Pollen Nation

Pollen Nation

A coalescence floating on top of a water droplet.

on Don Collin’s recently re-stained deck,

the physics of which folds and convolutions

remain a mystery to the observer.

http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~physics/PhysPhotOfWeek/PPOW/

Dear Linguists, Fictionists, Liberal Artists.& Colleagues

Across the Curriculum:

Now that we’re more than a quarter thru the semester,

I mean to try and give you a REPRESENTATION

(always inadequate, of course) for why my courses

feel strange if not uncanny: a joke, waste of precious

time –which for some if not for many describes the

experience I don’t blame them either.

I presume. For others the courses may not feel strange

at all, but familiar and comfortable—genial, generative,

ah home-sweet-home: we’re just fooling around here,

stunned stupid with leisure time to play with IT…

It depends on how YOU frame it.

IT = what’s going on, the experience,

hap happening.

Frame IT as LUDIC (game in play)

or as ILLUDIC (no game, no play:

work program & service project:

getRdone-ness)

Choose. The 2 frames (ludic/illudic)are

incommensurate and as “hostile” as

“masc.” & “fem,” as “linear” & “non-linear,”

as digital logic and analogic, as noun and verb…

Complementary and relate-able?

Yes, of course. But not if you collapse,

conflate, and contaminate the distinction,

That just generates Ignorance and Confusion

and thickens the bozone layer, true? Need we argue?.

Look: (Don’t worry about the devilish details,

just “grok” the whole deal if you can: as if it

were a landscape. )

I. Rules:

S-->NP VP

NP-->(det) N

VP-->VP NP etc

II. Structures:

III. Surface Play

Robert killed his parents .............The president bombed the Iraqis

Robin kissed a toad................. ...A snail navigated the garden

Roderick collapsed the ................Her biker bought the farm

House of Usher

Again: rules & structure on the one hand

Obama stayed consisent with Democratic principles.

Galveston sustained devastation from ruthless hurricanes.

Students harbor bias toward regulatory procedures.

And these sentence variations on the other hand..

Infinite Product generated out of the SAME

rules and structure relationship. (Like the way

an infinite number of crossroads lament & jazz

is generated out of a 12-bar progression, or

country & western not to mention all the rock

& roll is manufactured out of a three chords.

(I, IV, V)

You see the difference & relationship here?

Between finite and infinite & how they

differ and how they also just get along?:

Not a bad view, yes? Which attracts your

efficient attention: the SAMENESS of Rule

and Structure or the Variety & Diversity of

Robert, Robin & Roderick, of Presidents

and Snails and Bikers, of Mozarts and Obamas

Galvestons and Students?

Can you do justice to both—finite and infinite?

O.K. NOW maybe I have a framework for talking

about why my classes are strange, uncanny, irritating,

provoking, irresponsible, a joke & waste of time: all that.

This is not a justification—simply an effort to describe.

(You, of course, haveyour own explanations & reasons-why;

but here goes mine)

My “courses” whatever they are supposed to be about

in the catalogue are actually ABOUT the course-itself

and not just about the content. They are about the

CONTEXT and not just about the token Texts. They

are about the Players Playing and not just about the

game.

They are about the hidden, eclipsed mysterious

Rules & Structures of Converse-action occluded by

the marvelously rich and infinite sentences generated

in realtime-be-here-now; BUT they are also somewhat

about the infinite sentences & all the variations and

diversity and about the game going on and the texts

as well as the content.

As if they are about the folded convoluted inexplicable

relationships of pollen coalesced in a water drop as well

as also scattered about on the deck in random array even

though I can’t explain the differences or the relationships:

that’s what they are about anyway, you got a problem
with that? I don’t blame you if you do.

Any one can hit reply or (better) reply-to-all

to sustain the converse-action of these

courses-without-boundaries

xxxooo, Sam