** High Priority **

Jan
When I woke up this morning I thought I would scream if I saw another email cluttering up my already overloaded email account about this matter.  However this morning something struck me about the debate in someone's email. (I apologise for not repeating it etc and not going to the archives etc).

Jan's email also appeals to what I was thinking about this morning when I glanced thru some of the list emails.

It got me thinking because some people's memories/interpretations of what went on differ to my own (but that is irrelevant). Then I thought back on how I felt at the time -not whether or not I was personally affronted etc - Ken and Cindy both have emails about all this from me.

I sent an email to Cindy privately about something she said and it was quite short and simple. I agreed with something she said- can't remember the detail and this is not important. This was from memory just about when some heated discussion was starting to occur.

What is more interesting to me is Cindy replied personally to me - I can't remember the detail but I can remember how I felt at the time. It was actually most bizarre. I read it and felt a very deep feeling. I can still remember the feeling even now. I read the words and thought this person is in this room in my office. No before we go down that path of other realms etc... what I felt was the words that I am reading are evoking a feeling from the past from another email I have read  or another time. But this was all so very very subliminal and subtle I couldn't put my finger on it. I read the words and thought there is something going on here. This email is getting right to me...something in the way the words were written or how the sentences were constructed or in what was being said... there is a distant connexion here. I don't know that there was anything that earth shattering in the email nor long (can't remember)... but a turn of phrase or something in it really struck some sort of an accord with me. 

Then students came to the door .... enough said 

I imagine Ken can guess why I had these feelings - we have emailed very sporadically and we have met. We have exchanged a couple of emails about some deeper personal and professional issues on very rare occasions etc.

I didn't know it at the time but the words coming out of the page were going to my subconscious I suppose. I actually got a shock when all this was later revealed and a personal email of mine  to Ken or Cindy at the time before he came out was just so naive adn must have seemed so naive to Ken/Cindy. but cést la vie. 

I don't know much about this field of research (subconsciousness etc) at all and someone else will be able to fill in all the gaps. But one of my Masters students (and colleague) and I have spent a good deal of discussion on some of the theory that is supporting his research- it is about biological evolutionary theory ... and there is a bit in there about instinctual feelings (he is applying this to landscape/site theory - what there is of it )

Why I say this ... is that it was actually a very strong feeling. You know when you read one email and you just delete it but then you read another and it makes you stop and think - but it makes your heart respond in a physical manner as well as the rational/thinking manner. I now know it is because Ken was writing it and he knew me etc. Again - as I have said to Ken... none of this is/was nor never will be a problem to me. It truly doesn't bother me (but I do respect that others are bothered by it - and should be because they have invested more time/energy/heart/mind to the list than I have - and I respect them for that).

This is a poorly constructed email and I apologise for that.

And I know Jan's email was about gender and I have gone off on another tangent- but the idea of role playing set me thinking. Even tho someone was role playing and doing a fairly admirable job people who are closer (than me) to the role player - I wonder if they had any of these feelings (I know someone did as they were the one who challenged Ken). 


Kerry



Kerry London
Senior Lecturer
Postgraduate Director (Architecture and Industrial Design)
School of Architecture & Built Environment
University of Newcastle
AUSTRALIA
tel: + 61 2 49 21 5778

>>> Jan Coker <[log in to unmask]> 12/16/04 01:46pm >>>
Ken,
This is interesting head stuff. I am more interested in you heart stuff. I am
quite familiar with role playing games. In that environment people are expected
to take on roles, any roles switching gender, physical attributes, skills, etc.
It is a way of trying out scenarios and seeing what happens next. I may also be
a way of expressing another part of oneself, similar to extemporaneous theatre.
You created a gender debate. How do you feel about gender issues?
Jan

Jan Coker
C3-10 Underdale
University of South Australia
+61 8 8302 6919
fax +61 8 8302 6239
Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one
and the same reality
Albert Einstein