Aranansi #1: Another World of Words

Posted on August 23, 2010 by randomyriad

I have been posting a series of dream stories on another blog, but since I started this blog as an experiment in including all my explorations in all my worlds, inside and outside of me. I feel that I should just bring it all together into this space, still fragmented me but all in one place. I just tend to forget about the dream story when it is off to the side. It is me as much as anything else is me. This is all me, but still not all of me. I haven’t located all the floating pieces in the currents, eddies and backwater fringes, but I am keeping a sharp eye out as I drift along.

December 28, 2009, 16:54

I am interested possible realities and the worlds that we humans make in our heads. I have been  putting my thoughts down in words since I learned how to write, but now I am trying to take the time to do this for more than just my own thinking process, though I hope that comes through as well. I want to create worlds and concepts which others can inhabit and maybe find something of interest or inspiration. I have, for a long while, been too busy being a father, husband, preschool teacher, and balancing these occupations to use words to explore my thoughts and imagination. I will just start paddling and see where the current and my mental muscles will take me. I will try to make my boat big enough to carry whoever wants to come with me.

Posted in Aranansi, Dreamtime, mindworks, my life, Telling Stories, thinking in words | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How To Grow Lifelong Learners

Posted on August 21, 2010 by randomyriad

After reading a thoughtful and inspiring post about community building on my Reggio Emilia (an Italian model preschool program) email list. I began thinking about the community building projects that I have presided over through the years. They all had the same basic components and similar outcomes. When you honor everyone’s choice or idea in a group event and then use those ideas to create something cooperatively it is powerfully symbolic. It will make impressions in children’s minds like seeds that stick and grow. With thoughtful planning these shared events gives the teacher a wonderful tool to create community. It can take so many forms.

What I mean by thoughtful planning is that these ingredients are present to some degree: each child/family has input initially, the whole group has access and encouragement to work with the materials and ideas, and the process is discussed, documented, and displayed in some form to be revisited. I have done this many times with many ideas, as a one day process where the whole class made a book about something that happened that day, or over months long processes that are documented in many ways. If you have the three ingredients it will be an effective tool for community building. It will take root in the minds of many if not all of the children and create a model for belonging they can carry with them through life. “I am a participant in the learning process, and a contributing member of a learning community.” To plant this seed is one of our sacred tasks as early childhood educators.

Posted in All part of the process, developing relationships, my life, Teaching and Learning, thinking in words, working world | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

What Light Was Doing In My Neighborhood Around Noon

Posted on August 18, 2010 by randomyriad

Today I went looking for light and found it making a spectrum of amazing colorsI found a swarm of bees as well.

And, shadow was there too hanging about the edges and underneaths

and laying around on the ground next to everything.

The sun eaters were showing off for the bees.

Light has no preference. It lands on everything without judgment.

Posted in capturing light, Found Art, paying attention, summer, wonder world | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Random Thoughts from an Unemployed Mind

Posted on August 15, 2010 by randomyriad

A Perfect Day for an Island

Late in the spring, one of my students set up this scene depicting his interpretation of Lummi Island. I appreciated it because I used to live there.  As I was going through the photos on my camera I found this perfect place in my past, a quiet day in June, so clear and unhurried, a day to build a dream island in the yard next to the white picket fence.

Grey Building in the Afternoon Rain

I also came upon a picture of this building. I have a passion for decay, especially weathered and dilapidated factories, warehouses and barns. They are huge sculptures of intricate shades and nuances with colors, angles and shadows that I cannot find in newer well cared for buildings. the interaction of nature on the artificial fascinates me. Weather, gravity, and time are the masters of this craft. The fact that someone still works here amazes me.

Layers

Yesterday I was listening to a lecture on Thomas Pynchon‘s The Crying of Lot 49 by a Yale professor. As she was talking about the layers that language adds to our experience of life, I could hear my son Jordan’s measured and assured voice in the next room. He was talking  into a phone that connected through waves to someone in a different place. I was distracted by the feeling that what he was saying to that person might be more important for me to hear than what the Yale professor was saying to her class a few years ago. My son is one of the people I truly trust and admire, and I find his interactions in the world fascinating because he is so unlike me.  I had a feeling even before the wordy ideas started to trickle in to my thoughts that I was missing something that I could never hear again, something that might help me get a clearer picture of who he is. This seemed so much more important in that instant than what the Yale professor thought Thomas Pynchon was trying to say. Then the wordy realities crashed in and I was flooded with ideas about how we are constantly bombarded by language in so many layers, the sound of a voice in another room layered over the words of a recorded lecture about a book written over 30 years ago. How do I as a person figure out what layer to focus on? Or is it important to experience all the layers and sort them out as they come? I decided to enjoy the sound of my sons voice while I continued to listen to the words of the professor talk about the words of the author who was writing about how people live with language. I let the layers wash over me. I have not yet sorted it all out, but as you can see I am making a start at adding my layer to the mix.


Poem in “g”

Ragged rage on the page

The angle of an angel

ranges from eight to danger

BANG!

Caught in a draught

the engineer’s binge

brought the ginger angst

and a plague of cringing

ringing: Ding Dong!

all night a singeing song

Language to light and laugh

through tough straights

though meager wags the wagers

on the ageless eagles bough.

Posted in Art in Nature, capturing light, conversations, discovery and recovery, Family, mindworks, My Art, my life, paying attention, philosophy, poetry, spring, Teaching and Learning, Telling Stories, thinking in words, time travel, Word play | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Another One Done/ My Latest Former Journal

Posted on August 9, 2010 by randomyriad

Front

I started this one in October of last year and finished it as we moved out of our house on the hill. I had to do some repair work, but left much of it funky because that’s the way I like my journals. They are a part of my daily drag around existence and so sustain a some damage along the way. I decorate them as I go with bits and pieces that I find that fit. They lose bits here and gain them there, this is the final product, random but organized.

Back

Posted in doodles, file folders and nut shells, My Art | Tagged | 1 Comment