early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

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2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

                -\\O___~~                                                                ~~___O//-

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

                the wrap
                of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

 

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the Hierarchy of Knowing

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applying, Bloom's taxonomy, cognitive, cognitive hierarchy, concepts, empirical, evaluation, facts, knowledge, learning, levels of attainment, questioning, teaching craft, understanding

So why does learning have to happen in a K>U>E way?   (In a relative universe why cannot it happen E>U>K or U>K>E or K>E>U or X>Y>Z?).   The reason is because learning happens (and can only happen) in an integrative way.

Knowledge: is facts, are discerned, are identified, concern levels 3/4 (KSIII), grades G-D (KSIV), grades E-D (KSV).   If you take the simplest piece of learning it is made up of elemental components – pieces of knowledge, facts, things to be recognised.   The starting point of learning is to recognise those basics, to identify them, to discern them.   To identify or discern them you need to be actively ‘looking’, ‘hearing, ‘smelling’, ‘tasting’ or ‘feeling’ for them – you need to be open and ready to ‘get it’, ready to recognise them.   This recognition is the simplest form of cognition – it is empirical (seen, heard, smelt, tasted, touched) and then named.   This is Knowledge (K).

However learning cannot stay at mere recognition otherwise it remains just a functional skill – it has no meaning or purpose.

Understanding I: perceives the function, concerned with how facts are connected, involves level 5 (KSIII), grade C (KSIV), grade C (KSV).   To ‘make sense’ of a fact you need to find how it links with other facts – how they connect, how they work together, how they relate.   When a link has been found, then understanding has been developed (you stand ‘under’ the two, otherwise discreet, facts seeing a link between them that wasn’t perceived before, you have abstracted from the erstwhile discreetness).   With this understanding you can then go on to explain (show) the connection and use or construct the newfound connection…

Understanding II: perceives the contingency of the function, how facts are connected on a more macro level, webbed understanding, systems understanding, involving level 6 (KSIII), grade B (KSIV), grade B (KSV).   This is a higher level cognitive apperception because the link/connection can only be made by this abstraction-from-discreetness which enables perception of structure, process, function in the first place.   You cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch structure, process, function, you have to cognise it.   To move from factual knowledge to structural understanding you need to abstract from discreet exclusivity.   To abstract from discreet exclusivity you need to think – and here is the work of learning.   You don’t just ‘get it’, you have to ‘work it out’ (and then report how you worked it out in order to have it recognised, assessed).   This is Understanding (U).

Evaluation: involves questioning, developing, operating at level 7+ (KSIII), grade A+ (KSIV), grade A+ (KSV).   Are we finished yet?   No, because you could then question, improve, alternate, innovate, combine, revise, expand, plan, rewrite, extend, pose questions on, synthesize, generalise, propose, theorise, create, integrate, project, invent, rearrange, modify, develop, appraise, conclude, critique, judge, assess, contrast, deduce, weigh, criticise, evaluate those links/connections and find all sorts of ways to advance and exploit that initial abstraction of Understanding.   The connections found between facts are not empirical – they cannot be verifiable simply by looking/seeing etc. again.   They are verifiable through reason, cohesion, concordance, performance etc. etc, which can be challenged and alternated and modified as there is need and context.   As this verification is refined and developed, the application of the idea deepens, in that the initial connection, the initial understanding (‘standing under’), refers to more than the initial referents, it includes alternative referents, it includes related referents, it can even come to include erstwhile un-related referents as the concept deepens.   The concept deepens because of another abstraction: an abstraction which moves from the functional and mechanistic (Understanding) to the considered, reflective, principled, metaphysical.   The concept becomes deeper – expertese and mastery is developed.   The scope of this application is as wide as the sky, the result of this application is a one behind the many.   This is Evaluation (E).

~~~

You cannot have an understanding until you have something to ‘stand under’ – facts.   You cannot evaluate and play with an understanding until you have an initial functional understanding in the first place.   This has significant implications for learning (i.e. you cannot evaluate before you’ve understood, before you have knowledge of; you have to learn K>U>E).   Likewise you have to just recognise Knowledge, you cannot work it out, you cannot conjecture it; you have to work out Understanding, you cannot just see it or receive it (‘get it’); you have to experiment to Evaluate, you cannot just be briefed.   This has significant implications for teaching (i.e. you, as the teacher, have to move from E > broken down to U > broken down to K in order to ‘feed’ it back to pupils through your teaching), (or rather, U >>> breakdown for K (differentiation), and U >>> springboard to E (extension); see ‘constructalesson’, coming to a screen near you … soon; (and the ‘Cone of Knowledge’ which is in pre-production but which will be a blockbuster when it launches!)).

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

evaluation & knowledge & learning wormhole: something simple to offer
teaching craft wormhole: the Lamp