the dancer, the poet and holy communion

“We weren’t conscious of what we were doing as we devoured each other. On eating our fill, we both ceased to exist, leaving only love in our wake. Did I sacrifice myself as we tore into each other?  He allowed me eat my fill. For my  part, I ate as much as I wanted.  He offered me everything, and I likewise offered him all I had to give.

We can take each other’s life, just as we can allow each other to live. Knowing that we can’t extricate ourselves from the life cycle, we didn’t suffer as a result of following our instincts. We took great pleasure in being devoured.  It was just as though we were frolicking about like children. We found gratification in eating our fill, by devouring each other.

And now, I live in a world where I strum this wooden floor beneath my feet.  I live in a world where there are no boundaries between here and the hereafter.

I recall when I felt trapped and unable to decide what to do, I went to pieces. I was at once victim and perpetrator: I had a hunch that I was going to be attacked, and at the same time it was I who tore myself apart.  Yes, but what happened to me as my mind went to pieces?  Didn’t I turn into a fox?  Isn’t that a fox you’re seeing right over there?  What will become of it?  Will it to survive?  Don’t’ worry.  A fox doesn’t need to learn how to survive.  Let it fend for itself, because it instinctively knows how to cope with danger.”

Kazuo Ohno

“The slogan of hell: eat or be eaten.
The slogan of heaven: eat and be eaten.”
W. H. Auden

morrison on reading and writing

Toni Morrison

speaks about power, writing, and freedom

grotowski on art

“Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art? Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and unrepeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance and lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves. Art is neither a state of the soul (in the sense of some extraordinary, unpredictable moment of inspiration) nor a state of man (in the sense of a profession or social function). Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

We fight then to discover, to experience the truth about ourselves; to tear away the masks behind which we hide daily. We see theatre – especially in its palpable, carnal aspect – as a place of provocation, a challenge the actor sets himself and also, indirectly, other people. Theatre only has a meaning if it allows us to transcend our stereotyped vision, our conventional feelings and customs, our standards of judgment – not just for the sake of doing so, but so that we may experience what is real and, having already given up all daily escapes and pretenses, in a state of complete defenselessness unveil, give, discover ourselves. In this way – through shock, through the shudder which causes us to drop our dally masks and mannerisms – we are able, without hiding anything, to entrust ourselves to something we cannot name but in which live Eros and Charitas.”

nin on nin

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.

Anais Nin

1903-1977

zizek on writing

I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing — I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn’t really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project — it’s an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.

Slavoj Žižek

1949-

arendt in love

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable.”

Hannah Arendt

1906-1975

speed, what speed?

“Speed is in conflict with aliveness.”

Ivan Illich

1926-2002

khan academy for slow learners

I hate math.

I’ve avoided math’s mysteries (and all things related) with a fair amount of success all my life.  These self-imposed limits drag me down, hold me back.    That’s why this year I vow to spend a little time every day with Salman Khan.  Sal is a master teacher who can explain the most abstract of languages so simply that even a flaky math avoider like me can follow along. And what a joy it is to learn secrets forbidden to me.  When I’m watching Sal’s sexy little curser scratching away on my screen, I feel like we’re entering new and unexplored territory.  I feel like he’s whispering in my ear, explaining the unexplainable, offering me a key to forbidden treasures, revealing secrets only the smart can get. When I’m with Sal, I can get it.

Sal has hundreds of ten-minute you tube lessons to choose from.  And over the next several months I intend to listen to them all. I’ve started with what I most dread to learn: current economics.

you should quit

“I should know. I’m a medical doctor. I own a mansion and a yacht.”

-the Yacht Lady in  Richard Linklater’s Slacker, 1991.

 

From this year’s National Novel Writing Month novel  in progress.

Chapter Seventeen

I should quit.

Or maybe, I think instead I should run away.

But that’s too much trouble.  I’d have to figure out where I want to go first.

And besides, didn’t I already do that at least once?

Maybe I should just stay here and make things better, instead.

I should run for office.

Or better yet, maybe I should just run around the block, I could use the exercise,

But I’m running out of time.

So I should do something important with my life, something with purpose like Oprah says in her magazine.

At least I could throw away some of these old magazines that keep getting in the way of the refrigerator door.

It would be nice to see the floor again, but there’s way too much dirt.

Hey, I should do some gardening in this floor dirt. Grow potatoes.

I might as well plant weeds in this dirt.

I might as well stop worrying too, then maybe I could stop talking to myself.

Maybe I should listen to somebody else for a change.

I should change. No, I mean, I should really transform myself.

And I should start by counting up all these things I should change.

And I should start by changing my mind.

And if I changed my mind, I might start making some kind of sense at least when I write so that I don’t embarrass myself so much when I finally get around to reading it.

And don’t ever, ever, ever let me allow you to read any of this mess.

What a waste of time.

Besides, it’s time to start cleaning the mess that I left in the kitchen.

I should have put away that poor, cold chicken who never saw the light of day.

I should have washed my hands before I started messing with this borrowed computer.

I should buy my own computer.

At least if I’m going to write on the computer with chicken grease all over fingers, I should have bought organic.

I should have bought free range.

I should have bought fair trade.

I should have bought wheat grass.

I should become vegan.

I should have grown my own.

I should quit eating.

I should quit eating and become food for somebody else to eat.

I should become raw, candida, and gluten free so somebody can come along and eat me up without feeling guilty and they wouldn’t even have to cook me.

I should invent a food source that doesn’t kill anything ever and just keeps us thin no matter how much of it we eat and that meets all our nutritional requirements and that tastes like chicken and that never runs out.

I should become an activist who cares about larger causes and complex situations and world issues.

I should get a nose job.

I should quit my job, but then I’d have to get one first and then I’d have to tell my boss.

Maybe I should just send an email.

I should have gotten out of bed earlier and stopped dreaming so much about zombies who scratch their way out of graves in the middle of the night and then come running after me and grab hold of me and shake me and wake me up and then it’s noon.

I should have dreamed of a good future, a hopeful time, a life of destiny, a life with purpose.

I should have given up all the bad things when there was still time, coffee,  cigarettes, double butter burgers, whippets, the water, the moonlight, the cheap music, the Bingo parlors, the pimento spread, the Little Debbie snack cakes, the roller rinks, the Tetris, crossword puzzles, the Benny Hill.

I should have quit a long, long time ago and I should have listened to the inner voice chit chatting away, telling me not to do this that I wasn’t good enough to do that.  I should have listened so that I could remember what it was I wasn’t good enough to do, because now I can’t even remember what it was and now look at the mess I’m in.

I should have dumped all the dumpable people who stayed  undumped in my not-quite-ready-to-be-dumped pile.

I should have quit listening to you and I should have kicked that guy off my couch and out of my apartment before it was too late.

I should feel guilty.

I should learn how to do more than one thing at a time.

That way I should be able to cut my should list in half.

I should be doing what I am here doing and I should be doing something else too.

I should work faster and make more money and be more beautiful and lose more weight and reverse the clock so I can look more beautiful and I can have more opportunities and do more things.

I should do whatever it is I do very well and then I can learn how to be fast at several things simultaneously so that I can get much more than ever done.

I should be more mindful.

I should be present.

I should slow down.

I should slow down.

I shouldn’t even think.

I should just become mindful of my breath so later I worry about more important things.

I should earn credit for doing the laundry.

I should learn from my brother who found that if he turns the vacuum cleaner on and hides behind a bookshelf he can get away with making his wife think that he is doing chores for a little while, when all the while all he is doing is goofing off reading from some old book.  Too bad she caught him.  I should invent a contraption that would push the vacuum cleaner back and forth a little so that the drone isn’t so constant and so it sounds more like my brother’s really cleaning when he’s not.

I should do just one of the things I keep threatening to do.

All right then,

I quit.



A slow learner by any other name may be an expert novice

Today I complained to my highly opinionated son that I’ve been  suffering from a severe case of distractability. I had been reading Jerzy Grotowski’s  Towards a Poor Theatre when I was supposed to be doing a million other things I’d started and hadn’t finished.  I’ve been thinking about how cool it would be to set up a lab where a group of friends would do theatre games and mind experiments. Sounds like a great idea, I know, but I have no expertise in theatre. This is totally out of my field (whatever that is).  How am I ever supposed to get anything done when there is so much to do, so much to try,  so much to learn?

I’ve come to trust John to comfort me in times like these by offering me yet further distractions, suggestions for even more reading and movies and cool stuff to look at online. True to my expectations, John emailed me this reply.

“On being distractable, I just ran across this in a footnote, quoted by Katie Salen (the slow games lady):

Situated learning is …constituted by immersion in meaningful practices within a community of learners who are capable of playing multiple and different roles based on their backgrounds and experiences. The community must include experts, that is people who have mastered certain practices. Minimally, it must include expert novices, that is people who are experts at learning new domains in some depth.

Such experts can guide learners, serving as mentors and designers of their learning processes. (New London Group, 2000, p. 33)

‘Expert Novice’ –  That’s what I am.  Constantly excited (distracted) by the allure of learning a new skill, or entering a new domain.  Not so great at actually doing anything with those skills, but great at learning them.  The term ‘dilettante’ is far too negative, and ‘renaissance man’ is far to arrogant. Until now I haven’t had a good way to express the learning and living style that I enjoy so much. I’m an expert at being a novice, and learning communities need me. So there.  Last night I spent 4 hours learning about VJing.  I have no plans to be a VJ.”

I find it kind of funny that John would say this since I had just told a friend that what I really wanted to do with my life was to be a VJ for wild and crazy dance events. Of course, as with many of my impulses, that too passed.

I know I will forever and will always be an expert novice.  And now, thanks to John and Katie Salen, I can be a little less shy about being one.

Postscript: When John and his sister Liz were little I used to tell them that the Ice Cream Truck was really a Music Truck.  I said that the van that would ride around with kids running after it was just for entertaining us with music. Turns out Katie Salen had a similar idea.  Check out Karaoke Ice. You, too,  can be a novice expert on her site for hours. That is until something else distracts you.