A Language Older Than Words

For your enjoyment and reading pleasure:

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.
In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies acts as barriers to the truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must at all costs be avoided. When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defenses and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre party. We try to stay out of harm’s way, afraid they will go off, shatter our delusions, and leave us exposed as the hollow people we have become. And so we avoid these truths, these self-evident truths, and continue the dance of world destructions.
As is true for most children, when I was young, I heard the world speak. Stars sang. Stones had preferences. Trees had bad days. Toads held lively discussions, crowed over a good day’s catch. Like static on a radio, schooling and other forms of socialization began to interfere with my perception of the animate world, and for a number of years I almost believed that only humans spoke. The gaps between what I experienced and what I almost believed confused me deeply. It wasn’t unit later that I began to understand the personal, political, social, ecological, and economic implications of living in a silenced world.
--Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

Clothes--HDT Experiment

Thoughts on Clothes:
"Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our false skin."

I will post my list of clothes tonight

Keep your thoughts coming,
AK

Core Tenets of HDT Experiment

Please include passages from HDT that you think are core tenets that the project should be build upon:

Example:
Economy, p. 8: "We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests."
What are the simple tests that we might encounter that we must engage.

Keep them coming,
AK

Thoughts on Food

Here we go--please do your best, we need to lock this up for tomorrow.

Best,
AK

Journals

Just a heads up--

I have been working on your journals over the weekend and this morning; however, I am not sure that I will get them all done before class today.

Just wanted to let you know.

Best,
AK

Random HDT Experiment Thoughts

Thoughts on HDT Experiment:

1.) Should we take cell phones, iPods, and Tablets and lock them in Saliba’s office. This will have to be a voluntary act—I don’t think I can, or should, mandate it.
2.) Food—if everyone brings in five dollars on Monday, would we make up a shopping list, and walk to the market in downtown South Berwick in order to pick up supplies for the week. Can we also find a time to get together in order to make bread, soup, and other things for the week.
3.) Where can we eat together during the week, should we eat outside…also, should we include one plate, cutlery, and beverage container in the packing list.
4.) Clothes—the only thing I have heard is no jeans, so what are thinking after that.
5.) Showers and bathing—your thoughts, I am a little stumped on this one, and think that people should be able to take hot showers if they want a hot shower…thoughts?
6.) What else am I missing?

HW for tomorrow (Long Block) 3 November

Here is the HW for tomorrow:
1.) Read the next three pages (again) of "Self-Reliance"
2.) Find a leaf and do the following:draw it, write about it (describe it), and answer the question, Can you talk with it?
3.) Submit body paragraphs to the blog or me.

Best,
AK

HW The Remix

Sorry for any confusion but here is your HW for the weekend--

1.) Study for the vocab, next ten words.
2.) Write your body paragraph and post it on the blog (paragraphs will not be accepted after Monday)
3.) Review the first three pages of Self-Reliance.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Best,
AK

Blog

Hello--

I have looked at the settings on the blog and you all should have not problem logging on--you do not need to log on with a password or username, you can log on as annoymous if you are currently having problems.

Your HW for the weekend is as follows:
1.) Study for Vocab
2.) Complete Paragraph and post on blog if you have not already done so
3.) Read "The Village" by HDT.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
AK

HW For Tonight--28 October

On the blog I have posted a series of questions about HDT's "Reading" and "Sounds."

Tonight for HW, I would like you to write ONE body paragraph that answers one of the questions I have presented about "Reading" or "Sounds."

This is an analytical body paragraph, so it should adhere to the rules of good writing and contain:
-A topic sentence
-Textual Support
-Analysis.

Please post your paragraphs on the blog under the "Sounds" or "Reading." I would recommend that you type your paragraphs in Word first (blogger does not have spell check) and then post your response on the blog. Also, I don't think it is a good idea if you read other people's posts before you are done with your own.

Have confidence in your writing, remember what you have been taught last year, this year, and the year before. As long as you don't make mistakes that you know are mistakes...you will be fine.

Best,
AK

Thoughts, Questions, Musings on "Sounds"

“By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it.” 

Thoughts on “Sounds”

Again—please feel free to comment upon any of these questions on our blog.

1.)  On the first page of the essay ‘Sounds’ HDT writes: “We are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.” Do you think this is true—whey have we forgotten this language? With that being said, I think of how shocked some of you must have been during Common Period on Tuesday when the man said, ‘The drum has its own language.”

2.)  Why is the need for being ‘forever alert’ a necessity? How does nature teach us this essential truth of life?

3.)  What does HDT say about the process of cleaning his house? Where does he put his belongings and how does he say they look in this setting? Perhaps, you should try this exercise in order to see if HDT’s suggestion has merit.

4.)  When was the last time you heard birds at Berwick Academy? Why did you hear them? Are they not always around or do we just fail to notice them? With that being said, I see birds everyday—I wonder if you do, and I wonder if you are thinking about what they are currently telling us about nature or what essential fact of life they are driving in the corner for us to examine?

5.)  What is one of the mechanical sounds HDT constantly hears and what are his thoughts about this sound?

6.)  HDT writes: “Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pound no longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever.” What is the restless world, who belongs to this world, and why is it restless? And oh yeah, I ask again—is HDT alone?

7.)  How do the sounds of the birds tell us what time it is better than any bell tower? What are the birds HDT talks about in ‘Sounds?” What does he say about each one?

8.)  Near the end of the essay—HDT rolls out the knowledge grenade: “It would put nations on the alert.” What would put nations on alert and why would it have this impact?

Last thought—do you have the time, the space, the form, the thoughts to be more than a machine? Now that is a good question, but I am not going to answer it—but I will say, I am working hard and while the hard work might appear to be random thoughts, I do promise that meander to the path that my ideas have forged. 

Good luck—again, I ask, what else can I do to help you?

Questions to consider when reading "Reading"

Let us TRANSCEND—WE must rise above the work we have currently done

Questions to consider when reading “Reading.” Please feel free to respond to any of these question on our blog:

On the first page of “Reading,” Thoreau writes: “That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.” What is the time that HDT is referring to and why does it not belong to the past, present, or future?

2.)  Why is HDT’s residence more ‘favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university?’ This idea comes from a man who lives at Walden but attended another intuition for a period of time in Cambridge, Mass.

3.)  According to HDT, why will the adventurous student always study classics, even if the stories and language is old?

4.)  Why does HDT offer the idea “[reading] is the work of art nearest to life itself?” Why does he believe this and is their natural merit and wisdom in this assertion?

5.)  How does reading help us ‘scaling heaven at last?’ Thus, what is the true value of books and what is the natural value of reading the written word?

6.)  On page 100 of my book, I read: “The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers.” Who are the ‘good readers’ and why do they not read the ‘best books?’ More to the point, what are the best books?

7.)  Why does Thoreau suggest that “books exist for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones?” What are the miracles that books are able to explain and what is a book that revealed a miracle to you?

8.)  What is the ‘uncommon school?’ How do books, and how does reading, play a vital role in the excellence of that school?

9.)  What do books, what does reading, allow us to do?

What is one book, because of reading it, that has changed your life? That has forced you to understand more fully one of the ‘essential facts of life?’

 

I will end with a few words from HDT: “In dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident” BUT more importantly, and the last word from me tonight, “To read well, that is to read true books in a true spirit, is a _______________excercise.”

So I will just ask, are you worthy of that blank—are you worthy of that title…and I would suggest that you hand yourselves over to this worthy offering.

 

See you tomorrow.

Today

All I will say is that we need to do better than we did today--from my vantage point and from the way our conversation went today, I would say that many of you need to do the following:
1.) Read--I think that many of you have not been doing the reading. Again, I will say that there is a handful of you that have not read the bulk of Emerson's nature or HDT's "Walden"
2.) Read in order to understand NOT just to get the assignment done--many of you are reading just to do the assignment instead of working on trying to understand what the purpose of the assignment really is.
3.) Annotate when you read or take notes as you are reading or post ideas on our class blog.

If we continue down this path--our destination will change--and we will be forced to evolve with it.

Walden Help No.2

In order to highlight your understanding of the text compose a list of the five most important moments from last night's reading:

Example of one of those moments from "Solitude"
1.) p.129, "Society is commonly too cheap." In this moment H.D.T is suggesting that the world, state, organizations, that we live in water down the importance of life by placing value on things that are priceless but co-opting the importance of those items when they force us to by into their pre-determined value. Perhaps, he is also suggesting that the things we value, are expensive, are really worthless--and other things like honesty, truth, solitude, nature are made cheap by the worlds in which we reside.

Walden Help No. 1

In order to better understand the sections "Solitude" and "The Village" please post two questions (one for each chapter) that you think if answered thoroughly and correctly would highlight a person's knowledge and understanding of those readings?

Example:
Why does H.D.T suggest, "It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time?" Do you think H.D.T would believe that you are ever 'truly lost' in the woods--and why would this experience be valuable and memorable--what would it teach you about solitude?

Group Assignment

Please post the classes' answers here.

Thank you,
Sal

A Little Bit More On the Power of Words

Check this out if you are so inclined...if you want a soundtrack for the dancing mind:

http://www.prisonartsstl.org/

Best,

AK

Poems

Please place your Poems here...

Also here are some thoughts on the Spontaneous Prose Method.

Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh..." —from On the Road

Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose.

Thinking tonight...

Thinking tonight--but looking at the birds flying south--I could not escape our class today, and I just don't know what to think. But I do think that I am rushing, that I am not listening closely enough to you, that I am panicking because I am not worthy of the offering that are your thoughts...whatever, the case maybe, I wanted to let you know that I would truly love to hear from you about your thoughts regarding our time in American Studies and what I can do better as a teacher--as a person who prepares the initial questions that set our dialogues in motion. 

On a blogging note, I would encourage to you to do the following--or I give you the following for clarity's sake:

1.) I think it would be beneficial to look up the word holy.

2.) If you are looking for a length, I would say between 400-600 words, I don't know how you would be able to dig into a question successfully with less.

3.) Write with your heart and edit with your head.

4.) Something you feel will find its own form.

A lost thought from The Miracle of Castel di Sangro:

"Years have gone by and I have finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good football. I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: 'A pretty move, for the love of God.'

And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle and I don't give a damn which team or country performs it."

I will end by simplifying the offering: I am beggar for good writing, for rich ideas, so I stretch out my ideas and plea, ONE GOOD MOVE...and I thank you in advance for the miracle which will be your insight.

With thanks and gratitude,

AK

For Journal to Blog

Please take one of your journal entries and turn it into a more formal response.

My biggest piece of advice: Think but don't think--first thought, best thought.

I am proud of you all--your thoughts amaze and humble me.

I thank you in advance for all you will teach me.