ha.

That's French.

Yes.

Entertainment.

Ooh. la. la.

Ah?

Là.

A question mark?

Ha!

An exclamation mark!

A colon:

A mad dash -

ONwards...

SHIT...

-ASH.

DUST!

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

Written off, or laid down.

FLAT.

R.I.P.

Underscore _

CHANGE PARAGRAPH

I mean.

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

Carl Sagan

We are the world.

Well...a bit of it.

Punctuation to posterity.

Beat it...Michael.

Dot to dot.

DOTS...

A dot, I spent hours going dotting a page.

WHAT THE FUCK FOR?

Nature #decdoodle pic.twitter.com/e9wZUYrnRG

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 10, 2017

I know not why.

I mean.

That is enough.

But there was something in the dots.

There was a connection.

Prosaic!

Prozac?

A hashtag. 

Does that have a dash?

#decdoodle.

Whatever.

Just a link.

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

There was a feeling.

It sparked creativity.

I suspect it is what is essential here.

pic.twitter.com/XE2CWDYCIo

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 11, 2017

What did you say Carl?

"FOR SMALL CREATURES SUCH AS WE 

THE VASTNESS IS ONLY BEARABLE 

THROUGH LOVE"

Carl Sagan

I suppose that is what creativity stems from.

to connect the dots we must have dots - how do we grow our dot forest? #creativity (slide from my upcoming TEDx talk) #getsmART pic.twitter.com/VmIdeBoBpT

— Amy Burvall (@amyburvall) September 16, 2017

What connects?

YES!

What connects? God damn it!

TEDx

OH HI!

X now?

Amy...?

Love learning or its pendants: 

Love yearning 

Love mourning 

Drives us.

CRAZY!

YOU

CRAZY

FUCK!

What else is there to do?

Here....

So I connect dots.

Dot to dot process. https://t.co/O0jUzryogS @wentale #decdoodle #clmooc

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 11, 2017

With a hashtag.

#decdoodle.

#decdoodle https://t.co/QarOi4P5qo #clmooc

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 7, 2017

And I groan at Despacito.

#decdoodle nature nurture despacito pic.twitter.com/z2jCQFKMiT

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 10, 2017

And then the dog says...

#decdoodle « I wanna be your dog. » Iggy Dot https://t.co/tFvJ0t8Kyh pic.twitter.com/EnHkY1nRR6

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) December 10, 2017

Voice incubator

I have a confession to make.

I was scared of letting you read this.

I was my own worst judge.

I am not alone.

There are too many others who are scared of letting others hear their voice.

I have come across others...

Sometimes that makes me angry.

There are days like that.

What the hell is a blog?

I was never quite sure.

It seemed important for me to try to answer the question.

As far as I remember, I started off by reading Stephen Downes' blog.

I suppose it was as good a place as any.

I didn't think that I would ever write a blog.

What the hell was a blog anyway?

So here I am writing this blog.

I can't answer for anybody else but this is my answer to what a blog is. It's this. It's writing when I feel the desire, the need to fling a few words down onto this white space, this comfortable white space.

What the hell was Twitter?

I didn't know.

I spent six months being an egg.

I felt ovally dumb.

I didn't know what Twitter was.

I was an egg.

I took a long time to hatch thus...

I needed an incubator.

Incubation.

The incubator for Touches of Sense...was Learning with E's.

It is a story I tell my students now.

I had read Steve Wheeler's blog for a a fair old time before I thought I might be able to comment.

Like many people I feared that I had nothing to offer to a wider public.

I wasn't quite sure if comments like I might write would be appropriate.

I wrote to Steve asking if it was OK to comment on his blog.

Looking back on it, this seems ridiculous.

It wasn't ridiculous then.

I would read his blog every day.

It made sense to me.

I connected with his willingness to write himself openly.

There was a humanity, a personality expressed which I appreciated.

I was thinking about it the other day (a couple of years back now).

Comments that I wrote on his blog became progressively more like blog posts.

A couple of years ago, I went and found a few comments and saved them in a Google Document.





Yes, looking back the voice is recognisably mine, or at least the voice that I have become familiar with.

A Twitter Chat

I was participating in a Twitter chat yesterday.

I am no longer an egg.

I am a swirl.

It was an #edenchat hosted by Steve Wheeler about "rhizomatic learning".

He announced the theme in his blog: #EDENCHAT Growing Minds.

I got wind of it via my PLN on Facebook.

Autumm Caines did a great job Storifying it here:

@ashleygshaw @NomadWarMachine @amyburvall @shaw2703 My attempt to #Storify "#EDENChat on Rhizomatic Learning" https://t.co/WUKpS0SqLZ

— Autumm Caines (@Autumm) February 25, 2016

I wouldn't have been able to develop the Twitter skills necessary to participate in the chat had I not attended the Learning Without Frontiers Conference in London in 2011.

The photo above that I dug out was from a presentation which Steve Wheeler gave about Edupunk.


Incubation

Steve Wheeler asked a question:

Q4: I'm now quoting @davecormier: How can we help students 'make connections we would never make ourselves'? #EDENchat

— Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) February 24, 2016

@amyburvall @timbuckteeth @davecormier "Dots...that is where we come in." Dots is people. #edenchat #rhizo16 pic.twitter.com/qWdaPh3Nb9

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 24, 2016

I suppose this is where I connect those dots...


Rhizomatic Learning

Touches of sense is a space where I connect my learning openly, rhizomatically.

I don't start with a plan and then work backwards.

I don't have a structure in my head before I start writing.

In writing, I am learning.

In writing, I am learning what I will think, not what I think now.

In writing, I am learning to listen to a voice which was silenced for so long...by others, by myself.

Searching for patterns.

@amyburvall @timbuckteeth @suebecks humans are pattern seekers even where there were none #edenchat pic.twitter.com/2a45XV8XCq

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 24, 2016

I looked for patterns in my titles here in my last post.

I come back and read and read anew.

This is a blog for me. It is a space to pattern search.

This is a mapping of  haphazard rhizomatic learning.

I look at the people that I have had the pleasure to learn from and with.

How can you not learn from people who wear shoes like Howard Rheingold's, or paint in pink like Amy Burvall?

@timbuckteeth @hrheingold @amyburvall i prefer his shoes #EDENchat pic.twitter.com/6PZyKsyLAm

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) February 24, 2016

@amyburvall @hrheingold Howard has opened my mind to interconnected learning opportunities and taught me so much #edenchat

— Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) February 24, 2016

Search for Steve Wheeler in this blog's search box, you will see how often his ideas connect here.

http://tachesdesens.blogspot.fr/search?q=steve+wheeler

Search for Dave Cormier in this blog's search box, you will see how often his story of rhizomes connects here.

@ManYanaEd @Autumm To me it's a story for learning. It's a story that works for some people, not for others. #EDENchat

— dave cormier (@davecormier) February 24, 2016

Knitting strands...

We are all so densely complex to unravel.

How I feel of what I know changes constantly.

There is no knowledge without emotion.

There is no network without nuture.

Nature, nurture, network

Learning with e's.

I posted a link to an old post about anger to #edenchat.

I noticed a kind comment of Steve Wheeler's

Wishing I could write like @sensor63. Just once. https://t.co/LnwsvcOxFb

— Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) February 24, 2016

Thank you Steve for your voice.

It touched me.

Here are some Touches of Sense:

Learning without emotion is nothing.

Our role is to enable each learner to listen to the sense their patterns make.

Here are some of my patterns.

This is my story.

This is my voice.

Thank for your part in its incubation.

Shredding tears...

Nothing seemed to matter any more.

There was no light, there was not a glimmer of hope, there was no way out.



Confronted by the enormity of the events, he flailed around for a hold, a resting place, a ledge.

Nothing seemed to offer any respite from the prevailing gloom, from the pain.

Shredding tears...

He picked up a piece of paper.

He looked at its surface.

He took a pen.

He dragged out a line.

"In whose name?"

He looked at it.

There was no answer.

Nothing else followed.

He rewrote the line.

"In whose name?"

There was no answer.

Nothing else followed.

He...
He...

No, he couldn't even remember that bloody verb.

He tossed it into the bin.

He looked down at the bin.

It was full.

None of it made any sense.

He put down the pen.

Wrinkles and scars.

He looked down at his hands.

He studied the wrinkles.

He followed the scar on the palm of his left hand with his index finger.

Nobody could take away that scar.

Nobody would notice that scar.

Nobody would understand the intimacy of that scar.

What does it all mean?

Suddenly he noticed her.

He looked up to meet her eyes.

She spoke.

"I just wanted to say..."  

"Please don't change..."

It wasn't really very much.

It was undeniably cryptic.

Even if she was the only one...

It was enough.

He could go on in that knowledge.

At heart.

How do we perceive a heart beating?

There is a space which keeps us breathing, breathing together.

How does together feel?

How do we express together?



We are as of one.

We are embryonically aware of being contained.

We are precognitively aware of being connected.

Air cries out.

A light.

A cry.

A limb stretched out.

A hand grasps.

How does out feel?

We are babe in arms.

Familiar heart beating.
Beats aside of ours.
We are babe in arms.
Foetus no more.

Hunger, pangs of thirst, fear.

How does hunger pain us?
How do we express thirst?

Away from us...

How do we fear movement away?
What is away?

I am apart

How does singularity feel?
How do we express being a part, being apart?

I am desire.

Hunger  to move?

Thirst to know?

WHAT? 

WHY?

How do we feel to?
How do we know to be away?
How do we move away from us?

I feel I am, I recognise I am.

There is fear of being singular.
There is desire for being a part.

Recognise my singularity.
Recognise my longing.

I explore, I stretch out.

How far am I?
How far am I from the edge of my reason?

I take courage, I feel fear beaten.

I am, it is, we are, as if self-contained.

I grasp for meaning.

I stretch out my hand.

I feel your presence.

I am connected.

I am one of yours, my friends.

Your company keeps me safe.

Fear not.

Farewell

Rejoice.

For my friends

EMOTI[CON] (n.)

EMOTI[CON](n.)

(via @gardnercampbell Ecologies of Yearning.)

"Academia is to learning, what prostitution is to love."
[TALEB remixed.]

Connected communication synthesised:
[SIMON]

# :-)

[ANON]

Epiphany:
[SIMON]

'Eureka!!"
[ARCHIMEDES]

Science sucks!
[ANON]

What more is there to say?
[SIMON]