Okay so i just woke up in the middle of the afternoon. Which I love doing because, especially when other people are around, although there wasn't any one else around in my case, but that is okay too, and i love it because you can make that squeelly noise that comes so naturally after a Sunday afternoon nap when you wake up and don't care cause you just had a delightful nap and now you are going to get up and have something to eat (like a sloth) so you go weeeeoooowweeee and stretch. Awesome.
And anyway, during my Sunday nap I had a great dream. Well it was a pretty sad scary dream but it was pretty good too, it was a comedy in the end.
The dream:
So I went home. and there was none of the preparing to go missing flights packing plants in never ending suitcases stuff, just I was home. And Tristan came home and gave me a big hug. And then i saw what looked to be a small child in a diaper skipping down the stairs into the basement of the Fallingbrook house so I chased it to find out was a small baby was doing walking, and inparticular walking down the stairs. Well when I caught him, he said in the squeeliest high pitched voice "I'm archie" and that was all. and then he tried to escape by turning into something like a email, and electronic signal, but I caught him in an answering machine. Cause I wanted to show Archie to the rest of the family. Then for a good bit of dreaming it turned into a nightmare with people trying to kill Archie and stop people from killing Archie. But then in the end it turned out it was a one word story that had been made by a chain letter or on facebook or something. And somehow I didn't question how i was in the story. I just was.
Then there was another dream about being at a Mormon fitness club. and somehow I got really dizzy and fell out on the pavement and had to get back in because my stuff was inside, but i had to tell them I was a member but my card was inside because i was dizzy and fell out of the gym onto the pavement. And the guy said that was fine he would just need to take my name, but then he turned into a lawyer and had all these faxes to send and receive, and they had a fax machine that could print and bind books as one whole thing. I have no idea how it did it. It was so cool to see the books come out just like a fax, but then I guess it was a dream so it doesn't every actually happen like that.
But I just remember that part where Archie said: "I'm Archie" very cute.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Learning and studying
Happy January 20th. I think today is something special, but I don't remember. If it's your birthday, I'm sorry I forgot, but be sure I still love you.
On learning and studying.
My friend said to me, you never studied. I laughed and wondered what she was talking about because she was regularly there when I was studying.
I guess she meant I never studied by myself. To which I replied if I was doing it by myself she would have no way of knowing if or not I was doing it. But the truth is she was right, I don't think that during the years we were learning in close proximity to each other I ever did much studying.
I was never uncertain of what I had learned in school. So I never found any need to study it. I already knew it...why would I go about learning it again? I learned it during the teaching. My review usually consisted of taking note what part of what I had learned I would be expected to write about on the test.
For me a test was always a measure of what I had learned from a teacher. That is why no one else ever gave me tests. And so it would be in a way dishonest to study because for me it was about what I had already learned. And again if I had already learned it, why study?
You see you don't need to remember what you have learned. It is never forgotten. We don't study how to walk, we learn it, and then we don't forget it or it takes major brain trauma to forget...
School was amazing for me, because everyday I had at least 4 people who wanted to talk to me about things in the world. And I listened, I drank it up, because I knew so little about the world and well what else would I do, I was there, and they weren't going to stop talking. I think that is were I ran in to trouble in university (and with physics) the teachers didn't have things to tell me, just lists of things they thought I should study.
I didn't want to study.
I am not interested in studying. I never remember things I study, I never learn from it either. That is for sure. I think studying has all this metacognative stuff that goes with it, you have feelings and thoughts and opinions about studying. But you just learn. There is no feelings about it, it just happens. You know, do you have feeling about the fact that you know how to walk? or read? or know that spear toads have green blood. (did you know that? I did, but I don't any feelings about it. It is just something to say when I need to make a point) no, you just do it. that is because you have learned it, you don't need to think about it anymore.
I think I hardly notice when I am learning something. there is no metacognative activity when it happens. I was and am always doing something else when I am really being taught. Like a proper high school student, eating and drawing and saying eternally cool things, and making epoch changing decisions about how to talk to at lunch time and sitting on things that I would never sit on if I wasn't learning.
But this is how I feel today. That we study because we "have to" we are told to do it (and like it) so we go about it and never learn anything. Partly because it is impossible to learn something from yourself, if you manage to learn it from yourself it is because you already knew it and thus didn't need to study it in the first place. This is why I am not learning very much Japanese, because I have only studied it. Also because you study something because you are acutely aware that you haven't learned it yet, but if that is the case then how could you possibly learn it from yourself?
But I am not advising osmosis either. We have to be present, and active. I just don't want to study...that's all.
On learning and studying.
My friend said to me, you never studied. I laughed and wondered what she was talking about because she was regularly there when I was studying.
I guess she meant I never studied by myself. To which I replied if I was doing it by myself she would have no way of knowing if or not I was doing it. But the truth is she was right, I don't think that during the years we were learning in close proximity to each other I ever did much studying.
I was never uncertain of what I had learned in school. So I never found any need to study it. I already knew it...why would I go about learning it again? I learned it during the teaching. My review usually consisted of taking note what part of what I had learned I would be expected to write about on the test.
For me a test was always a measure of what I had learned from a teacher. That is why no one else ever gave me tests. And so it would be in a way dishonest to study because for me it was about what I had already learned. And again if I had already learned it, why study?
You see you don't need to remember what you have learned. It is never forgotten. We don't study how to walk, we learn it, and then we don't forget it or it takes major brain trauma to forget...
School was amazing for me, because everyday I had at least 4 people who wanted to talk to me about things in the world. And I listened, I drank it up, because I knew so little about the world and well what else would I do, I was there, and they weren't going to stop talking. I think that is were I ran in to trouble in university (and with physics) the teachers didn't have things to tell me, just lists of things they thought I should study.
I didn't want to study.
I am not interested in studying. I never remember things I study, I never learn from it either. That is for sure. I think studying has all this metacognative stuff that goes with it, you have feelings and thoughts and opinions about studying. But you just learn. There is no feelings about it, it just happens. You know, do you have feeling about the fact that you know how to walk? or read? or know that spear toads have green blood. (did you know that? I did, but I don't any feelings about it. It is just something to say when I need to make a point) no, you just do it. that is because you have learned it, you don't need to think about it anymore.
I think I hardly notice when I am learning something. there is no metacognative activity when it happens. I was and am always doing something else when I am really being taught. Like a proper high school student, eating and drawing and saying eternally cool things, and making epoch changing decisions about how to talk to at lunch time and sitting on things that I would never sit on if I wasn't learning.
But this is how I feel today. That we study because we "have to" we are told to do it (and like it) so we go about it and never learn anything. Partly because it is impossible to learn something from yourself, if you manage to learn it from yourself it is because you already knew it and thus didn't need to study it in the first place. This is why I am not learning very much Japanese, because I have only studied it. Also because you study something because you are acutely aware that you haven't learned it yet, but if that is the case then how could you possibly learn it from yourself?
But I am not advising osmosis either. We have to be present, and active. I just don't want to study...that's all.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
They can't even...
I remembered vividly tonight a lesson that I never believed I learned. Bev Hamilton told me a story about a school she put her son in, about a way of teaching without can'ts. A school where the student only "can do" things and each time he learns something new it is one more "I can". There is no negative connotation or knowledge of "I can't" in this school.
Well with the strange exception of the belief that the human soul can't travel faster than 60km/h...but we should allow for eccentricities.
Anyway, I thought the whole school was very strange, but now I think this is wonderful. Students are taught that each time they reach a barrier, limit, challenge they feel that can't do NOW, they should say to them selves. When I started here I thought I couldn't ___________________, and now I have done it. For example I thought I couldn't climb to the top of the jungle gym, and now i can. Then they say to them selves, now I think I can't overcome this task, so I will try, but it is okay if i can't do it now, i know that I can.
And moreover it isn't just the students themselves who promote and practice this thought pattern, to a much greater extent the teachers promote it, reminding students when they over come a challenge, and helping students recognize and appreciate (and be thankful for) their "I cans."
Particular this school works on integrating rather than segregating students. Exceptional kids (like Bev's son) work with regular kids and with other exceptional kids. So while Bev's son at 5 might look at himself and say I can read all the books in the book box. And then look at little ADHD Stevie and think he is so dumb because he can't. A teacher will intervene and say, when Stevie started here he couldn't sit still for five minutes and now he can sit and read a whole book.
In this way students are taught to see not what their classmates can't do, but what they can. What a marvelous lesson! To look at and examine what those around us can do. I have been practicing it recently, just quietly with myself, thinking about what i can do in class that I couldn't do in September. What I can speak and understand in Japanese that i couldn't do in August. And when i am frustrated with a student, I look at and remember what they can do, and refocus my energy into what we can do together.
Well with the strange exception of the belief that the human soul can't travel faster than 60km/h...but we should allow for eccentricities.
Anyway, I thought the whole school was very strange, but now I think this is wonderful. Students are taught that each time they reach a barrier, limit, challenge they feel that can't do NOW, they should say to them selves. When I started here I thought I couldn't ___________________, and now I have done it. For example I thought I couldn't climb to the top of the jungle gym, and now i can. Then they say to them selves, now I think I can't overcome this task, so I will try, but it is okay if i can't do it now, i know that I can.
And moreover it isn't just the students themselves who promote and practice this thought pattern, to a much greater extent the teachers promote it, reminding students when they over come a challenge, and helping students recognize and appreciate (and be thankful for) their "I cans."
Particular this school works on integrating rather than segregating students. Exceptional kids (like Bev's son) work with regular kids and with other exceptional kids. So while Bev's son at 5 might look at himself and say I can read all the books in the book box. And then look at little ADHD Stevie and think he is so dumb because he can't. A teacher will intervene and say, when Stevie started here he couldn't sit still for five minutes and now he can sit and read a whole book.
In this way students are taught to see not what their classmates can't do, but what they can. What a marvelous lesson! To look at and examine what those around us can do. I have been practicing it recently, just quietly with myself, thinking about what i can do in class that I couldn't do in September. What I can speak and understand in Japanese that i couldn't do in August. And when i am frustrated with a student, I look at and remember what they can do, and refocus my energy into what we can do together.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
I want to write
I want to write, and this kept turning into a story so I had to move it onto "Without Ethnicity" the nonfiction blog...uh I mean the fiction blog...this is the one for nonfiction...
So today`s topic: action, agency, activity and the letter A.
I don't have many books, but for some reason, that I haven't quite sorted out yet, the Book of Mormon is among the books I do have. So, for lack of something more stimulating, I was reading a little theology today and thinking about action and agency. I am thinking about what motivates us to move or act or do or try things in our lives. And after a lot of thinking about the question of why...why does fear motivate us, why does love motivate us, why does public opinion motivate us, why does a gym membership not motivate us, why should i keep reading this book, why should i write a new story, why shouldn't i cry it is tuesday...I was never much good at Tuesdays ... these kinds of whys, I think that why doesn't really matter.
I think it is time to stop needing reasons to act.
In a way this compulsive justification is stiffling our freedom to act as free and autonomous beings. I used to write because i was justified in writing. I had to write an assignment, I had to find out what a game was called, I had to tell someone a good recipe for a ham sandwich, I had to had to had to. i had so many reasons why i should, could, would, and did write. And then, I think, one day those reasons disappeared. And this became the first step in my great block.
I didn't think I had a reason to write. I didn't think I had something to say, didn't think I wanted to. I graduated, so I didn't have professors to read my writing. I have told the world about ham sandwiches. I got rejected by a couple journals (rejection sucks) and was just left with you (friends and strangers) -- and you are very busy people I shouldn't write you things to read unless they are very funny or important or or or-- and I didn't think you really wanted to read my writing. and even less want to talk about words written in a fictional space. So the block grew bigger.
And it grew and grew and I started to feed it, and I had really great justifications for why i didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't write. And i started scratching out big crosses and black marks in my writing, every time i wrote anything it became a big hole of frustrated justification.
And then, I don't know why, but it stopped mattering. All the editing and self aborting ideas stopped being aborted, and now i am running out of notebooks. But its all poetry now, so I think Splot is going to get pretty quite now. Don't worry I haven't gone far.
So today`s topic: action, agency, activity and the letter A.
I don't have many books, but for some reason, that I haven't quite sorted out yet, the Book of Mormon is among the books I do have. So, for lack of something more stimulating, I was reading a little theology today and thinking about action and agency. I am thinking about what motivates us to move or act or do or try things in our lives. And after a lot of thinking about the question of why...why does fear motivate us, why does love motivate us, why does public opinion motivate us, why does a gym membership not motivate us, why should i keep reading this book, why should i write a new story, why shouldn't i cry it is tuesday...I was never much good at Tuesdays ... these kinds of whys, I think that why doesn't really matter.
I think it is time to stop needing reasons to act.
In a way this compulsive justification is stiffling our freedom to act as free and autonomous beings. I used to write because i was justified in writing. I had to write an assignment, I had to find out what a game was called, I had to tell someone a good recipe for a ham sandwich, I had to had to had to. i had so many reasons why i should, could, would, and did write. And then, I think, one day those reasons disappeared. And this became the first step in my great block.
I didn't think I had a reason to write. I didn't think I had something to say, didn't think I wanted to. I graduated, so I didn't have professors to read my writing. I have told the world about ham sandwiches. I got rejected by a couple journals (rejection sucks) and was just left with you (friends and strangers) -- and you are very busy people I shouldn't write you things to read unless they are very funny or important or or or-- and I didn't think you really wanted to read my writing. and even less want to talk about words written in a fictional space. So the block grew bigger.
And it grew and grew and I started to feed it, and I had really great justifications for why i didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't write. And i started scratching out big crosses and black marks in my writing, every time i wrote anything it became a big hole of frustrated justification.
And then, I don't know why, but it stopped mattering. All the editing and self aborting ideas stopped being aborted, and now i am running out of notebooks. But its all poetry now, so I think Splot is going to get pretty quite now. Don't worry I haven't gone far.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
The last
So long a silence. I've been blocked. By fear. and a certain lacking of bravery. and a Japanese internet company that didn't want me accessing the internet when in such a shy state.
Anyway. Canada didn't suffer the coup d'etat. Shame. but its a good thing. We chose the more rational calm path of suspending parliment. Waiting and deliberating a bit before we make the easy move.
That's what i want to talk about today. it's funny to say that ending something is the easy move. That choosing to walk away, to over throw the government is the easy choise. But it is. Its far easier to say its all rubbish, throw it all away, than to admit our mistakes, than to try things we doubt we have the bravery to do.
I thought i would just quit on Monday. Say I can't do it. I can't make a life here. And i should go back to Canada, where at least i don't have the excuse of a language barrier stopping me from doing what I want with my life. Then i wondered about what i wanted to do. I didnt come up with much, so then i got depressed. Then i started looking for things to blame, the language, the food...the shy people and it occurred to me that i myself hadn't really even tried to go out. to try to do things i might enjoy. I was waiting for someone to pick me up and take me there. take me to something i would like to do. To introduce me and make me go.
And i thought about the piano concert. About the lesson there...I went to a masterful performance of Chopin on piano, and half the audience was asleep. it occurs to me that you, as a performer, cannot force the audience to stay awake. this isnt even like or dislike, but you can force them to even listen to you. All you can do is invite them. All you, the performer, can do is be there doing something you want to do. If that is play Chopin, or breathe deeply, or watch dancers, or listen to good music, or sing, or travel, or take pictures, or write love letters...that is all you can do.
And that, I think, is enough. Even if I do it alone, I can go out to a cafe. I like Cafes, the smell, the noises, the music... And even if i don't fall in love while I'm there, or write a great novel, or get a dream job, or muse quietly to myself... Even if it ends in awkward silence, I can start a conversation. Even if they don't become boon life companions, i can make a casual friend. i can invite them to come in for tea, or to a movie, or to a cafe...
Even if I'm scared that it will cause pain, that it won't make my life better, that I won't make other peoples lives better...the truth is just be living bravely, but trying to interact with the world it can only create good...i hope. I love you all. have a wonderful new year.
Anyway. Canada didn't suffer the coup d'etat. Shame. but its a good thing. We chose the more rational calm path of suspending parliment. Waiting and deliberating a bit before we make the easy move.
That's what i want to talk about today. it's funny to say that ending something is the easy move. That choosing to walk away, to over throw the government is the easy choise. But it is. Its far easier to say its all rubbish, throw it all away, than to admit our mistakes, than to try things we doubt we have the bravery to do.
I thought i would just quit on Monday. Say I can't do it. I can't make a life here. And i should go back to Canada, where at least i don't have the excuse of a language barrier stopping me from doing what I want with my life. Then i wondered about what i wanted to do. I didnt come up with much, so then i got depressed. Then i started looking for things to blame, the language, the food...the shy people and it occurred to me that i myself hadn't really even tried to go out. to try to do things i might enjoy. I was waiting for someone to pick me up and take me there. take me to something i would like to do. To introduce me and make me go.
And i thought about the piano concert. About the lesson there...I went to a masterful performance of Chopin on piano, and half the audience was asleep. it occurs to me that you, as a performer, cannot force the audience to stay awake. this isnt even like or dislike, but you can force them to even listen to you. All you can do is invite them. All you, the performer, can do is be there doing something you want to do. If that is play Chopin, or breathe deeply, or watch dancers, or listen to good music, or sing, or travel, or take pictures, or write love letters...that is all you can do.
And that, I think, is enough. Even if I do it alone, I can go out to a cafe. I like Cafes, the smell, the noises, the music... And even if i don't fall in love while I'm there, or write a great novel, or get a dream job, or muse quietly to myself... Even if it ends in awkward silence, I can start a conversation. Even if they don't become boon life companions, i can make a casual friend. i can invite them to come in for tea, or to a movie, or to a cafe...
Even if I'm scared that it will cause pain, that it won't make my life better, that I won't make other peoples lives better...the truth is just be living bravely, but trying to interact with the world it can only create good...i hope. I love you all. have a wonderful new year.
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