Auto Poesis

Dear Colleagues,

Auto Poesis

My instructor’s method is to throw us at a
project (car) even if we don't know what the
hell we are doing. We usually mess it up at
first, then he comes along and explains how
we should be doing it.

Makes it stick for me anyhow. We do it the
wrong way first (much of the time) THEN we
learn the right way and how to fix what we
messed up.

I don't know if he intends to use this method...
but that is the way it usually goes. Gives me
more confidence just to try something on my
own mechanically speaking)...knowing that
anything can be fixed...even your own mistakes.

Zen & the Art of Auto
Motivation Maintenance.

My son the ski resort manager, 18 years after his
psych major at Chapel Hill (all rat brains, synapse
& cognitive sonance: none of the soft so-called
humanistic psychology of the late 60’s and 70s),
now succumbing to Joseph Campbell & the Call
of the Wild: studying to be Jon The Mechanic, one
of the 100 faces of hero..

We were talking about Trial & Error—its pedagogical
abuses & uses.. oooOOPs damint. Oooo yes Yes YES. .

********

But it doesn't seem like our population is ready to
accept that we need a paradigm shift as opposed to
reiterating the rules of grammar from the 7th grade
up until our Freshman Year's writing composition
course. re-implementing traditional ideas and concepts
as opposed to saying "THIS ISN'T working, we need
REAL change"

One of my “liberal artists” responding to my over-the-break
spam (Courses Without Borders Series): Can a System
Self-Correct without Demoralization? Well, then: consider
the distinction between Surface Grammar Sustainability (golf
carts and solar panels) and Deep Generative & Transformational
SUSTAINABILITY

ouch
ooo
damnit
all my
trials &
errors
soon
be over…

Paradigm Shift, she says.
A notion popular for yeard
as if we could ease up on the
accelerator, depress the clutch
& subvert the dominant paradise. .

My roommate once mentioned that maybe McCain needed to
win the election. Because THEN, everyone would FLIP OUT
and there' d be chaos.

And then there'd be a real change. It'd be chaotic, it' d be
mass rioting, violence.

“The Violent Bear IT Away” says Flannery O’ Connor, quoting scripture.
But she wasn’t talking political violence. More like “Kingdom Within,”
“House of Usher,” “Stately Pleasure Dome” “Cerebral/Affective
Gold’s Gym”—you know: internal violence of Life of Mind &
Heart: liberal art, school mode stuff: Eng. Teacher talk.
Bears IT away.

IT, I said. Do I got to be spelling IT out?

I don't know what to think anymore. This college, and my
values and my beliefs. Everything is an environmental
issue. Everything is an economical issue. Everything has
to be politically correct.

There's too much responsibility in being alive. Yet so many
are irresponsible... and they don't realize it. And I don't
realize the extent as to which everyone is so irresponsible.

And then those of us who do realize it, have to make up for
all of those ir-responsiblities with the direness of our actions.

I'm tired. And I'm sick of being scared and seeing the eminent
end in everything and every action and all my reactions are
"shit we're doomed" or me feeling such guilt in how my
actions don't match up with my behaviors.

There, There,
(Pat, Pat)
All is well
and all is well
and all manner of things is well.

This is “school” mode, not “church” & “state.” Question Authority.
Question Everything. Schola: “leisure time”-- plenty of margin
for trial and error and room for play, true? .

xxxooo, Paulo Freire