Dear Sarah and all
This is a most extraordinary poem. The language is delicious, and the
movement that I follow through the lines is utterly potent. I thank you for
being so intimately brave, and for bringing to us such a powerfully
resonating feeling of your experience. I feel sure that many on this network
will recognise what you have experienced and continue to hold so closely.

Your words also bring to the foreground, for me, the matter of the
difficulty of the interface between authentically living theory, which is
literally of the person, and the limiting conventions with which those who
examine such theory are either forced to use, or believe is the only way to
judge such a work. We are in the midst of an evolving entity - each work
that rises to the surface of an examinable "place" bringing with it its own
challenges to the institution and those who uphold it - even critically.

I feel the depth of your devastation, and thank you for making this e
discussion group a holder of this aspect of our work too. I believe that it
is essential, if we are really to understand the nature of the "living" in
theory, that we have the strength to embrace these matters of shadow, pain
and archetypal learning. I sense some impatience in this network for these
matters but I do not understand it. If we are really on about living theory
how can anyone's living experience be considered irrelevant? If we are
really on about living theory how can we draw boundaries around our
conversation - shouldn't we be in a position of saying all
things/experiences/interpretations have their place in the whole emergent
field? My concern is that by not giving everything and everyone the time
that they need then we are observing some powers that would separate our
theory, living as it is, from the living that is on this network. What is
our practice when we are so confronted?

Having an AR background I see what we do, here and now, is our data; in the
voice of Judi Marshall, how we treat this data is also our data...

What I see you doing Sarah, if I may be so bold, is finding a most powerful
and eloquent way of treating your data, which is still living in you, and
you are keeping it connected to the living soil of its origins (LT). It
feels like a comet firing its way from your deep space onto this beloved
ground that is this precious network of people and mutual interests. I want
its narrative and meaning to be here, because I see it as inalienable from
what it is to be un-bracketed and alive. If it shines up edges and stiffness
in our idea of theory then that can only be a good thing.

The edge and brittleness that have shone up for me through this poem is to
do with some deep faith in the justice of the system that you rubbed up
against and experienced in the ways in which perhaps we most fear about such
systems. It is as if deep within me there is still a child, that depends on
the paternalism of these conventions to recognise me, accept me and give me
powers to move on and with more strength in my life. But why do I still have
this yearning when I know that the institutions and academies are so held
back in and on themselves - caught up in their own struggles to survive or
what seems more like death in so many cases? Do I need to hold who I am and
what I stand by as my LT with much more resilience than this child can
manage? Not independence - as that would speak of alienation... How strong
and of what kind of strength must I be?

Warmest
Susie 


On 19/2/07 11:53 PM, "Sarah Fletcher" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Susie,
> 
> I am SO very excited that you have expressed your perceptions in such depth
> and sensitivity of
> engagement with the whole question of living standards of judgement and
> standards of living
> judgement that we needed as a community.  I feel now that it was after all
> worth posting to this
> list and risking repression of my well intentioned challenges. Such fertile
> layers interconnecting in
> your posting that enthrall me! I am looking forward with joyful anticipation
> to responding to you.
> 
> Your posting evoked a response in me that is beyond expression as a linear
> analysis - at least at
> present!  I think in images, bright lines entwining and enticing one another
> to network and evolve.
> My reflections about how and what you have written need time and space to
> mature into my words
> but I would like to share with you a surge of poetic creativity that your
> posting has evoked in me:
> 
> So in a soaring and sore-ing embrace of my academic freedom I offer you this
> with absolutely no
> intention to blame or offend but in a passionate need to express how I feel
> and felt about events:
> Inspired by Gerard Manley Hopkins 'The Windhover' and Prevert's haunting
> 'Dejeuner du Matin' ...
> and warmly enlivened with a caring midwifery offered by Mohsen's metaphors and
> Alan's imagery;
> 
> (Still?) Burning at the Stake:
> 
> I drew together my knowing as an educator within the intimacy of a levered
> file,
> Hard, steel-glanced burnished bindings encircled and constrained my
> embodiment. 
> My knowing resisted, my poetic enthrillments trailing reluctantly to be yet
> confined,
> Easing aside the bare enwrapping binds and appealing to be engaged with
> creatively;
> 
> Ideas jived and mellowdeed, interrogating one another with living-actioning
> excitement 
> Jostling for examination in chaptered order and subsectioned regimentation as
> required
> Subsection H1.4.9; University regulations pertaining to Staff Mode B
> assessment (1995)
> Offering on the reflective altar of living theory a key to unfasten the
> gateway to my world;
> 
> Reapered unfastenings of insight garnered in encountering wealthed educational
> landscapes
> Thirty something years raptured and enraptured by what it meant and means to
> me ... to Be.
> Multi-media-d and entext'd, I chose conduits in which to share my knowing and
> invite more 
> To communicate and explicate en-truths of my living-loving-dyamic and
> philosophising 'I".
> 
> The How of Knowing embodied in the careful explication of the movements of
> each chapter
> The What alongside the How of Being a professional educator nurturing (my?)
> Courage to Be
> Content and presentation enmeshed, en-networked in a reflective expression of
> my integrity
> Epistemologised ontology and ontologised epistemology. Oh Joy in creating this
> accounting!
> 
> I placed my file between their hands
> Offering my heart within its embrace
> Trusting that the passionate seeking
> For understanding
> Of
> What it is to be and mean to be
> How it is to be and mean to be
> In being I-We-Me-Us
> Would entice their learning too -
> Join me? Meet minds with me? In my knowing envisioned-I
> That we might dance together close breasted open hearted
> Unfolding yet more knowing of how-what it is to be ALIVE?
> 
> They summarily inspected my file, at a distance with dis-passion
> Skimming my Being with dismbodied Eye-not-I and pronounced
> My sentence. As yet not quite deathnelled in viva voced formality
> That file is ME-I yet pleaded i beyond words My mind-child! SEE?
> 
> They placed my file on the Academic pyre,
> They incinerated my words and thoughts,
> Tearing me limb from limb yet screaming,
> Dumbed by the convention and procedure.
> 
> Phoenix-enheartened I spread my wings to fly,
> Circling the carnage I watched the vultures pick
> At my words, my images and extract their clippings
> To bolster uncertain egos and satisfy craving entrails
> 
> The cruelty of the scene lulled by landscape's beauty -
> The stench of their murder lingering on their hands -
> 
> Shall I fan these embers and regenerate among them?
> Shall I draw my being from these dying flames and swoop
> To take their side in their ignorance and stupid complicities?
>  If so - for whom? For them? Do I nurture yet this courage to BE?
> 
> One eye to heaven's stark encrystalled azured splendour, I hover -
> One eye chameleoned to the braying crowd below, undecided yet -
> So much I-me unknown, unexplored, unknowing, needing communal
> Minds embracing the lure of learning how to heal our raped humanity.
> 
> But wait ..
> 
> Decide yet not irrevocably
> 
> I observe...
> 
> Open hearted and welcoming within that crowd they stand unbowed
> Join us! Stay amongst us that we might converse and jazz excitedly?
> 
> Yet alongside
> 
> The unfaced-defacing Panel is deliberating - what is it they now scribe?
> 
> Trusting skyward ...
> 
> According to this University's Academic Regulations Subsection H1.5.07
> Phoenices are not and shall not be permitted to
> Regenerate on designated University Property
> (This Regulation as yet subject to ratification by this University's Senate)