My Annual Report & Self Evaluation

Annual Report: Self-Evaluation

“All good conversation, manners, and action
comes from a spontaneity which forgets images
and makes the moment great.

Nature hates calculators; her methods are
saltatory and impulsive.”

“As I am, so I see. Use what language we will,
we can never say anything but what we are."
RW Emerson

“We're not getting anywhere,” a student complains.
“We keep going round and round and round.”

Exactly! Metalogue.

Talk that is about itself Talking,
where the TOPIC of the talk is
not only the token topic (any
text, any context, any text and
context in relationship) but also
the talk itself: our digital & ana-
logical renditions of noise &
news, mixed & operating meta-
force carrying & concealing the
burden of underlying assumptions,
hidden suppositions, faux dicho-
tomies, dominant paradigms, contra-
addictions & para-doxologies:
culturally laden value-driven, non-
transparent connotations passing
for mere instruments of description,
unacknowledged reification,
personification and deification
manifesting and embodying pure
abstractions no one in his left mind
would put a finger on all of which
generate our daily Life of the Body Politic,
somewhat polite, more than somewhat policed.
@@@@

Self Evaluation

I preach differentiation & separation of species,
yet I practice confusion: collapsing & conflating
church, state, and school modes in the name of
Liberal Art—which for me is another way of
talking about esoterikos :

salvation of souls,
transformations of psyche,
born again & again,
renaissance, rebirth,
enlightenment, samadi,
nirvana, accepting jesus
as my personal savior,
standing one-to-one
with the absolute: knight
of faith enjoying my own
idiotic (personal, unique,
non-transferable, non-
replicable, non-transferable)
relationship with the universe,
self-actualization, SELF
reliance, individuation…

and all other ways of talking about a
sacramental part-to-whole communion
traditionally the domain of religion:
re-ligeo —to be “bound back” to
the source. Blest be the ties.
“My Yoga is Easy.”

Working toward this KIND of relationship
(however described) is primordial: super
ordinate. All other agenda: secondary,
subordinate, serving Liberal Art the way
surface sentences manifest and reflect
a deep structural generative organization
of our communication & converse-action.

Grammar.

What ever the course, token topic,
apparent subject-object matter,
trees in the forest, devils in the
details and all that can be
assessed: the deep eco-
logic is what counts &
can’t be counted.

Grammar..

Out of the closet: endlessly knocking:
I am presbyterian: old guy walking on
3 legs. Confessing my sin is the best I
can do. It don’t annihilate but puts it
on the table, in view. No cover up.
Maybe I can think around it with
a little help from my friends.

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

“The use of literature is to afford us a
platform whence we may command a
view of our present life, a purchase by
which we may move it.”

I fail at what I try.
I fail to frame a study of literature
as inter-play of text, context, and
media, also known as the practice
of metalogue and dialectic.

I fail unilaterally to build a mutually
reciprocating FRAME OF MINDING for
text-to-context class room converse-action
where we watch not only what we’re talking
about, but how—tracking the difference and
the relationship, getting better at suspending
disbelief and (more difficult) belief, getting
better at holding in mind simultaneously polar
& hostile contraries, delighting in contradiction
& paradox: knowing theoretically at least that
revelation emerges in the ability to keep
opposition in play but unable to keep it in play,
damnit.

I fail in initiating my students
into the practice of liberal art—
life-long sport anyone can get
better or good at and every
once in a while: eureka!

In Play (ludic):

Non Sense
Common Sense No Sense At All

Some get it. Some get wind of it. Many are left
a little behind. Sacrifice of innocence to Our Village
Gods of Clarity, Coherence, & Consistency.

“If you can only reach one or two,”
mentors told me when I first began.
“Be grateful.“

“Nonsense,” I said.
“I will reach them all.”

My reach exceeds my grasp.
And it is un-postponed joy to be reaching.
Missive Improbable. Mission Impossible.
Pre-requisites for the Practice of Liberal
Art.

xxxooo, Presbyter