Territories of the Alive

Rhizome and Gift Exchange -- Ideas that Recreate Worlds

2012-01-02T21:22:00.002-08:00

This is a piece I wrote recently as a summary of a book chapter I am preparing. However, I like the way it stands on its own. I think it provides a quick and clean description of rhizome and gift-exchange.

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Christopher Kinman introduces certain processes that he sees as providing new promise and possibility to all of our current social realms -- whether those might be family life, friendship, community, business, and the various political structures we have, such as cities, nations and international organizations. Christopher discusses two metaphors which he sees as offering great promise to all of these realms. These two metaphors are rhizome and gift-exchange.

Rhizome reminds us that everything good and enlivening that happens to us, no matter what social contexts we are connected to, happens within relationships, within vast networks of relationship. Rhizome includes all those connections that bind us in our present time, real-life engagements – no relation is considered unimportant. Rhizome also includes those connections that precede us, the relations that provide legacies for our current movements. Rhizome also includes those relations that are not yet, those that are still to come. And these rhizome networks are not limited to relations between people, but also include connections with animals, geographies and landscapes, technologies, ideas, histories, spiritual relations, etc.

The second metaphor is certainly connected to the idea of rhizome. It is the gift-exchange. Christopher sees gift-exchange as an idea that reminds us of how life-affirming things and actions move throughout our social realms. The goods we receive, the positive outcomes we welcome, the loves we cherish, all these things come to us through lines of innumerable gifts. The movements of gifts abound in all social realms, not just human realms, and these gifts are too numerous to list. Gifts are given and received through gestures, through words, through objects, through creative processes. All day and every day we are in the midst of gift-exchanges. Our sense of Aliveness is connected to such gift-exchanges.

Christopher suggests that understanding rhizome and gift-exchange sets the stage for the creation of many real and pragmatic possibilities within our worlds. He goes as far as to suggest that these ideas contain the seeds of possibility that can address our most challenging world difficulties.

Rhizome and Gift Exchange -- Ideas that Recreate Worlds

2012-01-02T21:22:00.001-08:00

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promise to all of these realms. These two metaphors are rhizome and gift-exchange.

Laura Calderon de la Barca -- Towards the Ordinary and the Overlooked

2011-08-22T09:25:00.000-07:00

A Forward to the Book "Pilgrimages of the Gift" by Christopher Kinman

Book available at: http://rhizomeway.com/site/?page_id=687

I met Chris – a story teller of gifts of the Alive, and a weaver of life-honouring relationships. I met him, as he might say: once upon a rhizome. He welcomed me to his world within an open heart, a place for the exploration of all things human and alive. This welcoming began in 2007 at a small gathering, a conference he organized in Vancouver, focusing on the future of the helping professions.

I made my way to this event through unexpected connections that arose between us. I heard about the event through Harlene Anderson (Houston, Texas). I had personally witnessed Harlene’s capacity to discover ways of being with others that welcomed inspiration, authenticity and openness. I suspected I might find some of this same inspiration at the gathering Chris was organizing. I was not disappointed. At the time, I was waiting for the examiners of my PhD thesis to submit their report. The rather unusual theme of the thesis, a therapeutic session for a pretty complex client, Mexico, my country of origin, won me a place in the meeting. Chris contacted me and we arranged for my attendance. So it was that during those beautiful sunny days in November, overlooking the breath-taking, snow-capped mountains and Vancouver skyline from the Vancouver Rowing Club’s Trophy Room, I heard him speak -- inspired by Gregory Bateson and his understanding of the Creatura -- about the world of the Alive.

The ideas he spoke of that day, and that he shares with us in this book are not bare abstractions. They come in flesh and blood as we experience the moments of the Alive inexorably associated with them. I have been moved not only by these ideas and their possibilities, but by the actual connections that were brought to life in conversations first with Chris and then with his book.

It is in this sense that Chris seems to me a story-teller. The things he talks about have names, have occurred in specific contexts, in particular times. These things can only be grasped through their embodiment in the material world. And yet, there is something in the way they are animate that inspires reverence, and that seems somehow to paradoxically transcend time precisely by being grounded in it -- from the rushed atmospheric dynamics that create sounds of wind in the trees to the time-worn crustacean shells that create a beach.

As can be seen throughout the book, Chris sees, with Christopher Alexander, ‘the Alive’ as connected to both nature and creative actions: we are part of the creative creatura, us humans; but we don’t own creation. As we become present to our relatedness to the rest of creation, a certain intensity comes to life, ‘a thickening of feeling’, as Chris would say, through which the Alive enters, opens up, opening us up. And through this we can find ourselves in ‘joint creations in cooperation with the moments of a living world’.

As I follow the book, it becomes clear to me that these creations occupy us as music occupies notes. Each of us is, in this game of creation, a note; singular and beautiful, but insufficient to make music, as Chris wisely points out (p. 89). The music of creation is only available if we surrender to something larger than our individual selves. And in the book, Chris beautifully demonstrates how to be a part of this music: by truly being with others; that is, by offering ourselves as witnesses to the becomings of the world, allowing ourselves to respond to them and making our response known.

In that sense, Chris’ story-telling of the Alive doesn’t just happen through narrative. Story-telling often requires a conclusion, a point to be made, a lesson, an evaluation. Chris’ stories are not like that. As the abundance he writes about, he has little interest in judgment. His stories do not offer to take you anywhere better, or to go and change anything. And it is precisely in letting go of that attempt that they move you, they change you. For these stories are sharings, a bringing-back of moments when he was present to something Alive, something that touched him and made him Alive. His words take us with him, to become witnesses of the Alive in the becomings of the world, to be found in the most apparently random locations: in a little boy’s combusting squiggle, in economies riding on the wing of a gull, in the visual beauty of a swarm of gnats, in the fragile companionship of a generous rabbit, or in the ephemeral touch of a child’s hand, his own child. And, regarding this touch, in the awareness of the possibility of the absence of this touch’s, its barest grazing unleashes in him ‘that roar which lies on the other side of silence’, as George Elliot would say, moving him, and myself with him, to tears as I become aware of the Alive in me, as I, childless, feel the loss nevertheless... or maybe because of it.

The Alive is not made present in Chris’s words alone, it also comes forth in his images. The knack he has for catching life unaware is evident in his pictures, in the gentleness apparent in the lick of the puma, the purple beauty of a partially crushed oyster, slowly becoming a beach, or the easy companionship of Pessoa’s friends in the café in Lisbon. He has tenderly intimated with the Alive, offering it his openness and sensitivity, and finding in return that it reveals itself to him in the overlooked and the ordinary. Sharing his findings with us, Chris offers us in passing a glimpse of what we might find if we cross our own doorway to the other side of silence. Enjoy the roar.

Laura Calderón de la Barca

Vancouver, BC; Mexico City

An Aphorism -- On Thought

2011-05-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

Thought is not generated inside a skull, it cherishes no friendship with the emptiness of interiority.

Thought emerges in the midst of engagement with a world -- with innumerable worlds.

Thought is that which oozes between the abundances of bodies, that which squeezes between complexities of relations.

On Becomings

2011-04-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

Deleuze, following Nietzsche, talks of becomings. I wish to continue in that flow.

I wish to talk of becomings rather than change. I wish to talk of becomings rather than established truths or determined states.

No beginnings, no endings -- just flows, perpetual movements.

No beginnings, no endings -- always in the middle of things.

In the middle -- between times more than at a point in time; never concerned with providing firm resolution to difference; never in a central and fixed location.

We do not have any surety of where becomings will lead us, but we can, from within our rhizome connections, create imaginations regarding how these becomings might be transforming us and others. Such imaginations are powerful creative forces (though not concerned with accuracy or predictability) and must never be trivialized.

Becomings – Nature and People

Becomings are not about a person/organism manipulating life and surroundings for the purpose of ensuring a determined outcome.

No, instead it is more likely we find ourselves carried by, even living out the desires of... becomings.

Particular becomings.

Becomings are best understood not as abstract generalities (i.e. becoming generous, becoming strong, becoming responsible) but as becoming a specificity, an image, a name (becoming animal, becoming woman, becoming river, becoming sea, becoming child, becoming eagle, becoming Buddha, becoming Christ, becoming godless, becoming... ).

I wish to talk of the becomings we are connected to as intimately associated with the becomings of nature. I wish to see our human worlds as indistinct from nature. I wish to see our becomings as sharing much in common with the constant becomings emerging within the grass, the rivers, the trees, amidst the lives of birds, fish, insects...

We know, of course, that the language we give to nature often invites separations – nature/culture; natural/artificial; natural/human -- dualisms that can set the stage for numerous violations and violences.

Yet, we still wish to talk of nature. We wish to see ourselves connected to those vast becomings wherein all life moves.

Rhizome Becomings

Becomings are always rhizome events, can be nothing but communal.

Individuals never determine and construct their own becomings. While we can easily delude ourselves with language, we can never truly be separate from the diversities of life.

As individual organisms we can give creative energy to our becomings, but that which is created is never simply the product of our own actions, it is never something over which we can individually claim ownership.

The initiation of becomings is also never an act of individual powers. Life initiates incessant becomings; they can go unnoticed, they can be purposely ignored, but they also can grasp us, even sweep us off our feet.

Becomings connect us to new worlds. They create repeated innovations, including new and renewed rhizome community.

Becomings and Negation

These becomings which we experience do not emerge from negation processes.

Now, clearly, negations surround us. Out of force of habit, we repeatedly participate in them. Negations are all too often engrained in our thought. They appear integral to the very structure of our lives.

We are led to believe that change only emerge by means of bravely coming face-to-face with negations. We are told that if we discover what is wrong with us, if we acknowledge what is wrong with us and if we then make changes based on such learnings we will accomplish our required redemption.

However, in life I see very little of this. Negations are far more likely to create reactive negations in response -- negations triggering further rounds of negations. Or they are likely to create a depressive paralysis, an immobility that breeds further depressive negations, that leads toward a sense of falling-backwards.

There seems to be a significant tie between those experiences we see as depression and worlds dominated by varied and incessant negations. Reactive and negative forces tend to glorify depression. These forces inform us that it is necessary to bear the burdens of one's errors, to repeatedly be reminded of the pain of one's sins – this is often thought of as a requisite for the journey towards a healed life.

Negation is part of the age–old tradition of sin/redemption. In this tradition our connections to the natural world swarming around us are condemned. Such connections were historically considered "pagan" and undesirable. In the dominions of fall/redemption we are informed of our sinfulness, of our transgressions against, not imminent forces around us in our lived world, but forces transcendent to life, forces far beyond everything that is nature. We are also informed of the requisite transcendent mechanisms which are able to redeem us. People are thereby pulled away from nature, from the forces of life, and become dependent upon the transcendent worlds of redemption. Such ideas of transcendent redemption become firmly established and ordained within modern religious and secular institutions.

A further note on the idea of redemption: as Deleuze aptly suggested, we must learn to live life and not save it.

Entering the Becomings

While we as individuals are not the architects of our own becomings there are actions that we can engage in.

However, as tempting as it might be, I refrain from detailing here such responses. Detailed suggestions coming from outside the specificity of the flows of a rhizome life are likely to fall somewhere between useless and damaging.

We all bring to life creative powers in abundance. Responses will appear to all of us who:

· affirm the creativity that life has bestowed upon us;

· resist the influences of negation which repeatedly attempt to keep us from creativity and action;

· appreciate and affirm the rhizome relations in which our lives are embedded.

The challenge for us is to learn how to determine which response to give, not to determine if there is a response.

What can we do, beyond providing detailed instruction?

· We can dare to put aside the influences of negation.

· We can affirm and respond to life, immanent life; affirm and respond to life as it moves amongst bodies (human and otherwise); respond to the endless complexities that life produces.

· We can create things, with others, with nature as a partner and leader.

· We can create rhizome words that engender relations with many and diverse bodies and, therein, many powerful becomings.

· We can enter with the grass and the trees, the grasshopper and the crow, those unmanaged and joyful realms of becoming.

Re-Imagining Life and Time -- Gilles Deleuze and Brian Eno

2011-02-14T19:35:00.000-08:00

The Experimentations of Brian Eno

Brian Eno -- musician, collaborator, producer, musical experimenter -- has recently found his interest focussed on the artistic image. Using his long experience with sound experimentation, Eno now experiments with images that move and shift, constantly recreating, never repeatable. A new show where he highlights these experiments is generating intense interest, it is called 77 Million Paintings.

In this art-form Eno introduces a new idea about time into the concept of image or painting. Not simply the implication of movement in a still image, but images that actually constantly morph, constantly generate new forms. It also introduces an art which is not dependent upon the artist for a distinct and specific form, but rather the artist is involved in a process which in turn creates art-forms in movement, in constant becomings. This is a radicalization of art, where art is no longer the gift of a single person, but more like a process of nature, a generator of beauty that is not dependent upon the artist, but not removed from the artist either.

Eno also introduces another twist on art-in-process. Eno creates music which is set to the images of life-in-process. Images move in ways parallel to real-time, in rhythms connected to the flows of time nature creates. Not dependent upon narrative inventions, just the flows of time and life. A forest which simply morphs through seasons. A tree by a river, moving through days and months.

Gilles Deleuze and Brian Eno

I find much resonance between Eno's visual and auditory experiments and the various conceptions of time and life created by Deleuze.

Outside of Narrative

Deleuze presents concepts which invite a view of life and time not structured so much by narrative or other traditional inventions for seeing and organizing time. These concepts invite appreciation for and engagements with the many possibilities for the movements of life in the process-of-life.

Complex Relations

A quick note on Deleuze's thinking on life. He creates ways of seeing that evade all simplistic description.

For Deleuze life:

evades categorization,
is always connected to diversities,
is engaging in constant movements,
generates unpredictable futures,
and is always tied together through numerous lines of relationship.

A Generative Process

Deleuze does not invite a copying of nature, not a forming of structures that simply replicate what we have come to believe about how nature operates, but he calls for the creation of ideas, concepts and ways of life that connect us to the endless possible movements of life. To re-emphasize -- this is a generative, creative process that creates much more than ideas and words, it creates new possibilities of relationship with the diversities of life itself.

Next Posting -- Becomings and Rhizome

Two ideas Deleuze presents that illustrate such connections to life are "Becomings," and "Rhizome."

I will explore these two concepts in upcoming postings.

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A final video. Brian Eno with Bono and The Edge.

The Opposite of a Morality of Salvation

2011-02-05T22:55:00.001-08:00

Immersed with thoughts from Lawrence, Whitman and Spinoza, among others, Deleuze talks about the soul and the body.

The soul and the body, the soul is neither above nor inside, it is "with", it is on the road, exposed to all contacts, encounters, in the company of those who follow in the same way," feel with them, seize the vibration of their soul and their body as they pass", the opposite of a morality of salvation, teaching the soul to live its life, not to save it.

Deleuze, Dialogues, pge 62.

Let me repeat...

"Feel with them, seize the vibration of their soul and their body as they pass", the opposite of a morality of salvation, teaching the soul to live its life, not to save it,

The soul as described here is not a divine creation, a product of higher powers inserted inside a body. It is not aligned with either the interiorities or the individualisms of Western life. It is not about an inner life. The soul is outside us -- it is with us, with all we walk through life with.

As Lynn Hoffman would say, the idea of the soul creates a "withness" not an "aboutness." It does not reside above or within, it resides amongst.

The soul accompanies us, connects us to complex worlds of relations. And it connects us to the pragmatics of our movements in real geographies and ecologies.

Experiments with Gilles Deleuze

2011-02-05T22:37:00.000-08:00

I have clearly been absent from regular posting on this blog for sometime now. This is not because certain ideas and ways of living are not moving me, or that the words are absent, but because the forms of creation that I have been driven to have altered from when I was regularly posting on this site.

However, I now want to return, but to do so with a particular and different focus. Recently I have been taken by an old passion -- that is the ideas created by French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. I want to experiment in this blog, at this point in time, with the thoughts of Deleuze, see where they might lead. I am not doing this out of a sense of discipleship, and certainly not from some sense of obligation.

It is more like a kind of exorcism, a desire to give my own form to these ideas, to address them, remove them from the vague, less-than-formed mass they feel to be right now. Remove them, create with them, and move on to some other ground...

I do not feel I am mining his thoughts, nor searching for an authentic author's voice for Deleuze. No, I want to let his ideas springboard to new places, let them create new ideas, actions, communal-relations, timely-constructions that assist in nudging and moving to productive places in life.

The Eagles are Satiated

2010-12-27T23:17:00.000-08:00

The eagles are satiated
They only fly away when my
Proximity becomes
Absolutely intolerable

For they are
Drunk on the
Grease-crammed eyes of
Endless salmon

Stoned on fat
Omega three stained beaks
Blue oil soaks the sand
Pulled by gravity
To the river

Running from layers
Of scattered vertebrae
Jawbones
Hollowed eye sockets
Colourless skin
Cartilage

Fat fleeing everything

That the eagles and gulls
Would not stomach

And from all of this abundance
Of skin and bones and oil

Overwhelming life
Endless tomorrows

Thinking about Charity and Gift-Exchange

2009-12-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

It’s the Christmas season again, a time of year when we are called to focus upon those people who we consider less fortunate than ourselves. We are called to give from our own wealth to those who are perceived as lacking or in-need. We are repetitively informed that it is the season for such an approach to giving..

However...
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Charity is no gift-exchange.
In a gift-exchange we are giving in response to gifts already given, we enter into an emerging game of reciprocity.
The gift is always in response to an encounter with abundance.
The gift-exchange pays little interest in need or lack – that is the work of charity.
We all-too-often talk as if the world needs more charity, more people giving to other people who are lacking and in need.
I argue we do not require more charity.
We must resist the belief that human lives are empty and lacking.
Instead, we must see human lives as rich and full – understanding that this fullness is not always an easy thing, sometimes it can also be a source of pain.
We take on the responsibility of bearing witness to our own experience of the fullness in human lives, and in life in general.
And we take on the responsibility of creating meaningful, enlivening and specific response to our encounters with such abundance.
Such responses are always unique... they never can be truly scripted or anticipated.
We respond to a unique and irreplaceable presentation of a particular act of giving within a complex rhizome world.
We respond to the abundance of others, not to lack and poverty.

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Such an emphasis on gift-exchange does not at all minimize the horrors of poverty.
On the contrary, poverty is tragic and reprehensible precisely because it repeatedly minimizes the gifts circulating within human lives and worlds.
Our response to poverty is actually not a response to poverty at all -- it is a response to the gifts circulating within the lives and worlds of those people we are engaged with.
And, our response to such a circulation of gifts is not limited to emotions such as gratitude, but might call forth any number of responses, including actions of anger which emerge upon the understanding that the circulation of these gifts might be minimized and limited.

Creating a Relational Work - Part II

2009-11-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

Life and Work through Image: Bill Reid and The Spirit of Haida Gwaii.

To access: Creating a Relational Work - Part I, click here.

We are all too often led to believe that in order to give understanding and direction to life and work we are in need of the appropriate words. We are taught that it is in language that we are supposed to discover truth, meaning, instruction, enlightenment – it is hard to envisage any other way. However, I am here inviting an exploration of life and work through an encounter with an image.

In the international departures area of the Vancouver International Airport there is a large bronze statue created by the late Haida sculptor, Bill Reid. It is called The Spirit of Haida Gwaii -- it is sometimes also called the Jade Canoe. This image is also found on the Canadian twenty-dollar bill.

I will let Lynn Hoffman introduce you to this work of art (she first encountered The Spirit of Haida Gwaii in another location, not the airport):

Another feature of this work was a strong communal presence. During a break in my workshop, which was being held in Vancouver, a person in the audience took me into a room filled with green light. There, in the midst of ficus trees and bamboo, was an astonishing object. It was a greenish bronze canoe, half the size of the room, and in it a variety of totemic animals were struggling with each other: the raven with the bear, the wolf with the eagle, the crow with the dog, while half-human creatures like the Dogfish Woman, or the Bear Mother, paddled, watched over by the sombre Village Chief with his temple-shaped hat. I learned that this was the achievement of a sculptor called Bill Reid, who was himself descended from First Nations people. In this work, titled “The Spirit of the Haida Gwai,” Reid represented himself as the Ancient Conscript, paddling along with the rest.

Click here to access Hoffman's entire document.

No words are necessary as we encounter this image. However, for many of us who see The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, who walk around it, who examine each detail and crevice, who touch the cool smoothness of those bronze creatures, we find that words cannot be escaped. For words are inevitably evoked, created in response to experiencing this creation. I will briefly share a few words that emerge through my own encounter with the The Spirit of Haida Gwaii:

Life is almost always full, abundant, even crowded.

The living of life can never escape a diversity of characters and relationships.

Some of that diversity which elbows through our worlds includes relationships with animals -- animals are people too (and, of course, people are animals too)!

We never move anywhere on our own through life, it is forever a communal event. The idea of individualism is simply a deceit – that emperor wears no clothes.

Our movements through life are never direct and pure. There are always bumps and obstacles to be encountered.

Our relationships in life are also never pure and free from conflict. There will always be a sense of clumsiness associated with our relationships, and, if we linger long enough in our looking, we will always find that somebody is biting somebody else.

Yet, through it all, we somehow together manage to paddle that canoe, and (again -- if we linger long enough) we will repeatedly be confronted with a sense of fullness and even joy in our movements through life.

Lynn Hoffman - Cloudwork

2009-10-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

Reading the following piece by Lynn Hoffman is like joining into the midst of an ongoing conversation, the reader is not necessarily party to to the prior conversation pieces. Rather than attempting to create an introduction that would provide adequate context for what is written, I decided to leave it the way it is. Just suffice it to know that this piece was written by Lynn to be read (by another person) at the occasion of her 85th birthday celebration.

In this short piece, Lynn (in a manner that has been so typical of her entire career) draws together strands of thought and work, creating a rhizome space which both honours and generates relationship. Also, in the context of such relationships, we are able to gain a richer understanding of the work we are engaged in.

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Peggy, Sarah (I remember you!), Bonnie, Kevin – Your responses filled me like a helium balloon, and I have to tether myself to keep from going off into the wide blue yonder. This is very bouncy stuff.

First let me address the question about why I chose those Pillars of Wisdom. They stand for our special Ancestors who recently died: Harry, Tom and Michael. I give each a memory phrase: “not knowing” for Harry Goolishian (of course, Harlene Anderson first described its genesis); “reflecting team” for Tom Andersen, which is what he and his followers became famous for; and “witnessing,” which Michael White added. Even though Michael took the format of the reflecting team from Tom, the idea of “witnessing” enlarged it, allowing him to bring in an anthropological perspective based on the work of the American researcher Barbara Meyerhoff, who had shown the healing effect that ritualized remembrances have on the lives of uprooted persons.

I also connect the Ancestor concept with Bruce Chatwin’s “The Song Lines,” which describes the walkabouts that Australian aborigines take to familiarize themselves with landscapes or creatures that are part of their history. They call these Ancestors, and make amazing pointillist pictures of them, with names like Lizard Dreaming. While walking they will sing a song describing what “lines” or pathways the Ancestor stood for.

Sarah, thanks for pointing out how puzzled people with psychology or social work backgrounds feel when reading works by people who don’t tell you “how.” It sounds like Alice, who threw the whole deck up in the air at the end of Wonderland, saying, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards?” Yes, but then how do you play the game?

For this reason, I have always been interested in close study of practices. Ellen Landis, a dance therapist, is getting a doctorate in Expressive Arts Therapy at Leslie College, and has transcribed six workshop meetings with therapists who work with traumatized people, first giving them a questionnaire on Compassion Fatigue and then repeating it at the end. In most of the sessions, Ellen brought in art materials: bits of cloth, colored paper, stars, which she asked the group to use in expressing their reactions, whether to the questionnaire, or to the situations they worked with. The meetings had an unusually positive effect on people, even though the last one ended with disappointment (a mild social action piece that was left to the end and seemed to wither on the vine). Ellen and I taped conversations about each session, trying to see what Ellen did that was special.

In her workshops, Ellen also used an exercise that we called “Sharevision,” a practice that was born at People’s Bridge Action in Athol where I worked as a consultant [not] during the 80s and 90s. I came once a month, and on the off weeks, the staff met without a supervisor in “pods.” The group later developed a time-map for these meetings, and the name was self-evident. In Ellen’s workshop, participants alternated between the meetings with Ellen and Sharevision meetings on their own. These meetings went so well that everyone was amazed.

As for Sarah’s mention of ideas about body, this has been a perpetual interest of mine. I became fascinated by Gregory Bateson’s research on communication which lacks a way to say “No,” like the speech of schizophrenics, the “language of the creatura,” the realms of humor, art, religion, metaphors, dreams, illness. After vainly trying to find a phrase that would nail the phenomenon in question, I ended up with the “Unlisted Languages.”

You ask about “Empathy.” Well, I tried to make it “Tempathy,” for Travelling Empathy. (see “Family Therapy: An Intimate History.”) I was not satisfied with the within-person idea but wanted to make it more like resonance, which is not “inside” anyone but is picked up variously, as whales pick up the sonar dimensions of their ocean-to-ocean habitat. It is the responses or echoes, not just the individual beeps, that count. What would “Sonar Practices” be like as a category of therapy?

I agree about Seikkula’s use of the love word, but that is a byproduct, and I would like to see what goes into that general effect – what the sonar of it is. Mary Olson did a nice paper with Seikkula on Open Dialogue, which I will ask her about.

Bonnie, nice example of being a telepath - like Sookie Stackhouse on Trueblood. But it is hard work for mere mortals. I use the Big Beach metaphor: the waves may be fierce, but even after a storm the beach will usually still be there, and you may find a new and interesting pebble or shell.

It’s true that models and structures exist for the comfort of the therapist, but if you have too many ropes or monkey bars, they can turn on you. Which bar or rope should I grab first?

And Kevin, I really like your so-called “mistakes.” Now Knowing is important. It cuts off the higher layers that get in the way, like “What if?” Seeing withness as witness is also useful – they go together. And the “contact improv” analogy is maybe more accurate than “conversation” for what we do. I think that text, conversation, written or spoken, is beginning to drop away as a guiding notion – that’s why I use the image of underground rivers, and more recently “cenotes,” the subterranean pools under the surface of the ground in places in Mexico.

As for Seikkula and Co’s break-through study of Open Dialogue, I love their emphasis on creating a common language rather than drawing a diagnosis out of an antique box. Redefining the goal as preventing chronicity, rather than suppressing symptoms is another great idea. Seikkula works with the whole ecology, in the service of creating a “sustaining web.” What is my definition of that? A setting where people can feel “more safe, more free, and more alive.”

I want to mention here a useful counter-practice invented by Chris Kinman who works with in indigenous communities in Vancouver. He came up with the idea of a “Collaborative Action Plan” instead of the “Problem-Oriented Record.” Question One: What gifts and potentials can this young person bring to the community? Question Two: What gifts and potentials can the community bring to the young person? Question Three: What are the Roadblocks that stand in the way of both? Tested on the public health nurses working in the Fraser River Valley, this change made life radically better for the front-line nurses, the university teachers, some of the bureaucrats, and all of the clients.

The ideas above are part of what I call the ˝Gutenberg Century” - the effect of a new technology on everybody’s ways of thinking and doing. If, as I suspect, the Internet is changing our ruling metaphor, which has been the System, we must leave unit-linked ideas like individual or family or ethnic group, and start looking at the connectivity suggested by certain kinds of Webs. The Internet can’t do web-building on its own, (witness the problems with MySpace or Facebook, or the aboutface by Wikipedia) but we should put our minds to this.

Cloud Computing stands for universal access, for better or for worse. Building Webs is the social must-do of the present. So are ideas about rhizomes. If we take seriously Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s warning against “arborescence,” the hierarchical tree-shape that imprints our current institutions, then why not take the Rhizome as a counter-concept? It will help us begin to see the pluses and minuses ahead.

The Ancestors who are part of my Songlines -Harry Goolishian, Tom Andersen, Michael White - were among the pioneers who already were playing with concepts of connectivity like webs and clouds. Then there are horizontal visions like the rhizome metaphor of Deleuze and Guattari, or Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat.” Another work questioning our fetish for hierarchy is called “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.

Finally, there is Chris Kinman’s beautiful self-printed essay: “Territories of the Alive: Nature, Community and the Gift.” Website: christopherkinman.blogspot.com.

To summarize, I am experimenting with new terms like Web-Building, Cloud-work, Sonar Practices, Kinman’s “The Rhizome Way.” “Sharevision” is another concept that fits. A number of philosophers like Mikhail Bakhtin, J.F. Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have been our heralds and soothsayers, and Gregory Bateson was the first to see as basic the evolutionary unit of creature and natural world. Nothing is congealed yet - we are still taking the measurement of the changes that are engulfing us - but we have a chance to fill the new mold while the metal still runs hot.

Speeding and Shape-Shifting

2009-08-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

Rethinking the Idea of the Gift

The gift... a concept I have been moved by, an idea which has been important to me in my work and life.

I wish to explore this concept a bit more in this posting. I wish to make a simple distinction, but a distinction that, as Gregory Bateson would say, makes a difference.

Two ways to talk about the gift.

Gift – as Possession

In this manner of thinking the gift is understood as:

An item of value which is provided to an individual or other entity without expectation of an equitable exchange of monies or other goods.
The item exchanged, by means of the exchange, and in spite of the inequitable exchange of monies or goods, becomes the property of the one receiving the item.
The emphasis becomes the gift as property/possession.

Such a conception of the gift is wrought with many legal meanings and histories.

With the idea of gift as possession, I give a gift to my friend -- let’s say I give a bottle of wine. After I give the gift, the bottle of wine is then understood to be my friend’s property. A person's relationship with the gift is one of proprietor and property.

In a similar vein, we use this type of language of gifts in connection with people and the unique contributions they bring to the world. We may notice gifts such as intellect, athletic abilities, business acumen, even compassion, but we see these gifts as connected to and owned by a particular individual or group.

She has a gift of intellect.
He has a real gift with his athletic abilities.
Those people seem to have smarts when it comes to doing business.

Such gifts are also distinguished as items which a person is in possession of. The emphasis is not so much on the exchange of gifts but upon the item given and the fact that the item is the property of the individual. Such a conception of the gift tends to isolate a person, it proposes that the person who owns the gift is different from others around him or her precisely because the person is in ownership of the gift. "Giftedness" in education is built upon this idea.

Gift – as Movement

But the gift can also be distinguished by virtue of its movement, its economy -- if I may. The emphasis shifts from ownership to flows and speeds of movement. In cultures where gift economies are emphasized, the focus is typically upon the gift-in-movement, not upon the perceived owner of the gift, and not even upon the unique embodiment of the gift in that particular moment.

Gifts are seen as moving within and through communities; gifts transform their embodiment as they change hands; and people (and the land, animals, plants) are conduits, carriers and transformers of these gifts.

Within this way of understanding the gift, the emphasis is not on the bottle of wine, or on the one who owns it or gives it. Rather, the bottle of wine is given in response to the perception of gifts being given previously (for example, the bottle of wine is given in response to an invitation to dinner); and the reception of the bottle of wine transforms into further gifts of appreciation, hospitality, and on and on. The gift, in a way, moves through the items given and through the people giving and receiving, it keeps circulating and expanding, taking on ever new embodiments. This gift never ceases.

And a gift such as compassion, therefore, becomes so much more than a possession owned by an individual; it becomes a response to previous gifts too innumerable to mention, it becomes part of ongoing flows and exchanges. To tie down solidly a gift, such as compassion, into a body, as a possession, can deny both the complexities of movement that brought that gift into its current form, and the endless possibilities of how that gift can move and transform in the future.

It has been my sense for some time that people tend to feel uncomfortable when the goods they bring to life are seen as possessions which they carry within their bodies. People want to be part of ongoing flows of gifts, they don’t so much want these gifts stopped and settled upon their own bodies – such a weight can feel far too heavy to bear.

It seems to me that we usually want to live in response to others and the gifts they bring; and we wish others to live in response to us and the gifts we bring -- gifts moving through us, changing form in their passing.

Such a sense of gift exchange, I propose, creates its own flows of gifts; for one, it creates an ongoing experience of a good life, of a life well lived.

CHEHALIS FAMILY LAW

2009-07-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

Chehalis, a First Nation situated near the confluence of the Harrison and Chehalis rivers in what is now known as the province of British Columbia, is developing ways for working with children and families that honour their own history, widom and values. The people of Chehalis have created a document that represents such values and gives direction to the work of assisting their own people.

This document describes what is important for the people of Chehalis when it comes to assisting families within their own community. However, I find this document to be of value for all of us. I asked Anna Charlie, from Chehalis, if I could share this document with those who read this blog. She said that they would be happy to share this document if it would benefit other communites.

I hope you find this document of value, as I have.

SNOWOYELH TE EMI:MELH TE STS'A'ILES

Snowoyelh is the natural law the creator provided for us. It is the "Law of Everything", the law of life, the stages of life. Snowoyelh is based on respect to all things, recognition, obligation and traditions, and is the basis of our culture and spirituality.

Emi:melh is a generic word meaning children, but also means family, whether by blood or association; the word has both social and spiritual connotations.

Sts'a'lies is who we are.

Snowoyelh Te Emi:melh is an obligation that we as Sts'a'lies people have to our children, our families, our ancestors and those yet to come, because that is the natural law.

Snowoyelh Te Emi:melh includes these principles:

Our families are paramount to our culture and society
We have the capacity to codify family law
Our culture, spirituality and traditions are core to our identity
Past, current and future generations are all important to us
Our children are our most precious gift
All children have unique gifts
We are measured by the actions of our children and grandchildren
Families must be recognized and supported
Extended families have a role in raising children
Our families have connections that extend beyond our community
Healing must be provided to those family members who need it
Healthy communities are based on healthy families
In family there are no 'reserve' boundaries
Community leaders have a place supporting and advocating for their members

Talking about Talking

2009-07-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

I want to think of a world where talking is not something which separates us, cuts us away from the worlds of animals and nature, but where out talking emerges from the movements of nature, and where our talking (I sincerely hope) also returns us to the prolific world of life from which we came.

I wish to think of our talking as connected to the songs and calls which animals create.

I imagine the call of the wolf, the mystical song of the thrush, the vibration of the cricket, the chatter of the chickadee, as emerging from the same sorts of relations and creative impulses as do our own words and our own songs.

I imagine that our talking is similar to the sonic engagements of the bat or the whale -- calls are put forth, but it is in the return that the contours of worlds are explicated.

It’s not in the speaking, therefore, that any meaning is produced, but it is in the return of our calls that worlds are brought forth.

Our sense of language, of words, of song is not about a search for a truth, not about knowing the correct formations of reality, but rather, in the return, rich, pragmatic, and complex worlds are produced -- this is not a knowing of precision, but a multifaceted and sensual experience of contour, texture, proximity and distance.

Words can only come from life – I search for words as a return to honour life.

Jacques Derrida's Cat

2009-05-31T01:09:00.000-07:00

On discovering one is being looked-at, rather than looking-at

Jacques Derrida in his book, The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008, Fordham), discusses the expectation before him to talk about animals, but, instead of "talking about", and instead of describing animal as a generality, or even as an assortment of species, he describes an incident, a specific moment with a singular and real cat, with his cat. He described a moment of being naked in the presence of this cat, with the cat looking at him. He described a sense, of discomfort, even shame from this experience of having his naked body gazed upon by his cat. Derrida saw that he was not so much looking as he was being looked at, and not by some global category of "animal", but by an all-too-present, staring feline.

Derrida continues, always returning to the cat, his cat, the specific cat staring at his naked body. He reminds us that the experience of being looked upon by an animal is almost never the vantage point from which animals are talked about in both science and philosophy. Instead, the gaze is repeatedly and consistently from the human eyes upon the body of the animal. We, the humans (and in particular, we the philosophers, the scientists, and other institutional players) are the observers, and from the position of looking upon the animal we also find ourselves with the privilege of being the ones who name, who examine, and who interpret the animal. The scientific and philisophical eye never expects the animal to be examining the examiner.

As in Genesis, where the animals are brought before Adam, who then looks upon them, and from that vantage point provides names for them, and also, as in Genesis, where dominion, authority, power is granted to Adam and his descendents over animals, so in a modern world, the human gaze (and, more particularly, the institutionalized gaze) looks upon and gains mastery over animal worlds. Yet Derrida, breaking with all that overwhelming philosophical and scientific tradition, invites us to see the animal seeing us. He invites us to explore the intensity of being gazed upon by the animal.

While science and philosophy have kept this objective, unidirectional gaze upon the animal, other forms of human discourse have, at times, explored life from the position of the animal’s gaze upon us. Derrida suggests that poetry has enabled such forays.

I remember William Blake.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night...

In what distant deeps ofskies

Burnt the fire in thine eyes?

Few animals evoke the varied emotional experiences which come with being gazed upon more than the cat. With Blake, it is the eye of the tiger. As the cat looks at a human being, her gaze so frequently goes, not upon bodies, naked or otherwise, but rather, her eyes cut directly into human eyes. An intensity of stare, like heat from a fire, breaks right through those “windows of the soul”. Such a gaze can awaken awe, a sense of nakedness of spirit, it can demand us to respond, it can demand us to provide food or open a door, and, it can also instil a sense of dread. As fire penetrates and shatters, so the eyes of the cat.

Yet our language is dominantly about looking at the animal, not of the animal looking at us, and certainly not of the exchange of looking which so often occurs with the animals we share our lives with. Language itself is seen as that activity of looking which separates us from the animals. For we can put our observations into words, animals can’t. We can observe animals and name them -- it appears that animals cannot do the same thing.

However, what a cold and dry understanding of language this is! For I do not see language so much as a tool of objectivity, a tool for determining what is true, what is name-able, what is decipherable. Rather I tend to see language as something which emerges, both in evolution and in day-to-day life, within the midst of exchanges, in the midst of social connections and interactions. I imagine language as more akin to the actions of hands rather than the exchange of information. Language touches us, it moves us, and it strikes us, and these hand-like movements reverberate, they are communal, they never come from and never stay within just a two-person realm.

Words are certainly not the only way to touch and be touched, yet words are so often seen as that which distinguishes us from, makes us superior to all other animals. Our adamic heritage is still intact, even within secular realms – it is still often assumed that because we name, because we use words, we are therefore superior; because we use words to look down upon, to observe and evaluate, therefore we have dominion, we can control.

Yet the eyes of the cat tell us otherwise. For it is a challenge to experience the stare of a cat and not feel some intensity within the moment. I have heard stories of encounters with wild cougars – few events can strike terror into the heart more than finding one’s eyes caught in the stare of a wild, large feline. And, it's not just fear, but also the shame of being naked, the joy of being loved, the excitement of play... all such experiences can be evoked as we encounter the eyes of a cat.

Language is one way to touch and be touched, it is obviously an important method that we as humans use, but it is only one way amidst a plethora of ways within nature for connection to occur. The human animal is able to touch and be touched through language. And many animals, in their own desire to connect with us, while they are not able to speak to us with words, they are able to be touched by our use of language. Many animals can develop some resonance with our use of words. Yet, in spite of such remarkable animal responsivity, we still imagine that we are superior in some way.

Whether with language, or whether through connecting with the eyes of the animals, we see the other looking at us. We see the cat responding to us. But, we see even more, we see a mutual looking, a mutual touching and being touched. We see turns and returns of response. We see realms of relationship, numerous lines of connection and reciprocity built through light, sound, touch, even smell -- tying us together as people, and tying us together with the animals and the worlds around us.

Let us not forget, we are animals also. Do we look upon each other, as we so often do upon animals, with this unidirectional eye, this philosophical and scientific gaze? Do we look upon people, as with the other animals, with a one-way objectivity, from a viewpoint separate from, higher than, able to evaluate, interpret and establish names? Or, are we able to see ourselves being seen? Do we see the mutuality of our seeing? Do we see such complex and shared engagements? Do we find ourselves not only coming to connect and understand through communal exchanges, but also collaboratively creating new worlds wherein we can all in our diversities, people and animals, learn to live and thrive?

Call and response is clearly not simply a task of language, for the feline is a master at it. Jacques Derrida’s cat stares upon his naked body. We now see the animal, and to our intense surprise, we are not just looking at her, she is looking upon us, and she is insisting that we respond.

Returning to the Blog

2009-05-31T00:56:00.000-07:00

I apologize for taking such a long time to return to this blog. During this break I have taken some time to go through my previous blog entries and have used much of this material to create a new book. It is titled:

Territories of the Alive: Nature, Community and the Gift.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to order a copy.

Now I am ready to return to this blog.

Christopher James Kinman

Why no Colours?

2009-02-08T21:47:00.000-08:00

I write of the Somali rapper, K’naan... but I have no pictures of Somalia, and if I did they would not be mine... so instead I provide my own pictures, images where, as I see it, beauty emerges out of the ordinary and the sub-ordinary. These images come from my own world.

I heard an interview the other day with K'naan, the Toronto based, Somali rapper. He talked of his home country, Somalia. He talked with great love, he talked in words defusing great beauty as he remembered his own land.

He also talked about the eyes of the media, the predominant Western way of looking at his land in particular; that is the way images are presented of Somalia. He said that the images on the news and in the films is over-and-over-again of a beige, grainy world -- a world of devoid of colour.

And he wondered, where is the colour? The land he knew was infused with colour. Where is the colour?

There were plenty of images of a land taken over with war and warlords, plenty of images of pain, of fear, of terror in its birth. But where is the colour?

Why no colour?

Even in those darkest corners, there is never a purity of the degenerate. Beauty is always right before the eyes, glaring at us. What effort, what discipline we all must make to ensure that this beauty is not acknowledged.

There is colour in Somalia.

There is beauty everywhere, in and around all of us...

Let us make every effort... not to make the colours show (we do not need to do that)... but to remove those nasty boundaries -- liberal and conservative boundaries; boundaries created by a preoccupation with social injustices, breaches of principles, rather than the pragmatic gifts of life as they are inescapably presented before us; boundaries which make a fetish of, as Elton John once said, that Madman Across the Water, that evil in far-away lands, troubles in places and people always removed from us -- boundaries which hide beauty and love from us in its most obvious demonstrations.

Open those blinded eyes... for there is no true effort in looking for it, those gifts of life are everywhere around us.

Demarcations

2009-02-06T23:01:00.000-08:00

I write as these pictures portray, lines of difference, between a this and a that, between water and land --distinctions which truly matter in the movements of this world.

However, these lines of difference, while they can be clearly distinguished within an image, a stopping of time... in the real world where living things find their home, these lines of demarcation are never solid, never still, always in movement.

Whether it is the distant movements of the pacific tides, daily raising and lowering the waters in the river; or whether it is the undulations caused by the rising winds or the passing boats; or if it is the less dramatic changes wrought by the swans and the ducks, by the migrating salmon -- it all creates lines of demarcation which can never be solid are always undulating with the movements of life and planetary forces.

Two truths, the double vision of William Blake -- life creates lines which mark differences between a this and a that, but these lines constantly undulate, forever shift and move.

Let us respond, move to the liquid flows which are inescapable in the movements of the alive.

The Proliferating Christ

2008-12-26T18:14:00.000-08:00

It was in 2004 that Canadian theologian Tom Harpur published his world-shattering book, The Pagan Christ. Harpur convincingly shows how the Christ of the gospels was not a new figure appearing on the scene in Palestine about 2000 years ago. On the contrary, the idea of Christ, down to the details of his reported daily lived life, were found in a mythical character from ancient Egypt – and these details were laid long before the stories of the biblical Christ. In fact, this Christ figure repeatedly appeared, not only in Egypt and later in Palestine, but in many ancient mythologies.

Clearly this appearance of a Christ figure in ancient worlds, far outside of the Judeo-Christian worlds, long before the creation of the New Testament stories, is a major challenge for contemporary Christianity. However, the challenge this creates for modern day Christianity might not be quite as straight forward as it might appear on the surface.

One obvious way of understanding this difficulty is to distinguish between an emphasis upon the historicity of the biblical Christ, as is seen in modern day fundamentalist Christianity, and the spirituality of a more mythological Christ figure.

The issue as I see it, however, is not so much one of historicity over against spirituality, but one of singularity over against multiplicity – and this, by the way, is a challenge which supersedes religion and effects the modern day secular worlds as much as the religious worlds. Harpur reveals a Christ figure whose mythology is proliferate, repeating, in its spirit and its details, throughout cultures and civilizations. A Christ is revealed who refuses to be limited to one incarnation, to one point in history. And, here appears a challenge not just to Christianity but to a legacy of Western thought, religious and secular. For, in the world which Harpur presents to us, truth itself is transformed, it becomes additive; truth follows rhizome, zigzag lines; truth refuses reductionist lines and instead accumulates possibilities.

Harpur’s world does not so much reveal the Christ as it creates, generates a universe of Christs. Using Nietzsche’s language, we can say that Harpur creates a “becoming” Christ, or “becoming” Christs, incarnating not only in ancient mythologies but in contemporary lives and institutions. And not only Christs, but also proliferating creations of endless possible spiritual figures. Spiritualities emerging which shed exclusivity and unity and instead create repeated affirmations of endless life possibilities. Life collects, life assembles... and life refuses a systemic or mechanistic unity.

While there is a long history of challengers to such singular views of truth, I want to conclude with an emphasis upon the generative spiritualities so beautifully discussed by American poet, Walt Whitman. No exclusive gods in Whitman’s world, just a spreading divinity which enlivens life in its every corner. Christ, divinity is created, like “leaves of grass”.

Speaking of his own work of writing as if he were a visual artist, Whitman says:

Painters have painted their swarming groups

and the centre-figure of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading

a nimbus of gold color’d light,
But I paint myriads of heads,

but paint no head without its

nimbus of gold-color’d light...

Walt Whitman

How to Talk about Life

2008-12-08T21:22:00.000-08:00

I apologize to my readers for not having posted for such a long time now. I have been preparing a book, based upon pieces of this blog... and that job has been quite overwhelming. I am hoping that the book will be published possibly within the next month. During this time, however, my mind has been playing with many ideas I want to write about. So... I suppose I just have to start writing again.

In this posting, I want to talk about how we talk. I want to language about languaging.

I find myself tired of the techno/scientific language which has come to dominate our talk. It is a language which is far removed from nature, removed from connections with real life. No more anachronisms, like PTSD, or ADHD. We can talk about the challenges of having to live through horrific circumstances or the experiences of little boys in the classroom without such cold and dry language.

And so much professional language is impossible for the regular citizen to seriously address. Think of global warming, for example: scientists put together models of climate change, and those of us who are not scientists (more particularly, those of us who are not scientists of a climatology specialty) have no ability to make any reasonable judgment on such information. As a result of such types of discourse, we learn to trust schools of thought and specialists. We learn to champion certain schools of thought, types and outcomes of scientific research, in the same way we show loyalty to a sports team. And, in the process, we learn what seems like the necessity of minimizing and trivializing our own ability to perceive life and make decisions. In this process, we know we see life, but we are led to believe that the truth always lies far beneath our own perceptions. We learn that those things which are most important in our world are transcendent to the living of life, transcendent to experience, transcendent to nature, and are instead embedded in formulas and algorithms of labs and universities.

Following up with the climatology example -- Why is a discourse on global warming necessary to convince us that the earth is not well? Just living in this world tells us that the earth has been desecrated. Seeing the haze lingering over the city tells us this. Developing asthma as an adult, particularly during the hot summer seasons, tells me that the air is not well. Seeing the removal of much of the natural environment around me, noting the growing disappearance of the salmon from year to year, wondering why I no longer hear choruses of frogs in the springtime – all of this tells me that the earth is changing, and it informs me of this with great emotional impact. I don’t need a global warming discourse, of which I can truly understand nothing, and upon which I am unable to make any wise judgments. Democracy itself demands access to life without having to blindly rely upon what experts tell us regarding how we are to think about this very world we live and move within. I want to talk directly of nature and life, and not of abstracts such as global warming. I want to talk of life as it is accessible to us.

Some scientists are able to make things clear to people like me. Einstein, for example, revealed a world which was strange, yet a world we could understand. He revealed a universe built upon what he called “relativity”... that is a universe composed of relationships, vast realms where the relations between things truly matter. This connects with much more than physics, it connects with our experience of daily life. And Charles Darwin wrote “The Origin of Species” -- a document which is understandable to anyone who takes the time and energy to understand. It is not at all limited to experts. I find it interesting that those scientists we often consider the most influential, those we consider to be the greatest minds, are able to communicate in ways which you and I can find accessible.

When I talk of trying to talk without anachronism, without specialized languages which are disconnected from life and nature, I am not at all suggesting a simple language. I am not suggesting a language of limited vocabulary and grade-school level sentence structures. The way of talking I am referring to can be challenging, it can invite us to expand our usages of words and sentences. It also is not afraid to push aside the dryness of the language of professions, it is not afraid to push aside the secret languages of specialists.

I am referring to democratization of talk.

Let us talk like poets... savouring not just meanings, but also the tones and textures of words. As David Abrams suggests, let us listen to words as we also listen to the babbling of the running river, the chorus of wind in the trees, the laughter of the coyote, the dancing melodies of a song sparrow. Words, talk, language then becomes alive with something approaching magic. Words becoming living things.

I want to live in a world where language is living, where talk is beautiful, and where those words which are cold and disconnected from life are chased away --with no love lost.

Ideas for a New Vocabulary

2008-10-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

By Lynn Hoffman

Chris Kinman and I are exploring a postmodern vocabulary that fits with the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who have given us the pair: Rhizome (decentralized) vs. Tree (hierarchical. The Internet is a rhizome too, billions of bits floating in an electronic colloid. Here are some more pairs:

Rhizome vs. System
Assemblage vs. Narrative
Webwork vs. Network
Sharevision vs. Supervision
(see The Sharevision Group, Northampton)
Cloud-linked vs. Theory-linked
(see “Cloud Computing” on the Web)
Starfish-structure vs. Spider-structure
(see Ori Brafman and Aaron Beckstrom’s “The Starfish and the Spider”)

Aliveness vs. Health or Stability
(see Kinman’s “Territory of the Alive”)

Gift-oriented vs. Problem-oriented
(see Kinman’s “Confluences”)
A few ideas based on my correspondence with Clarke Millar:

“Collecting what Gathers Momentum" vs. Creating a Collection
"Floating Summer Midges"
(Clarke Millar used this image to talk about ideas as if they were airborne swarms and schools. Again, a cloud-form)

Example: “Family Therapy” just put out a "Genogram" of the family therapy pioneers, and I am in it. Rather a nice page with a picture and a biography, and I am in the midst of all the other First Midges, in the floating Midge Cloud.” (email from Lynn Hoffman to Clarke Millar)

An Idea and an Offer from Lynn Hoffman

2008-10-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

On-Line Reflective Consultation

By Lynn Hoffman

What is “Online Reflective Consultation”?

It means that the consultant joins as an “outsider witness,” in Michael White’s sense, with a therapist who wants a supervision experience but does not live nearby. That makes a line dance troop of the consultant, the therapist, and the person or family she is working with. Other people and creatures, real or imaginary, can be online reflectors too.

How does it work?

First, the therapist emails the consultant and enlists. She describes the situation she is working on and what she wants help with. The rules are that any messages from consultant to person or family will go through the therapist, who shares them at her discretion. Likewise, if the person or family wants to respond back to these messages, they must do so through the therapist. The consultant may not get between the therapist and family or take over unless circumstances demand it.

What does this process look like?

A Moebius Strip, where top and bottom are always shifting into each other’s space. The consultant takes the therapist’s hand, the therapist takes the person or family’s hand, and their responses to the consultant close the loop, which then goes on looping. We try to conduct ourselves “without rank,” as the philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin puts it, since this style of working emphasizes collaboration.

What are my credentials for offering this kind of consultation?

See Biography and Bibliography sections for information on my 45 year journey through the field of relational therapies. This year, having some new ideas about online consultation, I renewed my AAMFT Approved Supervisor credentials. Although AAMFT prefers face-to-face supervision, I found out that in cases of geographic hardship, it can be half and half. Currently, I am offering online supervision to a therapist in Canada who is getting the face-to-face requirements in the city where she teaches.

What are the possibilities for writing about Online Reflecting Consultation?

An online exchange is archived automatically, so that with the appropriate permissions, one can create a story out of the work that has been done. Names and other identifiers can be changed and the print-out of the story can serve several purposes:

1. As an honoring testimonial for the person or family to keep.

2. As a paper which can be part of the qualification of the trainee.

3. As an article in a collection about Online Reflecting Consultation. In this
case, the consultant would be the main author.

What has been my previous experience in doing and writing about Online Reflecting Consultation?

From 1993-2004 I was part of psychologist Lois Shawver’s Postmodern Therapy Newsletter, a very literate online conversation having a connection to psychology, philosophy and therapeutic practice, and offering a periodic magazine.

From 1999-2001, I worked online with Gisela Schwartz, a psychologist from Austria, as a one-person “reflecting team” for several of the families she was seeing in her practice, and we put together stories about two of them. These will be published in “The Rhizome Way,” an online publication being assembled by myself and Chris Kinman, who is a community consultant in Vancouver, Canada, and a present writing partner. (See christopherkinman.blogspot.com)

From 2002 to 2004 I was invited by Lois Shawver to join the online faculty for the online Professional Development program as part of a Master’s Level course in Discursive Therapy offered by Massey University in New Zealand and Calgary University in Canada. This experience proved to me that it is possible to connect with people online using embodied language that has the power to move participants in unexpected ways.

I am also putting together the story of “Nina’s Box,” which tells of getting past a “stuck point” in a year long therapy. The therapist, Olga Sutherland, worked with me and her client, in a kind of three-way braid, for several months. At the end of this time, Olga had to leave for another city, and transferred her client to another therapist. But this client, on her own, decided to make a “healing box” out of bird’s eye maple and gave it to her therapist as a parting gift. This golden, beautifully made box amazed us all.

To whom am I offering this experience?

Practitioners who want a time-limited exposure to what some of us have called “Sharevision,” which is a horizontal, collaborative approach combining practices from the late Tom Andersen’s body-oriented “Reflecting Process” and ideas from Michael White’s poststructural “Narrative” orientation.

Trainees who need an experience of Online Reflecting Supervision with an Approved AAMFT Supervisor, and can complete the face-to-face time where they live.

Students in health and service fields who would like to enlarge their repertory by taking part in discussion groups focused on new ideas like “The Rhizome Way,” or by joining temporary reflecting teams for selected therapy interviews.

Other topic suggestions: “Notes on Sharevision,” - “Evidence for the Gutenberg Century,” - “Gregory Bateson and Ecologies of Mind,” - “Webwork and Netbuilding in Online Consultations”- “Decentralized Starfish Structures on the Internet” - “The Nature of Paralogical Conversations.”

***

If anyone is interesting in taking Lynn up on this offer, feel free to contact her at:

lhoffman2101@charter.net

Becoming Animal

2008-10-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

I fear the animals regard man as a being... seriously endangered by the loss of sound animal understanding...

Nietzsche

I play with the words of Nietzsche. For something emerges which is hard to expose within the carefully crafted, academic works of other philosophers, but is not at all difficult to discover amidst the rhythms and rhymes of the poets. It makes repeated appearance in Blake and Coleridge, Whitman and Pesoa. It also appears in the poetic-prose of the likes of D. H. Lawrence and Herman Melville, and later in the diverse explorations of Gregory Bateson.

What is it that appears? Follow Nietzsche through a few of his poems.

First of all... he bemoans the clock.

Around my neck, on chains of hair,
The timepiece hangs – a sign of care.
For me the starry course is o’er
No sun and shadow as before,
No cockcrow summons at the door,
For nature tells the time no more?
Too many clocks her voice have drowned,
And droning law has dulled her
sound.

Nietzsche is not calling for a conservative movement here, not a return to simpler days when the cock crowed to wake the farmer, and the stars and moon told of the coming seasons. No! Nietzsche is, however, calling us to ourselves, to who we are, yet who we repeatedly deny that we are. Nietzsche is suggesting that we are not distinct from nature; we are inescapably connected to the animals, to the seasons, to the hedgerows, to the sun and the streams. If we do seem separated from all this, it is an artificial separation, yet it is also a violent division which leads nowhere but destruction. And the ways of this heartless separation – including the imposition of blind law, distinct from any connection to nature, and an insistance upon a spirit of submission -- he clearly despises.

I hate to follow and I hate to lead.
Obedience? No! And ruling? No indeed!...

I hate to guide myself, I hate the fray.
Like the wild beasts I’ll wander far afield....

Instead of obedience, he becomes a wild beast! Yes... he becomes! As Deleuze would say, Nietzsche becomes a Becoming Animal...

Not a return to nature. No... but a Becoming forward toward nature. There is no need for a return, for our yesterdays were no more connected to a real world of sun and sky, fish and frogs, weeds and insects, than is our today. There is nothing to return too, instead this is a Becoming.

We see this Becoming in the next poem, where Nietzsche becomes a serpent. Not a serpent in the tradition of Western thinking -- the evil, conniving snake which deceives first the gullible woman and then the weak man – and an obvious misogynist man at that. No, this serpent is what it is, it moves through the rocks and the grass, it sheds it skin, it Becomes into newness, and it eats the food the earth provides. This serpent is real. It is even vulnerable to the violences of the human hand and foot. No emblem of evil here! Nietzsche not only loves this animal, he himself, through the words of this poem, Becomes this animal. And, we also, if we are able to read without interest in the narrow violations of evaluation and judgment, become this serpent. We Become the Becoming animal...

My skin bursts, breaks for fresh rebirth,
And new desires come thronging:
Much I’ve devoured, yet for more earth
The serpent in me’s longing.
Twixt stone and grass I crawl once more,
Hungry, by crooked ways,
To eat the food I ate before,
Earth-fare all serpents praise.

It is in this place, the place of the Becoming animal, that the powers-at-be loose their grasp. It is, for Nietzsche, in Becoming serpent, or mouse, or dog, dragonfly or tiger that a freedom and a joy emerge. For in the world of the snake, there is no more sin, no more God, no more king or queen, no more dominance of governing authorities, no more underlings to govern... but there is the grass to crawl through, one’s skin to shed, a feast of the earth to eat. Nietzsche cared not to call for either rigid structure or chaos; he created a world antithetical to both the Nazi and the anarchist. But he did call for an awakening of the animal, the animal whose influence we cannot escape, the animal which could be the serpent or could be the dove, but the animal which we dare to Become.

How strange this all appears. So removed are we from the creatures we share this world with, from the very creatures we are and we can become, that such concepts seem strange and utterly bizarre. Yet, perhaps, never before in our history has the Becoming animal been so required within our lives. We destroy creatures and the worlds they move within not because we are hungry, not because we, like the tiger and the hawk, desire to hunt and eat, but because, on the contrary, we are separate, distinct, disconnected from almost everything living. Let us Become that spider, that fly, that migrating songbird, that salmon, that disappearing shark. Let us become the hawk, the owl, the worm. Let us become Nietzsche’s serpent, and in so doing, discover the beauty and power of Becoming not just animal, but also wonderfully human.

_______________________________

Friedrich Nietzsche (2006). The Gay Science. New York: Dover Publications.

Sadness

2008-09-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

The language of depression invites a process which turns inward, to internal movements, those supposed inner mechanics of mind and body. As if the person, and the feelings he or she experiences, is somehow separate from an outside world of people, things and nature. Apparently, in the worlds created through a language of depression, there is something deep inside, and that something deep within is broken, malfunctioning.

Yet, while this deep, dark, interior world, closed in by body and psyche, is the reality which is repetitively presented to us, the solutions we create do not come from such a place. And they cannot come from such a place, I argue, for such an interiorized place does not exist.

These days the dominant method for helping people deal with this thing called depression is a carefully created mix of chemicals. While we may be led to believe that these chemicals are synthetic, created by pharmaceutical companies far removed from nature, they can only be created by that which the earth is able to produce. They are, even though the legalities of property ownership might suggest otherwise, gifts of the earth. The only way we as human beings can create anything is with that which the earth and life are able to supply. So that which we call “treatment” for depression is through connections created with a world which is not interior to mind and psyche, but outside of us, outside of our bodies, through connections with life and planet. And, while these connections might be bureaucratised, placed within cumbersome institutions -- medical systems, research systems, capitalistic production systems -- it is still impossible to remove the necessity and reality of connection with nature, as well as with human hands and faces.

This is not a world of interiority, this is a world where the body and mind open up to an outside and connect with humanity and nature. Yet the language of depression is still a language of deep and troubled interiority.

I am tired of the word depression! I don’t want to be depressed anymore.

Why can’t I be sad, instead?

Sadness seems such a neglected and repeatedly diminished concept, as if the idea of sadness was somehow cheap and shallow, not fitting for a professionalized world. Sadness also might not seem to fit well with the industries associated with depression, for it is a language which tends to escape both the necessity of, and the practicality of, easy solutions. Sadness might not even invite a solution at all. For sadness does not have to be treated. The language of sadness does not imply that it is something which must be removed from our lives.

And, sadness is inescapably connected to relations with an exterior world. The language of sadness usually suggests that we are sad “because” of something. Sadness connects us outside of the mind and body, and usually connects us to relationships which we see as significant. Relationships shift, change, rupture; and in response we may feel sad.

Sadness is not just fit for human beings, for even a cat can seem sad, a dog, a horse, a cow. We have even seen plants which look sad.

While sadness is not always an experience which we must escape, there are things which we can do to move away from sadness, if we choose to. We can engage with other people, we can play and sing and dance, we can read a book, watch a movie. We can even imbibe in chemicals – including the ones the doctor provides. There are endless possible ways for distancing ourselves from sadness if that is what we feel we need to do. But all of these ways necessitate an opening up to worlds which are exterior to our own bodies and minds.

I have felt the rupture of relationships. So have you. We all know this sensation, or conglomeration of sensations, which we call sadness. I, for one, prefer to be sad, not depressed!

The Return

2008-09-19T23:33:00.001-07:00

It's autumn again along the coast of British Columbia. The salmon are beginning to migrate up the rivers to the locations of their own birth. Every year I am reminded of that impossible to distinguish line between life and death. The salmon return to their birthing waters, they spawn, and they die. Their remains bring forth a multitude - seagulls, ravens, eagles, crows, trout, bear, crayfish, innumerable insects, crustaceans and other life forms -- all dining on nutrients provided by the salmon's decaying bodies. This spectacle of the alive awakens human bodies, our own senses, it moves in conjunction with our own livings and dyings. As if an ecstasy and a sorrow, a feasting and a horror, together come begging for return.

The following video was made from images and audio I obtained from one particular location where the sallmon have returned to spawn. A loud abundance moved around me -- you will hear thousands of gulls, the splashing of salmon, the occassional call of an eagle. However, most obviously, you will hear the ravens who took particular interest in me; watching me from a high perch, repeatedly flying over, croaking loudly, checking out my every activity.

Gregory Bateson

2008-09-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

(1904 - 1980)
And the Territories of the Alive

Picture from Wikipedia

The following video is a slideshow with audio which I made last year. It was inspired through my readings of Gregory Bateson. Probably more than any other writer Bateson has influenced my thinking on the idea of the Territories of the Alive.

Questions and Affirmations

2008-08-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Imagining with D. H. Lawrence

So let us leave the way of the question, and try again the older way of affirmation. We shall find that our mind now definitely moves in images, from image to image, and no longer is there a logical process, but a curious flitting motion from image to image according to some power of attraction, some sensuous association between images.

D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence compared the actions of AFFIRMATION with the actions of QUESTIONING. I want to further explore this comparison.

Lawrence’s thoughts can be found in a small non-fiction book titled, Apocalypse. It was originally published in 1931. The thoughts below, however, are mine... spring-boarding off, inspired by Lawrence’s thinking.

Questioning

Questioning – perhaps a modern obsession (on the other hand, it is a method which has been around as long as there has been an assigned priesthood).

Questioning is what academics tend to do (among many others).

It is the process of never taking anything at face value, the process of always presuming that what one sees, what one hears, what one feels is not what it seems to be.

The true meaning, in the Questioning process, is only found deep underneath our perceptions.

The determination of meaning requires an archaeological-like process whereby layers of depth are successively exposed and interpreted, with a continual movement deeper.

Senses are not to be trusted; rather depths must be exposed, and meanings must be determined by priest-like specialists, interpreters such as academics, researchers and scientists.

When a questioning process is embraced, there is a turning away from the varied gifts which life might offer for fear that the experience of these gifts would be untrustworthy. Instead, there is a reliance upon constructions of meaning provided only by this new priesthood of experts.

Affirmation

Affirmations are actions which include a focus upon what one senses (for example, an emphasis upon image with Lawrence); a bodily acknowledgement of what one senses; and, in some way, a celebration of a world which enables such senses to emerge.

Affirmations emerge on a local, lived level; and they do not require priest-like experts to interpret what is experienced.

Affirmations show very little interest in depth – the abundance of life which awaits affirmation is almost always right at the surface... almost always right at hand.

If there were to be experts in the world of affirmation, those experts would probably be children and dogs.

Take a child to the beach and every pebble, every shell, every tiny shore-crab, every sandcastle, every seagull has the very real potential of emerging as an object of affirmation.

Affirmations are much more than words. They are responses to life which find expression, above all, in the body, in the face and hands. Words fit within acts of affirmation when they are responsive to the experiencing of life. A verbal responsivity must be fluent with the responsivity of body, face and hands.

Affirmations require the communal. While a singular body may sense and give response to given movements of life, the process of affirmation requires an additional level of response. Responsive action must be given to the initial responsive action before a sense of affirmation is produced. That is, affirmation requires two levels of affirmation – the affirmation of life, and the affirmation of the affirmation of life.

For it is not words that beget new things, it is feeling.
D. H. Lawrence

But now, instead of being naked vital man breast to breast with the vital cosmos, it is naked, disembodied mind losing itself in a naked and disembodied universe, a strange Nirvana.
D. H. Lawrence

A Meal of Crabs and Clams

2008-08-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

The years gather together
In a dizzying lucidity
So much
Such a long time
Now merging into one
Unfinished conversation

Bits and pieces

Perhaps the sacred
Can be made of nothing else

A life is shared

A whole life
Yet
Never all of it

And it comes to be
As do
Our crabs and clams
From local abundances

Still after all this time
Local abundances

We sit together
A plastic table cloth
There is no way to eat this and be clean
So life is devoured
In it’s messiness

Perhaps all these movements
These comings
These goings
These glories
These tired bones
These spirits
Still soaring with the seagulls
And this spattering crab nectar

It all comes together
In a local eatery
Amidst a buttery
Clutter of
Sacrificed crustaceans
And the charm
Of a local hospitality

And it is never finished
For there remains
Always
A pile of
Broken shells

Arguably
Not a sacrifice at all
But a return

From calcium to calcium

Perhaps the sacred
Can be made of nothing else

Big Fat People

2008-08-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

In a Big Fat World

I want to write about being fat.

There seem to be well-accepted rules which are evident to many about how to respond to a person who is considered large/big/fat/overweight/obese. I continually struggle with weight and become acutely aware of the antagonistic voices which are out there directed towards those of us who fit such fat status. Some of these voices include the following ideas (I must emphasize, this list is certainly not representative of ideas I personally value):

1. First of all, it is clear that those who are heavy are so because they choose to be. That is, they are making choices about food and exercise which are directly making them fat.

2. Secondly, and in a similar vein, we must assume that those who are not fat are that way because of their wise choices. They also are the product of their decisions. And their successful fat-fighting lifestyles must be examples for those of us who are fat.

3. Fat people are grouped together into a population. They are, in a very real way, through the politics of language, separated from the real communal settings which life has connected then to and instead they are identified by their fatness. The same happens for many others too, where questions of identity tend to centre almost exclusively upon specific issues such as race, sexual identity, disability, intelligence ratio, etc.

4. Fat is undoubtedly and unequivocally a bad thing. There is nothing honourable or redemptive about being fat. Fat is an enemy to be fought against.

5. Fat is considered the product of over-consumption, the product of capitalism gone awry. Fat is hated in the same way that pollution is hated, that carbon-spewing city traffic is hated – it is the product of having too much. (If fat people are the product of capitalism gone awry, if they are the product of people having too much, then why in the Western world is fat disproportionately an issue of the poor, and skinniness disproportionately connected to the rich?)

6. The evil of fat can be treated, if the fat person is willing to admit he is fat, and to submit to strict restrictive and painful regimes of sacrifice which are usually institutionally packaged, sold in an anti-fat marketplace, and then applied to the identified problems which are making the fat person.

7. It can be safely assumed that fat people are not putting adequate effort into their health. Therefore anyone who meets a fat person can feel free to offer that person advice, for such advice has previously either been lacking or it has not been heard by the fat person. More advice is needed and should be received gratefully by the fat person.

All this is no surprise to me. As with other supposed plagues upon our society, fat is addressed, even in the strict secular realm, within clear Christian traditions of fall redemption. Fat is a sin – a secular sin these days. Fat is a destroyer and is to be seen as having nothing redemptive about it. It must in turn be battled against. The people who are fat, however, can potentially receive salvation from their fatness by listening to righteous and priest-like experts who know how to become slim and fit; also, by entering secular confessional processes where one’s fat-producing choices are admitted; and then by entering strict regimes of sacrifice and penance – necessary pain designed to eradicate the evil of fat.

We all know, and, of all people, fat people certainly know that there are often effects upon the body for being fat. A quick reminder though, there are many other things that effect health. I would certainly not be surprised if one day it is discovered that extreme physical exertion, such as running marathons, performing triathlons, creates serious detrimental effects upon health. But, my argument is certainly not directed towards a stopping of these things, but rather at recognizing the innumerable possible influences upon health – not just the influence of fat.

We as individuals need to take actions upon our own health, and we need to do it out of love for our bodies, and knowing that others love our bodies, not out of a loathing for our bodies, our fat bodies, as fat people are repetitively asked to do.

I want to suggest that many fat people have done far more to try and improve their health than most of the population has done. They have often attempted to reduce dietary intake, to sacrifice, to enter painful and extensive exercise regimes. But such changes are incredibly difficult to maintain. And, those who do well in this type of sacrificial arrangement, I argue, are those who are already predisposed, either genetically, or through other life influences, toward a desire for sacrifice and pain. Those who are predisposed toward joy, celebration, the beauties of food and other bodily pleasures, find it excruciatingly difficult to keep up with such regimes of sacrifice. Yet, over and over again, they try... often to a shortly-maintained success followed by further weight gain -- often beyond their previous weight.

Rarely is the relationship between fat and poverty addressed. If I walk into a high-end store, set aside for the more well-moneyed, I generally see slim and well-groomed people walking around. Yet, if I go to Wal-Mart, where many of the lower-class people will shop, I see far more fat people. A lifestyle seems to develop for the poor that tends to exclude things such as gym membership, which leads toward not buying high quality proteins and fresh produce (these costs are becoming increasingly out of reach). The lifestyles of such people tend to become overly dependent upon highly processed carbohydrates – sugars and grain products. Such foods of course lead toward an increase in obesity.

Recently, the aboriginal community of Alert Bay, just off the North-East coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, decided to adopt a diet more approaching their traditional diet; it included high quantities of healthy fats (in previous generations they would eat eulachon grease – eulachon is a small fatty fish -- with much of their food); much local protein such as salmon, shellfish and game, leafy vegetables, small amounts of fruits and root vegetables. Many in the community who practiced this diet lost significant weight; many also found their cholesterol counts and their blood pressure improved. And, to top it off... they loved eating this way. Check out their story:

CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/03/10/bc-alertstudy.html

CBC (Discussion): http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/discussion/2008/03/my_big_fat_diet.html

Canadians Talk:
http://canadianstalk.ca/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=6556

However, if one is not able to catch one’s own protein, collect nature’s pickings in the wild, this kind of diet is very expensive to maintain. Urban settings invite those with little money to rely upon more affordable, high carbohydrate diets.

Certainly we can all learn to eat food which is real and nourishing – and we must discover these foods for ourselves. However, at the same time, I want to invite a renewal of celebration of fatness. Yes, I mean this! Fuck the attack on fat people. We are large in the world, and many of us have the potential for much joy and much influence. Let us carry ourselves with confidence and bravado!

A quick story... a few years ago I saw in a small Korean corner store a cheaply made, plastic, smiling Buddha. He was laughing hysterically. His eyes sparkled with pure joy and humour. But, what most struck me about this plastic Buddha was that he was very fat. Yes, this Buddha was fat and overwhelmingly happy. Like a fool... I never bought it! I wish I did, but, even so, I carry its memory with me.

Compare this happy, laughing and very fat Buddha with the religious image that the Western world was built upon. Not a fat god living in abundance, but an almost anorectic, dying Christ -- sacrificed, hanging upon a cross. I will argue that the joyless, sacrificial, anti-fat society, in which we live, as secular as it may appear, is clearly just a reinvention of certain Christian values in a world in which religion is supposed to be denied. I am at a point in life that I want that fat, laughing Buddha. Christianity, and the new secular Christianity, needs to discover its own fat heritage – for it is there.

For those of us who are considered fat, let us wear these fat bodies with dignity. Let us willingly impose our largeness with energy, with joy, and, of course, with the plastic Buddha’s sparkling eyes upon this anorectic Western world.

For Children in Care

2008-08-02T02:56:00.000-07:00

Some Thoughts on the Work

By Drew Moore and Christopher Kinman

We all (including children in care) experience our world, our place within that world and ourselves only through the context of relationship.

Children and youth have a persistent impulse towards health, growth and relationship. We need to recognize this impulse, honour the impulse, and find ways of gently joining with the child or youth in this impulse.

Children and youth often engage in conversations using nonverbal means to express their desires and needs in relation to their growth and development.

Children and youth present behaviours that express their understanding of themselves and their world. These behaviours are the equivalent of words, and they are the child’s or youth’s best efforts at expressing himself or herself at that particular point in time.

We wish to see any changes occurring for a child or youth (whether desirable or non-desirable) to be a movement toward his/her own maturity -- emotional, psychological, physiological and spiritual maturity. These changes always occur in conjunction with significant relationships within her/his world.

The relationship between caregivers and the youth is the point where the most potential for growth and development occur. We say caregivers (plural) because we include the assigned caregiver(s) and the child’s or youth’s own family and community.

We see it as our work to maintain a primary focus upon the relationship between caregivers and the child or youth. This relationship-location is where life-effecting work occurs. Therefore, we understand our work as with relationships, not with individual people. Even when talking with individuals, we still see such a conversation as a work of relationship.

In order to fully support this work those surrounding the caregivers and child or youth must view themselves as in positions of support – not authority. Our work is to enable such a network of rhizome-relationships to work toward the support of the relationships between child/youth and caregivers.

This is a work of relationship... this work creates environments that support and nurture the development, stability and longevity of relationships between those caring for children and youth and those children and youth being cared for. This includes the relationships between the caregiver and caregiver’s family, but it also includes the children’s or youth’s relationships with his/her own family and community.

Compassion is the only foundation that will effectively support the growth and development of the youth. This compassion must be circulated freely, not only directed one way. Compassion must be directed toward the caregivers as well as to the child or youth. To talk of compassion for the child or youth but not direct that compassion to the others connected to the child or youth is a breach in the movements of compassion. The children and youth will typically be the first to perceive such a breach, and to be troubled by it.

Six Billion Sexes

2008-07-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

A child is born who has never come before and will never come again, a child who carries an unrepeatable singularity (composed of uncountable multiplicities). Yet, immediately, upon entry into life, this singularity is destroyed. The child is torn into two; a determination is made as to whether this new life is a boy or a girl -- no other alternatives, just boy or a girl. And the results of this tear will impose direction and limitation for most every movement in this life.

Why must there be only two sexes? Why are there not more than six billion?

Sometimes, either because we wish to be open-minded, or, perhaps, because we wish to be mean-spirited, we allow ourselves to see masculine characteristics in a female body and soul, or feminine characteristics in a male body and soul. But why? Why must some ways of moving through life be considered male or female? Why not each life in its singularity simply be what it is and become what it becomes, within a richness which vastly exceeds a world of two options?

Even such added distinctions such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, as liberating as these distinctions might be, do not go far enough. They still play around the male/female borderlines. They still are far from acknowledging the over six billion genders which move within our world.

I wish to find ways to talk of people, and, more than people, to talk of life in its splendid diversity, in ways which acknowledge a uniqueness far outside simple hand-me-down distinctions, and certainly far beyond the most basic of distinctions-- male and female.

I wish to find ways to talk of people in languages profuse with colours.

I wish to think of the living of life as carrying textures, depths and elevations.

I wish to imagine our movements as in the midst of constant traffic, where we continuously have to negotiate our turns.

I wish to imagine bodies as always becoming and as eternally in rearrangement.

I wish to think of life as never, ever finished, never decided, and never truly describable.

I believe that by such imaginings we can, and we regularly do, live outside the simplicity of a world divided into two.

Honouring Community

2008-07-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

The Work of the Rhizome Way

There is a work which we love
A type of work
A way of working

We call it the Rhizome Way

But this is a work which has been around so much longer
Than our words

It is not the work of fixing
Whether that is fixing people or communities

But it is a work of
Honouring
Honouring community
Bringing to life
And celebrating
Those innumerable gifts which circulate
Within our own communities

It is a work of
Honouring relationships
Even those which often frustrate
For it is through such varied connections
That our daily lives
Find sustenance

It is not through experts
That our hope emerges
But through the gifts
Which circulate within
Our communal realms

This work concerns
A bringing to communal life
In ways which we can all see
That vast array of gifts
Which move into life and world

And this work
It is also about creation
Creating
Things

Things made by hands
Arts crafts
Equipment and machines
All such creations
Coming from and returning to
Life itself

Also, this is a work of creating words
Ways of talking, singing, writing
Which connect people together
Which bring love, understanding and hope

We together create more than community
We create
A people
Which in a way
Has not yet come

For this work creates
A people of tomorrow
A future

And not a future
Of gloom and decay
But a time when the
Very gifts we share today
Return in renewed ways
They return with our children and grandchildren
And they return with
So much more than we can now imagine

We engage in a work which creates
A People
And a future
Which are not
(quite) yet...

How to Think about the Future -- Part II

2008-07-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

Beyond Batman and the Joker

I saw a movie... I thought of life...
That’s what great cinema does!
Here are my thoughts.

The pictures in this posting are of the abundance of life, they are not about Batman.

It was a man from India, Salman Rushdie, who extolled the genius of the American comic. And, I’m in the mood to join him. I want to reflect for a moment on the film, The Dark Knight – a story of Batman and his nemesis, the Joker. For in this film far more than action sequences emerge, filtering through such genre-necessities something approaching life comes forth. But really this life-likeness only appears in one short moment, and the whole of the film pivots upon that moment. And, it is interesting to note that in that particular moment all of the major characters in the movie are absent. I will get to that moment later.

A Nihilist’s Logic

This is certainly not a film about good versus evil, though, I suppose, it easily could seem that way. Heath Ledger’s Joker is far too logical, too “right”, and too completely compelling to carry the purity of treachery required for a good versus evil story. In fact, while the motives of Christian Bale’s Batman appear to be untainted his actions clearly are not. He repeatedly acts as violent as his enemy, and, his expressions of anger actually exceed that of the Joker. Batman and the Joker at times seem remarkably similar. In one memorable line Ledger’s character when responding to an implication that he may want Batman dead, says something to the effect, “Why? You complete me!” The Joker creates an image of good and evil as a game which is played, where both are in need of the other. The Joker may kill, but he won’t kill Batman, for then his game would come to an end.

One might say that the Joker creates the logic for a nihilist view of good and evil. And, I think the Joker certainly intends such a view. Batman plays the hero and saviour, the Joker undoes this story, laying its moral (or rather immoral) bones bare for all to see. Yet, while this nihilist unravelling is what the Joker attempts to produce, this is not where the film goes. The Joker’s verbal wiles which attempt to undo the distinction between good and evil instead set the scene for another world to emerge which is outside of both Batman’s and the Joker’s interventions , outside of their game.

A Disrupting Event

Let me return to that moment I alluded to earlier. I won’t give the details, no spoiling of the story here! But I will say that there is a moment in the film where the Joker believes he has orchestrated a particular outcome and where Batman is unable to intervene with his heroic powers. Yet it is within this moment where both Batman and the Joker, and the game they have been playing, become undone. Without disclosing too much, an unknown character played by an unknown actor diverts the plans of both the heroic good and the demonic evil, and this occurs through the creation of a most simple event. Ultimately, all that happens is that something is thrown out a window. Yet, the story turns upon this very act, a moment which might appear irrelevant and even counter to what is expected of an action movie.

Again perhaps something of life emerges here. For both Batman and the Joker are the product of a modernity, they believe that by using their own powers upon the world, they can intervene, they can alter the outcome of history in accordance with their own actions. They follow a logic of causality --predictable inputs produce predictable results.

Yet, the film invites us to consider something very different. It suggests that life moves, the future comes upon us not in accordance with the predictability of causality, but in accordance with the unpredictability of the event. The event, which in the film’s context involves a simple act of throwing something out a window, is something which could never have been predicted, it comes to us from outside of the chains of causality. It is this event, this divergence in the routes of causality which creates the story. And, we can easily argue that almost every change of significance which happens in life and which happens in nature and evolution, occurs because of an event, because some confluence, convergence, some meeting which was not foreseen or predicted, shatters the chains of causality.

Let’s leave Batman and the Joker now, let’s think about the challenges of a real life. Whether personal, familial, communal, environmental, global, we all too often get stuck in the chains of causality which we are accustomed to. It can seem compellingly obvious to us that the difficulties we encounter come to us through distinct lines of causality. However the discovery of causality rarely liberates. It rather tends to create circles which we become stuck within. For the lines of causality which we use to escape lines of causality in turn need further lines of causality for further escapes. Causality can certainly be compelling, but it is also can become a dizzying entrapment.

What is called for, what I tend to believe that life invites of us, is not circles of causality, but rather events which disrupt the causality. And events are not things which just-happen; they are things which are created.

In the Dark Knight, the event was made visible to the movie-goer through the action of one individual, but the creation of that event was a pure communal action. Many were involved in its creation. Perhaps this is the way most events work.

Let us create events!

Let us together and alone create things and moments of beauty, of power, of disruption.

I think of some of my therapist friends. These individuals often feel so very uncomfortable with the language of the therapeutic, yet I find they eagerly enter into conversations with people. And, in their work, they create conversations, they create events from which those involved come forth not just changed, but walking in a new world. These friends of mine repeatedly are involved in the creation of such events. Yet, they usually feel most uncomfortable with such a description for they know that personally they enter the conversation with no predesigned strategy. They do not feel like they are creating something. And of course they don’t, for the creative movements are unequivocally communal, and they know that. The created-event happens outside of the instrumentalism of both individual and group causality.

At the end of the film Batman disappears into the night. At the same time his institutional structure, the actual building in which he created his technology collapses into dust. For, the unbearable difficulties of Gotham, and the solutions, causal chains designed to fix the city were now being lost to the beauty and generosity of ordinary, everyday events. Events created by people engaged in conversation and life together, people who move in response to each other and in response to the life around them, people who have learned how to trust a world outside of the controls of causality.

How to Think about the Future

2008-07-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

Creating -- Not Fixing

I want to think about how we think about the future. Not for the purpose of philosophical musing, and certainly not to fine-tune predicting abilities, but rather simply to think about how the time ahead of us can be created in beautiful and life-honouring ways.

The Future and Causality

The future is often imagined as a chain of causality, sequences of happenings or decisions leading to predetermined and predicted ends. The future becomes a simplified and graspable product shaped within the factories of human decisions, and distributed in accordance with the flows of prior investments.

Often this causality follows apocalyptic lines of thinking where ill conceived and the foolish thought and action produce an assured end result of overwhelming disaster. And there is an obligation for those who are in possession of this apocalyptic vision that their lived-time must be occupied with the production of clear and vigorous prophetic warnings.

At other times we are invited to see causality as optimistic, we see chains of right decisions leading to the profitable yields of smart investments. Such an optimistic causality suggest that the future is created by wise choices, efficient and effective actions, and the timely application of appropriate resources. This optimism is not available for all, it is saved for those who clearly act in accordance with the principles of optimistic causality, it leaves open the possibility that unwise decisions might be made, resulting in loss.

Gregory Bateson and Causality

It is this emphasis on causality which Gregory Bateson expressed such dissatisfaction with. He invited his readers to think of the future not as a chain of causality but as movements of whole ecologies, innumerable shiftings amidst vast networks of relationship. And he suggested that in the midst of such multifarious worlds a particular outcome cannot be formed by simple lines of causality, rather (in a mode of thinking that takes some serious thought) a particular outcome occurs because other options were restrained from occurring. That is, things happen as they do because other alternatives were held back. Bateson suggests that the question upon us should not be what caused an event, but rather what other alternatives could possibly have occurred and what influences might have stopped these alternatives from occurring. Such questions of restraint, according to Bateson, keep us within the complexities and abundances in which life moves.

Stephen Jay Gould describes a scenario which I find illustrates Bateson’s theory of restraints. Gould found himself repeatedly challenged by those who claimed life's clear progression in time from the simple to the complex, implies an intelligent causative force guiding the direction of all life in nature. Gould responds by reminding his readers that life originated with single-cell organisms, the most simple of life-forms possible. In life's early stages there was only one direction for it to evolve, and that was in the direction of increased complexity. Life evolved in this direction because other alternatives were were clearly restrained from occurring. Evolution toward more complex life forms was the only option in town. However, as life diversified, with the addition of further complexity, uncountable different possibilities emerged for the evolutionary directions of life. And every single evolutionary process has been subject to its own unique assemblage of innumerable restraining influences.

The Return of Religious Causality

It is interesting to note that the secular world, a seemingly non-religious world, even anti-religious world is actually very much a Christian world in its views of causality. It still follows upon causal narratives which are biblical in flow, in language, and in pure zeal. The supposed secular world creates futures filled with apocalyptic visions, redemptive possibilities, harsh judgments and punitive responses.

Environmental Causality

Some of the approaches taken by the environmental movement are obvious example of such an apocalyptic outlook on the future. I talk of the environmental movement merely as an illustration of these views -- I certainly feel most connected to many of the concerns and desires the movement puts forward. The environmental movement is certainly not alone, overwhelmingly the contemporary world follows such religious views of causality.

Environmental science repeatedly puts forward a clear apocalyptic and fall/redemption voice. It shows us the results of our wrong actions, the yields of our poor investments, all which lead to a judgment, a potential final judgment, which could be the destruction of life as we know it. Our environmental sins invite a form of environmental damnation, an environmental hell. At the same time, we are given the possible option of redemption. We are informed that if we engage in the correct acts, including various sacrifices and punishments, we may be able to escape at least some of the coming judgment. Sin/Redemption, that age-old line of religious causation is alive and well and operating in full confidence.

No one was more concerned for environmental concerns than Gregory Bateson, and few have put as much thought into our human response to such a dilemma. Yet these causal chains as described above, weather scientific, religious, industrial or therapeutic were not seen by Bateson as a way out of our difficulties, on the contrary, he proposed that such thinking repeated initiates and accentuates environmental difficulties. By understanding life as if it were simply a product of causal chains, and then by intervening in life as if our actions would implement a redemptive causal chain, is, according to Bateson, the very form of thinking and acting which disrupts and endangers complex environmental systems in the first place.

Therapeutic Causality

It is not just the world of environmental science and action which follows such causal thinking, what I call the “therapeutic” also is firmly in tune with such modes of thought and action.

The “therapeutic” suggests that there is something wrong, broken, sinful (in a non-religious way) about people, their bodies and their relationships. In response to this a certain secular liturgical process must be implemented to respond to these wrongs.

First, with the assistance of experts, the brokenness must be faced and acknowledged. Assessment processes identify a pathology; base it in life, body and/or relationship; and describe it in obscure language. The movements of this pathology must be examined, and its history must be traced in accordance with lines of professionalized apocalyptic causality. These liturgical process generate truths which must be accepted and are embedded in therapeutic authority.

Once assessment has been completed, then actions are created which are intended on fixing the problem and addressing the history of pathology. However, during this process blame is further distributed, moving from the body and the family and toward those persons assigned to assist in healing such difficulties. And, this blame often spreads with great speed. It is inevitable, for problems are not things destined to being fixed. Yet those assigned to do the fixing seem to be destined to bear portions of the responsibility for this intransigence of the problem.

On Rhizome Lines

The world moves according to other lines...

A new complexity emerges... for, in spite of not being able to fix problems, these workers often find themselves connected to something powerful. For while in the midst of their work, and through the connections they have built with those they work with and the communities these people are connected with, they discover that human lives do move and change (and not just the lives of those they are working with). However, these changes come into life in the same way that Bateson described, amidst networks of relationship, in response to the many restraining influences of life. And, they also see that human lives move in response to goods and gifts that circulate within their realms.

And, often they come to understand that while surrounded by gifts on all corners, people create life, they do not fix it!

When these workers were able to respond to the rhizome connections in their work worlds, they found that they become integral parts of these realms, and they often saw that, in spite of the many challenges, life often moves in beautiful and desirable ways.

Outside of presumed lines of causality, the world is filled with uncountable, unpredictable, yet often unnoticed changes. Life is constantly responding to life, and the resultant movements extend far beyond our understandings. Whether we are wishing to respond to the environment, the complicated realms of nature, or we are responding to life in our communal realms, we find amidst this rhizome abundance that a newness is constantly introduced to us. And creativity, the very gift we so need at this time in history, insists upon our response. And we rejoice, for we now realize that we do not fix worlds... but we do create them.

Meeting Chris Kinman -- by Lynn Hoffman

2008-07-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

This is Lynn's story about connecting with me. She felt it was important that I post this -- so here it is! I have included a few pictures of some friends whom I have worked with through the years.

Lynn Hoffman

Back in 1993, while living in Massachusetts, Chris phoned me out of the blue and asked me to come out to do a workshop in British Columbia. While I was there, Chris brought me into contact with the powerful traditions of the First Nations people, particularly the art and culture of the Haida from Haida Gwai, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. Chris was working with First Nations youth and families, and had been fascinated by the ancient ritual of the potlatch, where the idea is to give rather than to get. It was not surprising to me when he told me that he wanted to work from the idea of bounty rather than the idea of lacks and disabilities.

Another feature of Chris’ world was a strong communal presence. This was exemplified during a break in my workshop, which was being held in Vancouver, when a person in the audience ushered me mysteriously into a room filled with green light. There, in the midst of ficus trees and bamboo, was an astonishing object. It was a greenish bronze canoe, half the size of the room, and in it a variety of totemic animals were struggling with each other: the raven with the bear, the wolf with the eagle, the crow with the dog, while half-human creatures like the Dogfish Woman, or the Bear Mother, paddled, watched over by the sombre Village Chief with his temple-shaped hat. I learned that this was the achievement of a sculptor called Bill Reid, who was himself descended from First Nations people. In this work, titled “The Spirit of the Haida Gwai,” Reid represented himself as the Ancient Conscript, paddling along with the rest.

Chris also took me to the university bookstore, and introduced me to two French writers, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1986), who favorably compared the horizontality of the “rhizome” (think crab grass) to the hierarchical pattern of the tree, hierarchy being a pattern that was common to Western helping institutions. Another beloved writer was Gaston Bachelard (1994), who came up with the concept of “reverberation” as an alternative to causality. This idea pushed me back to Bateson's idea of the “Grammar of the Creatura,” where transmission of meaning goes along the paths of metaphor rather than through chains of logical thought. At this time I also bought a book by Jacques Godbout called “The World of the Gift,” (1998). I remember telling Kinman that he should make “The Language of Gift” a main descriptor for his work.

Alistair Moes -- I worked with Alistair in various capacities for about 14 years. Alistair is known as the Angerman; check him out at http://www.angerman.ca/ (by the way, I like this picture of him much better than the one on his website). Alistair is a dear, dear friend.

(Just a reminder -- these comments under the pictures are made by Chris, the text of this particular posting is by Lynn)

Chris then showed me examples of a “Local Wisdom” series he had put together based on sayings from the families he was working with. I perused booklets which Chris had printed himself: Local Wisdom of the Mothers, or Local Wisdom of First Nation’s Youth. He would transcribe what people said to him and put it into a kind of chapbook. Sometimes he would intersperse their comments with passages he wrote, or quotes from writers he admired. I felt it gave the people he worked with a special dignity in being quoted like that.

Another innovation Kinman (2001) had come up with was what he called a Collaborative Action Plan. This document was an alternative to the usual problem oriented intake record, widely used by services in that area. What was special was that it was organized around the “language of gifts” referred to above. The first page asked, “What are the gifts and potentials this person can give to the community?” The second asked, “What are the gifts and potentials the community can give to the person?” The third page read, “What are the roadblocks to these gifts and potentials?” This was the gist of it, although it varied over time. Kinman told me that just the use of this document altered his relationships with the people he worked with in a very helpful way.

In his wish to acquaint me with his environment, Kinman drove me to an old time resort hotel in the Canadian Rockies। It was only one night, but it must have cost a pretty penny - well worth it, if the idea was to impress me. I asked about the work he was doing with young people and their families, and he told me touching stories about his efforts to see the world as they did. One memorable thing he shared was about a teen-age girl who said to him, “Therapists try to get into your head; counsellors help you bear your burdens.” Or, as he put it, “What the mountain cannot bear, the river takes away.” I liked the idea that therapy might be like the river. We closed our time together with a trip to the Anthropological Museum, the repository of so much First Nations culture and its splendor. Then I bought a book on the work of Bill Reid, and said goodbye.

The Fairy Godfathers

But it was not goodbye. The following year, Kinman asked me to come out again. He had organized a meeting that represented the “systems” he was working with: the parents of kids he was seeing, a group of his trainees, and a few of his colleagues. At the time I was much influenced by Tom Andersen's ideas about the reflecting process, and thought we could use such a format for our meeting. What I did was to ask Kinman to sit and listen while I interviewed each “pod” in the circle about their experience with Kinman's very different way of working. The parents said that he was not like the usual social service worker because he made them feel like helpers and partners. The students were pleased, because the tools he gave them made connecting with clients so easy. His colleagues had similar things to say. During all this, Kinman occasionally tried to break in, but I stopped him. When all had their say, I turned to him and asked how what he had heard affected him. He was full of emotion by this time, and turned to the notes he had taken, offering each person's idea as if it were a line in an extended poem. It was an intensely moving experience for all of us.

Two years later, Kinman asked me to come back again to preside over a meeting that we were now calling “Honoring Community.” This time the gathering was more formal, and Chris introduced me to his new work partner, Peter Finck. Present were representatives of various social services: some foster parents, two members of a biker group who directed homes for troubled boys; a probation officer (the only one there who had a professional degree); some social work trainees; and a group of adults brought over from Vancouver Island by psychiatrist Robin Routledge - an old and good friend of mine - that was called The Mood Clinic. Chris gave an orienting talk, and introduced me, and I then sat with each subgroup and asked about their work. I was very touched by the different experiences that were presented, and the ideas offered, Because most of the people present would not have otherwise known about the worlds of the others, it became a fascinating conversation, both for those talking and those listening.

The day before, I had sat in on a weekly conference attended by a group of biker men who were not only in recovery themselves, but in charge of various youth homes. They all had vivid tattoos winding up their forearms. Not having been introduced, I felt like a foreign object, but I sat and listened with interest. Each man described the doings in his home during that particular week. A large dog under the circular table kept going from one set of feet to another, finally settling on mine. At this point, the leader of the group, still without introducing me, asked me for my opinions. I said that what had most impressed me about the speakers was their tenderness toward the charges in their care.

Then I ventured something outrageous: I said, “To me, you are just a bunch of Fairy Godfathers.” A moment of appalled silence, and then the group burst into a huge roar, looking hard at the leader, the one who had the most impressive tattoos, and who luckily was laughing too. This man and another member of that group came to our community meeting the next day and commented powerfully on their past experience of class prejudice from persons in social service agencies. But what most caught my eye was a small tag pasted on the shirt of the leader, saying “Fairy Godfather.”

The conference finished with all of us listening to the concerns of the Mood Clinic. This was an informal club which played an advocacy role between patients and medical doctors on issues to do with medication and treatment. Their stories enlisted both our sympathies and a feeling of hopefulness. The event as a whole had given me a depth knowlege of the helpers and workers who toiled, you might say, in the shadows of desperately troubled clients, but kept their optimism intact.

New Systems For Old

But that in no way prepared me for the next time I was asked to the Vancouver area. I had kept in touch with Kinman, and every once in a while he would email off to me another one of his writings. Once he used up a whole roll of my fax paper - yards of it came pouring out of the machine like an endless Chinese scroll. But soon there was a new addition to the wisdom series which featured the public health nurses of the Frasier River Valley. And I learned a new story.

Chris had told me that some nurses from the Frazer Valley Health Area had come to him for advice because they had become disenchanted with their problem-oriented assessment form. They had heard that he had been experimenting with an alternative that was based on gifts. Apparently, the Collaborative Action Plan was just what they were looking for. Kinman told me how these women had taken this format and were fitting it to their own practice. To my amazement, it seemed that their supervisors and the bureacracy were supporting them. Then Kinman said that the teaching program in public health nursing at the University of Victoria was also changing.

Sitting on my hill a continent away, I received these smoke signals, but I still had no idea of their profound implications. Without much warning, Kinman asked me to come out one more time. It seemed that they were going to have another Honoring Community meeting built around the achievement of the public health nurses. So I flew across again, and what I found really staggered my mind. As soon as I got there, Kinman introduced me to the frontline workers and they told me about their plans for the meeting that was to be held the next day. Here is an account of what happened.

First Kinman gave a slide show featuring commentary from the nurses themselves (he stayed up all night to finish it). Then I sat with a group of frontline nurses who told me how their work lives had been transformed. Then came key persons from the bureaucracy who were backing this adventure. Next came some teachers from the public health nursing program at Victoria University who were changing their curriculum. Lastly, I sat with Marjorie Warkentin, one of the nurses who had helped spearhead the change, together with a young mother who was recovering from a postpartum depression and had agreed to add her voice.

Vera Little -- Vera is an elder in the community of Ahousat, on Flores Island off the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Vera defines the very meaning of the word `hospitality`. She is also a dear friend -- like family. Go and visit with her at Vera's Guest House (Vera's own business). Sit down with Vera and listen to some of that true old-time country music -- life doesn't get much better.

This was the first time in my 40 years in the field that I had been present at a change at each level of a complex health system: front line workers, administration people, teachers, and clients. That last group had usually been excluded from such conferences, except as the Exhibit A in teaching events. I thought about all the families that had been used to demonstrate family therapy in front of huge audiences since the field began. But this young mother was not there as evidence of some clinician's ability, but to tell her own story. She and Warkentin described their experience with this “gift-oriented” approach to human difficulty, and told us what a difference it had made to both of them.

These systemic changes have lasted and I can now bear witness to the newness that shone forth so brightly in the Fraser Health Authority that day. Despite the reductive mantle of managed care, shifts like this one continue to inspire hope in those of us who believe that the language game we use makes all the difference. And there are many of us who continue to be watchers on that hill!

Lars Meyer -- I argue that Lars is not a human being at all.... he is an angel in disguise. Lars is a consultant for organizations and businesses regarding issues of strategic design (contact him at lars@larsmeyer.ca), he is a film-maker and a teacher at the Vancouver Film School. He also has become a treasured friend.

Manifesto: The Rhizome Way

2008-07-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

This posting is a piece I developed in conjunction with Lynn Hoffman and Lars Meyer. It is our attempt to prepare what we call a "manifesto" about the "rhizome way". It will be available soon as part of a new website (which is not fully functional at this time): www.rhizomeway.com.

The idea of the Rhizome Way originated with the work of family therapists Christopher Kinman and Lynn Hoffman. As opposed to the “system,” which was a founding metaphor of family therapy, the rhizome is a botanical metaphor allied to life and growth. It offers a triad of images that reveal new understandings of community, business, governance, helping and art.

Rhizome

One of these images is Rhizome – an underground root system or lateral network of branches, tendrils and nodes. The idea of Rhizome connects us to life-giving relationships, community-enhancing values, and vast resources of creativity. It is a key metaphor of the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. In addition, Rhizome mirrors and prefigures the defining invention of our day, which is the Internet.

Gift Exchange

The second image is the Gift Exchange, which affirms that each member of the rhizome has unique gifts or items of value that are offered to the rhizome collective. Gift language invites us into processes which build and create rather than tear down. Both Rhizome and Gift Exchange call for a third image: the Territory of the Alive.

Territories of the Alive

The “Alive” of life does not occur within the boundaries of a single journey or even a shared one. Instead, it emerges at junctions, at confluences, and at crossroads. These intersections are where people’s lives collide, meet and touch; where the Other or Others are encountered, and where serendipitous and unexpected shifts take place. Sometimes in these shifts, the animate touches the inanimate in such a way that both elements become more alive.

The Rhizome Way weaves all these strands together in the service of an unstoppable tide of invention, renewal and hope.

Make a Mistake, but Please... Make it Twice (at Least)

2008-07-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

Pictures taken in Porto, Portugal

We are made with opposable thumbs -- we can grasp, we can make, we can assemble. We have facial and respiratory structures which enable us to form words, which in turn enable us to grasp seemingly impossible, yet-unseen worlds. We are naked and vulnerable, leading us out of sheer necessity to relationship, to the making of friendships, the forming of families, villages, and endless other sustaining connections.

Those processes of life which enabled us to emerge as a species clearly insist that our movements in life will be to create things. We are creators.

We make ideas, technologies; we create concepts and contraptions; we tie together thoughts and things, we form connections; we create machines, that is, we create things which create things, which in turn create other things; we make difficulties, we create answers; we create friendship, we form families; we make hate, we make love; we create worlds, innumerable possible worlds.

But, every creation is a crap-shoot. Most attempts at creating don’t result in desirable outcomes. For one of the things we make, one of the key things we make is the mistake. We are able to create meaningful things because we persist, pure trial and error (with plenty of error) not because we knew how to get it right in the first place.

This is not just people who operate by trial and error. Think of nature, most all of nature. Think of the dandelion, hundreds of seeds which drift away to “unproductive” futures – most every dandelion seed fails to produce a future dandelion. Nature repeatedly builds mistakes – multitudes of mistakes – into the essential processes of life. Think of sperm: millions are produced yet typically only one has the luck of fertilizing the egg, and usually even that one doesn’t make it. Sex is the classic example of the non-efficient, apparent wastefulness of nature. The production processes of nature are built upon the very requirement of mistakes, and mistakes by the bushel-full.

But, just for a moment let’s leave what we consider as nature and let’s enter human realms, social realities which are plainly impossible for us to overlook. For in this societal plane questions emerge. For example...

Why do we feel such shame these days when we make a mistake?

Why does our very fear of making mistakes so impede us from even initiating creative attempts?

Many reasons, I’m sure, but let me offer one in particular.

We have developed systems of education which inform us that mistakes are not only undesirable they should be responded to with strict punitive measures. We pass or fail on the basis of the number of mistakes we are able to prevent. Science class asks us to perform an experiment, not so we might find ourselves surprised at the results, but so we can learn the necessity of doing it right, doing it flawlessly, evading mistakes from the very first go at it. Actions of judgment are rigidly directed toward the elimination of mistakes. Repeatedly and overwhelmingly education teaches us that mistakes are that enemy which must be evaded or destroyed at all costs.

We learn over and over again the supposed destructive nature of mistakes, and we learn this in so many contexts -- workplace, media, family, and many other relationships.

Yet the idea that mistakes are to be evaded is evolutionary nonsense -- against the very flows of the alive! The eradication of the mistake is a concept destined to destroy the life-given, and life-sustaining impulse to create.

What can we do?

Through this march of trial and error (more accurately -- trials and errors) we call “creation” let’s go out of the way to celebrate those things which we produce, let’s affirm each others’ creative productions. At the same time let’s honour our mutual evolutionary legacies which enables us to create in the first place -- for perhaps never before in history have we needed a splurge of abundant and diverse creative endeavours as we do now.

Simply put... let’s create, and in the process let’s make mistakes -- let’s make many of them.

From System to Rhizome: A Change in the “Creating Concept”

2008-07-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

The images in this posting are all of rhizome organisms

Guest Posting: by Lynn Hoffman

I have said before that I write according to the rain barrel principle. About every ten years, I find that my rain barrel is full, and I begin to think about putting its contents into a book of stories. The beauty of this is that I don’t have to write in a formal way, but as though I were telling a friend about a trip I have taken. And there is much that I am excited about. For one thing, my colleague Chris Kinman and I have begun to use a new master metaphor for the fields of social betterment. Taking inspiration from the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari , we propose a shift from the System metaphor for human services to a Rhizome metaphor. Unlike the System, which derives from engineering and technology, the Rhizome idea offers a botanical image, tied to the natural world and having an affinity with human themes and ventures.

“Rhizome” also allows us to escape from a common linguistic trap. As Harry Goolishian and Harlene Anderson reminded us, as long as you use terms like “systems” or “structures” to describe social data, you become prey to the illusion that such units can be seen as “functional” or “dysfunctional.” Having created a “problem,” the next step is to look for a solution. This is the unhappy result of the structuralist, or noun-based, worldview that has gripped our descriptions of society’s troubles for the past few centuries. We use the phrase “Terrorists” (bad) as opposed to “War Against Terror” (good), in the same way that we say “dysfunctional” family (bad), “functional” family (good). Then we are on the slippery slope of having to “do something” about it.

In their critique of helper bureaucracies, Deleuze and Guattari compare the Rhizome to the Tree. The Rhizome has no up or down but lives in an eternal middle. It is famous for the way it repeats itself. All it does is to put out an underground root or aerial shoot and it re-appears in another place. Some rhizomes are viewed as pests, like crabgrass, others are valued like iris or daffodils, but they are hard to kill. Stamped out in one yard, they just sprout up in another. They continually create new “plateaus” or “assemblages,” as Deleuze and Guattari put it, from an inexhaustible horn of plenty.

By contrast, the Tree presents itself as a standing hierarchy: root, trunk, branch and crown. To aid in our understanding of expert social systems, Deleuze and Guattari have coined the word “arborescence,” which they believe describes the top-down nature of the human services industries that practitioners have to conform to. By contrast, the rhizome is a counteracting concept that brings a host of welcome notions with it: the importance of the Net and Net-making as opposed to the individual and her normative trajectory; the idea of Plateaus and Assemblages as opposed to structures and units; the idea of the “Body Without Organs” (the non-medical body); the idea of Exchanging Gifts instead of Problem-Solving; and the emphasis on Bounty and Abundance rather than Deficit and Lack.

Finally, there is a contested concept: the “Nomad War Machine.” This idea comes like a shock to people who put a high value on collaboration and find negative labels pejorative, and yet answers the need for some way to describe and honor the vital spirits of rebellion, revolution and reform.

Before going on with my story, I should mention that the term “Creating Concept” was used by Deleuze and Guattari to describe the ruling metaphor that heralds the appearance of a new domain. Clearly, they felt that the Rhizome did that for the emerging world they were dreaming into being.

By Lynn Hoffman

Look at Photographs... Not Movies...

2008-07-06T20:18:00.000-07:00

A short poem...

Look at photographs

Not movies

Revel in words

Not stories

Think a thought

Not a theory

See a smile

Ignore goodness

Make people laugh

Forget humour

Read a Walt Whitman poem

(Oh yes... make sure to read it aloud!)

And throw away that fucking commentary

This poem plays with a series of affirmations and negations. Please... don't take the negations too seriously!

A Population Does Not Make a Community...

2008-07-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Photos of collaborative artwork spearheaded by Sara London, of Mexico City.

Have you ever met a population?

Have you ever engaged in a conversation with, had an argument with, made-love to a population?

Research in the social and the biological sciences has a perpetual interest in studying populations. Every day on the TV and in the newspapers you hear about research done on populations – could be studies about men, women, various minorities; or maybe studies about people within certain income brackets or who are connected to types of workplace -- the various ways to distinguish populations is endless.

Yet, generally speaking, populations are not things we encounter in daily lives, they are academic distinctions, they are distinctions which usually have to be imposed upon life. Albeit, there may be some value in distinguishing such populations, in seeing what learnings can be gained from such distinctions, but still the distinctions are artificial, they are removed from life as it is lived. We do not meet populations. We do not engage in conversations with populations. We cannot make-love to a population. We can distinguish a population, we can take action upon a population in academic ways, but we cannot truly encounter one.

Even the most basic of distinctions such as male/female describes a combination which can only, in lived life, exist together. Concepts such as men and women, boys and girls cannot make any sense separate from each other. And not only must the two parts of the male/female distinction be acknowledged together, such conjoined distinctions can only be seen within a vast network of other distinctions and parts. Male/female only exists in worlds which might also require children, houses, jobs, money, cars, animals; it also requires things such as night and day, seasons, food, air, water, soil; and it also necessitates such things as love, hate, sex, health, illness, and on and on...

However, there is a politics of populations which must be taken account of. Population distinctions take on certain political currency. People are supposed to identify themselves as belonging to a population. In fact, community is often identified with populations.

However, I argue that community is only possible because of a vast network inclusive of much diversity. Difference, not the singularity of population, is the basis from which community is able to emerge. And perhaps here comes to light one valuable outcome, one possibility which appears from the act of distinguishing populations – we are able to use these distinctions to draw out the full richness of that which we consider to be community. For community, therefore, is not made up of single populations but of a vast diversity which includes the possibilities of men and women, children and the elderly, gay, straight, transgendered, bisexual, Christians and Sikhs, atheists and religious zealots, poor and rich, healthy and ill, etc. The population distinctions only seem to approach the realm of the alive when they are recombined, brought back together into a communal place, amidst rhizome connections, thereby assisting in the creation of that untidy and boundary-less coherence we call community.

The distinctions which interest me, however, are not the institutionalized ones, not those which have been heavily politicized, but those which are created amidst our daily interactions in life, those which appear as people interact with each other, make room for one another. These are distinctions which, ironically, enable the individual to emerge into life; that is a person with numerous unique dimensions, shifting and flowing dimensions, marking spaces in the alive which have never appeared before, and will never appear before. A person is born. A person we can meet, we can talk with, we can argue with, we might even make-love to. This person comes into life amidst the endless distinctions which the communal realm can make. Through such a process an individual is created, a person emerges who comes once into this world, and will never, ever be able to return again.

Within the alive, a rhizome muddle comes to the fore, and it is within and because of such a chaotic jumble that the very idea of community becomes even possible.

Tom Andersen's Dog

2008-06-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

By the way, this is not Tom Anderson's dog... just my dog.

I remember hearing the late Tom Andersen (Norwegian psychiatrist, family therapist pioneer) say the following words at the beginning of his presentations.

Get a dog

Let the dog teach you
How to gently
Stroke it

What rich words! Tom would go on to discuss his own thinking in regards to this saying. He talked about a professional work where our very interactions with the people we are working with inform us as to what our own actions might be. We perhaps gain little from our previous instruction – at least when it comes to the understanding we need for our engagement with the people before us. We certainly don’t learn because we have become experts on human behaviour, not even because we have been informed about social justice and human rights. Even the best intentioned of our learnings can interrupt the beauty and power of our joint work with those human lives, bodies and relationships we are in interaction with. According to Tom we learn what to do as we are looking and listening from the midst of our own interactions with those we are in conversation with. We always learn from the middle, and certainly not from a place prior.

The people Tom was in conversation with -- they taught him. And, those we are interacting with must also always teach us.

But Tom’s words say so much more. They talk not just about work, they talk about life.

After I would hear Tom’s words about getting a dog, I would find myself wishing that he would stop right there, that he would say no more!

For -- in something akin to the spirit of a Nietzsche aphorism, or perhaps in accordance with the sensualism of a Walt Whitman poem -- in these few words Tom speaks... and we all listen.

And Tom repeats to us...

Get a dog

Let the dog teach you
How to gently
Stroke it

Have You Seen...

2008-06-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the beauty
In a swarm of gnats
The late afternoon light
Transforms them
Into a universe of dancing stars

Have you seen such utter loveliness
Just off to the side
Beneath the feet
Outside of the glare
Of our prejudices

“Look, don’t think...”

Eyes, Hands and Words

2008-06-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

The Work of Harlene Anderson

I wish to focus within this posting upon a particular person, one who I have come to deeply admire and respect, and one who over the last couple of years I have also come to call my friend.

Her name is Harlene Anderson.

Harlene is known for her pioneering work in the family therapy field, beginning many years ago with her friend and colleague, Harry Goolishian. But, in this posting my purpose is not to reiterate Harlene’s many accomplishments in family therapy and beyond -- though it would be a privilege and a delight to do that. I encourage the readers to learn of Harlene’s work, beginning with her own website, http://www.harleneanderson.org/. And of course one must read the many books and articles she has authored.

But here I wish to talk of Harlene as I see her, as I experience her in her life and work. These are my own words.

Eyes

Harlene talks much about collaboration. She writes and speaks of the Collaborative Therapies. But this collaboration is much more than words.

For one, this collaboration is an inescapable impulse evident in the eyes – and it appears in Harlene’s eyes. Connections merge into life as eyes speak and as eyes meet. Such engagements of eyes, through words unspoken, or perhaps with words, but words which dance with the unspoken, pull together many lines of community and awaken a commonwealth of collaborative becomings.

There is an unpreventable honesty in such collaborations. In this vein, it seems that Harlene’s eyes are not particularly well equipped in the ways of deception, for collaboration refuses to hide, appearing even in the silences. One could be deaf in Harlene’s presence and the movements of collaboration would still be most evident, there is no keeping it secret, it would repeatedly appear in every passage of her eyes.

Keeping close to the spirit of collaboration, Harlene knows it’s not just about her eyes; it’s about many eyes, rhizome lines connecting between looks. Not the look of the gaze as described by Foucault, but relations between countless eyes, circulating care, respect, love, the humour of living, the delights of friendship. Harlene’s eyes, and her words, become a one-among-many, one net of influences joining with a world of influences, small and large, near and distant. And, is this not the very work she repeatedly talks of, and the very joy which she cannot hide?

A democratic work! Harlene becomes a one amidst many communal becomings, but a one with influence, along with the rest of us. An irony appears here, for Harlene has often been uncomfortable with the talk of the political within our work, but in a way her own work becomes, and she becomes with her work, a certain becoming-democracy. Joining in this democratic impulse is a host of dear friends, including, of course, Lynn Hoffman and the late Tom Anderson.

Hands

It is not that Harlene talks much of hands; it’s that I see hands – moving, working, touching -- within Harlene’s ongoing interactions. Such hands are in movement upon the front page of her website. She invites people to be “inquisitive, creative, authentic, and open to the ever-present possibilities for newness in others--and in themselves.” This is a call to create, to make something specific -- to repeatedly produce ways whereby we are able to open ourselves and others to the plenitudes of life and newness.

This is a call for hands creating together. Watch what happens at those events she helps organize. A buzz of making occurs, in the meetings and out of the meetings. Many things – thoughts, relations, joys and other gifts – created together. I think that for Harlene the hands of creation and the language of collaboration are one and the same thing.

Words

We return to words. Many years ago Harlene and Harry Goolishian engaged in their own creating, and they called what they produced, Collaborative Language Systems. The landscape of therapy was forever altered. Harlene persists in talking about the way we talk together, particularly about the way professionals talk within their work. But as I watch Harlene she continually endeavours to create words, particular kinds of words – words which return. That is words returning to the movements of life, to the curiosity, the creativity, the newness and hope that life calls forth.

I invite you to read Harlene Anderson... encounter the creations and the many processes of creations she unravels. For words continue to meet eyes and hands upon her pages.

Pure Immanence

2008-06-12T02:35:00.000-07:00

Shortly before his death, the philosopher Deleuze wrote about what he called "pure immanence". It was the last piece he ever wrote. A daring, and some would say naive move, to entertain an idea such as purity in a cold-hearted intellectual world. It is much easier to tear apart something like purity, to deny it, to destroy it with cheap and easy questions. And immanence! Who talks of immanence these days? And why bother? Why not tackle the hard questions? Relevant questions such as the environment, gender; questions of justice, of governance, of war and peace. Why, at that late date in his life, did Deleuze not put his mind to such grand and contemporary issues?

But think of Deleuze, the man, for just a minute.

Beginning with the most stark of facts -- he took his own life. Deleuze suffered from an illness that was killing him. Rather than continue with his suffering, at the time of his own choosing, on his own terms, he ended his life. Just weeks before, at the time of his last writing, Deleuze was all-too aware of the idea of immanence -- the immanence of his own death, the immanence of suffering. Yet, at that time, when he wrote of immanence, he wrote of it as if it were life.

Derrida called Deleuze the "thinker of the event," I consider him a "thinker of life." His readings of Spinoza, of Hume, Berkley, Nietzsche, Foucault, of so many, continually brought forth a life which is lived, life in the midst of living. A live beyond words, beyond descriptions, beyond labels. A life whose very "immanence" could never be reduced by any identity, any narrative, any essence.

Deleuze often in his writing evoked the idea of life, Alive, of immanence, but, in these last words he wrote he allowed the idea to emerge through two particular images.

First of all, there was this character which Charles Dickens created. A miserable, nasty old man, who pushed every caring soul away. Yet, when this man was upon the brink of death, a community emerged, a people gathered around, and whatever could be done to save this man's life was quickly and eagerly done. At that particular moment, poised between life and death, that man's identity, his history meant nothing. However, in the midst of that very moment the man's life came to mean everything.

Secondly, Deleuze talked of small children. I cannot recall Deleuze ever discussing small children before in his writings, but in those last days this is precisely what he did. He particularly noted their play and their faces. He spoke with adoring words, tender words, words of love. A dying man gazing into the eyes of childhood. No, no... not childhood, into the eyes of a child. And there he saw what he called "pure power" and "bliss." It was life, simple unadulterated life, lived in a moment, all focus upon that moment. He saw joy -- beautiful joy.

These two images, the dying old man, the eyes of a child, brought alive for Deleuze the idea of pure immanence.

Yet, this immanence, this life, is not a rare thing. It is everywhere around us. But one must pay attention, one must, as Wittgenstein said, "look, don't think." For pure immanence is not understood, it cannot be claimed in language, rather it is felt, one brushes-up against it. In the realm of language one can play with it, invite it, talk of it in fleeting terms, but one can never approach its definition, never truly know it.

My cat has just joined me -- she sits upon my desk. It's in the eyes... between her eyes and mine. She looks directly into my eyes then she calmly closes her own as only a cat is able to do. In that moment a bliss breaks into the day, just as it did when Deleuze looked into the eyes of a child, just as it did as he watched the child in her play... A gentle explosion of bliss.

Pure immanence -- not evasive and endangered, no unattainable perfectionism, as some may think, but contagious, even explosive, and always close to hand.

And our words... they are anything but useless. They can call, invite, they can evoke and invoke. Oh yes, yes, and best of all, words can sing. I venture to guess that one day some anthropologist, or perhaps a biologist, will come to the conclusion that the spoken word is simply an evolution of the lyrical word -- the singing of song came first! Pure immanence... and the voice of song.

As for life, it comes eagerly. But, whether the old man on his death bed, whether the eyes of the child, whether the bliss of a cat, one thing repeatedly emerges -- life always comes, and only comes in the moment of its living.

Becomings

2008-06-03T00:07:00.000-07:00

Aphorisms about the Idea of Becomings

While I was particularly inspired by Deleuze, Nietzsche and Derrida in my thinking here, I wish to talk of these ideas more in the first-person-singular.

Perhaps there is no other way to write other than first-person-singular.

Becomings I - Nature and the Alive

I wish to talk of Becomings rather than change.

I wish to talk of Becomings as moving toward the Alive, moving toward beauty, hope, connection and other gifts of life.

I wish to talk of Becomings as connected to the becomings of nature.

I wish to see our human worlds as indistinct from nature.

I wish to see our Becomings as sharing much in common with the constant Becomings emerging within the grass, the rivers, the trees, amidst the lives of birds, fish, insects.

We know, of course, that the language of nature can itself invite separations – nature/culture; natural/artificial; natural/human -- distinctions that can set the stage for regimes of violations and violences. Yet, we still wish to talk of nature. We still wish to see ourselves connected to those vast plateaus wherein all life moves.

Becomings II - Community & Difference

The relationship between Becoming Community and Becoming Bodies is a complicated one.

I put forward that community is built upon difference, yet it is often imagened as built upon unity. It seems to me that unity can never Become at all -- it is an illusion of Becoming. The creation of unity takes something like force and power, submission and subjugation -- such attributes are antithetical to Community and to Becomings. Force and power are able to create impossible-to-realize hopes and dreams of unity, they can create an image of something that may appear like unity, but they cannot create unity, and they cannot create community.

Only difference can truly Become in these social worlds -- and the Becoming of community is built upon such difference. We can approach each other to understand, to differ, to be surprised, but we can never approach each other for the purpose of unification. Life, joy, love -- all such communal treasures, only come into life because of the differences which inevitable emerge, and because of the response we offer to such differences -- not through any illusion of sameness.

Time to discard the intensity of the alliance between difference and conflict. While the two can certainly be found together, difference also pairs up with curiosity, admiration, attraction, desire, love, humour, and on and on... The very biological notion of sexuality is built upon the necessity of difference.

Becomings III - Negations & Affirmations

These Becomings which we experience do not emerge from negation processes.

The ideas of negation and affirmation are meaningless unless connected to something of importance. Negation does not stand on its own -- we connect it to the idea of the Alve. Negation means a great deal when it is seen as the negation of things living. The same with affirmation. Affirmation on its own could stand for many things -- it could even stand for the affirmation of destruction. However, we are referring to it as the affirmation of the Alive. Affirmations of the movements of life.

Now, clearly, negations surround us. Out of force of habit, we repeatedly participate in them. Negations are ingrained in our thought. They seem integral to the ways of our institutions.

We are taught that change emerges because we face up to negations. We are to learn what is wrong with us, we acknowledge what is wrong with us, and then we change based on such learnings.

However, in life, and in my work with people, I see very little of this. Negations are far more likely to create further reactive negations in response -- negations triggering more and more rounds of negations. Also they are likely to create a depressive paralysis, an immobility that breeds further depressive negations.

There seems to be a powerful tie between those experiences we see as depression and worlds dominated by processes of negations. Reactive and negative forces tend to glorify depression. These forces inform us that it is good to bear the burdens of one's errors, to acknowledge the depths of one's sins – this is often thought of as being responsible.

This is the age–old tradition of sin/redemption. In this tradition our relations to the natural world swarming around us are condemned. Such connections were historically considered "pagan," and therefore undesirable. In the same way we are now informed of our sinfulness, of our transgressions against, not imminent forces surrounding us in nature, but forces transcendent to nature, forces informed by higher powers. We are also informed of the requisite transcendent mechanisms which are able to redeem us. People are thereby pulled away from nature, and from the forces of life, and become dependent upon the transcendent worlds of redemption inherent within our human institutions.

Thought becomes one of the tools of transcendence. Thought, in this manner, must not emerge from relation to nature, or relation to the lives of people, rather thought comes to bear upon us as an authority which must be accepted, as a statement of truth, from a separate and transcendent plane, which directs and forms our thinking. All of this, outside of our relations to life with nature and people.

Thought is not just used this way by religious authorities, it is used by most institutional authorities, including education, the workplaces, government, the media, special interest groups, etc. It is a tradition handed down to modern institutions from our religious roots. In this view, thought is owned, it is a possession of an established order, it is not something which comes from and returns to our living engagements.

Yet, inspite of such influences, thought, as it is connected to a living and responsive world, is very much alive. It is clearly evident in much of our everyday relations and interactions. If we look, it is there in abundance.

Becomings IV - Never Fixed... Always Flowing

We can dare to put aside such influences of negation. We can enter with the grass and the trees, the grasshopper and the crow, those unmanaged and joyful possibilities of Becoming.

We can think of Becomings rather than identity. For we are not an identity, some thing, some finality that can be boxed and wrapped up. We are many Becomings at any possible time, constantly in the midst of various flows. Nothing ever fixed.

Becomings flow through us on the backs of the gifts and goods which move through our worlds. For example, we don't have love, we don't own it, hold it as a thing. Rather, we flow up and toward love, we respond to loves, and we constantly are called to respond again and again. Loves always move. And loves always diverge and multiply.

Becomings are always the result of many hands. But the many hands never create just one thing, and there is never just one perspective, and there is always, always difference. Community is the very recognition of such differences, and it is the connections which come forth from amongst those differences. Becomings always happen in numbers beyond one, and even beyond two.

Becomings are never manipulated through self-help or through the cult of the therapeutic. Becomings are always in some form of friendship with chaos. They flow through us as we immerse ourselves in the chaotic abundance of our communal realms, as we participate in the varied becomings of others.

Thinking Life

2008-05-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

We have been searching for images, metaphors, narratives, the poetic -- and any other pieces of thought or action -- which can approach that sense of the living-of-life, and which can further draw us into the midst of those places where the Alive occurs.

We are also aware that much thought does not emerge from and does not return to those places where life lives and moves.

Instead certain orders, structures are applied to life. Hierarchies are imposed as if they are superior to the actual living-of-life, and, as if removed from the influences of living moments.

Strong and fixed vantage points are thereby created, far removed from the influences of lower or more natural powers. From such positions people and nature are considered more able to be organized and acted upon.

Through image, thought, through word and action we search for ways and means to bring honour to the living of life, the lived life, the Alive. We see this honouring emerging amidst diversities and abundances, through the myriad of possibilities wherein creation and life can meet.

We also see this honouring amidst our rhizome interaction with individuals, families and communities.

Life Persists

2008-05-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

Images from Portugese Tile Art

Break open the sod, leave the soil exposed. In short time all such real estate is occupied -- no agent needed. Such space is invaded with organisms, ready, just waiting for such an event.

They say, of course, "Location, location, location!" But, not so picky here, for in every corner where moisture and nutrient coincide -- abundance encroaches. Life persists....

A potential predator approaches the nest. For both male and female there is no fear, just a purity of insistence, an intensity of desire directed toward the protection of one’s own.

They scold, they dive-bomb, they attack. They cause the intruder to jump and dodge. They put themselves in repetitive jeopardy, all for the sake of their own, their loves. Life persists...

After the tide recedes we turn over a rock, almost every centimetre is territorialized by organisms, often life upon life: oyster upon stone, oyster upon oyster, barnacle upon oyster, crab upon barnacle, starfish upon oyster and barnacle. The crab scurries off to the side.

We turn away from this rock. Soon after a seagull arrives. Bird upon starfish, stealing away, consuming.

Space in the tidal zone is never empty. Even the sand above the high-tide line is made up of calcium, coarse and crushed, yesterday’s crustacean-constructions now sea-worn particles. Laying upon such particles are hominoid sun-worshipers. Life refuses even the resemblance of deficit. Life persists...

Past relations mostly slipped away – what we think of as craziness does that. Typical life expectations now beyond evasive, he pushes the shopping cart, he spits on the sidewalk, he finds a meal where he can, he obtains a fix by any means. Against odds – Life persists...

In tall buildings, amidst grandeur, clear expectations, dressed in grey and white pin-striping, she pursues what she knows she deserves. She looks for money, but more than money. She searches for abstracts like power, authority, recognition. Such desires seem most illusory, yet, through it all, she won’t give up. For, over and over -- Life persists...

Words on Skin

2008-05-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

Why is it that
All too often
Those cold
Violations Isolations
Creep upon souls
When bodies
Try to connect
With Words?

Why is it that
The most tender
Of moments
Those times

Charmed and beautiful
Often feel
Wordless?

Out beyond words
Spectrums of touch
More than

Fingertips and skin

Caressing
In sound
Stroking tapping moving striking
In words

Or perhaps
No

Not words -- voices

Voices
Keeping pace
With feet and breath
Working as tireless hands

And voices
Talking/Writing
Words more than words
Equal to music
Before nouns
Beyond verbs
Antecedents of laughter

Speaking not in the ear
But upon the skin

Now these words
May indicate
Absolutely nothing --
Yet the actor reads from
The New York City phonebook
And his audience is in tears

Laughter not contained

Words
Moist with
Tongue teeth and lips
Lungs and larynx

Words
Ceasing meaning
Yet flowing
Between and among
Vibrating as reeds
Bodies as reeds

Twin reeds
As oboe or bassoon

Producing the unrepeatable moment

With tone, timbre and melody
Emerging through the middle of
(Not the body, but)
Bodies
Many bodies

Before meanings
There was the rhythm of tongues

Persistent hammerings of rhyme

Before understandings
There were polyphonies

A proliferation of dictions

Before truth
There were excesses of voice
Harmonies
Nuance
Dissonance

Before any intellect
Before any ideas or mind
And after
Long past all words

In two twilights of thought

There were
Voices

And there will certainly be

Song
Hymn and mantra

A joyful

Chaotic

Inescapable

Collision of

The Lyric

The Bully -- Part I

2008-05-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

What it Takes to Create a Deficit...

Before continuing with this posting I want to remind people of the previous posting where I recommended a visit to the new blog of a young man named Mat. Please check it out.

http://www.tourettesgiftexchange.blogspot.com/

Now, on with the current posting...

***

Just for a moment, consider a particular young man, we will call him George. George is not a real person, but a made-up character, more an accumulation of many characters. Following are some of the more typical ways by which educators, other professionals, and many others might talk of George.

***

George is often a frustration to both staff and other children. Out on the school playground he is known for confronting and pushing other children, even blackmailing them to get his way. Therefore, it is not difficult to see how George would be frequently described as a bully!

In the classroom George repeatedly does not cooperate with the educational learning objectives, and he can be disruptive to the learning of the other students. He is seen to have some serious difficulties in his ability to learn . Therefore, based on this information, George is not only a bully, he is also learning disabled and behaviourally challenged.

It is reported that George’s family has many difficulties. Apparently his dad can become very angry and even violent, particularly when he has been drinking. His mom seems isolated/removed from school and community. She is perceived as somewhere between just lacking in the realm of parenting skills to a harsher view of being irresponsible in her parenting duties. George often comes to school smelling, clearly not having bathed for some time, and he frequently comes to school with no lunch. So, we now have more information about George – his family is dysfunctional, and George’s difficulties are compounded by a family history of violence, along with alcohol and drug problems.

Many children, and many adults can be described in the manner we have talked of George. But, to talk this way, even to understand a person in this way, there are several disciplines that must be put into practice. I say “disciplines” because these ways of talking and knowing are not part of the usual flow of human experience, they must be learned, and, I argue, it takes something akin to discipline for people to actually think and act in these ways.

What are these disciplines?

1. First of all, time must be understood as something which can be stopped, and must be stopped abruptly on certain occasions. Time must cease to flow -- at our command. A great example is the perceived need to stop time upon George’s bullying behaviour -- to limit our attention to the single episode or episodes which represent such bullying behaviour. Time could be experienced within its varied flows, and, within such flows bullying becomes a glancing moment, along with all other glancing moments. It takes discipline, years of training, to learn NOT to look at life from within these flows. We find ourselves instead learning to understand life by ceasing time at specific and prescribed moments.

2. These stopping points, where we make time cease, are to be used as spaces for the creation of language. Only we are not to see such processes as creation at all, rather we must see them as processes for discovering truth, of assessment, processes for the determination of the correct and accurate language to be applied to this person.

3. Not just any language is applied to George as he is stopped in the bullying moment, it must be a language of deficit. George is to be seen as having certain traits which are given words such as bullying, learning disability, hyperactivity-attention deficit disorder. Many other potential disorders, deficits and spectrums are also available to be applied to George and his family. However, these traits are actually not traits at all, they are indicators of deficit, they are chasms, holes, empty spaces. They connote a tragic emptiness which is to characterize both George, and his family. Deficit is thereby firmly described, it is professionally ascribed, and it is clearly seen to be residing within the very bodies of George, his mom and dad (it takes a curious and bizarre twist in language to see deficit, as if it is not truly an emptiness, but rather, against all the logic of emptiness, it becomes a thing, and as a thing it is therefore able to reside.)

4. Attempts must be made to fill such emptiness. There are typically clear rules about who is able to administer the attempted filling of these deficits. First of all, these people must be professionals. They must be recognized as such, with education and titles. There will be a hierarchy of such professionals, those higher on the hierarchy will determine what type of action must be taken, while those lower on the hierarchy will be designated to implement these actions. Community may be seen as important for the healing, the filling, however, it must be carefully monitored and regulated. The child and family must be protected from the chaos which community is seen to bring. Community is therefore helpful only if is capable of working in accordance with the professional plan.

5. All the above processes must be assigned economic value. Monies are to be attached to each level and each action to be taken. The need for money continues the ongoing process of stopping time, identifying a problem, applying language to describe such a problem, ensuring that the language is firmly within the realm of deficit, and then implementing interventions designed to supposedly fill the deficit.

The ability to learn such disciplines takes numerous forms of training implemented over years. Many of us who work in the therapeutic professions know these discipline processes intimately.

At this point in time George and his family are firmly described with words of deficit, and professionals of various types may be assigned to work with them to assist in filling the described deficits. There is also often a communal overflow in the deficit language, for many others, who are not part of the professional network, will accept the deficit language as truths which knowing persons have placed upon George and his family.

However... I see much hope...

We will explore such hope in an upcoming posting.

Introducing Mat...

2008-05-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

Life With-and-Beyond Tourette's Syndrome

I want you to check out a new blog. It is by a young man I know well. His name is Mat. Mat has been dealing with Tourette's Syndrome his whole life, something which has been a huge challenge for him and his mom. However, as I have grown to know Mat I have learned so much, not just about Tourette's Syndrome, not even just about living with Tourette's Syndrome, but about life... about what it means to be Alive.

Mat's blog just recently opened up. In it he shares his poems, artwork and other thoughts. I hope you take the opportunity to look it over.

http://www.tourettesgiftexchange.blogspot.com/

Creation and Liberation

2008-05-18T00:22:00.000-07:00

Liberation – one of the predominant metaphors of the therapeutic professions, and certainly one of the guiding influences within popular psychology and the self-help movement. A strong religious tradition, a particularly Western religious tradition embedded in biblical narratives such as the Old Testament exodus story. The liberation story insists that there is a “right” party, which is also an oppressed party, held captive through strong and destructive forces and people. In this posting I compare the liberation story with another narrative, one which also carries a religious lineage with it, but one which has not been as influential in the therapeutic culture. That is the tradition of creation. In the worlds of creation various possibilities for life are created -- communally formed or produced. In the liberation tradition oppressive ways of life are identified, fought against, and escaped from.

Why must our liberations so often insist that the only way toward an affirmation of one is through the negation of the other?

Why must our liberations so often insist that there must be a victim and a victimizer... and that this distinction between victim and victimizer be clear and unequivocal?

Why must our liberations so often minimize those many times in our daily lives, and amidst our daily relationships, where we live in ways other than the victim/victimizer roles?

Why must our liberations repeatedly amplify and enhance those very powers which produce cruelty?

Why must our liberations, when they do permit a recognition of our powers, insist that these powers be primarily tied to the victim/victimizer story?

Why must our liberations so often direct and limit our options regarding our sense of identity?

Can we instead tell tales of love, of influence, of laughter, of beautiful and powerful relationships?

Can we tell tales of creation, of together making worlds with joy, with response, with difference, with openings of understanding?

Can we tell tales of mischief, of the creation of Nomad War Machines, of the creation of powers which refuse to be limited by the institutions and influences at play?

Can our creative powers be given precedence over our needs for liberation? For any movement to more loving, connected and responsible worlds must be created, made by hands and minds, feet and voices. Perhaps these acts are more works of creation than they are works of escape. And these are always acts of joint creation -- even when the creative partners might not be easily evident.

Our creative movements are powerful. We must be aware of these powers. These powers have the potential of being destructive just as they can also be loving or funny or hopeful.

When we use our powers to create tales of liberation, can we remember the influence of these creations? When we generate tales of liberation, can we remember that we are creating worlds dominated by victims and victimizers? Can we remember that these created worlds are not simply pure and innocent? They can produce the powers of violence as easily as they can of love.

Can we remember that Nazi-thought necessitated an identification of a certain people as victims? Can we also remember that the creation of Nazi-like worlds also necessitate a victimizer? Arguably, the world’s greatest horrors have been generated through the creation of such victim/victimizer relations.

Could it be that much of the violence we encounter occurs when a person, or a people see themselves as being victimized by another group or another person? Could it be that much of the violence we encounter is an attempt to liberate, an attempt to ensure justice?

This is an invitation to create... to create worlds where many gifts become evident, where they grow, where they spread outside of limited identities, where they create connections , abundant and life-giving connections, rather than separations, boundaries and clarified distinctions.

Talking Alive

2008-05-14T21:07:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche and the Affirmation of Life

I have developed a certain passion for the thinking of Nietzsche in recent years. He appears to me as a thinker who searches for ways to put aside the influences of those structures, institutions, and ideas which impose upon life, remove us from the nuances of movement which life brings. Yet, at the same time, he creates -- he finds ways to join with life in the very act of making, creating -- specifically he creates ways of living and thinking (becoming) which enable life to be met close to its own terms.

Nietzsche repeatedly exceeds the reputation many ascribe to him. For example, he said much more than "God is dead!" Ironically, in spite of his defiance against religion, against all those influences which impose upon life, he spoke most highly of the thoughts in the gospels. He loved the Christ of the gospels. And, he certainly considered himself continuing a line of thinking, a way of engaging with the world which he saw within the words and actions of the New Testament Christ.

A couple of Nietzsche's aphorisms here... simple thoughts about life and relationships which reveal a very different side of Nietzsche to the idol-tossing, table-turning, God-is-dead thinker for which he seems to be most known.

First he speaks of love.

Love and Honour -- Love desires, fear avoids. That is why one cannot be loved and honoured by the same person, at least not at the same time. For he who honours recognises power -- that is to say, he fears it, he is in a state of reverential fear. But love recognises no power, nothing that divides, detaches, superordinates, or subordinates. Because it does not honour them, ambitious people secretly or openly resent being loved.

And Nietzsche talks of the-many, of things akin to abundance...

Philosophically Minded -- We usually endeavour to acquire one attitude of mind, one set of opinions for all situations and events of life -- it is mostly called being philosophically minded. But for the acquisition of knowledge it may be of greater importance not to make ourselves thus uniform, but to hearken to the low voice of the different situations in life; these bring their own opinions with them. We thus take an intelligent interest in the life and nature of many persons by not treating ourselves as rigid, persistent single individuals.

Life lived with love, outside of those things which separate, which make higher or lower, and life lived amidst the multiple -- this was, at least in part, the way life was seen and encountered by Nietzsche. In the nineteenth century, an awakening to the Alive was occurring, what Deleuze more recently called a "radical empiricism," and Nietzsche was a part of this awakening, along with the likes of William Blake, Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Lewis Caroll, Henri Bergson, and of course, many, many others.

The Orchid and the Wasp

2008-05-10T00:04:00.000-07:00

Old Darwin awoke a new world. His book, Origin of Species, is a thing of beauty -- he paid attention to finches and tortoises, all manner of life; he endeavoured to listen, to hear that “roar on the other side of silence” which George Eliot talked of. And a roar it was, an earth shattering roar, toppling many an artifice. He attended to creation, not authorities, and, in turn, he created, he formed thoughts which themselves evolved into an idea which transformed the world.

And yet there were some things he left out of his listening and his creating. But maybe these things were left out because things are always left out, they must be left out. These overlooked things awaited other ears, other creators.

Watch the dandelion in its momentary joining with the butterfly. The dandelion and the butterfly both evolved for just such a moment. Flowering plants and flying insects evolved together. Neither is able to survive without the other, and neither existed prior to the other. They evolved not just cooperatively, but they evolved to require each other, to desire each other in a way that is akin to the sexual. In fact, for the flower, this moment is a sexual act, for it is through the butterfly that the plant is able to be pollinated. The touch of sex for the plant is the connection with the body of the insect. And it is this act, this moment, which insures a continuation of genetic flows through generations.

Darwin seemed to overlook this evolution through attractions. For Darwin it was mostly about competition, survival of the fittest, tooth and fang. However, Gregory Bateson understood this process. He saw many levels of communication not only between like-organisms, but between species. He discussed the relation between the horse’s hooves and the development of the prairie sod – neither can exist without the other. And, Deleuze also saw such a movement through time, only he decried Darwin’s non-evocative “theory” in favour of a “becoming”, something akin to a love-affair, something imbued with poetics. He talked of the orchid and the wasp. He mentioned how every orchid contains within it the shape of a wasp, a form which is inclusive of the flying insect. And the same with the wasp -- the orchid’s form is a very real part of the wasp. Deleuze called these “becomings”, rather than evolution, suggesting a process that necessitates a mutuality, a communal dance of sorts, and it is this shared dance which invites change, movement, rather than simply a force, such as evolution.

The dance becomes complicated, utterly abundant... for, because of such becomings between flower and flying insect, orchid and wasp, most everything we as humans require for nutrition (with the exception of those things which come from the sea) is dependent upon this relation. The relation between insect and the flowering plant ensures that we are able to have grains, seeds, nuts, fruits, green vegetables, root vegetables, tubers. And not just us, but most terrestrial animals are dependent upon this relationship --even the meat we eat requires it, for animal protein forms as a result of consuming the products of such flowering plants.

Evolution is not simply a process of survival of the fittest, of competition. Much of life, terrestrial life, is dependent upon the becomings of something akin to a love-affair between insect and flower. This mutuality between insect and flower created a basis from which birds and mammals were able to enter into the flows of life.

And I ask, is our work with people any different? We certainly don’t become/change/evolve on our own. No, we create spaces within ourselves for the Other, for a multitude of Others. We create room within our lives and our words for the gifts which others bring, and they also do such for us. We repeatedly honour the gifts of the Other by allowing our own lives to be formed to the contours of such gifts. Is it not through such processes whereby we all shift and move? And, while we can certainly experience the movements of life amidst our day-to-day interactions, those most significant changes, do they not also, as in the evolution of flower and insect, occur through generations, many generations?

It appears to me that the becomings of life might often bear much similarity whether the relation is between insect and flower or between person and person, people and people. We always become together. Dare I say -- there is no other way to become.

Celebrating Walt Whitman

2008-05-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

I have been quite taken recently in my revisiting of the American poet, Walt Whitman, in his book, Leaves of Grass. Thought I would share just a few of Whitman’s thoughts.

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
(What is less or more than a touch?)

Logic and sermon never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper in the soul

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars...
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.

The words of the true poem give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behaviour, histories, essays, daily life, and everything else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color’d light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-color’d light,
From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams, effulgently flowing forever.

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know nothing else but miracles...

Mathematics

2008-05-08T20:04:00.001-07:00

When the world appears empty

Just count...

The imperfections on a leaf
Swallows passing over the chimney
Stabs of light on the surface of the creek
Plastic toys on an August beach

Angels in disguise
Devils in details
Heartbeats of fear
Warm breaths of lovemaking

Lawyers in the phonebook
Judges in the newspaper
Politicians speaking their masters’ words
Construction workers who curse at politicians

Reunions at the airport
While on the bus -- eyes which must never meet
In the park -- Hands held, fingers entwined
Parents hovering over toddlers in the playground

Pores in the skin of the cheek
Stones on the side of the road
Weavings in a bed sheet
Vibrations in the purr of a cat

Just count...

Touch

2008-05-05T02:02:00.000-07:00

Encircling and colliding
Around a me and a you

That’s what they do

I learn to love these loves
Love their gifts
Simple in their surprises
Love their impossibilities
Which are never truly revealed
Love their wordlessness
Even their meaninglessness
I learn to love these loves
For they are just a touch
Pure touch
And only touch
A touch across mountains
Across seas
Across rooms
Across differences

Touching
Through the wetness of the sand
Through the crispness of a snowdrift
Through the mystery of the eye
Through the honesty of the hand
Through the excess of a digitizing universe
Dissolving the flesh of words
(For that is what living words can only be)
Into ten million pieces which
Reappear congeal re-form
In unseen places
A resurrection is confirmed
Through fingertips on plastic

Fingertips on fingertips
Lips to cheek
Palms warm and comforting
The touch of a friend
Of a lover
Of no category
A touch undefined
Unfiltered.

A touch of something lost
No completion

The touch of a child’s hand
My own child
Holding my arm in utter confidence
But we know
And dare not say
That one day even this touch will cease
Or will it?
Yes No
I will postpone the tears

But what presumption
I am a fool
Tears arrive
Uninvited
For in this very moment
My arm is still held
The confidence is still palpable
In the memories and dreams of this night

A joy
An indescribable joy
(Joy can never be described)
Touches upon the shoulder
Tenderly like the moon upon the sea
For that is what a touch is
Our loves our joys must be
Can only be

A brushing-over
A lingering

There is no grasping
In such a touch

Nietzsche Talked

2008-05-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche talked of
The strong and the powerful
If only he had not been understood by a reading of history backwards
If only Nazi and Nazi-like establishments had not revoltingly
Tied themselves to such a free and contrary spirit
Such bandits of life
To manipulate the dead

And just a reminder
Nazis (both new and old) don’t read
They can spell (perhaps)
And they can certainly count
But they are not able to read
And they never are able to read Nietzsche

The strong and the powerful for Nietzsche
Bear no resemblance to imperial war-machines
The strong and the powerful
Never lay down to rest

In the safety of nations
Or schools or churches
In idea-regimes
Or systems of clinical precision

Rather
The strong and the powerful
Come into life
Through an incessant walking of the hills
In the common and available
In fields and hedgerows

The strong and the powerful for Nietzsche
Never come to be
In methods and technologies
Never in philosophy
Even less in theology
Never in a forcing of thinking into rigid lines
Never in a forcing of anything

No clarity
Just thought upon thought
Step upon step
Stone upon stone
Aphorism upon aphorism
The strong and the powerful
Appearing through additions
Not reductions

Through a heaping of thought
A squirming of bodies
Through an endless dispersion
Rhizome movements of
Mind and flesh

Perhaps the strong and the powerful
For Nietzsche
Never come to be
Whatsoever

Just a becoming
Forever a becoming

Through shifting and moving
Like summer breeze
Always surfacing on winds
And tides and currents
On the evolutions
And revolutions
Of earth
Of sky and water
Of life

Reading Walt Whitman

2008-05-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Reading Walt Whitman
Pulled close to the sea
To the lonely night sky
To a child who weeps
Quietly weeps
Gently weeps
Who only weeps
When the sea and the sky
Cease their separation
Unavoidably
For a turn of the earth
On a beach at night

A New Work

2008-04-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

I recently read an intriguing new book by Amy Sutherland: What Shamu Taught Me about Life, Love and Marriage. Sutherland talks about the new generation of animal trainers, particularly trainers of exotic animals. She becomes fascinated with how the ideas which motivate these animal trainers are helpful not just to those who work with animals but to all of us as we maneuver throughout the challenges of our own relationships. Her book inspired -- at least in part -- this posting.

***

Perhaps these thought are just too out of the ordinary for the therapeutic professions, and also for many who play the political game on its various levels, but in the field of animal training it seems to be becoming commonplace.

That is (I am using my own words and understandings here):

Our work is not at all one of getting rid of undesirable behaviour, thinking, attitudes, etc.

Our work is about assisting in bringing to life the person’s/animal’s natural desires and vitality into movements of relationship and ways of life which promotes the well being of all concerned.

Our work is not the work of violence which the therapeutic domain has become accustomed to – that of identifying evils which, in turn, must be torn away.

Our work is one of creation. Joint creation! Creating ways of life, being, becoming, relationship which are desirable and enhancing of the Alive within the varied relations which make up our world.

And, regarding the way we engage in this practice:

This work is not primarily a work of words, not even primarily a work of relations between the givers of words. This work is about bodies which communicate, and words are connected to bodies which communicate. The responsivity of bodies to each other within a living moment of mutual engagement is the context whereby desired goods/gifts are brought further into the realm of life.
This work is not primarily about the relationship between a practitioner/trainer and the one she/he is working with. This work is about community, it is about complexity, it is about the responses of many bodies to each other. If we have any influence at all, it is somehow within this communal realm (granted, it is possible that the communal can be awoken and influenced through one-on-one interactions).

The Immanent

2008-04-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Immanent I

The sound of wind in the trees
It sings of Powers

But not the powers of gods and demons
Not the powers of ghosts and soothsayers
No, No, No...

The sound of wind in the trees
Sings of many powers
But what kind of powers does it sing of?
What powers are revealed?

Perhaps
Just perhaps
These powers are
Simply

The sound of wind in the trees

Just that
The power of what it is
The sound of wind in the trees
Nothing more nothing less

And why transcend such a moment?
Why step away from
Remove ourselves
From the crescendos of this fleeting event
From an unrepeatable chorus of ten thousand leaves?

We stand beside such disruptive forces

Hot in the desert

Carrying hurricane and thunderhead

But here, none of that

Just wind in the trees

Every imagined and
Every created power
Vanishes
Becomes nought

In this instant
When the heavens brush
Against a living earth

The Immanent II

The earth never begs for our ear
It cares less whether we bother to hear

But even so there is music

Exquisite rhythms
Harmonies and dissonances
Hymns
Lyrical exchanges
Emerging
Surfacing

But only within
A living exchange
A chance meeting

The song appears only when there is an opening
A breach
An infringement
A possibility

An opening of arms
Of eyes, heart, hands
Of lungs, lips, ears

An opening toward
The turnings of this earth
The endless engagements
Of the Alive

Please
No ghosts no gods
Fend off all that is transcendent
Only such movements as the earth
As Life
Tosses before us
Mindlessly sends our way

The only true spell
Is
This living instant