AIDS prevention: “Live long enough to find the right one.”
Linking food production with sustainable harvesting and youth development.
and then there’s When Obama Wins.
My friends succeed marvelously at keeping me informed and entertained!
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Julia was going to be a part of the combo blog project that’s still struggling to get off the ground.
She was brilliant. A math genius and computer programming whiz whose work had caught the attention of some fairly prominent folks. One of her favorite activities during classes seemed to be making fun of me/my interpreting: “I can tell when you understand what you’re signing and when you don’t!” She was a tease – besides loving to poke fun, there were these moments of pure delight when some mathematical concept would click into my head (”matrices are three-dimensional!”) and enable a much more accurate interpretation. Our pleasure in those moments compounded: my glee at getting it, hers at seeing my lightbulb go off, and mutually as the learning process was facilitated.
I’ve missed working with her this year but continued to enjoy texting. We’d developed a weekly check-in, often to celebrate the end of another work/study week. These messages were light contact, a “hello I’m still here how are you” touch. I was unaware her internal emotional struggles had gotten so incredibly worse. Always there was stuff – she had one of the most difficult lives of anyone I’ve ever known well. She managed herself and all that stuff with incredible poise. I never realized she was at risk.
Of course I knew it was bad when I got a message from a colleague asking for me to call because she had “some news.” As we played phone tag for the next few hours my mind skimmed through the people we knew. I assumed an accident or health issue; I was unprepared for the reality. “Julia took her life.”
Ouch.
It’s been more than 24 hours since I learned; she died early last week. The initial numbness is wearing off. I keep having flashes of her body, inert.
There’s no making sense of such a choice except to respect it. Yes, the timing is rough as we learn new pain was recently added to the old and lingering. Damn, I know I am going to miss her. Yet, long talks with a friend who did her dissertation on the presentation of suicide in the media have changed my level of judgment. I am terribly sad. and…
I recently began re-reading Octavia Butler, Dawn:
My own experience reminds me that pain does keep coming ’round. I think some pain is restorative: necessary to experience in order to shed harmful or adverse effects in the present and future. Most pain is probably palliative, offering temporary relief for an underlying or ongoing dynamic. Some pain is progressive – reinforced by cycles that can be exacerbated by systems/patterns of interaction (with people, with institutions).
From the outside, as it were, one can imagine all the reasons why Julia should have stuck it out. Are they all selfish? Mine are. I want to be teased by her again, to learn with her, for her to be a part of one of my pet projects, for her to open a door for me to other exciting projects that she would have developed or contributed to, for others to get to know her and benefit from her talents. I don’t want to feel the pain of her absence, the loss of her friendship, the gaping hole where once she was. It always felt great to get a surprise text message from her in the middle of when&whatever! Now, no more. I am sad.
Julia knew what she was doing. Respecting her decision does not take away my sense of loss, but it is all that I know to do, now, to show my appreciation for her life.
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“The space was really what this sailing thing was all about.” (p. 7)
“Everything was so quiet now. The dawn was still so early the turn of the creek in the distance was barely visible…a dawn mystery took hold…” (22)
Last year August was my maiden trip. Just a few days of real sailing but enough of a taste to know I wanted to do it again. A second, shorter outing in October did not dispel my enthusiasm.
“After awhile he heard the putt-putting of a small boat approaching. An early fisherman, probably, heading down the creek. Soon the entire cabin rocked gently and the lamp swung a little from the boat’s wake. After a while the sound passed and it became quiet again. . . .” (77)
“Now, above deck, his attention was given to sail shape and wind direction and river current, and to the chart on the deck beside him folded to correspond to landmarks and day beacons and the progression of red and green buoys showing the way to the ocean….Somehow he’d gotten the idea that a sailboat provided isolation and peace and tranquility, in which thoughts could proceed freely and calmly without outside interference. It never happened. A sailboat underway means one hazard after another with little time to think about anything but its needs.” (94-95)
“Now that he was quiet he noticed that the boat’s motion wasn’t so much a rocking as a surge, a very faint, very slow, lift and drop accompanying the waves. He wondered if that could be a surge coming in from the ocean…” (233)
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My smart friends are posting wicked cool stuff:
Flaws of Gravity, a review by Christopher Hitchens of a new biography of Isaac Newton.
and
Critical Art on Trial, about a group of tactical media practitioners doing digital disobedience (among other fusions of art, pedagogy, radical political action). Their activist work includes an installation that “encourage[s] citizens to make informed decisions about the biological and chemical substances which have become such a part of everyday life.” They’ve gotten into some trouble for this, leaving them (and us) to wonder “precisely what kinds of communities&emdash;real or virtual&emdash;we will be able to make” – ever.
In the review cited above, Hitchens quotes Sir Leslie Stephen, who “claimed genius was ‘the capacity for taking trouble.’” Taking, you notice, not necessarily (or only) making. Intriguing.
Relating to a lively discussion (currently in a bit of hiatus) via email with some friends, Hitchens also writes this:
the day is not far off when we will be able to contemplate physics as another department&emdash;perhaps the most dynamic department&emdash;of the humanities. I would never have believed this when I first despairingly tried to lap the water of Cambridge, but that was before Carl Sagan and Lawrence Krauss and Steven Weinberg and Stephen Hawking fused language and science (and humor) and clambered up to stand, as Newton himself once phrased it, “on the shoulders of giants.”
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by Steph on April 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Tags: A Place in Space, DUO, group dynamics, Language, phenomenology, teaching
Was it two hours of considering pain during John Symons’ lecture on pain and embodiment that heightened the pleasure of good company? I enjoyed the presentation &emdash; learned a lot &emdash; but was hooked by the immediate (initial) framing, hence my question about why continue a course of inquiry that does not bring one into position to engage with other discourses (if such is what one actually seeks) came across as an attack instead of a quest to understand strategic intent. :-/
I missed the caveat that situated the talk outside of the endeavor to join a dialogue with other disciplines; if I had understood the opening apology to be a signal that the conversation would be internal to philosophy I might have been able to ask in such a way as to learn what I sought. Or maybe I would not have been able to formulate a question at all! :-/
After the talk &emdash; well, what a great evening in downtown Boston! I put on my dancing shoes but we never actually arrived to the dance studio for hip hop or popping lessons. (Be warned, “Steph says ‘yes’”!) Instead we drank sake at Shabu Zen (and had one of the most awesome meals I’ve eaten in ages), walked, talked, and sipped tea looking over the Boston Harbor under the nearly full moon with its reflection dancing over calm, rippling waters. Then we walked some more, checked out someone’s totally fancy office (!), and got more sake at Shabu Shabu. Did I mention laughing? 
My car wasn’t even towed!
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Well, almost, unless you want to eat at the other bakery… and there was no milk for coffee (or was it no milk for guests?) until a full gallon jug got passed around long after the first cup.
I spent a wonderful couple of days in Boston a few weeks ago with quite the gregarious crowd. The notes for blogging are nearly incomprehensible, now – there’s a lesson about timing! Will the acuity in the moment of my sense of reality suffer overmuch? Corruption is welcome. I did have a serious attack of the lonelies after returning from the Colombian’s visit to Boston. At least I wasn’t chased by a Drunk Mexican (who was actually from Peru), although the fact that someone was chased got me a temporary quasi-date for the evening: “If I kiss you,” she said, “it doesn’t mean anything.” Oh :-/, well “Ok!”
The rain was abominable en route to vaguely ambiguous social events. I so much did not want to drive to the fun, preferring life should come to me! However, ’twas not to be, the promise of fun won, and the drive done soon enough. (I certainly did not accomplish as much as Zeynep, who solved the problem of the universe, reconstructed her dissertation, cleaned the kitchen and packed for the weekend in a few hours prior to departure. Eventually, we took a trip across the street. “I want to visit that galaxy,” a 6th grader informed Jake, who informed her that the Earth is, indeed, already in the Milky Way and inquired of her opinion. “I am not sure,” she intoned, solemnly looking around.
Different senses of reality pervaded dinner, dancing, bowling, and pool. I really want an actuarial table on the persistence of groups, some way to predict the strength of relationships over time and the possibilities of re-union, recurring configurations, a way to track not only stages of group development but the shape of groups over time… (Javier! Save us!)
The Drunk Mexican returned periodically throughout the evening. Slowly the non-Spanish-speaking members of the group caught on to the fact that he was not operating in an official entertainment capacity for the establishment. Different languages = different senses of reality!
There was a rotation on the couch (prior to the photo frenzy involving several couches) and I texted a pal often through the night. “Are you winking?” I was teased. Alas, no, just offering presence. My favorite dance partner took me for a few turns of salsa conditionally – only if I granted him the criteria of getting “to be the man!” Oh alright, I can follow. 
Eventually the evening came to an end:
We returned to the shaking house for curried rice & peas, salmon steaks, bread and cheese. Debate ensued about Boston’s unique tectonics, or is it wind through sewage pipes introducing a wobble in the building like Willy Wonka’s house? Some folks weren’t sure if the house was really shaking, legs over the edge of the bed to stabilize a turbulent tummy via the (moving) floor.
At some point I was encouraged to “wink back.” Conversations the next morning (?) ensued about cat channeling, monkeys/national geographic/nature and failure/f-ck-ups. (I have no clue.) Then there’s this enigmatic phrase: “There’s some grains in there…..”
Finally, wisdom about the/a matrix, I mean, come on, you know it’s all made up anyway!
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Weird how certain things come up in bursts, isn’t it? In the past month I’ve encountered three situations involving some combination of Deaf people, American Sign Language, and Koko, the “signing” gorilla.
To be fair, as I consider this, I would probably have to converse with Koko myself to know whether I thought there was actual language happening – you know, the kind of communication that we consider the particularly special feature of language. My understanding is that Koko knows some “signs,” responding “appropriately” to some of them and and generating some “signs” herself (is Koko a she?) Please don’t misunderstand me, I think it is awesome that there is such strong evidence of high-order cognition from other animals besides ourselves, and I want gorillas to persist on the planet. In fact, I would be stunned and amazed and thrilled, actually, if humans could develop languages or other means of communication that enabled us to learn from the other animals what they know about living on earth. Maybe signed language is one of those modes – just like human babies can learn to project meaning with signs sooner than they can project meaning with spoken words (all those pesky muscles in the tongue and mouth!) – it is not surprising that gesture is a powerful tool across species (as well as between different language groups among our own).
Equating what Koko does with what culturally Deaf people do with their linguistically-complex signed languages (yes, plural!), while cool for the great ape can also serve people inclined to stereotype. Old prejudices persist, with sometimes appalling consequences. I’m not just referring to a deaf person’s hurt feelings because a non-deaf person is unable to understand that the mind works just as well with signed languages as it does with spoken ones. I am referring to the casual attitudes one develops towards those considered somehow inferior or otherwise less-worthy. I am referring to a cavalier attitude toward Deaf people’s concerns with medical genocide, so easy to pass off if one assumes a Deaf human being is more like a gorilla than like me.
Another irony involves this popularity of non-deaf parents teaching their non-deaf babies to sign. What a fad this is! Parents value those five or six word vocabularies so much! And then drop them (?) as soon as baby starts to speak. I’m not saying parents should not take advantage of the temporary relief signed language provides, but – this is a bit of cultural appropriation, isn’t it? Where’s the give-back? I have friends who are doing this and I am happy to provide a few ’survival signs,’ and – I hope they’ll remember, someday, to support legislation recognizing signed languages and residential schools for the Deaf, reject moves to medicalize deafness through research and (what some people consider) experimental surgery on children, to reject eugenics, be willing to pay for signed language interpretation to create accessibility, and even be bold enough to talk with and to Deaf people in meetings or classrooms or anyplace where an interpreter is available for that very purpose (instead of talking to the interpreter as a proxy!)
I know. People don’t consider these things, and why should they, really, if it hasn’t come up? We’ve all got plenty to do. Most of us say we’ve got too much to do, rushing on and on, in a hurry to get things done so we can immediately start the next task. Get those kids signing so we can move on to other things!
All I’m saying is, let your mind be joggled!
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I asked students in the Group Dynamics course to engage with the title of John Robison’s book, look me in the eye, in order to investigate the meanings associated with eye contact and then consciously link that range of meanings to the notion of indirect interaction. The few students who tackled this challenge in full show how communicating across differences is quite a challenging task. Buckets34 discerned no link but trusted one must exist (to which I’d say, “no, not unless we make it!”) Freshkicks6 wrote:
In class when we commented on Steph writing sideways, she responded with, “Maybe I’m a sideways type of person.” In our culture it is expected (and we have all learned from a similar frame) that when you write, you try to write straight, horizontal, left to right. The fact that she didn’t do this, stood out and allowed us even to poke fun at her about it. Writing straight, left to right, is a cultural norm, just like looking someone in the eyes is when having a conversation. Often times, because someone does something out of ordinary, we like to comment on it and point it out. The author of “Look Me in the Eyes” talks about this often because people either make fun, or just don’t acknowledge his “sideways” behavior, so he never learns to act “normal.”
Several students comment on how the title provides a frame, which Thumpasorus suggests is a kind of proof that people actually think differently:
“Each person’s thought process brought him or her to a different conclusion about the meaning behind the title. After reading the title I thought “[Robinson] meant it figuratively. That is, he meant to say, examine me closely . . . as I read I found there was a double meaning.” I can now see that other people have thought processes different than mine, which can bring them to conclusions equally as valid. Robinson’s thought process certainly functions differently than many of us. This was expressed especially well in his explanation of his smile at the news of a death of a stranger. As we have been slowly been learning since the beginning of the semester, Steph too has a thought process somewhat foreign to many of ours. This was quite clear when she started “writing sideways” in an attempt to express herself graphically, leaving us with confused, amused expressions”
Arturo, a colleague from Business Strategy & Organizational Theory (School of Management), describes the juxtaposition of John’s and my thought processes thus:
I just finished reading your exchange with John Robison. I have to say that it is very interesting at so many levels: from structure and style to goals and understandings. It is like observing a dance where the rhythm is a 2 by 4 where one of you follows the 2-tempo while the other goes for the 4-tempo. Both of you are dancing to the same tune yet an external observer can see the differences in “beat”. On one hand you are articulate and constantly link concepts left-to-right. You use your own voice to bring in your student’s ideas and expectations and frame them in the context of his appearance in the class. Yet during all this process you do not forget your own role as mediator/referee of this engagement. On the other hand he goes linear, ignores the social innuendos. He focuses on personal goals yet he makes a noticeable effort to address your issues as they link to his ultimate goal: awareness on the autistic condition. Nevertheless when all this is happening he is still a curious mind. He seeks to grasp where are you coming from in your interpretation of his world / words as you do not conform to any standard that his linear thoughts would have foreseen (he is a linear thinker while you are a sideways traveler). So far it looks like he has partially moved from seeking/perceiving you as a means to his goal (awareness of autism) to exploring/understanding you as a means for understanding himself. He used your “eyes” to see himself from the outside at a group communication level.
Certainly I can identify with these statements: I perceive similarities in the way John and I approach the world as out-of-the-norm (noted by Fresh and Thump), and I am aware of the differences articulated by Arturo: can a strictly linear thinker and a sideways traveler form enough of a bond to co-construct a common goal? A longer exposition of this question is posted in my teaching blog as I urge students to consider deeply: Audience: to imagine or ignore?
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