Fire in a Handfull of Dust

Intellective Fire:

Dear Paula & Writers Across the Curriculum,

This is dedicated to the Black Dog Runners:
every early morning the running conversation
going by my 2^nd floor window among Steve,
Ed, and Andy—pat, pat, pat & I could hear
Andy’s voice booming by the gazebo before
they even got to the hemlock: chewing the fat
& running at the same time, morning after
morning; & I’d get a wave & wave back and
Steve’s big black dog: pulling the trio toward
Witherspoon Complex and points south.
Those were the days.

Protocols for Strategy Creation

A) Take the notion Intellective FIRE (an image
we were playing with a week ago or so).
Characterize it.
Turn it way up and set it beside:

B) the essentially Assess-mentalist concerns:
number of pages, spacing, criteria for points & scoring:
grammar, spelling, clarity of expectations, things that
count—no, literally you can count them, check list so
as to minimize subjectivity, unfairness, squabbles over
grading, time it takes to process a theme….that dominate
our pedagogical environmental studies & turn THAT
concern way up, too—as equally significant but not if
not counter-balanced anti-thetically, antagonistic &
diabolically opposed by flames of Intellective Fire so
as to not WET BLANKET the whole deal know what
I’m saying smother the venture like black plastic with
cookie- cutter openings tossed over the garden straw-
berry patch so that only decent politically correct
berries need apply.

C) And only then (sequence protocol)
without diminishing either
(FIRE, on the one hand;
REGULATION on the other)
wonder how the 2 can Get Along
& not just the sound of one hand slapping.

It's gut wrenching. Visceral grinding.

Our collective "light" not to mention the spirit of
collaborative genius: hidden under a monumental
bushel of control-it-&-regulate; and how're we
gonna let it shine?

Do I overstate, or under? Will you improve my
terms, images and assumptions? Need we argue?
There’s the saving grace, right there: that we can!

That phrase of Paula’s smolders, & smokes like the
burning going on right now below the Advance- mental
Offices, a controlled fire: smoke drifting up to Jensen.
.
The Art of Teaching Luncheon was a beautiful example
of our finished-product assess-mentality. all about points
and prompts and projections and parameters and thesis
statements and what Bob’s article would call protocols
for strategic analysis:

“entirely rational and logical” even though not
interpretable as such at the neuronal substrate
level where thinking takes place.”

Who thinks in terms of thesis statements?

After the thinking’s done & gone—sure: smoking it over:
aha, I see what it is I’ve been trying to say maybe.
Retrospectively, cerebral Monday morning quarter-
backing. What a temptation to make up the Rules
& Regulations based on Retrospective After-the-Deed
Critical Analysis! And we do. We DO. .

But those patterns were NOT present when I was lost
in the process, damnit: moving thru a cloud of unknowing
anyone knows what I mean who’s been carried away in
the moment of composing, burning with intellective &
affective fire & holy smokes. Wilderness. A wildness.
You all know what I mean, I bet you 5 dollars.

Do you remember Poe’s Philosophy of Composition?
The making of “The Raven,” and how said he marched it
all out logically and sequentially and rationally like an
algorithm, like a protocol for strategic analysis— one
controlled turn after another make no mistake or slip
of the lip ever more?

It was a hoax.

A moneymaker: “Boy, wait’ll they get a load of this!”

Poe knew the “rational” was forever in service to the
“IRRATIONALl” no matter the public enlighten-mental
age of reason & he would twit & tweak Common Sense
just when the Rationalists thought they had it covered &
under control.

BOO!
Crashing up from the cellar:
upos—the problem of evil.

Who writes creatively, inventively, with 100 points of
assessmentalism driving you on? —every sentence better
be meaning full: clarity, consistency, coherence and accurate
documentation lights a fire under my but? NO No no. It’s doesn’t
WORK that way. Not if we want some bonfire of the intellective
vanities to warm the village it takes to raise a child.

I HATE PLAGIARISM! Don’t you dare.
(who ever don't: cast the first stone
it's ongoing original sin, yest
one form or another)

Don’t that kindle the seeds of my rebellion?
We’ll see about that! NOW it becomes interesting.
How many ways can I rip-off the internet and assemble
a treatise and thesis-nail it down to look like protocol?
I’m finally challenged.

I’m assuming the Creative is as important to cultivate as the
Critical and that they are not the same deal but 2 radically
incommensurate hostile sets of VALUES yada yada yada..

Intellective Fire mothers invention and the Rules for Regulation
& Control & you guys, my colleagues: you’re all like Mothers
For Rules for Regulation (MFRFR) & Control & Protocols
for Strategic Analysis addicts. (CPSAA)

NO? Bring it on.

If not …nevermind. I’m sorry. xxxooo, Sam

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact,
you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if
it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you
through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily
conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we
crave only reality.

If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats
and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go
about our business. (HDT: romantic transcendentalal,
engmajor ways-of-talking: ok, we don't talk the same
as you other guys: you got a problem with that?.)