Crafting Gentleness

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Tom Munnelly

From Fintan Vallely:

"Tom Munnelly, song collector, glorious wit, raconteur, combatant against half measures and paddy whackery, the academic scimitar of song-style integrity, wonderful friend to many, passed away this morning at 1.10 am in the company of his family at Fintra Beg, Miltown malbay, following an enduring fortnight of fighting on against the odds."

Blessings, Tom. I'll try not to be an obscurantist :)

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Happy Birthday

I'm sending a happy birthday wish out into the ether :)

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Freelance possibilities

I've been looking into the possibility of combining my full-time job with a freelancing career, and it is technically possible. One possibility is becoming a sole trader for evening and weekend work. I could also maybe become a member of the Professional Contractors Group (PCG), for support.

The cultivation and expansion of needs ...

"The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear."
(E.F. Schumacher, 1973).

Monday, August 27, 2007

the frequent tragedy of written words

I have been thinking of conflict that has taken place between me and a person I have learned to love and with whom I have managed, briefly, to be loving.

Conflict built and sustained by words, by text. Both played a part.

When I think of that conflict, and I think of the sometime loving presence of that person and their ability to dissolve conflict by simply being present, listening, and communicating, I am reminded of the possibilities of loving friendship and friendly loving and the frequent tragedy of written words.

Email messages can be horrible things. They build in hard, concrete silences.

In person a wistful smile and a surrendered drop of the eye might serve as silent invitations to a better moment.

Email gives no such space. It tends to erect monuments to moments of madness, slips of the mind, and flustered thoughtlessness. Friendship-graveyards of archived impetuousness.

Sometimes I forget gentleness is possible.

Sometimes I forget gentleness is possible.

Sometimes I forget
I don’t have to
do what I want
say what I want
get what I want
achieve what I want
eat what I want
buy what I want
live where I want
have what I want ...

Sometimes I forget
there are times when
I’m not sure what I want,
even as I want it.

Sometimes I forget
what I want
may not be what I want
but what other people want me to want
and I never noticed that I was
thinking their think
speaking their speak
doing their do

Sometimes I forget
if what I want isn't here
then being here isn't what I want
and I'm only ever going to be here.

Sometimes I forget
what I want
May not be helpful

Sometimes I forget
what I want may be
planted by the fixer
nourished by the escapee
grown in the soil of fear
boiling with anger
marinated in prejudice
dripping with desire
seasoned with selfishness

Sometimes I forget
I often want many things
And they may not be
going in the same direction
humming the same tune
walking the same path
digging the same hole
singing from the same hymn-sheet
ploughing the same furrow
flying in formation.
And that's okay.

Sometimes I forget
what I want
may be wanting.

Be careful what I wish for.
It might just happen, and
then I’ll have to
live with the consequences.

Laziness

I met a delightful person with a vibrant heart recently who reminded me that being a freelance writer means you never get lazy. I am not a freelance writer, I am a full-time academic, and I must admit that I often get lazy. That's what security does for me, apparently.

I could be writing. I could be publishing. I am very thankful to this person for reminding me of this. As my Mum says, don't say you're going to do it, say you did it.

Learning to learn?

I think sometimes I get scared by the prospect of history repeating itself, the prospect of me doing certain things again when I had already told myself that I had learned not to.

The learning part of all of this isn't all that easy. I suppose that's why I have an issue with the idea of 'personal evolution' (or, especially, with the 'global evolution of consciousness'). I don't often seem to be very good at learning how to learn about my emotional life sometimes. For me, at least, there doesn't seem to be any linear progress to an enlightened state, merely opportunities for being human. Sometimes I don't do too well with those opportunities. And I suppose, that's okay. I mess up. I get back on the horse. I pick up my pieces and move on. I mix my metaphors.

I know from my own experience that I look back on situations I've been involved in and I can see how I could have handled it all so differently, I could have related to people so much more helpfully. There is, of course, a large element in any relationship that I have no control over, and a large element that no-one has any control over.

Sincerity to helpfully be the change I can be, courage to accept the things I cannot change, and wisdom to know the difference.

I keep reaching out to people because I believe in second (and third and ...) chances, but I sometimes forget that reaching out to someone might sometimes be less helpful than simply walking away and leaving them alone. I can give people the benefit of the doubt without having to intrude. There is a time for time and a time for thyme and a rhyme for thyme too.

I mess up quite a bit. I may say positive things when I feel them, but when I feel a situation's not quite right I sit it out, keep my mouth shut, maybe to see if it's not what I think it might be, and that seems to get me in trouble more than I need to.

How can I learn from that? If they have already locked me out, is it just a matter of trying to be better at it for the next encounter, for the next people I meet.

How can I learn to respond to feeling hurt by peoples' actions without apportioning blame?

Is it always helpful to call it as I see it, or is it sometimes just wiser to keep my mouth shut?

If I believe that the wonder of a human being is so much greater than the consequences of their (my) messing up, what am I supposed to do with that understanding?

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Too many roads diverged in a wood ...

I think I wrote at some point way earlier in this blog that I try to live my life wihtout making too many moves that feel like decisions, that feel like leaps across an abyss. Small meaningful baby-steps as often as possible.

What I'm realising this week is that small meaningful baby-steps become more and more difficult when I'm surrounded by people who live by the kinds of decisions that feel to me like leaps across an abyss: bank managers, mortgage brokers, builders, house sellers, estate agents.

I feel like I am suspending myself over a cliff and I also feel that so much of that might be so unnecessary.

It's hard to find courage to move forward when the road ahead is so unclear.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Confidence and certitude

Someone commented to me recently that I seemed very certain about my ideas about uncertainty.

I think there is a subtle and important difference between, on the one hand, confidence that I have about how I find things have tended to work in my experience (with subsequent confidence in what I think are appropriate generalizations that arise from that), and on the other, certitude in relation to my position whereby I hold my position in an absence of doubt and in a spirit of righteousness.

I would hope that I work with the former rather than the latter.

I am not afraid to be transparent, accountable, and responsible for the positions I hold. Maybe working to draw my ways of thinking and doing into a more integrated, holistic, and personal experience might be seen by some as arrogant, if the norm is to keep your ideas distant from your personal and emotional challenges? I don't know.

I know it is all too easy to slip into arrogance. I know it is all too easy to forget to put in the qualifiers in what I say - the maybes, the possiblys, the likelys, the 'as far as I can make sense of it' statements that ruffle the feathers and roughen the edges of a written or spoken piece.

I know it is all too easy to forget that I speak from the particularism of my own experience and that to extend that too far beyond my zone of proximity is to engage in what others have called the 'arrogance of particularism'.

What I like to work with as an assumption, however, is that the only true judge of whether I am adopting an attitude of certitude or not is myself. Only I can really work out to the level of subtlety that is most helpful whether or not I am proceeding with the elimination of uncertainty as an ethic in my life. Others can point things out to me; others can mirror my words and actions back to me; I can listen more carefully for the consequences and effects of what I do and say in the situations around me.

It is important to stay accountable for how I communicate what I communicate, to stay focused on my positioning in the particular, my positioning in this place, in this room, breathing this air, having these effects, always-already making these differences. It is important to keep the qualifiers hanging around, to the point of being pedantic. The absence of particularist qualifiers (the things that communicate 'I'm not sure' in speech and writing), the absence of explicit transparency, accountability, and responsibility for the Anthonynesses, the idiosyncracies of my own positions, that absence can feed into the generalised and generalising tendencies we [often] have to overstate the case for words, to overdeclare our confidence about our realities, to express opinion as certitude. I can often unwittingly and unwillingly communicate certitude where I feel none. I can do better.

I don't really understand how it works ...

... but there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophies.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Great moments knocking on the door of life

"When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it" (Boris Pasternak).

Thursday, August 23, 2007

recklessness with the heart

I suppose trying to be sensitive to and gentle with someone else in a relationship relies a lot on whether the other person is emotionally honest with you. It's hard to act appropriately when people deceive you or themselves.

At such times you can end up in a constructed fiction of a relationship and not even know it. If only one person directs the fiction they can assume almost total control of a system that the other person didn't even know was there. Anything you do, even with the best of intentions, can then become open to the unexpected accusation of inappropriate behaviour.

Attempts to be real and present unbeknowst to you start to become challenges to the fiction: conflicts start to arise with no apparent cause; good intentions start to be read through the lens of paranoia; generosities start to become encroachments; being attentive evokes irritation.

It gets worse when the emotional dishonesty starts to include someone else external to your own relationship (e.g. if you find you are facilitating a two-timing situation), whereby every thing you participate in within your own relationship always-already weaves into the shadow-play of falsehoods and starts rippling out into the other relationship in ways you can never know.

It hurts when people are reckless with your heart.

It also hurts when a brief relationship that was by my account and my experience real and special and magical (and still fool of unknowns and possibilities) becomes twisted by someone else's words in a process of revisionist history-making and retroactive interpretation into something tawdry and icky that at least in my view disrespects what actually happened.

How can we ever be confident about what has happened when the intensities of emotion let loose the dogs of misperception?

Do I underestimate the power of the self-protective impulse in shaping people's realities (including my own)?

What is it about the moment-to-moment reality of openness and loving that sometimes scares people?

Why do people sometimes choose relationships of disrespect and dishonesty and anger and jealousy over relationships of openness and loving and generosity and supportiveness?

Can I learn to react less defensively or communicate more helpfully when I get hurt?

Is there any way for me to not fall into the pit of macho pride and competitive arrogance when there's another guy involved in the equation?

Is there a point at which the 'signs' can become mere jesters in a court of mockery and disillusion?

If I were brave?

Sometimes I just don't know how anything works any more.

One thing I try to do in my life is clarify what it is that I want, how it is that I want to be. I find this helps me in responding to the situations I find myself in, in responding to the people I meet, in becoming aware of the opportunities that present themselves. That's the theory. It's always a little more difficult in practice. Sometimes I want something more than I want to listen to what's going on. The 'what' becomes more important than the 'how', again.

I've been around the block a few times, and I've had my heart broken a few times, and I've learned that there's no point walking into another person's life with a vulnerable heart and an offering of love and loving unless the other person is ready and willing to notice the vulnerable heart, treat it with gentleness, accept the offer of love and loving, and walk forward in an offering of the same.

Sometimes people make crystal clear that you don't make as much of a difference to them as you'd like to think you do; not through what they say but through what they don't say; not through what they do but through what they don't do. That can cause problems if my enthusiastic expectation of a richer, deeper relationship distracts me from noticing that they aren't really noticing me, or that they have pulled away, or that they are dealing with stuff that they need to deal with and that I need to let them deal with.

I'll leave the rest to Shawn Colvin ... "If I were brave":

Could it be that I was born without a clue to carry on
and still it is the same now I am older
armed with just a will and then this love for singing songs
and minding less and less if I am colder?

...

It was never clear what would come next
But that's the risk and that's the test
And you were the only one so far to follow
And no-one talks about when one might stop and need to rest
Or how long you sit alone before you stop looking back
It's like you're waiting for Godot
and then you pick your sorry ass up off the street
and go

And what the hell is this?
Who made this bloody mess?
And someone always answers like a martyr
Is it something you should know?
Did you never do your best?
Would you be saved if you were brave and just tried harder?

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Yet another worrying development in the academic world

http://www.freeandrej.net.ms/

http://einstellung.so36.net/en/openletter

"After a lot of hard work, our colleagues from INURA Berlin have put together various materials in order to raise international attention and support regarding the case of the 7 persons accused (out of which 4 were jailed) last week in Berlin for alleged suspected 'memberships of a 'terrorist association'. 3 of these are fellow urban researchers, one of whom, who is currently in jail, has agreed to be named: Andrej Holm, urban sociologist and established researcher on gentrification in Berlin.

Please find below a statement in English, which we are trying to circulate in academic and related circles in order to build international support. Do you think you could circulate to INURA London mailing list, to the PNUK mailing list, and to any other contacts from the London urban networks (former London social forum or whatever you deem appropriate)?

Colleagues are mobilizing in the US around the ASA conference. Colleagues in Australia are also mobilizing via the gentrification research community. In the UK a Leeds colleague is circulating to human rights lawyers. I am going to try and see what networks to inform in France.

For the INURA London people, you can let them know that Volker Eick is the main point of contact at INURA Berlin who is organising the solidarity, although many other members are involved! However for all other groups, there is general coordination e-mail address which should be used for any query (see below)."

On 31st July 2007 seven persons were charged by the Attorney of the German Federal Supreme Court for alleged suspected 'memberships of a terrorist association'. Four of these have since been in pre-trial confinement in a Berlin jail. Three of the seven accused individuals are fellow urban researchers, one of whom, who is currently in jail, has agreed to be named: Andrej Holm, urban sociologist and established researcher on gentrification in Berlin.

An OPEN LETTER is attached, summarising the background of the case, the arguments used by the Attorney of the German Federal Supreme Court and the demand made by the solidarity movement.

Individuals or organisations are invited to demonstrate support by sending protest letters, petitions and declarations to the Attorney of the German Federal Supreme Court, i.e.:

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof
c/o Ermittlungsrichter Hebenstreit
Herrenstraße 45
D-76133 Karlsruhe
Germany

and

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof
Brauerstraße 30
D-76137 Karlsruhe
Germany

Fax + 49 7 21 819 14 92

An e-mail address has been set up by the Berlin colleagues who are coordinating action around Andrej Holm and the others accused: it would be helpful if individuals and organisations could send a message to this address to inform the Berlin colleagues about the support action they are taking (solidarity addresses, declarations that are to be published) and address any question they may have:

For information, the German lawyer and press contact for the accused, including Andrej Holm, is:

Wolfgang Kaleck
Immanuelkirchstrasse3-4
D-10405 Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49-(0)30-4467-9218
Fax: +49-(0)30-4467-9220

In short, the main demands of the solidarity movement are:
- Release of the prisoners
- Stop the proceedings under § 129a of German penal law
- End the § 129, 129a, and 129b laws
- Stop criminalizing progressive research and action

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof
c/o Ermittlungsrichter Hebenstreit
Herrenstraße 45 D-76133
Karlsruhe
Germany

Der Generalbundesanwalt beim Bundesgerichtshof
Brauerstraße 30D-76137
Karlsruhe
Germany

Open letter against the criminalization of critical academic research and political engagement

On 31st July 2007 the flats and workplaces of Dr. Andrej Holm and Dr. Matthias B., as well as of two other persons, were searched by the police. Dr. Andrej Holm was arrested, flown by helicopter to the German Federal Court in Karlsruhe and brought before the custodial judge. Since then he has been held in pretrial confinement in a Berlin jail. All four people have been charged with "membership in a terrorist association according to § 129a StGB" (German Penal Code, section 7 on 'Crimes against Public Order'). They are alleged to be members of a so-called 'militante gruppe' (mg). The text of the search warrant revealed that preliminary proceedings against these four people have been going on since September 2006 and that the four had since been under constant surveillance.

A few hours before the house searches, Florian L., Oliver R. und Axel H. were arrested in the Brandenburg region and accused of attempted arson on four vehicles of the German Federal Army. Andrej Holm is alleged to have met one of these three persons on two occasions in the first half of 2007 in supposedly "conspiratorial circumstances".The Federal Prosecutor (Bundesanwaltschaft) therefore assumes that the four above mentioned persons as well as the three individuals arrested in Brandenburg are members of a "militant group," and is thus investigating all seven on account of suspected "membership in a terrorist association" according to §129a StGB.According to the arrest warrant against Andrej Holm, the charge made against the above mentioned four individuals is presently justified on the following grounds, in the order that the federal prosecutor has listed them:

- Dr. Matthias B. is alleged to have used, in his academic publications, "phrases and key words" which are also used by the 'militante gruppe';

- As political scientist holding a PhD, Matthias B. is seen to be intellectually capable to "author the sophisticated texts of the 'militante gruppe' (mg)". Additionally, "as employee in a research institute he has access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts of the 'militante gruppe'";

- Another accused individual is said to have met with suspects in a conspiratorial manner: "meetings were regularly arranged without, however, mentioning place, time and content of the meetings"; furthermore, he is said to have been active in the "extreme left-wing scene";

- In the case of a third accused individual, an address book was found which included the names and addresses of the other three accused;

- Dr. Andrej H., who works as urban sociologist, is claimed to have close contacts with all three individuals who have been charged but still remain free;

- Dr. Andrej H. is alleged to have been active in the "resistance mounted by the extreme left-wing scene against the World Economic Summit of 2007 in Heiligendamm";

- The fact that he - allegedly intentionally -- did not take his mobile phone with him to a meeting is considered as "conspiratorial behavior".

Andrej H., as well as Florian L., Oliver R. und Axel H., are detained since 1st August 2007 in Berlin-Moabit under very strict conditions: they are locked in solitary confinement 23 hours a day and are allowed only one hour of courtyard walk. Visits are limited to a total of half an hour every two weeks. Contacts, including contacts with lawyers, are allowed only through separation panes. The mail of the defense is checked.

The charges described in the arrest warrants reveal a construct based on very dubious reasoning by analogy. The reasoning involves four basic hypotheses, none of which the Federal High Court could substantiate with any concrete evidence, but through their combination they are to leave the impression of a "terrorist association". The social scientists, because of their academic research activity, their intellectual capacities and their access to libraries, are said to be the brains of the alleged "terrorist organization". For, according to the Federal prosecutor, an association called "militante gruppe" is said to use the same concepts as the accused social scientists.

As evidence for this reasoning, the concept of "gentrification" is named - one of the key research themes of Andrej Holm und Matthias B. in past years, about which they have published internationally. They have not limited their research findings to an ivory tower, but have made their expertise available to citizens' initiatives and tenants' organizations. This is how critical social scientists are constructed as intellectual gang leaders.

Since Andrej Holm has friends, relatives and colleagues, they now also are suspect to be "terrorists", because they know Andrej. Another accused individual was blamed for having the names of Andrej Holm and of two others charged (but not jailed) in his address book. Since the latter are also deemed to be "terrorists" - this is how "guilt by association" is established.

Paragraph § 129a, introduced in Germany in 1976, makes it possible for our colleagues to be criminalized as "terrorists". This is how, through § 129a, the existence of a "terrorist group" is claimed.

Through these constructs, every academic research activity and political work is presented as potentially criminal - in particular when politically engaged colleagues who intervene in social struggles are concerned. This is how critical research, in particular research linked with political engagement, is turned into ideological ring leadership and "terrorism".

We demand that the Federal Prosecutor (Bundesanwaltschaft) immediately suspend the § 129a-proceedings against all parties concerned and release Andrej Holm and the other imprisoned from jail at once. We strongly reject the outrageous accusation that the academic research activities and the political engagement of Andrej Holm are to be viewed as complicity in an alleged "terrorist association". No arrest warrant can be deduced from the academic research and political work of Andrej Holm. The Federal Prosecutor, through applying Article § 129, is threatening the freedom of research and teaching as well as social-political engagement.

Signature(s)

Date

Poisoned city fights to save its children

To see this story with its related links on the The Observer site, go to http://www.observer.co.uk

Poisoned city fights to save its children: Families in a Peruvian valley choked by toxic gas from a smelter are taking on a US metals giant Hugh O'Shaughnessy in La Oroya, Peru

Sunday August 12 2007

The Observer

At an altitude of 13,000ft the Andean air is clear. A plume of white smoke rises from the chimney at the La Oroya smelter,hard at work refining arsenic and metals such as lead, cadmium and copper.

But today the company is not discharging any gases over this city in central Peru. 'It's a nice day, so the company won't be letting off any gases,' says Hugo Villa, a neurologist at the local hospital. 'They keep the worst emissions to overcast days or after dark.'

When the gases are released, they make this one of the most polluted places on the planet, with La Oroya ranking alongside Chernobyl for environmental devastation, according to a US think-tank, the Blacksmith Institute.

The company is a US corporation, Renco Doe Run. The gases are the product from the main smelter a mile or two down the valley. The high mountains around keep out the cleansing winds, meaning that airborne metals are concentrated in the valley. Neither humans nor nature can escape the company's outpourings of poisons. And, despite evidence that gases have been behind the premature deaths of workers and residents young and old, the business-oriented, pro-US government of President Alan Garcia is too afraid of foreign investors to do anything about it.

Now, however, the townspeople, once muted by their worries about losing their jobs with the valley's biggest employer, are turning their attention towards Ira Rennert, Renco's proprietor.

The pollution from his plants appears both horrific anddifficult to contest. A study of 93 newborn children in the first 12 hours of their life, conducted by Hugo Villa, showed they had highly dangerous levels of lead in their blood, inherited from their mothers while in the womb. The nearer the mothers lived to the main smelter, the higher was the babies' level of lead poisoning.

'The effects of the lead are often difficult to trace,' said Villa. 'But it lodges permanently in bones and affects the liver, kidneys and the brain. It affects the central nervous system. I've had child patients who have lost feeling in their limbs and can't control themselves.'

The quality of air sampled in the neighbourhood by three Peruvian voluntary agencies showed 85 times more arsenic, 41times more cadmium and 13 times more lead than is safe. In parts of the town the water supply contains 50 per cent more lead than levels recommended by the World Health Organisation. The untreated waters of the Mantaro river are contaminated with copper, iron, manganese, lead and zinc and are not suitable for irrigation or consumption by animals, according to the standards supposed to be legally enforced in Peru. The water coming out of the nearby Huascacocha lake contains more than four times the legal limit of manganese.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the town has more than itsfair share of youngsters with physical or mental disabilities. The company has a scheme under which a few hundred carefully selected children of Doe Run employees are taken for a few hours every day to a camp outside the town. With less money, the town council is trying to do something similar for children whose parents do not work for the company.

None of this bears on the main problem - the pollution from the refineries. The problem here is such that adults chat about the lead levels in their blood. 'I'm 37,' said one. 'That's nothing,' said another, 'I'm 43.'

For years the Oroyinos, as the locals are called, appeared to put up with their lot. In the past, union leaders and the mayorwere persuaded by Renco Doe Run to side with it to block, successfully, the government's feeble attempts to force it to reduce pollution.

'We may move out, and you'll all lose your jobs, was the message,' said Pedro, one former employee, now an invalid. 'It was a question of deciding whether to have enough food to eat or not.'

This year it is different. The town has elected a new mayor, Cesar Rodriguez, and the unions elected new leaders; and the effects of the pollution on children is finally getting through to parents.

Rennert's record as a polluter is not confined to Peru. For nearly 13 years, according to industry reports, the company topped the US Environmental Protection Authority's list as the worst air polluter in the country.

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

Monday, August 06, 2007

The Rainbow Connection

Why are there so many songs about rainbows
And what's on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we've been told and some choose to believe it
I know they're wrong, wait and see.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

Who said that every wish would be heard and answered
when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of thatand someone believed it,
and look what it's done so far.
What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
All of us under its spell,we know that it's probably magic....

Have you been half asleep
and have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same.
I've heard it too many times to ignore it.
It's something that I'm supposed to be.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.
La, la la, La, la la la, La Laa, la la, La, La la laaaaaaa

(Thanks, Kermit)

Words that make a difference

An interesting medical take on the language we can use when empathizing with people in difficult situations:

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/135/7/551

When evolutionary biologists attempt to make sense of altruism ...

If you start with the assumptions that

a) we are all always-already selfish
b) life is really always-already about the production and management of resources

Then you can end up with ideas such as the following:

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9581656

I'm glad I don't work with those assumptions.

Article: With our common cultural vocabulary splintering or disappearing ...

From the Sunday Boston Globe

CRITIC'S VIEW

Lingua fracta:
With our common cultural vocabulary splintering or disappearing, it's not so easy to only connect

By Gail Caldwell, Ideas Section, Boston Globe August 5, 2007

Daylight is already waning by early July, and so it was that on a recent night when the stars were out, the conversation turned to the subject -- typically breezy for this crowd -- of death's final mystery. I was trying to say something about the bright edges of existence being defined by the certainty of their end, and so I reached for a finer mind to articulate the point. "Well," I mumbled, " 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.' "

I wasn't showing off (not in this company, all of whom could quote circles around me). I love the monosyllabic trip of the tongue that Dylan Thomas's famous death poem inspires; more germane, every schoolchild of my generation -- the baby boomers -- had been exposed to the poem by early high school. As with Yeats's rough beast or Dickinson's thing with feathers, Thomas's green fuse, for the melancholy postwar crowd, had been a shortcut for gaining purchase on the cliff face of life. Shakespeare and John Lennon were the sources we quoted instead of Scripture, and their words translated the feelings of mere mortals into universal song.

Or was it really universal? Maybe time and hindsight have glazed my perspective; the Thomas quote holds as a code for the life-death conundrum only if you were listening in class that week, and dared to remember it. But the evening I invoked his words, there were several nods of recognition -- albeit from a certain age group. They ranged from a couple of computer geeks to a woodworker and an academic, and all of them were over 45. The youthful end of the party, brilliant every one and looking baffled, decided to go for a walk.

This could be a simple matter of the referents changing with the generation; my mother and dad hummed Benny Goodman to each other and rolled their eyes when my sister and I, barely adolescent, swooned over the choice between Paul and John. And everyone beneath my slightly arbitrary cutoff point might be bonding on an equally deep plane with lyrics from Fall Out Boy. But the explosion of popular and high culture in the past 15 years has rendered obsolete the assumptions and metaphors of the old guard. If once we could count on the shared experience of a common vocabulary, learned methodically from literary sources that had stood the test of time, now we have to make room on the digital shelves for 10,000 alternatives -- words and images from a zeitgeist that seems to change by the week.

More ...

A drop of tae

It's hard for me to separate my experience of gentleness from the thousands upon thousands of cups of tea that I have drunk in my lifetime; an infinitea of them, you might say. Tea is so much part of the ritual of being present in company in Ireland for many people, and also in England, where the following website comes from:

http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/

and an accompanying interview (thanks Colin):

http://www.b3ta.com/interview/nicey/

Friday, August 03, 2007

Tools for Change

"Tools for change is a linked archive of resources - from whole books to project outlines and from mailing lists to zine articles - whose common theme is that they are all about change: social movements from below challenging structural relationships, spiritual practices geared towards transforming ourselves and our interaction with others, and attempts at radical educational practice of various kinds. ..."

http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/toolsforchange/