Knitting
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/24/2015 - 18:40She learned to knit
from her older sisters,
it was something they could do together
on cold winter nights.
Knit two, pearl one
One by one they left home
and soon she was knitting baby blankets
for nieces and nephews.
Then her sisters starting knitting
baby blankets
for her.
At family gatherings
they would knit
and talk about
their children.
At the church sewing circle
she would share tea rings with friends
gossip
and make scarves for orphans.
Life was good.
Knit one, pearl two.
When her father died,
(Parkinson’s)
followed soon after
by her mom
(a broken heart)
knitting kept her centered
peaceful,
rarely dropping a stich.
It was harder when her husband left
Knit two, drop one.
Eventually,
she started knitting baby blankets again
for her grandchildren.
They took longer than they used to
but still came out well.
Then there were the wakes
for her friends from the sewing circle.
The survivors would still knit
as they remembered the early years,
but without as much vigor.
Knit one, drop two.
Her hands were slowing down,
less stable,
and she started dropping
more stitches.
There were days
when she’d rip out
more
than she knitted.
The doctor said it was
essential tremors,
not Parkinson’s.
It relieved her,
but the knitting
still became harder.
Her sisters were now gone
So were her friends
from the sewing circle.
Knitting became solitary.
It became frustrating,
no longer the peaceful
meditation
it had once been.
Finally,
she put down
her knitting needles.
A very short blog post
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/23/2015 - 22:14It has been a very busy day, choir practice, chores around the house, picking Fiona up from one party heading out to another party. I’m finally done and trying to write. Any poetry or longer blog posts will have to wait until I have more time, and I’m not sure when that’s going to be.
#Rhizo15 Online Associative Poetry
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/22/2015 - 21:44When I was younger and it was my turn to put the children to bed, I would grab a few poetry anthologies to read to them. I would typically start off with one poem, and then moved to another poem that was somehow connected to the first, at least in my own mind.
Years later, I would go to ‘social dreaming matrices’ where people would share dreams and associations they had to the dreams. It was a challenge to resist the urge to interpret the dreams and instead to just share associations and observations about these associations.
Now that our youngest daughter is now a teenager, we have a new activity. We will sit around the dining room table and have a ‘riff off’. One person would play a song, typically from YouTube or Spotify on one electronic device or another. The next person would then play a song related to the first, and we would go around taking turns associating one song to the previous.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about this with poetry, combining the childhood reading of poetry with the free association on dreams or music, free associating from one poem to the next in an online community.
It seems to fit nicely with the whole rhizomatic learning event I’ve been participating in and it might be a fun thing to try there. I will share this post in the Practical Discussion group on Facebook. For that group, a starting poem could be The #Rhizo15 Artifact poem I wrote for this week. One person could share a poem they associate to this poem, and then others could share poems they associate with each subsequent poem. If they really like the idea, they could start a similar rhizomatic sharing of a poem with associations in other places, which could potentially serve to start other associative poem sharing in a fractal manner.
I will also probably start a similar thread on my own Facebook page and see if either of these take off.
Incomplete Thoughts
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/21/2015 - 21:38It’s been one of those days, one of those weeks, too much going on. This morning, I spoke with Mairead about her resume as she looks at what she does next in Japan. It was a lively discussion with lots of things to write about. Kim’s phone died so she got a new one, as well as a tablet. They both need configuring. I’ve spent a little time doing this configuration.
Then, I stopped to try and get some of my daily writing done. It turns out my web server crashed, so I needed to fix that.
One my computer, I have around 80 tabs and windows open. They are all different projects or ideas partway completed. I have other ideas percolating in my mind. Yet any one of them would take a while to formulate into a blog post.
Then, there is the pile of books next to my bed that I’m reading bits and pieces of.
Now, the server is up, Fiona is using the tablet with a few apps installed. Kim’s phone is updating itself, and I’m finally writing. Rhizomatic learning and twentieth century Japanese gender studies. Upgrading to Android 5.0. Configuring an LG tablet, and making phone calls via Google Hangouts. Stars using their star power for good, like Alicia Keyes or Jared Padalecki. The Fandom of Jesus Christ.
The #Rhizo15 Artifact
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/20/2015 - 21:03We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Many paths converged
(each path a learning subjective)
out of the directed graph
of carefully measured online posts;
the content in the creators,
the content in the community,
arriving back at the initial thoughts
as foretold by Eliot
and foreshadowed by Joyce.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.
Along the way
we experience
the goddess
the temptress
the father,
we kill the Buddha
and get of the idea
of ‘dave’.
The ultimate boon?
An artifact?
A map?
L’objet petit a?
Perhaps an amulet
or talisman
that can assist the next hero
in their journey.
