May 2006
I have just come out of a stretch of intense preparation for the upcoming conversations at the Kanankil Institute, in Merida, Mexico. I am tired! This is a good tired, the same welcome 'tired' I feel after planting gardens, or after finishing an invigorating run. I have not yet left town, and yet, it is as though I have traveled in these last weeks, and have now returned home to my life as I left it.
My preparation took me to some wonderful places. One significant shift for me involves an increasing doubt regarding the orderly coherence of narrative genres of speech. I am becoming more curious about the unsaid that is a silent accompaniment with every story. To tell a story is to simultaneously edit - I can see this more clearly now... And I can see now too, that even an evocative and artful telling can achieve a closing down of space... like a monologue... or a room with no doors...
Still a little nostalgic about stories, I wonder about narrative styles that enable what Wittgenstein described as "perspicuous representation" - the spacious kind of understanding that consists of seeing connections... or of sensing, or feeling, or playing within and between connections... stories as metaphors instead of stories as lessons? And I wondered if my blog stories which seemed to have developed a 'from-change-to-stability' predictability, could make room for the voicing of other patterns?
In my anticipation of our upcoming conversations in Mexico, I find myself now seemingly between words - between the texts and voices that have been my company in the last weeks, and the words that I will find together with colleagues at Kanankil... the space between words already spoken and those not yet said. In this new vibrant silence I am eagerly waiting... Rocio, Paco, Dora and Maricarmen - we will soon talk together, face to face!
To those of you who are soon to be at the International Summer Institute with Harlene, I send early hugs and wishes for safe travels. We will have a wonderful week! To those of you who will be there 'in spirit' only, we will remember you, and miss your presences, and hope to be with you before too long.
My preparation took me to some wonderful places. One significant shift for me involves an increasing doubt regarding the orderly coherence of narrative genres of speech. I am becoming more curious about the unsaid that is a silent accompaniment with every story. To tell a story is to simultaneously edit - I can see this more clearly now... And I can see now too, that even an evocative and artful telling can achieve a closing down of space... like a monologue... or a room with no doors...
Still a little nostalgic about stories, I wonder about narrative styles that enable what Wittgenstein described as "perspicuous representation" - the spacious kind of understanding that consists of seeing connections... or of sensing, or feeling, or playing within and between connections... stories as metaphors instead of stories as lessons? And I wondered if my blog stories which seemed to have developed a 'from-change-to-stability' predictability, could make room for the voicing of other patterns?
In my anticipation of our upcoming conversations in Mexico, I find myself now seemingly between words - between the texts and voices that have been my company in the last weeks, and the words that I will find together with colleagues at Kanankil... the space between words already spoken and those not yet said. In this new vibrant silence I am eagerly waiting... Rocio, Paco, Dora and Maricarmen - we will soon talk together, face to face!
To those of you who are soon to be at the International Summer Institute with Harlene, I send early hugs and wishes for safe travels. We will have a wonderful week! To those of you who will be there 'in spirit' only, we will remember you, and miss your presences, and hope to be with you before too long.
posted by Janice DeFehr at 4:01 pop.
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