Back in the day when I had classroom audiences, I’d tell them ahead of time what the “essay question” would be on the (still compulsory) exam, so that they could prepare something artful and interesting, and so that I wouldn’t have to read scores of bluebooks of blather. It sort of worked, because some took the opportunity to think about the question and actually tried to make a coherent response. <\/p>\n
\nIn crafting today’s Question for the Convivium, it’s been useful to me to explore how<\/i> I find and explicate the idea. The starting place (Georges Perec in this case), the cross-connections, the contributions of others (Kate, in this instance, in response to my blog post), the influence of new input streams (reading the morning’s array of blog postings on my RSS feed), the writing down of passing thoughts for later consideration and integration… all very worthwhile to observe and recognize. Maria Popova’s relation of Ernst Haeckel’s tragedy and response<\/a> is a glowing entrée to thinking about what Popova denominates elsewhere<\/a> in today’s harvest as “…this intricate tessellation of being…” <\/p>\n \nLast night, Kate followed up the jigsaw puzzle line of thought with the observation that we are accustomed<\/i> to the pieces of our lives fitting together, making patterns that we understand. But what’s now afoot for many is a disruption of the understood, the puzzle pieces unmoored and scattered, and many are now going nuts not being able to do the familiar, and with perspectives altered: twisted, fractured, adrift…<\/p>\n \nSo what’s a constructive, healthy, satisfying response<\/b> to such disorientation? For me I recognize that it’s finding something outside<\/b> the inner selves (noting that, for some, the Inner is echoing, scary, empty, where the personal demons are), something that links<\/b> with others. In my own case it’s turning out to be making stuff: the “word books” blogging project, the sending of links to various friends and relations, exploration and amelioration of various bits of long-standing disorganization.<\/p>\n \nWhat’s your<\/i> response? Commence filling your bluebooks…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the day when I had classroom audiences, I’d tell them ahead of time what the “essay question” would be on the (still compulsory) exam, so that they could prepare something artful and interesting, and so that I wouldn’t have to read scores of bluebooks of blather. It sort of worked, because some took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metastuff","category-rumination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3740,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions\/3740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}