Please respond to the text as you will: emojis, agree, disagree, both, videos, images, and whatever will fit in the box.

In the end, amid protestations of empathy and care and love, bearing witness in utter silence is all I can do. The things she carries are what she carries. I cannot carry them. I carry my own things. I am sorry and silent.

The things they carried.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLYoyJr-fJI

I think of all the border, margins and boundaries that have doors and thresholds and guardians on them.

If God is the witness, both writer and reader, then God, if good, must be empathic toward his creations. Hard to imagine what kind of empathy allows such horror.

Another form of distancing for survival? What makes the mind adaptable like this? How did the world fashion us to be like this? Or at least some of us to be like this?

Writing as a shield, a way to get between the raw core wound and the rest of the world. The raw wound has a mouth and will tell its story.

Am I supposed to feel a certain way? Feels manipulative and I haven't even looked at it yet.

Gotta admit that most of these de-contextualized tweets are fascinating abstractions, but hard for me to 'get' out of their original homes.

Damn this is a passel of assumptions, perhaps a tangle of them.

A very wryly intelligent group of folks in the comments at this link. I am reminded of the origins of the word genius--the spirit of a place

OED:

"1.1 With reference to classical pagan belief: The tutelary god or attendant spirit allotted to every person at his birth, to govern his fortunes and determine his character, and finally to conduct him out of the world; also, the tutelary and controlling spirit similarly connected with a place, an institution, etc. (Now only in sing.)    In the first two quots. Genius is the proper name of an allegorical person who in the Rom. de la Rose represents the native moral instincts of mankind as setting bounds to the range of sexual passion."

For example--blogging is cooperative sharing with long-term value.

I had never made this distinction before.

1. Get new ideas from your networks.
2. Filter ideas through conversations in cop's.
3. Make new stuff together or separately in trusted affinity spaces.
4. Share creations with 'teams' or cop's or networks.

I think of training as the core of creativity.

I have said almost these same words in my classroom. I would love to extend this to my department. I am part of our facdev efforts although I am technically not on their official committee I insert myself into the mix. I should view this is a crucial part of my network. I should make every effort to nurture it.

There seem to be niches where this is not true. For example, in Tokyo I have read that there are 10000 potters making a living. You would have to, right, in Tokyo. So expensive.

Sometimes the traditional and the cutting edge cross paths.

What are you learning and who are you learning from would be great questions to ask in small group settings.

Yes, suspended and in the hammock always. That is the remit for a poet.

A hammock--a liminal space

There is so much in Rumi that parallels this.

It won't be.

Yes.

Archaic Torso of Apollo Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926

We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.

All these directionals: over, down, distant, right, up, lean back,over. Why is it so important that Wright makes dead sure that the reader is alway properly oriented? Or is it just the natural orientation of someone in a hammock?

Reflective fire? Inner fire? Is this poem an example of reflective or radiant (inner) fire?

All these quotidien observations include old horse droppings are made golden by that field of sunlight.

Here is the middle distance, a field of sunlight framed by the dark pines.

Wright moves from the close up to the long shot, from the butterfly to the distant cowbell.

Not the cows, but the cowbells. The cowbells are the first order image and lurking behind are the cows.

Wright never allows us to forget how the imagery is coming to him and no one else. He is the intermediary. He sees. He hears. He observes.

Do butterfly sleep perchance to dream?

Here is a link to info about the bronze butterfly: http://www.gardenswithwings.com/butterfly/Bronze%20Copper/index.html

Link to preview edition on Google Books: https://goo.gl/NEhdBH

My money is, in part, on this explanation. Poetry gives a semblance of control to world. At least it does for me.

This sounds like classic integration, melting pot thinking. Am I reading this right?

In the U.S. the citizen school movement as represented by the Highlander School did exactly this in the South in the 50's and 60's. And Myles Horton is the dude to read to get a feel for this alternative pedagogy.

I feel much the same way about school reform--just so much jive.

I am reminded of W.E.B DuBois' double consciousness:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Is there only one way to live your life? This is such a good life question? Could this be an entry question? Could this be a good I-Search question? How do I want to live my life as a learner?

And where are we climbing in this metaphor?

OR OR

I had a similar experience in my composition class as we did some slow, close reading. Ask me about it. It is astonishing.

Literacy is not a privilege, it is a survival skill, a life rope. Just imagine (and I very much suspect that skill will be retarded in a digital only world) the world that you know not. You will never cry for Boxer in Animal Farm, you will not know the horror of the suicides in Dante's Hell, you won't feel the triumph and defeat of Atticus Finch. So much. So very much.

And how often are they finding that what little reading they have done, is a game hardly worth the candle. Digital crowds out analog. Why?

Evidence? N of !?

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

The Gutenberg Pause is unnatural? Humans were born to make sense...in any way imaginable. Reading is just another way to make sense of the world. A technology.

I know this feeling. This summer I made it a point to rediscover analog reading. I really had a handle on this for awhile, lost it, then re-engaged with my new tablet hardware, ReMarkable.

Again, is this true? I think the qualifier "an index" makes it mostly true. And it is a gateway technology for future proofing yourself in the world.

She asks how they did it. Mom responds: don't know, a mystery to us too.

The author repeats her wonder at how they played the tooth fairy so well considering how things went later.

My mother in present day is a nurse who works third shift. She calls me in morning and drinks a beer to go to sleep.

Back to the present day . My dad is dying from bone cancer and looks terrible.

I see her in her print dresses.

Flash forward to the memories of later years of violence and fights and silence and more violence.

Imagining how beautiful my young mother was back then, waiting patiently at the window for me to go to sleep.

They did it so quietly I can't even imagine it even now. How did they do it?

My parents really got into being the tooth fairies for me by making a fancy quarter to put under my pillow as well as faking some footprints on my sheets all while I was asleep!

Here is my effort to be more hands-on with my annotation.

My goals in reading this article:

What can I do to use this in my composition classes? How can I use this in my professional learning? What can I share with my colleagues?

We can share our purposes here in the Page notes. We can collaborate and help each other. We can work separately but visible to others.

Here are some issues I have as this annotatory process grows.

1. If the annotation continues over a period of weeks, then how can we attend to it?
2. If an annotation flashmob's mentality is "one and done", then should we not say that from the beginning?
3. How can we keep the spirit of care and vulnerability as issues become more fractious and as weaker ties begin to crowd into the annotation space?

I am more and more drawn to the work of Damon Centola on the spread of 'behaviors' through networks. I would like to substitute "behaviors' for literacy and begin to apply Centola's work in the classroom. He has a new book coming out on Monday and I have put a talk of his on Vialogues so that we can annotate that: https://vialogues.com/vialogues/play/44449

Aside: When an annotated space reaches a critical mass I think we need summary behaviors or further highlighting and notification procedures. Kevin has already done so in one post. We might call these emergent writing or emergent behaviors.

Might consider a slightly more focused trim tab here in this all-page annotation box. This isn't to say that, if invited, improvisation is not encouraged. It must be. House rules gotta make this a playground not a prison.

Look no further than this annotation box for all that you suggest. Hypothes.is annotation is a multimedia genre all on its own in the process of being born. It is an ideal medium for teaching the old ways of writing and reading as well as the new ways of responding and creating. It is in its infancy and not locked down and scaffolded to death. So uptown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmnSm_d2ll4

I couldn't agree more. The big problem for us all is that often these spaces are so locked down, so scaffolded, so assessment driven that I despair of the system that created them and their capacity to create these spaces. I know we can do it and have done it, but do these exceptions prove my point? I do not want to come across as a ed-apocalyptic. Hell, the industrial model of learning is alive and "well" and shows little sign of abating.

I have to wonder if school is not, as Ivan Illich coined it, iatrogenic. Further, as a person who naturally "keeps on" (I have been a sheep farmer for over 30 years!) Are we guilty of educational iatrogenesis?

I also have to wonder whether we are all a bunch of Boxers saying, "I will work harder." Present company excluded.

Alison Gopnik argues that the youth of each generation are the product development branch of their cohort. They 'grow' the tools they need to solve the wicked problems of now. I want to help them do that. I do not want to give them the tools to solve the problems of the previous generation. We need to give them the space to make and do anew, but I want us to be more like concierges, not sages or masters. If this requires a new model then I say bring the revolution. It's coming anyway might as well join their camp.

Good practices? Here are a couple of critiques of the phrase best practices.

1. When “Best Practice” is Bad Practice

1. Best Practices Are the Worst

Not trying to nitpick here, but as a teacher I find it more important to be able to look at any writing practice (digital or otherwise) and see how it fits my learners and our learning niche. I am always surprised at what works and what doesn't and how the trifling-est practice sometimes works. I understand, too, that the reason we propose 'best practice' and do research to determine what is best practice is to pare down on the universe of options available to us as teachers and learners. As an experiment ask a student what they might consider best practice for learning a particular thing and I think you might be surprised. Oh, right, students don't enter into best practice except as we practice it upon them.

Is the phrase "digital writing" as fraught as "digital native"? Or has it morphed into just plain writing? I still find myself bridging the gap analog -digital gap. For example, a summer goal is to make annotation of pdf's as close to paper as I can. I invested in a reMarkable tablet to make this happen. Do I consider it "digital writing"--yes and no. It is the merging of digital and analog. I do it so as to have less friction and quicker feedback with students. None of this matters if students can't take in the feedback or if my feedback sucks, but that is another pedagogic and compositional concern.

That little apostrophe holds a world in it. Who owns CLMOOC? I raised this question very early on in the many iterations of it. NWP paid the first couple of groups of facilitators. Does that mean they own it? Or is this more of an example of 'usufruct'--we all get the 'use of the fruit' of CLMOOC. The question of 'open' cannot be answered to my satisfaction until we know the answer to this. Personally, if any one entity owns it then the idea of participatory design is a bit of a hoax, perhaps a mass-delusion. All the overt levers of power and participation seem quite open. Maybe the progenitors should have issued a DNR order at the very beginning or even an agreed upon closing/sunset date?

Participatory Design Conference 2018

Here is my sense of what you say in translation:

A Numbered LIst

1. I am aware, so aware, that definitions rule. They make us imagine our practice.
2. I am aware that less is so often more.
3. The R&D arm of each generation is already at work constraining and cajoling.
4. Our poets and dogs drag home the damndest things: bones, mirrors and seeds.
5. And still it is not enough.
6. The margins are a moving target that even its authors may no longer recognize.
7. Even if Yeats is right and the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate hootery, we still note our thanks, we continue to add to the pile, and we keep open and keep on. and get down now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BARAHLk-8dk

Probably Possibly Maybe Could be Don't know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyFwko9O2UE

Margins and boundaries are at the heart of ego. Having them makes us strong in the world, but they also render the world as more rigid, defined, and static than it really is. Korzybski's admonition that "the map is not the territory" is never more true than when we are discussing margins and boundaries. Teaching is quite a bit less than the "2+2=4" that I think Troy Hicks points to in his comment about how 30 years of work in digital writing give us some certainty. It's a collection of practices that you can try and most of which have worked more than once and, as such, are worth trying again.That's about it. No certitude there. And that should not discourage anyone who thinks of reading and writing as more art than science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hf1t_BXGfk

Yes, I will.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening BY ROBERT FROST Whose woods these are I think I know.<br> His house is in the village though;<br> He will not see me stopping here<br> To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer<br> To stop without a farmhouse near<br> Between the woods and frozen lake<br> The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake<br> To ask if there is some mistake.<br> The only other sound’s the sweep<br> Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,<br> But I have promises to keep,<br> And miles to go before I sleep,<br> And miles to go before I sleep.

Yes, I will.

This Kentucky boy cannot hear the word 'furlong' without thinking of the greatest thoroughbred to ever live, Secretariat. The Triple Crown Races for 1973 culminated in a Belmont Stakes victory of over 20 lengths and a track record over a mile and a half over two seconds faster than previous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V18ui3Rtjz4 His jockey applied no whip. Hands only the entire race. That horse was racing for the sheer joy of it. I did see another of the greatest horses ever, Forego. He had heart and more of it as he grew older. I was on the rail when I saw him win one of his last races. Furlongs with heart. Rising out of the rubble from the back of the pack he rated his competition even better than Secretariat and then would move past exactly like Secretariat did in his Derby Run. Cruising. No whip. It is a sight to see. And they really do "thunder by" the furlongs. I shiver remembering.

Nor I. Could this happen? It is the kind of work I see happening more often if folks had a universal income and Medicare for All. I also see this annotation work as a way to prototype freely all the ideas needed for solving a problem and then applying them. Sounds like the work of 'schools'. I have mentioned in other places the work of Alison Gopnik. She argues that the young are the research and development branch of every generation:

Babies are the R&D department of the human species. Evolution seems to have solved this problem by giving us a division of labor where the young creatures get to learn and imagine and think of possibilities. And then us old creatures take what we learned as children and actually put it to use.

https://youtu.be/Uno2Xu5TvQ0

http://jonudell.net/av/youtube.html?id=v2VzRMevUXg&startmin=0&startsec=14&endmin=36&endsec=45

I used to see these birds by the dozens. Flocks of them on the winter pastures. Great explosive birds on the wing. Now, not so much. Flicker collapse.

This keeps rolling around in my head, one marble in a Chinese Checkers tin. And I am not asking what does this mean, but rather what could this mean?

Did you know Illich invented the term "iatrogenesis", sickness induced by medical activity. Is there educational iatrogenesis. Yes. Anyone who teaches knows this is true. That is why it is so important to hand over the reins of learning to your students as soon as possible. As Blake noted in "Proverbs of Heaven and Hell", the tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. This is why we 'unschooled' all of our children. Exactly why.

love the rhyme Sorry, can't help by add this just for the...giggles.

Networks (back and forth) not funnels (one way). If this isn't a summing up of CLMOOC, I don't know what is.

Reimer was good friends with Illich when they were both in Puerto Rico. Classic networking IRL. Here is a free copy of Reimer's book, School Is Dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Thread

and anti-everything-but-white-ness

I highlighted this callout text three time before I tried to comment here. pause I don't want to be a pedagogue. I am not a healer. I don't even know how to heal others. Most healers will tell you that mostly they just facilitate self-healing. Is this a possible healing? pause I haven't read all of this yet, but I am not sure I want the responsibility of 'transformative tools' that get applied to others. Maybe we can open up a space for all students to choose tools of transformation that are apt for them.

A game to play as you begin this annotation or one to end with after you have done with it: an empathy map.

Here is another set of directions.

the opposite of green fuse? simply another season? Two seasons:the quick and the dead, zero and one, love and death, time and ...nothingness?

omg, the heavens are a clock, there is a second hand ticking, as it ticks it creates the heavens. Time is the greater creator and destroyer. It ticks into the present and we are here and it ticks again and we are gone, to be replaced by another and another tick.

I thought of heaven as an eternity, no time, time out of time.

The first stanza describes the human condition.

is the force, time?

https://goo.gl/tSMCkx

I can speak.

I am dumb

not a happy tone--parasitic. time is a parasite. it sucks time from us in order to live?

ironic--he isn't dumb is he? He is speaking out loud in a mysterioius way?

is this the force by another name?

The "I" could also be generalized to us all.

It occurs to me that the poet is doing the opposite of what we usually think--the repetition is at the beginning of the line. And the poet is complaining and comparing constantly. What's with that?

comparison between flower and poet.

drives it like the spring in a clock? Driven? Suggests no choice.

suggests a bomb?

suggests something powerful and abstract

Dumb

engine

Alliteration of "f" sounds. Repetition, too.

driving force

One force? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug3m8FHHheo

William Blake poem:

lips of time?

speechless

not jedi force

crooked

perfect rhyme, except for "clothes"?

Four silken syllables.

The first "then" arrests our attention much like Julia in silk has arrested Herrick's attention. The second then starts time back again (methinks). LOL, he really isn't thinking very much is he?

And who is Julia?

Is this the same as The American Dream?

credo defined

Does this mean Pinterest and Tumblr?

I have never liked this guy. Maybe I agree with him this time but I doubt it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-oIL9cLHDc

DWYL

What does this mean? How does ti relate to

https://twitter.com/miyatokumitsu?lang=en

https://www.jacobinmag.com/

Quote in Miya Tokumitsu article "In the Name of Love"

reminds me of The Idler magazine in UK

LOve how he uses the language of business against itself.

Thoreau is unstoppable in how he counters commerce. Still fresh.

No bullshit.

2017-2018 budget: $417,000,000

https://www.wku.edu/finadmin/budget/2017_2018docs/1718_executive_summary.pdf

not just a wku problem

possible solutions to enrollment issues

Nothing will begin to happen until April and later.

final 10 million here. So vague: what are tixed costs and what kinds of enrollment changes?

enrollment is due in part to decreasing enrollment in general.

problem: decrease in international enrollment will mean more deficit in the future.

solution: but not sustainable.

An amazing fact: this is five times the problem we have ever had.

here is another 9 million. that gets it up to 30 million. Where is the rest?

Consequences: staff cutbacks. How is "staff" defined?

Our problem: a large deficit.

So true. I was raised in a time when the speed of news was accurate. The tempo between news and its making was roughly the same. Now...Taleb has got it right.

This quote, standing alone, utterly re-imagines my role and the need from my role in teaching and learning. Bring it.

I don't know whether it is the dark that seeps through or the light. Or both.

This is a glorious line, shining with truth and aid. thanks.

a small wander, too, a random walk in the fields and woods, the landscape and the inscape.

I don't know whether it is the dark that seeps through or the light. Or both.

This is glorious line, shining with truth and aid. thanks.

a small wander, too, a random walk in the fields and woods, the landscape and the inscape.

Humans are so very...lame. We mostly are only capable of small beer and badly played pub trivia. Our lives are often small answers to great questions.

Whose dead? His dead. Who is dead? Depends on your life. Who is dead in your own life? We forget. We all forget. We all forget even those who we loved the most. That is worth begging forgiveness for, dontcha think?

Linking necessity to chance and apologizing to both if mistaken. Mistaken about what?

Emotional tone of apology. Apology for what? to whom? These are the templates implied by the word 'apology'.

Classic assonance under and one. Why do that? Because it hints at another inner rhyme--sun, a small star.

Some of my most productive pauses are destructive ones that are part of the path toward creating. For example, I get to teach a composition class of 24 with more than half of my students being Saudi. I have always had international students in my classes. My department head says it is because I am a softie. That is not a compliment in the unholy land of 'rigor'. So this class gives me great pause. How the fuck can I rise to this challenge? I think I have to break a great many sacred pedagogical icons along the way, but I don't know for sure how to go about it. Knowing political conditions in Saudi Arabia right now, a 'rigorous' approach might will be an indirect death sentence. Now that gives me pause.

Dreams don't care 'bout no verisimilitude. Dreams are psycho-stress tests? Dreams are bullies that make us believe in them. We bully ourselves. Teasing out the consequences of this sentence makes me realize how deep and rich and ...consequential it is. This sentence stands alone as a meaning rich objects much like a sculpture.

Yeah, this is the last refuge of passive-aggressive personality.

Style is a cool word. I think of it as having a couple of different senses--shallow and deep. I think Dyer is warning us to adopt the deeper sense of it--an organic characteristic emerging from the depths of one's self.

The cover of Ken Macrorie's textbook, The I-Search Paper, has a moebius strip on it, reflecting this sentiment nicely.<br>

But the conceit of the moebius strip extends from the back cover as well

So, you start reading this book on the back cover, nice twist, just like in a moebius strip. You work through the text by doing. Then when you are done, you get to the end and out the back of the book you go onto the back cover, to enter again. Escher would approve. That is what I see happening here. In the end this process serves the product, the text that is produced for anyone concerned.

I love this phrase. I am reminded of Robert Twigger's splendid book Micromastery. The subtitle to his book is "learn small, learn fast", i.e. pedagogies of small.

That takes me in a natural way to Buckminster Fullers metaphor of the "trim tab". Ho loved that idea so much, he put it on his grave stone.

Let's find the trim tabs, the micromasteries, the small pedagogies that might work as we learn together. That is the kind of we-search I can support. Wholly.

A manifesto if ever I saw one.

Thankfulness can be a declaration of privilege, of shouting to the heavens, "Look at me and what all I gots." Thankfulness could be like Raymond Carver says, just waiting for the glory of what happens next in a state of wonder. Agog.

Did he who made the swan and the bear make thee? All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all.

A "one-two" jab, right cross combination to the head. I am down for the count.

Reminds me of William Blake's "The Tyger"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIgV2O-qRws

I have seen this I have seen these spare birds Sparrows Feasting in a furrow of newly plowed ground then with utter seeming joy lift their heads and thrill and shrill.

I love the repetition.

and re-inspired by Dogtrax.

Inspired-breathed in re-inspired-and again in

the thump of this line delivers

I love what the OED brings to this poem.

shrill, v.

(ʃrɪl)

Also 4 schrille, 4–6 shrille, 5 shrelle, [skrille], 6–7 shril.

[f. shrill a. Cf. G. schrillen.]

1.1 intr. Of a voice, cry: To sound shrilly. Hence of noises, the wind, or the like, or a place echoing with sound.

   13‥ K. Alis. 777 Bulsifal neied so loude, That hit schrillith into the cloude!    1582 Stanyhurst Æneis ii. 35 The inner lodgins dyd shrille with clamorus howting.    1591 Spenser Virg. Gnat 518 Their mightie strokes so shrild, As the great clap of thunder.    1647 H. More Song of Soul ii. App. iii, Its tearing noise so terribly did shrill, That it the heavens did shake.    1782 Mickle Proph. Q. Emma iv, When the female scream ascended, Shrilling o'er the crowded lawn.    1811 Scott Don Roderick ii. xix, First shrill'd an unrepeated female shriek!    1842 Tennyson Morte d'Arthur 201 A wind, that shrills All night in a waste land.    1884 L. Wallace Ben-Hur iv. iv. 166 His voice shrilled with passion.

2.2 To speak, cry, or sing with a shrill voice; to make a shrill noise. a.2.a Of persons or animals.

   [c 1400 Anturs of Arth. xlviii, Þene his lemmane one loft skrilles and skrikes.]    c 1440 Floriz & Bl. (MS. T) 756 Þe mayde, al for drede, Bygan to shrelle [earlier MSS. crie, schrichen] and to grede.    1595 Spenser Epithal. 82 The Ouzell shrills, the Ruddock warbles soft.    1598 Florio, Querulare‥to shril, to‥chirp.    1639 H. Ainsworth Annot. Ps. v. 12 To showt, shrill, or cry aloud for sorrow.    1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. III. ii. vi. (1872) 81 The Tribune drones,‥the whole Hall shrilling up round it into pretty frequent wrath and provocation.    1896 A. Austin England's Darling i. ii, The misselthrush That shrilled so gleefully.

b.2.b Of an instrument of music, whistle, etc.

   1579 Spenser Sheph. Cal. Nov. 71 Breake we our pypes, that shrild as lowde as Larke.    1590 ― F.Q. ii. iii. 20 A horne, that shrilled cleare Throughout the wood.    1710 Philips Pastorals iv. 56 Thro' all the Wood his Pipe is heard to shrill.    1842 Tennyson Sir Galahad 5 The shattering trumpet shrilleth high.    1879 E. Gosse New Poems 100 The first sharp snow is shrilling through the trees.    1903 Kipling Five Nations 114 The whistle shrills to the picket.

3.3 trans. To utter, give forth (a sound, cry, words) in shrill tones; to exclaim or proclaim with a shrill voice. Also with out.

   1595 Spenser Epithal. 129 Harke, how the Minstrels gin to shrill aloud Their merry Musick.    1606 Shakes. Tr. & Cr. v. iii. 84 Harke‥How poore Andromache shrils her dolour forth.    1613 Heywood Silver Age iii. i, Through all th' Abysse, I haue shril'd thy daughters losse.    1613 ― Brazen Age ii. ii, What better can describe his shape and terror Then all the pittious clamours shrild through Greece?

   1801 Lusignan I. 173 The terror of the feathered tribe, shrilled in the omens of an approaching tempest.    1817 Coleridge Biog. Lit. xxi. (1882) 205 Gnats, beetles, wasps,‥may shrill their tiny pipes‥unchastised and unnoticed.    1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. I. v. ii, ‘Messieurs’, shrills de Brézé.    1904 M. Hewlett Queen's Quair i. vii, Lethington likened her to Diana on Taygetus shrilling havoc.    1947 A. Ransome Great Northern? i. 16 Roger's voice shrilled out, ‘Sail HO!’    1975 New Yorker 16 June 97/3 It was a lapse on Miss Sills' part to shrill out a high E flat at the end of the first finale, but otherwise she was tender, touching, and sensitive.

4.4 To render shrill. rare—1.

   1772 Foote Nabob Prol. Wks. 1799 II. 285 If age contracts my muscles, shrills my tone.

5.5 To summon with a shrill sound. rare—1.

   1859 Masson Brit. Novelists iii. 204 The pibroch shrills them to the work they do.

wings...wind..her mind

I am reminded of Tom Waits' "Heart of a Saturday Night", a song of gratitude. I want this sung at my funeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7UHd7NVegE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk4wn_YPocc

Magix.

Just magix.

Ravens casting their familiar spell.

The margins of heaven responding.

The river clearing, the mind untroubled.

Now and for a little longer.

glad for the delightful ambiguity--the pines, the readers, the poet

love the caesura here. the pause in phrasing aloud and the pause in print as well.

I am grateful to know that matters to the poet. It matters to me.

gifts

what have you been given today?

is your blood warmth breathing and pulsing?

Is there a solid road under you?

is there a dog adoring you?

is there thick crusted bread?

is there sense being made nearby?

is there a garden feeding you?

is your air, unmediated and pure?

is your water cold and good?

what have you been given?

if that was taken,

what would you still have?

of that,

what would you still need?

I love how the writer bookends the observation: "I wonder what I am, that anyone should note me." with the end of the poem: "Here there are blueberries, there is no need to note me." Problem and solution. Call and response.

blueberry sky quince clouds bread thick with life meadow margins a blanket of "I am" in a meadow of "No need"

What we are given

in this one sweet life

is what we have already earned

by virtue of being alive.

Do not wonder at that.

Do not sow.

Reap.

From Matthew 6:24–33 (King James Version "KJV"): No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

God=Laughter.

Laughter is spoken.

God speaks Through laughter.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make laugh.

I am reminded of how grateful I am that she lived as long as she did before her suicide. I feel the same feelings toward David Foster Wallace and his Kenyon commencement address. Grateful...then sad, but mostly grateful and glad to be alive to read and share their genius.

Every morning we can

My wife and I

on our front porch swing

share

the news that stays news

at the end of our eyes

and ears

and nose

and tongue

and finger tips.

This is not capital

of any kind,

not interest

or dividend earned

or profit plowed back

It is the ante

we pay each other

to play

this infinite game.

We are alive

to

nevermind

and to

whatever

but not to

the inscape of God

Try to praise

You must

You should

Praise

the mutilated world

https://soundcloud.com/viciousminuteshour/a-vote-for-the-gentle-light-a

nettles and exiles, nettle because of exiles, mutilated lives, one rising from the other