• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: decision

next unexpected step

23 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2016, 5*, child, decision, freedom, life, publishing, realisation, searching, shopping, step, talking to myself, water, work

                                am I free?

                don’t need to search in shops like I’m lost
                don’t need to publish every day like a child starved of attention

don’t need to keep at work like a grate holding water
don’t need to think of further examples like I haven’t yet got the realisation, yes

                                I am,

                now
                for the residue

                and the
                next unexpected step

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

child wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
life wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
publishing wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
realisation wormhole: for / the first time
searching wormhole: is this it // all the time
talking to myself & water wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
work wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working

 

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happen//ing

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2011, 5*, being, chaos, decision, flow, non-doing, non-striving, politics, recognition, ripple, talking to myself, water, will

            happen doesn’t happen
            through will or decision
            creating chaos like an oar in water

            it doesn’t happen
            through positioning becoming part of the chaos
            riding a ripple

            neither does it happen
            by going with the flow
            becoming part of the chaos riding the trough

            or by not caring
            becoming submerged and possibly drowning
            happen happens

            when it is recognised
            amid the will the positioning the caring
            then

            the will the positioning the care happen
            like water poured into water
            ing

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
flow wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
politics wormhole: listen willya
recognition wormhole: ashramas
talking to myself wormhole: magnetic field
water wormhole: one day / in 1956

 

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gone black

11 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2013, black, business, Channel Tunnel, compromise, decision, phone, sleep, society, train, travelling

                           snipped smart and cologne
                           all about with compromise

                           the business man in shoes
                           and open shirt drops asleep

                           after the decision on the
                           phone and a light meal –

                           tablet gone black as we
                           all plunge into the Tunnel

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

black wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
compromise wormhole: dream career // groggy
sleep wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
society & train & travelling wormhole: lonely and free

 

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dry rot

10 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2012, anger, breakdown, broken, care, career, creation, culture, decision, disregard, giving, growth, illness, management, managerialism, resentment, speech, survival, teaching, thought, work

 

 

 

                                dry rot

                                still

                resentment sets in
                                I go to work anyway
                but the resentment is always there
                                I create resources I mark books
                                I teach lessons
                but the resentment is always there
                                I do my fucking duty
                                I do an extra parent’s evening
                but the resentment is always there
                                some manager asks how I am
                                I tell them I survive
                                              (but I don’t tell them
                                               I don’t thrive –
                                               `not quick enough)
                but the resentment is always there

                I offered my thought
                               my creation
                               my care
                because I nurtured growth
                              I cultured way
                              I wanted to give

                                AND YOU PAUSED
                IN YOUR BUSY-NESS AND PRESSURE
                JUST LONG ENOUGH TO GET ON
                                WITH YOUR BUSINESS AND PRESSURE TO COMPENSATE THE OH, SO, ANXIETY OF
                                MAKING THOSE TOUGH DECISIONS FOR THE SAKE OF PROGRESS (PROFIT?)
                                TO OVERLOOK

                                what I continue to think
                                what is still on the table
                                              unopened
                                but which has lost the will
                                              to project anymore

                                              you

                                              make

                                              me

                                              sick

                you made me sick
                                you created a sick teacher
                even while I attend each day
                                for the sake of absence management
                even while I create and mark
                                for the sake of growth
                even while I sit through a meeting
                                which dribbles on about ‘good to outstanding’ until it is running down your neck
                still the resentment is always there
                                sticky invisible and malignant

 

I know: we’ve heard it all before; just indulge this little toddler for a little while longer, will you; it has only slightly altered since I wrote it a good four years ago, like being in a boat on the sea, buffeted and brûlée’d, looking for where the sky becomes screen and the prow rips through it (c’mon, film buffs, what am I talking about?)

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

breakdown & management wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
career wormhole: need
giving wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
managerialism wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
speech wormhole: fine
teaching wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
thought wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
work wormhole: work

 

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impressionism

18 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 1878, 1880, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1901, 1935, 19th century, 2015, 20th century, appearance, beer, being, blue, cafe, chair, cypress, decision, doors, Edouard Manet, Edouard Vuillard, emerald, field, garden, glasses, hair, impressionism, leaf, living, looking, mass, passing, Paul Cezanne, people, photograph, posture, profile, rock, shadow, skyline, sound, speech, survival, turquoise, van Gogh, view, writing

 

 

 

                      impressionism

                      when it appeared that being
                      took more than looking
                      to survive in grander scale

La Terrasse at Vasouy Edouard Vuillard

                      people froze in pose of living
                      and, standing, turned from the
                      emerald skyline and blue of leaf

                      until the ‘chirrup’-click
                      fit to portrait – maybe landscape –
                      enlarged, reduced (and whopaintedthis ‘click’ gottit) of

                      chair standing but not on
                      the tiles by the
                      turquoise door blue – wassnext! – standing

                      right in front (of the view
                      looking to be written on a notepad) right there
                      to one side of the frame in profile, ‘like I was …’

                      looking in ‘ready’ chirrup – then
                                                                      nudged
                      passing out of everyone’s way – ‘sorry!’

                      glasses on the head before
                      wheatfield with cypresses, hennaered
                      hair before rock shadows, and

                      tell me, is it the transluscent beer
                      or the backward look to another order
                      the point in the corner of the café-concert?

 

witnessed between elbows at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, 030515: La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Garden, Edouard Vuillard, 1901, reworked 1935; Van Gogh’s Chair, Vincent van Gogh, 1888; A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, Vincent van Gogh, 1889; Hillside in Provence, Paul Cézanne, about 1890-2; Corner of a Café-Concert, Edouard Manet, probably 1878-80

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

20th century & sound wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
being wormhole: dash
blue wormhole: Jon
doors wormhole: through
field wormhole: keep the light off
garden wormhole: the open window
glasses wormhole: new garden
hair & shadow wormhole: 1964
living & skyline wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
looking & posture wormhole: and that’s where I are
passing wormhole: 1963
people & writing wormhole: well,
speech wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12

 

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and that’s where I are

26 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2016, Aleister Crowley, alley, appearance, birch, black, Bowie, breakdown, breeze, brick, building, car park, career, Carol, cars, cats, child, church, clothes, coffee shop, creativity, decision, Diane di Prima, disappearance, down, Eastbourne, emptiness, fear, form, grey, Heart Sutra, horizontal, humanity, identity, left, leg, looking, mother, muse, others, passing, pavement, plane, posture, quantum, rebellion, right, right angle, roads, school, searching, seeing, silence, silver, sitting, sound, spire, stain, stopped, streets, talking to myself, teaching, trees, up, vertical, waiting, walking, walls, William Carlos Williams, wind, writers, writing

            inner coffee shop

            so, is writing pointless,
            just rebellion from root
            just the muscling of me
            to spite the hard fear that

            I’ll turn to stone if I look
            into her face … `spite the
            knowledge that others are
            far more brave than me?

            St. Saviour & St. Peter

            so what draws me to sit,
            after all, on the roadside
            wall across from the spire
            clear for all to see the

            even bricks buttress, cap
            and flute up so high to
            eleven storeys to, maybe,
            the single point, with run-

            down stain and grimèd
line defining plane and vertical rightened quantum to the neat, surrounding parking and the passing upright
            humans both of public
            dress and private gait

                           360º

            and then the grey cat
            strolled from some-
            where left between
            silent cars to cross the

            road right – stopped –
            t’looka’leaf ‘n’ disappear
            up on wall by tree-sniff
            stop – fence? – no,

            down be-hind th’wall
            out through th’front
            windscreen ‘n’
            downastepps t’street

            to not appear where
            expected; ‘shut’, a mother
            leads a tot from front
            door to car …
                                   … still no appearance

            … … scamper with the
            wind behind as the car
            pulls away; maybe I should
            record this wh’appened all

            around breeze, strolled –
            stopped – by the wall
            back from b’hind m’left
            enters the gateway out

            by th’alleyway (with the
            bold and naked silver birch
            I hadn’t noticed);
                                          upover
            the fence [not attempted

            before] tadaaanother cat
            black treesniff checkleft
            then … left, jumptowall,
            jump to pavementstop;

            over the road frontleg
            onelick s t r o l l s car-
            shielded; black belly-slink
            low across the road; they

            walk away both from
            sight either side of the van;
            one tail up and wiggy
            one tail fluffy with spine

            these things all of great
            importance to spite the hard fact
            of my writing them,
            old Bull Williams would have

            and that’s where I are

 

there are expanses awkward to the landscape in writing sometimes: the technique is there, the shift can be made, but the will and excitement just isn’t; I have been reading Diane di Prima’s “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”, I greatly fed off her childhood but have languoured once she got into the Work; I have been reading about Aleister Crowley’s ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ awkward plane; I have a huge project ongoing writing poewieviews to David Bowie’s oeuvre – I am going to new lands but the luggage is heavy and awkward and requiring decisions which I don’t easily make; oh, and I am off work again, feeling un-plugged in to my own practice of vocation like a forlorn state-of-the-art food mixer; I spent a morning down in Eastbourne chauffeuring my wife around like the successful carer that she is; walking; sitting in a coffee shop; snagged at St. Saviour & St. Peter Church on the corner of Spencer Road and South Street, still pondering the relationship between multifarious form and the emptiness makes it dynamic; but it wasn’t until I sat back in the waiting car and watched the chess moves of two cats in the street that I stumbled across the full quote from the Heart Sutra: “form is emptiness; emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form also is no other than emptiness”; but it wasn’t until I got home and shaped it all up from scribbles to column – with my ageing black AND white cat leaning against my foot – that I wondered if I still hadn’t quite got it yet (as William Carlos Williams, the great great practicer of ‘no poetry but in things’ said); and yet it has been satisfying finding not so …

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

birch wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
black & grey wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
Bowie wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
breakdown & writing wormhole: nothing to write
breeze wormhole: strange / tarnish
buildings & silver & streets wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
carer wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
Carol wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
cars wormhole: stacked
cats wormhole: new garden
child wormhole: dream 260815
church wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
coffee shop wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
creativity & school wormhole: through
Eastbourne wormhole: along
emptiness wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
identity wormhole: dear clown’s face
looking & muse & sound wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
mother & silence wormhole: early evening
others wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
passing & posture wormhole: really
roads wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
searching wormhole: opening
seeing wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
sitting & talking to myself wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
teaching wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
trees wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
waiting wormhole: Saturday – poewieview #3
walking wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
walls wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
[William Carlos] Williams wormhole: and then just stop
wind wormhole: keep the light off

 

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Put service back into people rather than productivity

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in teaching

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

communication, decision, education, holistic education, management, managerialism, money, organic education, structural time, teaching craft, values

As an individual, and not overly-excitable, teacher I have been growingly resentful of, and frustrated with, and exhausted by, the management of education on a quasi-business level.   I am moved with concern for the whole school when decisions are made on purely structural, financial criteria at the expense of educational criteria.   I am worried that individuals within the school (both pupils and teachers) are seen as secondary concerns with management decisions, not as those who are the beneficiaries of those decisions.

I would like to hear much discussion about why we teach, the value of the subjects we teach, what we would like our pupils to end up with having graduated through our institution, what we consider to be ‘an educated pupil’, how we can best educate such a wide range of ability, effectively, on whether a teacher is an artist or an operative, is a crammed curriculum the proper way to culture a pupil, what are the values of the school and how do we actually communicate them to the pupils etc?

I personally tussle with the way we currently educate our children; I have problems with much of the affective syllabus we deliver.   Therefore I would welcome a holistic and natural overhauling of what we teach and how we deliver it.   But I am unshakeable in the conviction that education is possibly the most important activity that one human being can do with another.

There are only some jobs done in teaching which could be handed over without increasing the need for administrative communication and liaison.   They usually don’t ‘stand alone’ but are part of the business of teaching children.   If you extract an aspect from a teacher’s whole job and call it ‘administrative’ and thereby give it to somebody else, you simply create yet another route of liaison and communication and extend the administrative nature of the task across two people.   It makes it worse.   You need to recognise that the job of teaching has grown plural, but still remains a whole job – a holistic job.   If you try to split the job up into aspects you simply end up making the job even more – and unnecessarily – complicated.   To enable the job of teaching to happen you need to provide the structural time for the teacher to do the whole job.   Money would be better spent on increasing time for teachers to co-ordinate the tasks themselves as part of their teaching.

A teacher – of whatever level or duty – hasn’t the time to do their job properly because they have a full timetable to teach.   The ancillary tasks I input in my ‘own’ time: after school hours and at home.   Because these ancillary tasks – nevertheless essential to my teaching – occur in time which is in conflict with my family and personal time, they are variably performed well or badly (or not at all).   However they are essential to my teaching and therefore my lessons are consequently taught well, badly or not at all.nbsp;  The performance is haphazard and therefore the learning of my classes is haphazard.   The stress I experience in my job is that engendered not only from having too much to do (in order to do it well) but also in knowing that I could have done it well if I had had enough time/energy for it.   I knowingly run substandard lessons because I haven’t the structural resources to do otherwise.

This leaves little structural time for teachers to prepare/feedback on teaching or perform pastoral support.nbsp;  If you increased teaching/pastoral-support teachers you would be spreading tasks which are part of a holistic activity across more than one teacher and learning experience.   The opportunities for that holistic learning experience to fail would thereby increase.   If you reduce the teacher’s timetable, that teacher could do her teaching and pastoral duties herself.

The key to establishing a ‘community’ style of organisation in the school (rather than the present ‘boxed’ one) is to find the mechanism which bridges the gap between teacher aspirations, expertise and experience and the management structure which allows it to work.   As has grown in recent decades, an overly-weighted managerial system seeks to regulate human communication (in this case teaching) within a structure which cannot allow for individualism, spontaneity – the humanity inherent within communication/teaching.   To weigh it the other way – towards establishing a community of educative, human communication – would need the re-empowering of the teacher with trust in the care and instinct which made them take up the profession of teaching in the first place.   There need to be managerial mechanisms which value those instincts rather than just make them accountable.   A new structure of management and implementation must encompass both teachers’ frustrations and their hopes.   If the structure of a school fails to meet teachers’ frustrations it will fail because teachers will retreat to their own efforts and not share in the responsibility; if it fails to meet teachers’ hopes they will start to become frustrated.   A new structure is going to have to be quantumly different – in scope, in value and in trust – from any other business-management scheme which has existed in the last 15 years (since, say 1988) in order to inspire the confidence of a staff.

You do not need to teach teachers how to teach, you need to allow them to teach.   The management of teaching needs to be supportive before it is either organising or assessing.   It needs to treat them like performers rather than operatives.   Change in teaching does not need to come from the bottom up (teachers have done enough of that for the past 15 years), but from the top down.   There is a need for change of the contextual structure in which teachers work.   There is a need of change in the way management views, values and manages its resource: to view it not as a manufacturing tool which is set to optimum productivity but as a human service which needs a supportive culture in order to thrive.

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

communication wormhole: Woodbrooke labyrinth / affirmations
education wormhole: Now, let’s think this through, shall we? The clunkish philosophy driving today’s education.
management wormhole: management and managerialism
managerialism worhole: inverse superhero
money wormhole: dropped ’till you’ve shopped
teaching craft wormhole: teaching performance
values wormhole: where is there a Middle Way when you want one … / … / … oh!?

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

pages coagulating like yogurt

  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 10
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Introduction
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • William Carlos Williams
  • wormholes

recent leaks …

  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’
  • Journey
  • ‘the practice …’
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut

category sky

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tag skyline

'scape 2* 3* 4* 5* 6* 7* 8* 20th century 1967 1979 1980 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 acceptance afternoon air Allen Ginsberg anxiety architecture arm in arm attention awareness Batman beach beauty bedroom being birds birdsong black blue Bodhisattvacharyavatara books Bowie branches breakdown breathing breeze brown Buddha buildings career Carol cars change child childhood children city clouds coffee shop colour combe end comics communication compassion compromise crane creativity curtains dancing dark death distraction divorce doing doors dream Dr Strange earth echo Edward Hopper Eglinton Hill emergence emptiness evening eyes faces family father feet field floorboards garden Genesta Road girl giving glass gold grass green grey growth haiku hair hands Have hedge hill hills history holiday hope horizon house houses identity kitchen leaf leaves lemon letting go life lifetimes light lime listening living London looking lost love management managerialism mauve meaning mind mist moon morning mother mouth movement Mum muse music night notice open openness orange others park passing pavement people performance management pink Plumstead poetry pointlessness politics portrait posture power practice professionalism purple purpose quiet rain reaching reading realisation reality red requires chewing river roads roof rooftops samsara sea searching seeing settling shadow shops silence silhouette silver sitting sky skyline sleep smell smile snow society sound space speech step stone streetlight streets sun sunlight superhero table talking talking to myself teaching teaching craft Thames thinking thought time train travelling trees true nature university voices walking walls water waves white William Carlos Williams wind windows wood Woolwich words work world writing years yellow zazen

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