Replying to LO26319 --
Beloved Co-Learners,
Barry, John, Hanching, Jan, Andrew, Rick and others are pulling at my
heartstrings:
On Fri, 09 Mar 2001 22:43:35 -0500 John Dicus <jdicus@ourfuture.com>
writes:
> This post was sparked by three messages concerning poetry and
> measurement. (snip) Some of you may remember the segment from >"Dead
>Poet's Society" where (snip) {my words: Robin Williams asks a >student to
>read a formal description of how to understand poetry, to >which} Robin
>William's character responded by saying "Excrement!" and
> continues: "We're not laying pipe, we're talking about poetry. (snip)
>This is a battle -- a war. Armies of academics are going forward and
>measuring poetry. (You must) learn to think for your selves again. Learn
>to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and
>language can change the world. (snip) The harder aspects of life are
>necessary to sustain life... but poetry, beauty, romance, love -- these
>are what we live for."
John adds to the dead poet's credo saying:
> I left my corporate-induced sleep a number of years ago, and vowed
>never to get "comfortably numb" again. Now, time and again, things feel
>too intellectual and too hard. Much of the conversation here (and I'm a
>co-conspirator) is "in the head." I want to feel -- to experience --
>more deeply than ever before -- what we can "be" in organizations that
> are alive. Organizations that are packed with people like you and me
> that are fully alive and living life with passion. Maybe that's my
>measure??
Sajeela's comments:
Poetry and measurement...hmmmnnn...beauty and romance .....heart and soul,
passion.....yes ---- well, I do have more then a little to say about all
these things, since I live my life first and foremost by all these
qualities. (Ask Andrew, he'll tell you). AND it so happens that I am a
poet (since I was eight years old), an iconoclastic deconstructionist, a
kaleogenetecist (one who studies beauty as morphology), a feminist, and a
neo-accountant (one who looks for new ways to define measures of Beauty;
creating a Beautiful Bottom [:)] ....Line, if you will.)
I certainly agree with Williams' character's Dead Poet reaction and
disgust (is it this list serve that has been throwing those two ideas
around together?) to some linguistically impoverished formal notion about
how to appreciate poetry. Excrement indeed! Before I comment further I'd
like readers to take in Hanching's post and then I'll continue to comment
afterwards:
> "How about a saying by Confucius, 'Education begins with poetry, is
> strengthened through proper conduct and consummated through music.'"
Sajeela's comment:
How utterly beautiful. Hanching "gets it" even as Confucius "gets it".
Poetry ---- a means of learning to behave differently, and then a final
paradigmatic thrust into environmental and ethno-relativity, into complex
systemic whole brained perception through musical induction. Wow! What a
turn on.
This definitely starts to qualify as my definition of "Aesthetic
Intervention"(TM) that brings on what I have called "Tertiary Wisdom"
(Ramsey, 1997), where through our entire sensate structure we come into
absolute show-stopping fully awake awareness ---- and fall in love ---
with life, with who we are, with learning. To sense things and be
affected; indeed to be sensual - - - this is at the energetic core of an
Aesthetic Intervention. This is the next step beyond second loop learning.
And I believe it is a next wave, socially speaking.
Yes, John, I agree, our words and language can indeed change the world.
AND we must also be in our bodies to do that. And this is the feminist in
me speaking out loud and clear now. In re-feminizing the workplace we must
be sensual, sensate passionate beings. We must re-language in a way that
takes us out of our heads. Because you are right about being in the head
too much --- for me it signals anesthetizing ---- going numb or being
unconscious ---- and this is what is reinforced unwittingly more often
then not by a culture that ceases to be aware of itself as a complex
interrelating entity.
Thus we do all our accounting from the neck up, and fail to measure with
our whole beings. And so organizations are sleeping giants who must be
awakened to their forgotten ability to learn by other means then just
logical, linear means. I think Rick (our host) touched on this when he
alluded to Flow in a post some weeks ago ---- and I got all excited;
passionate ---- yes!
Last but not least, may I say that I really love the way Jan plays with
language (well and Andrew too, for that matter) when she begins her posts
with HelLO-ers and LO-vers. Heart and soul. Oh yes, one more indulgence
--- Andrew, man of many questions, you asked John "are we in this
passionate human race;-) to become emptied or filled?". Reminds me of a
poem I wrote a while back called "Divine Longing":
I find you just past
the curtain.
I lie next to you.
My body forms a cup.
I say to you "fill it up."
I am always making a
container for us.
It remains empty.
Or does it?
SMRİ1998
Evening clocks ticking,
Sajeela
Sajeela Moskowitz Ramsey
OD Specialist/Culture Generalist
2432 Villanova Drive/Vienna, VA. 22180
703 573 7050/ SajeelaCore @Juno.com
--Sajeela M ramsey <sajeelacore@juno.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.