Liberal Art Going On & On

Converse Action with a Colleague

Don't Just Do Something:
STAND THERE!
(Daniel Berrigan)

Did you notice bell hooks referring
to her "situational position"?

Acknowledging how-it-is our lives
put us in situations & positions
where we push away & move
ourselves toward somewhere else:
other places, positions, situations
we think better.

Or decide I’ll brighten the corner
where I am wherever I go there
we are & Jesus wants me for his
more-than-the-sum-of-parts-&-
parties beams.

My favorite Berrigan quote:

"A revolution is interesting
so long as it avoids like the
plague the plague it promises
to heal."

Otherwise: doomed.

Where is the edge between
rationality and craziness?
How much of either can we
bear creatively? Isn't that
the place where art and
wisdom are discovered,
or created?

"To bear and not to own,
to act and not lay claim,
to do the work and let it go;
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.” (Tao)

The Plague

Just listening to bell
and the responses:

a plague all around,
round & round

A pox on Both Houses:
righteous & righteous.

She says...He says...

Doomed: Dominated.

Or damned damnit::
damaged & damaging
if we do damage &
damaged & damaging
ifwe don't. Damned,
damnit.

Go ahead: improve my terms.
Can't talk "damned" on Oprah.

Say: "Wounded,"
or, better,
"vulnerable"

and she will roll eyes, call up
resident Dr. Oz, social worker,
marriage counselor, gender
expert, stock broker, movie
actor, hip-hop ghetto broker,
pop diva.. and let the healing
begin: reparations, redemptions,
reconciliations, reconfigurations,
reformations, resurrections,
redundancies again and again

Heal, damnit.
Heal!

xxxooo Presbyter & Colleague
across the curriculum.

bell hooks and the possibilities of intervention and transformation

Founding Fathers

fund, found, foundation, fundament,
fundamental: L. fundus -- bottom.
I.E, bhudh: base, (butt—bottom line)

A House (divided) is
Not a Home

Domo (home) Oikos (house)
Domain Ecologic
Dominance Economics

Identifying ways we participate in the
perpetuation of white supremacy, of
racist domination, expands our potential
for intervention and transformation.
( bell hooks)

And “patriarchal” thinking, that too.

Of all the words that bell hook put into play
yesterday, I think “DOMINATION”
dominated, trumping:

“white supremacy, “
“racism,”
“feminism,”
“patriarchy,”
“homophobia/hetero-normalcy”
“class hierarchy “and
“ecological disaster”

--by far.

This makes sense.

All those terms represent the symptoms of the
DOMINANCE which dominates my habits,
habitats, hegemonic inhabitation: the patterns
that drive my homeland security systems and
my human nature.

Control. Order. Predictability, Regulation. .
In my terms-of-desire, of course so as
to make the world a better place. .

I was feeling both guilt and righteousness listening
to bell—acknowledging & identifying with my white
racist skin. my patriarchal privileged relatively upper
class ways on the one hand (situational position).

But on the other hand congratulating myself as stalwart
pioneer exploring unknown pedagogical frontiers:
relinquishing my classroom dominance best I can
inside an environment which perpetuates dominance
like anything.

(Trying to build an ice cream parlor in hell
while doing no injustice to either hot or cold. )

Given the DOMINANCE bell critiques as the dominant
environmentalism (my dominion- driven & domain protecting
human nature):how to build it’s diabolical antithetical
counter-balance without too much disturbing the
PEACE we all desire too, damnit; that's
something LIKE the challenge bell
presents to me.

That’s how I see it

IMAGINE, so as to expand my potential for intervention
and transformation: me being able to consider the
DOMINATION challenge (identifying my involvement
as perpetrator/victim) as really

interesting:

a problem in description (aesthetics, prior to ethics).

ME--able to suspend (at least in “school” mode) my moral
judgment (“Damned Moral Sense”as Twain calls it) long
enough to sidestep my righteous/defensive double-binding
ingrown strategic tactics tying me up in great Gordian
Naughts as usual or forget about it.

IT, I said.

My Dominance/Submission Addiction, whatever its race,
gender, class, situational embodiment & varieties of
regional & local manifestation makes no never minding,
damnit.. OMG: that would be awesome.

This little lite of mind

Ask your self:
how can consciousness
know the UN-conscious
which rules (need we argue?)
without reducing it to
conscious process, like
talking about sphere in
terms of flat lines?

Am I aware my voiced-to-voiceless
alveolar fricative plural-variations
depends upon—is governed by—the
environmental conditions of the final
segments of the noun I unconsciously
pluralize?
How do I do this?

What does it take to lift a finger?
tongue-tap the alveolar ridge?
maintain the valved hum of a
low-back vowel? the glide of
a voiced glottal? How do I
sustain such unconscious
capabilities & environed
mentalism?

[Once: Faulkner & Joyce exposed
their streams of unconsciousness
offending my linear habits of
beginnings, middles, & endings;
and then MTV, damnit, began
generating constellations of imagery
non sequitur to whatever lyrical
sequence was going on & on: my
sense of Show & Tell took a hit,
ambushed by internal providential
explosive devices until it became
clear to me what a merely
convenient truth a
sequence is— &
because & affect.]


Consciousness:
melting polar cap

Shrink
Shrank
Shrunk
the whole iceberg;
and then merely
the tip & now
only a snow
ball squat
on top
the tip is
how I’ve
come to see my

consciousness;

or sitting in a plastic
kiddy-seat beeping
a rubber horn as
if driving the auto-
mobile: a convenient
toot.

Watch out:
Consciousness is
Coming thru.
Beep! Beep!

Aiming
to save the
world with Buick
intentions, I’s berg
aspirations, & a
snow ball’s
chance in
hell.

Consciousness:

a miner’s lamp;
me: assessing
the true nature
of dark.

Consciousness

this little lite
of mind: I’m
gonna let it
shine my
total eclipse
of the sum.



xxxooo, Presbyter

Stimulus Packaging

Where Do New Ideas Come From?

The Poverty of the Stimulus.

A phrase used to describe the idea that
we “know” far more about the linguistic
environment we swim in than is “exemplified"
by the language we hear around us.”

The grammar a person ends up with is
vastly underdetermined by linguistic
experience. Although children hear
many utterances, the language they hear is

incomplete,
noisy, and
unstructured.
the data they are exposed
to is impoverished.

Less than what is necessary to account
for the richness and complexity of the
grammar they attain. (see pg 348)

WHAT THIS (may) MEAN:
By analogy:

Something like innate rules and structures
are within each of us that receives the data
of our individual daily experience coming in
noisy and unstructured (like my classes, say),
happen stance and unplanned (like my classes, say).
constellated & digressive & divergent (like my
classes, say),

AND YET is transformed into a richness
and complexity of (say) one’s personal deep
grammar that generates one’s frame of
mind-set, attitude, outlook, world view,
Way of Operating, Processing,
Communicating: “Language-ing”.

The Poverty of Stimulus.

A frog’s egg can be “stimulated” by a horsehair
and it's tweak will start the internal grammar that
produces a (haploid) individual. Not exactly an
“immaculate” conception—but not spermatazoic,
either.

Might be described as the “poverty of stimulus.”
It don’t take MUCH because the innate inner
“grammar” is programmed to kick in.

Let’s hope Something Like That

(our noisy,
unstructured,
unplanned,
classroom
environmental
emergent autopoetic
chaos & anarchy )

is never the less a stimulus package
(impoverished, sure) rich enough to
generate a personal plethora of insight
and meaning provided one is scanning to
Make Some Sense of One’s Own

as opposed to

the dense-pack information “rich”
linear lesson-plans on-task, cover-
the-ground, GetRDone Else institutional
learning we are Used/Abused To—
not that there’s anything wrong with
THAT: it's measurable, assessable,.
purposive & driven by predictable
aims, objectives, goals: convenient
and conventional.

STIMULUS PACKAGING

Impoverished (do more with less)
Enriched (do less with more)

Do you see the DIFFERENCE?
(Is it a difference for you that
makes a difference?)

Do you see the RELATIONSHIP
Can you say? Tell?
What if you were Helen Keller?

(Feel free to push Reply or Reply-to-All
if this has any stimulus value toward
sustaining relevant-to-class conversation)

xxxooo, Sam

Comfortable in my Own Sin

Groaning Liberal Artists

... words of prophets written
on the subway walls…whisper'd in
the sounds of silence. (Paul Simon)

From the men’s bathroom stall,
2^nd floor Jensen:

Identifying ways we participate
in the perpetuation of white
supremacy, of racist domination
expands our potential for
intervention and transformation.
( bell hooks)

And knowing the ways I participate
in patriarchal bias, my purposive
ego-centric conscious agenda driving
idiosyncratic if not idiotic terms of my
desire, ambition & o my jealous heart:
my conviction of spin not to be denied
or covered: identifying these my ways
of willing & nilling in accord with my
personal & partial grand scheming also
and by the same token expanding my
potential for intervention and
transformation.

As my cousin the artist would say:

“If I can Just Get My Own
Head out of the Way, Sam”

convinced his landscapes would be
all the better for it.

I’m somewhat comfortable that I’m
uncomfortable that I’m not comfortable
in my own skin & that’s not bad, pretty
good actually. Who is? After nip/tuck,
lipo, colonic rub-a-dub dub washed
in the blood of lambs: some say
they are:

“Comfortable in my own skin!”

I know I do no right myself without wrong.
To be comfortable in my own spin I would
have to ‘fess up:

Yes, I did this and this & So:
No, I couldn’t do that or that
also: much to my regret, damnit”

What a convention is good for:
conveniently ignoring the wrong that
righting generates so as to accentuate
the positive so I can sleep at night.

I confess:

I am somewhat uncomfortable in the
comfort of my own skin; however:
knowing better the ways I participate
in crimes of convention: the tacit if
not explicit itch, burr under saddle,
pea under mattress, I’m ok with that
& comfortable in my own sin: guilty
as charged & appropriately accused.

Not denying.

Expanding my potential
for intervention & transformation. .

Presbyter

Growing Liberal Artists

Growing Liberal Artists

Don’t wear tuxedos;
scuttle high seriousness,
pomp, circumstance &
the principle of the thing.

Dirty business.
Pull the black plastic
off the strawberry fields

We used to focus mainly
on product outcomes &
concrete results. But
realized we achieve more
shifting focus upstream
and thinking about the
processes that produce
our results.

Most important:
shared worship—
all due respect
to the overall
Environ- mental
Frame-of- Mindset:
Our Mother of Resource
nurturing, cultivating &
shaping Inventiveness.

oops,
oh my,
oof,
damnit,
er, ah,
hmm,
shucks,
ooo,
yes,
Yes,
YES….

“We’ve already moved
from management to
leadership—we are about
to go beyond leadership
to inspiration. In the 21^st
century we have to achieve
peak performance by
creating conditions that
allow them to unleash
the power of their people—
not leading them, not by
managing them, but by
co-inspiring them”
(G. Otto Scharmer Theory U.)

Or Keep IT in the Cupboard with the Cupcakes

Always for the Sake of Argument:

“When you’ve got everything in order, be sure
to store your information in a safe place. You
might consider keeping everything in a fire proof
metal box ,file cabinet, or home safe.”
Balanced Living

Philosopher of Composition.

A SINNER in the hands of angry gods;
betrayer of organized labor: walking
into class clueless, yet always with
great expectations.

Wait'll they get a load of THIS:

Our bundled Mind On a Page: prompt-galore,
noggin-notions, images, ideas, declarations,
expostulations, cornu copia & a daily
stimulus package..

WHELM of possibilities & crime against
conventions: traitor to departmental textual
harassment and assessable objectives,
goals & aims.

Algorithm:
Chaos-Tolerance + Anarchy Appreciation.
= Emergent Phenomena &
Possible Auto Poesis

“Collaborative genius,” is nurtured by an
environment that encourages failure & factors
in the liability of clarity: how lucidity occludes
the rest of a whole, attention deficiency always
riding the underbelly of attention efficiency

Genuine Anarchy Welcome Inn:
no arches, no leaders, no agenda.
Always The Beginning of the
Universe of Converse: nothing
overt filtering Friend CHAOS.

Possibilities overwhelm. Swimming
always in agenda, we’re like fish hooked
& hauled into the canoe, knowing dry
like a virgin, for the first time and what
it truly means to be all wet. To flip &
flop.

Uncanny: the potency, the potential,
the power & glory of an environ-
mental abyss: mothering invention
or simply dismay. .

When you’ve got everything
in order, be sure to store
your information in a safe
place. You might consider
keeping everything in a fire
proof metal box ,file cabinet,
or home safe. Balanced Living

xxxooo, Presbyter