Monday, August 2, 2010 at 5:30AM understanding
I know I have rambled on periodically about how sometimes the nature of writing, particulary with poetry I find, is that you realize that you cannot really write on a certain theme and subject matter without going off and educating yourself a great deal more.
That s what has happened with the City of Love, I am...filling in gaps as I go, learning things and having to make some changes in my life before I can progress with it. Combined with all that is my fore-knowledge that the big piece after is called "The Art of Dying" and that just opens up a whole broad area of "I-don't-knows."
So I am reading. Not just reading but doing. As I learn things I am going out and engaging more with people and areas of life that have been more or less, experienced only personally or maybe just theoretically. I have started volunteering. I am doing a ton of things that involve relearning how to listen.
One of the things I have had to crash educate myself in is Alzheimer's. Now, I know alot around Alzheimer's but, as things go, it is something that is about to enter my life in a very real and present way. I have had to go beyond just "knowing" about it to preparing myself to actually dealing with it.
I found this. If you in anyway are dealing with someone with Alzheimer's I really recommend that you take the time to read through this material. There is also a section that focuses on what to do if you have been diagnosed with the disease. If neither of these apply to you, I recommend that you find time to read it anyway because even if the disease does not directly touch your life ten to one it is effecting someone you know as a caregiver. And beyond that, the research done on the nature of communication is...downright illuminating. I am reworking the next workshop on performance to take this into account. It is subtly changing how I am approaching performing in the new video as well. Who knew that there are three main forms of communicating? I mean, most of us know this to some degree but to see it separated out and to have examples of how it works is just...illuminating, to repeat myself.
http://www.alzheimer.ca/english/care/intro.htm
I went out with the bike group again this weekend, which is why you did not hear from me. A short ride, 22 miles. 34 with all the fool biking I had to do to get from the bus to the tip of the island an hour and a half a way and it was beautiful. I got there early enough to just sit, for the first time this year, and watch the ocean. Funny how easy it is to let your world become so small it is all literally within a 2 mile radius.
I realized that I hadn't left Providence in over 3 months. Not even for a day trip. Naturally then I start yammering on about how I want to plan to get out of the city more often but the reality is that won't happen, but if at least I can take a bus every so often, maybe once every 8 weeks and get out - that would be fine.
We forget both how easy it is to do these things and how necessary. The bike ride, short as it was, was chock-a-block with hills. Which is something considering I am basically in a sea level state.
And tweeted last week that I learned to shoot video with mirrors. Let me clarify that, I have learned how to shoot video with mirrors, it does not mean I have learned to do that well yet.
:)
As I continue to work on the shooting script for the Executioner's Song I am continuing to practice with the mirrors. I am slowly getting a firmer idea of what I want to do. Plus I had to bite the bullet and learn Final Cut Pro for real.
I was so good. For the first time in my life I went and did all the instructional videos et all before trying to use the program (sort of, remember how I bitched last year about it? That was because I just tried to use it without learning anything about it). This reading instructions before hand is new for me.
So there I was...all trained and crap and I went to use it and nothing worked.
Nothing worked at all the way the fancy videos said it would.
I wound up youtubing around and found a video by a woman that showed me the itsy bitsy button that was never mentioned in the official videos that like....made the damn thing work.
Getting there. But it also opens up a whole new vista of quality for the new video.
On and on. I will be recording more Chesterton later.
The mad kitten is officially fat. I cannot avoid it. She tips herself over when she tries to lick her back. I am starting to cut back on the treats and put an end to the all-day-buffet of cat food. Trying to do it subtly so I do not trigger her extensive passive agressive skill set. Last time I tried to cut back on the buffet she stomped around the house and then would sit infront of anything that contained liquid (coffee cups, sports bottles, bottles of water) wait until she had my attention and then tip them over.
That and take my keys and stuff coins in my shoes.
Ahhhhhh the joys of supporting a freeloader.
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Reader Comments (1)
A year ago I would have thought I knew what you meant here...but I would have been only grasping it in theory, now I gather information in word pad as I study to prepare to open my mind, my eyes and then my mouth in conversations. It is a simmering pot waiting for me to find and gather the best ingredients and learn how to combine them just right to bring the fullest flavor out. Everything is hurry, hurry, and there is so much pressure to keep just churning things out. Simple water will boil and churn in an otherwise empty pot...mind you I am still not organized, but there are somethings that I have to be kinda of disorganized to catch on to what is missing or slightly meaningless... mediocre and there is this point that can either be pivotal or send it to the recycle bin. And honestly either is preferable to having it just sit drawing effort and energy.
In my youth, that hardest thing was to tolerate the boredom of learning the basics and the emotions of how your first works are immature and imperfect and suck and you don't see that till you put it on the wall with everyone else's and 3/4s suck just like yours for just as many reasons, but all you really see is that 1/4, that are use to getting something not half bad and no longer settle for that as a stopping point. They have come to believe in themselves and what they are doing and to feel what they are working on is worthy of the time and energy to make it the absolute best, no matter how much they have to study and learn to put that edge into it, to be crossed over to excellence and mastery.
It is this back and forth between subjective and objective. And Yes, now days the programs are so advanced so loaded with tools and functions and layers and apps and...and...and that you do start, no matter how much knowledge and experiences you have, lost and looking for what either makes it work or what steps have to be combined and in what order to produce your vision.
But the absolute joy is, to me, that you can self educate with free downloads, manuals, and user forums and how-to videos and it can be at your own speed. It use to be that all that knowledge was in textbooks at university bookstores that you had to be a student in the class to buy. So much is now free to anyone that has a computer to access it.