Language of life

NVC Non-Violent Communication, how to identify needs in self and others and how to speak without shaming, blaming and criticising is one of the four or five disciplines that I’d like everyone in the world to know how to do.

Language is important, but as Moreno said:

The analysis of language, useful as it is in itself. does not lead to any change in behavior. It has to be followed up by methods of action learning which train the pupil to think and act below and beyond the boundaries of language.

That’s why I think there are four or five disciplines, but none of them sufficient alone.

Epochs and eras

I was just thinking this was an era of modularity when this tweet arrived. Similar idea, summed up with the notion of: small pieces loosely joined. An example wld be “motornet” not public rail or buses, and it is much the same in the world of ideas. We have Twitter and Facebook not another Karl Marx.

ajnabee (@ajnabee) 28/10/10 10:23 AM http://tumblr.com/xs9ng0h8c

“The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skin.”

—Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”

Poems Read by Ted Hughes

I listened to that poem in the previous post, over and over. I got to like it.  I had a tape, on my pre-ipod walkman. I must find it and put it on my phone.

By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember – Ted Hughes

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

That line would resonate well as I listened while walking deep in the New Zealand bush.

Picking up quite late in life what I imagine American kids learn at school.


Continue reading “Poems Read by Ted Hughes”

Poetry

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

Been posting more poetry. It may be not so much the poems as the way they are snapshots of my education.

Those lines remind me of a teacher at Port Hacking High who taught us that poem over weeks, explaining the theme, and also every confusing (to me then) line. I learnt what alliteration meant from that verse.

I was, like the wedding guest, grabbed by the poem. It was great to have that bit of deep work done as a teenager, later I enjoyed learning about the Romantics as a movement. But I needed that base. In fact I am sorry there was not more of a basis. My early education was so disrupted and really badly done, I am envious of people who are more fully steeped in the culture.

Perhaps there are positives. The nationalistic and sentimental enculturation I did get (see here) was not so deep that I can’t easily go beyond Australian art, and enjoy, say Robert Frost. (coming up).

Poetry

You will notice that I have recently posted a swag of poems and have more brewing. This came about after listening to Joanna Harcourt Smith interviewing a writer Kim Rosen (the link). The writer impressed me on the power of poetry as a way into ones own psyche. Engaging with poetry seems like another royal road. My own sketching and journaling is ok too, and to be honest being a therapist is another.

I have no appetite for new poems. I want to catch up with the ones that have grabbed me in the past, via good teachers usually, but that have not been fully claimed and that I always thought I’d go back to one day. These are the poems appearing in the blog. And there are more to come.