Higher & Higher Education

Don’t let your schooling interfere
with your education, says Mark Twain.

Write First, Think Later

The niche left open in hire higher
education, the briar patch no one
seems to love: loving the "enemy":
turning up the opposition, putting
mind in play, foolishness, messing
around, tricky business & risky--
learning as game, sport—oops,
oh my, ah so, yes, Yes, YES:
how-it-is practice makes perfect
& anyone gets better & good
by doing and re-doing: shotgun
recalibration—batches of takes,
mistakes, retakes: shooting from
the hip in un-postponed joy.

. &&&&

My courses do violence to parts
presumably in favor of wholes:
but how can parts “know” the
whole—except in partialized
terms through a class darkly?

My version of a class, this
community, my marriage,
my family, General Motors,
Wall Street: etc—all them
WHOLES —holy, yes?
Each ONE more than the
sum of their parts.

I project my partiality and think
about wholes & holiness in my
own terms of desire: rationalizing,
explaining, giving Reasons Why
& Because & Affects—doing
violence to the whole, criminal
in my discrimination. I sample.
Rip-off a piece, let it Stand-For
a whole. Do you see a problem
with this? NO? You’re lucky.
YES? you’re lucky.

Do I contradict myself? Make myself
perfectly clear? I am large. I contain
multitudes & multiple personalities:
schizo- frantic, sure; a house.
divided.

Neither logic nor sermons convince me.
I am “fem” as much as “masc”—erotic
and aesthetic, involved and detached.

I care & don’t give a crap. Leave no
child behind I say, but screw em if they
can’t take a joke.

Politically Correct in external affairs:
internally: my inner Hitler grimaces
& groans.

I don’t wake in the middle of the night
worried about global warming. I talk
about it all day long because it’s
fashionable. Our Lingua Franca.

What does wake me?
Ppersonal fears and
anxieties: successes &
failures inter-goddam-
personal relationships,
dentist & outstanding
bills…having to get my
office cleared out so
they can put new
carpeting in— as if
I could care less for
carpet.

Walt: “Sing Song of Myself’
(untransformed but interested in
transformative higher educating.)