What Would Tranformational Learning Look Like? I'm Asking

Seriously

Washing off the blood of the lambs the past few weeks—
reading through journals, term papers, creative translations,
Basement Writers submissions, & final exams,

Binge & purging the end-of-semester purgatory —scrubbing
spins of the farther reaches of imagination un-impeded by the
rigor of disciplinary constraint: your hard core courses
demanding a reputation to sustain & so: weedy whim
and wit abound, melancholy introspection galore,
flights of fancy dragons, dungeons &
environmental cubbies.

Imagine a collection of D.U.I ‘s designated to take
Remedial Driving, required (with some community
service) penalty for operating vehicles under the
influence; and they might be lawyers, doctors, artists
musicians, bank tellers, insurance agents, Sunday school
teachers and professors, college presidents, mayors and
used car salesmen—all together gathered to study proper
auto-motivation: their common cause occluding the rich
variety & many splendored diversity each would otherwise
bring to the classroom, irrelevant to the task-at-hand which
is getting sober about driving responsibly
or else.

Soberly, they undertake their instruction.
On task. Aiming for AA (All A’s)

Now, say, the sober agenda is scuttled: reform reversed for
reckless abandon, give it up, let it be out of control, move
on down roads of excess leading toward the palace
of Wisdom.

Between Egypt and the Promised Land:
40 years of wildness. Full labor. No
Caesarean delivery.

Manna maybe, but none you can squirrel away.
Eat it on the spot or forget about it.

And it turns out the Promised Land is full of Giants.
And it turns out the Promised Land is Egypt all the
time and always was.

Full of giants, damnit, and you got to killem.
So to speak. In manners of speaking. .
.
(Trying to describe what it feels like to cluck convention.
tweak common sense for idiocy, knowing better but
unable to do other wise. Thinking: wait’ll they get
a load of this, they’ll love me for it why else
would one risk foolishness? A new trap of
mice and men. as if my difference would
make a difference that would make
a difference.) .

“ I. would like to believe that imagination counts more
than knowledge,” she writes.

I say: “it’s not what I know
that counts but whether I can put IT in play.”