Tags
2013, 5*, appearance, breath, career, communication, decades, dialectic, lungs, managerialism, neglect, no voice, offering, plastic, professionalism, rights, teaching, toxic
just saying, is all VIII:
and after all
I had something to offer
to the very fibre and vessel of teaching
that was ‘hoff’-
ishly and consistently denied the right to enter
that holy dialectic, it was
sincere and
credible and beneath
neglect, while keeping up toxic appearences
of communication,
thriving in a sealed plastic bag …
… in which I have taken breath for decades
my lungs
now shot through, unable to
speak but still reliant on a borderline-
psychotic professionalism wasting me to the bone
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
breath wormhole: stone
career & managerialism wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical
communication wormhole: reprieve
professionalism & teaching wormhole: wakeoutofadream
mlewisredford 
Curious what ‘hoff’-ishly references (or onomatopeia). I instantly though of Douglas Hofstadter, which might be a nice complement/ idea stream with some of your work; suspect you haven’t actually read him. Some vague notion the syllable appears in either Winnie the Pooh or Tao of Pooh somewhere. David Hasslehoff crossed my mind in 2nd reading, but seems unlikely to fit. (The Hoff is a pretty empty reference to me; never watched Baywatch, & slightly before my time; have picked up vague echoes though)
With reference to ‘psychotic’, it’s interesting; leaving off whether borderline is adjectival or psychiatric sense => psychotic is thrown around by people for all kinds of functions ( Fun Fact: ‘psychopath’ was actually struck from the DSM many years ago due to media and popular conflations and indiscriminate usage). Checked it, and your use is entirely compatible with Merriam-Webster. But when I see ‘professionalism’ next I thought ‘ah, OCD might be more precise’. Unhinged might modifier for OCD. Having travelled on the psych merry go round a bit myself (all either excess substances or a too sudden stop; not that there was nothing else up, inevitably. The doctors seemed nearly pathologically unable to accept the proximate stimulus and stuck me with a wrong diagnosis). Did not actually check the DSM directly, but one of the three things Wikipedia lists first as keystone characteristics in psychosis is ‘thought disorder’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_disorder
Arguably this is in fact the most important if you ask me. It intermixes quite fluidly with delusions. And ‘loss of touch with reality’ can in cases that maintain a level of safety, communication & object handling skills (on a triple axis, I guess? Essentially nearly all cases) … With less intensive episodes, can be one hell of a squishy ruler to put in even professionals’ hands. Have not rescanned the parameters for delusion, but there are vast numbers of people who hold beliefs others don’t see as remotely connected to truth. Atheists vs Theists may be the largest blocks to consider. Others attach their supernatural ideas to more or less common constructs & word ‘handles’, conspiracy theories and aliens being common, but you can assemble a non-consensus belief from any linked constructs (word ‘nets’ + other components in memory and experience).
The degree of constancy and perception of the thoughts as being impelled from within or without or self directed are all factors useful in grasping the way it goes. Meanwhile, many people, I presume, are driven by unhinged thoughts of heaven&hell , while many others settle into a more or less stable acceptance of themselves in peace with their outlandish articles of faith…
Also important to note, psychosis is normally thought of as a temporary condition, not a chronic thing (plenty of well adapted people with schizophrenia or other heavy diagnosis labels around every day) .. A person with severe and less or more organized delusions can get by if they play their cards carefully, indefinitely. Unless of course they wind up acting strange enough to get 911 rang, or the delusions begin to play out destructively to others (housemates most often I’d guess).
I am scoring total crap at my wish to contain my comments’ et al volume today. A person in a strong wave of ‘disordered thinking’ meanwhile would perplex everyone they interacted with, and depending largely on how the normals interact, could become increasingly …… Such phenomena would tend to a more rapid intervention unless one avoided people. Can’t speak for others but the ‘disordered’ events do in fact have plenty of meaning, however it is continually shifting, and can be majorly reordered hour by hour (somewhat influenced by whatever one is driven to rethink over and over. Reordered but the conscious does not dictate the process. Must stop before pulling a few more tangential threads to follow. 🙂
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Duude!
‘Hoff’ was the sound that managers made after I had made a corridor-encountered lob of ideas (much like your comment) in response to some issue raised at some whole-staff meeting, and when the waterfall ran out, there’d be a pause, a one-word phrase with, perhaps, a question-mark, and then the ‘hoff’ as they turned to wander off along the corridor wondering what the answer to the issue is …
… or rather how they could measure their way out of the issue to show that they had met it; and this was the crux of the poem: teaching is an organic dialectic, management (as it has become over the last few decades) is a measure which is conflated with the dialectic but never enters into it and becomes part of the whole; therefore managers measure, sound-bite and set targets about teaching but are not part of the dialectic and become more and more frustrated that their management of the solution does not seem to work … at which point they become draconian in their treatment of teachers (… workers, after all) and then change the direction of play with increasing frequency … verging to a near psychotic frenzy before thay burn out and have to retire with their bonuses leaving deep tyre-gouges out of peoples’ careers in their wake;
thank you so much for your involvement – I appreciate it
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