Nexus

cry

2009-07-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

cry with someone; it's more healing than crying alone...

Albert Camus

2009-07-06T23:15:00.001-07:00

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Ashes

2009-07-06T23:08:00.000-07:00

Burned to ashes
And the ashes flew
In the wind
Taken by breath
As I breathe on

Shadows in my head
When I'm too high to think
Give me my view

Teaching Present, Past, & Possible!

2009-07-06T23:07:00.002-07:00

Today, as I was reading Bruner's The Culture of Education, I came across this impressive paragraph which meant a lot to me. That's why I've decided to share it with you:

I thought I was in for another discussion of the usual but was not it at all. What do we do now, they asked, about teaching Russian history of the last century, including the 75 years of the Communist regime? Teach it as just one big mistake? As Russia hoodwinked by party opportunists in the Kremlin? Or can the past be reconstrued to make sense not only of the past and its tragedies but of how the future could be shaped? "You," one of them said, "have been writing about history and culture as narrative, about the need for constant updating and reconstrual of past narratives. So how do we get a new generation to reflect upon and reconstrue their history? How do we keep from fooling ourselves again?" The discussion went on past midnight- better to have fresh reading, say, of Dostoevski's Notes from the Underground or Gogol's The Inspector, than 'exposing' official histories of "The Revolution"? The next morning I thought, How come we're not asking questions like that? Because we "won"? Should that mask our failures and blindness- not a moment of official mourning for the tense of thousands of oppressed Iraqi civilians killed in desert storm, never mind how just our cause? No public pondering about the richest country in the world generating poverty at a rate second to none? Is that "winning"?

Jerome Bruner

Anna Akhmatova

2009-07-06T23:07:00.001-07:00

I drink to our ruined house

To all of life’s evils too

To our mutual loneliness

And I

I drink to you

Mikhail Bakhtin

2009-07-06T23:05:00.002-07:00

Carnival is associated with the collectivity. Those attending a carnival do not merely constitute a crowd; rather the people are seen as a whole, organized in a way that defies socioeconomic and political organization. All are equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age. The carnival atmosphere holds the lower strata of life most important, as opposed to higher functions (thought, speech, soul) which were usually held dear in the signifying order. At carnival time, the unique sense of time and space causes individuals to feel they are a part of the collectivity, at which point they cease to be themselves. It is at this point that, through costume and mask an individual exchanges bodies and is renewed. At the same time there arises a heightened awareness of one’s sensual, material, bodily unity and community.

Letting the cables sleep

2009-07-06T23:05:00.001-07:00

You in the dark
You in the pain
You on the run
Living a hell
Living your ghost
Living your end
Never seem to get in the place that I belong
Don't wanna lose the time
Lose the time to come

Who in the world am I??

2009-07-06T23:04:00.001-07:00

I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!

Macbeth Witches

2009-07-06T23:03:00.001-07:00

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

My River Runs to Thee

2009-07-06T23:01:00.000-07:00

My River runs to thee

Blue Sea! Wilt welcome me?

My River wait reply

Oh Sea, look graciously

I'll fetch thee Brooks

From spotted nooks

Say, Sea, Take Me!

Emily Dickinson

Unlearning

2009-07-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

“Meanings” grow from an existential soil (daily living, cultural, and social), and get nurtured by it. Just like plants and humans grow and get nurtured from the surrounding earth soil. It is hard for me to think of growth with no soil nurturing it. Growth never starts with concepts. They might enhance it at a later stage.

It is very hard for me today to think of a situation where I would learn something without unlearning being part of it, or of a situation where I am unlearning something without learning being part of it.

By Munir Fasheh

Tanager

2009-07-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

Recapturing distant childhood as far back as I can trust my memory, trying to understand my act of reading the particular world in which I moved, was absolutely significant for me. Surrounding myself to this effort, I re-created and re-lived in the text I was writing, the experience I lived at a time when I did not yet read words. The text, words, letters of that context were incarnated in the song of the birds –tanager, flycatcher, thrush; in the dance of boughs blown by the strong winds announcing storms; thunder and lightening; rain waters playing with geography: creating lakes, islands, rivers, streams.

…

Paulo Freire

translated by Loretta Slover

Omar Khayyam

2009-07-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

The moving fingers writ, and, having writ, moves on:

Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back

To cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

Omar Khayyam

The Road Not Taken

2009-07-06T22:57:00.001-07:00

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 20

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Don't compromise, Realise!!!

2009-07-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

در پی حرفی که مسافر نمی شود

در گذر لحظه هایی که قطار

بیهوده نشسته ب...غ... ض

در برزخ انتظار

...

در پس دیده، آینه داران سیاهپوش نشسته اند

آواز وارونه می رسد به هوش

پرواز

وارونه به آشیان گوش

...

کودک تازه ست هنوز

غرق اندیشه ی رویش در سر

ارتفاع واژگون یک رویا را

میزند بال و پر

George Bernard Shaw

2009-07-06T22:50:00.001-07:00

"You see things; and you say 'Why'?

I dream things that never were; and say 'Why not'?"

"Back to Methusulah"

A Tribute to Adrienne Ségur

2009-07-06T22:48:00.001-07:00

Adrienne Ségur was a French illustrator of fairy tale books, born in 1901. Little is known about her life, and it is not known if she was related to the Comtess de Ségur (1799–1874), the famous fairy tale writer. She illustrated numerous French fairy tale volumes in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. Her work gained a devoted following in the U.S. when Golden Books published three of her collections under the titles The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen and Other Stories, and The Big Book of Cats. The illustration used in this exhibition was published in a French collection of Hans Christian Andersen tales and has never appeared in the U.S..

Silent as Silk

2009-07-06T22:44:00.000-07:00

Affection wins out over aggression as a she-leopard nibbles her dozing mate’s ear. “It’s a rare sight,” says photographer Kim Wolhuter of the normally feisty female’s apparent tenderness. During her estrus period of up to a week, the cats will mate briefly but often—sometimes one hundred times in a day. Then they’ll separate, the male likely playing no further parenting role.

Photograph by Kim Wolhuter

مزمور اول

2009-07-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

مرا آتشی باید و بوریایی

که این کفر زیر هفت آسمان هم نگنجد

بر ابلیس جا تنگ گشته ست آنجا

رها کن مرا

"شفیعی کدکنی"

das leben

2009-07-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

DIE SONNE IM REGEN, DIE LEHRE, DER SEGEN,
GLÜCK HEGEN UND PFLEGEN, ZU NEHMEN UND ZU GEBEN,
SO SPIELT DAS LEBEN, SO IST ES EBEN

Does Consciousness Exist?

2009-07-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

A sophisticated and powerful theory of consciousness, the multiple drafts model, has been proposed (Dennett & Kinsbourne, 1992). Dennett believed that while psychologists and philosophers no longer believe in the soul, they nevertheless remain unwittingly in the grip Descartes picture of consciousness. Descartes said that the soul was the single place where all the manifold features of human experience came together in a single, private, privileged stream of consciousness.

Dennett concludes, information processes in different parts of the brain produce varying drafts of experience, often at the same time, and interacting in diverse ways.

You have probably gone to bed occasionally with a pain, gone to sleep, and then later been awakened by the pain. Was there pain when you were asleep, or did the pain only exist while you were awake and conscious of it?

The former alternative seems more plausible. If the pain literally ceased to exist when you were asleep-were not conscious of it- it could not have caused you to wake up (Searle, 1990). In Dennett’s terminology, the pain continued to exist as a draft of consciousness. An increase in the pain caused it to be “written down” waking you up.

Leahey, T. H; Harris R.J (2001) Learning and Cognition

Dark Room

2009-07-06T22:35:00.001-07:00

Define definition in my focus
Living in a room over the fear side view
I am surrounded by the border of disorder
So I oughta be stable and able to lift my hand and take an opportunity
Sinking down into quicksand time
Another number never I endeavour like time is forever expanding
Immaterial
Is the original principle
Now the icon is God
Sad case in the rat race
Erasing all the memory of something that they can't quite comprehend
I end a line to the live wire
With my entire trickle down lava flow blood fire
I attack with my brain seeing eye vision
Looking over my terrain day by day stay same
In the land of chaos and disorder
Living behind the light we're surrounded by a border in the dark room.

"I don't much care where"

2009-07-06T22:34:00.001-07:00

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where --' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Swan

2009-07-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

I will play swan and die in music.

"William Shakespeare"

Not in this life

2009-07-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been walking all alone through the wind and through the rain
Been walking through the streets and finding sweet relief
In knowing that it won't be long.
Lately it's occurred to me that I've had enough of that
And lately I've been satisfied by simple things
Like breathing in and breathing out.

Never again, not in this life, will I be taken twice.
Never again, never on your life, will I make that same mistake.
I can't make it twice.

Lately it's occurred to me exactly what went wrong.
I realized I compromised, I sacrificed far too much for far too long.

(Natalie Merchant, "Not in this life" song)

Entezar

2009-07-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

How long can you hold your breath?
While you hold mine, I'll come and wait
Just to watch you perform the great escape

Albert Einstein's quotations

2009-07-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

I want to know God's thoughts. The rest are details.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Rudyard Kipling

2009-07-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

I keep six honest serving-men.

(They taught me all I knew.)

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

(Rudyard Kipling)

Way out of here

2009-07-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Out at the train tracks
I dream of escape
But a song comes onto my iPod
And I realize it's getting late

I can't take the staring
And the sympathy
And I don't like the questions,
"How do you feel? How's it going in school? We know you want to talk about it..."

Way out, way out of here
Fade out, wait up ahead

And I'm trying to forget you
And I know that I will
In a thousand years
Or maybe a week

Burn all your pictures
Cut out your face
The shutters are down
And the curtains are closed
And I've covered my tracks
Disposed of the car

And I'm trying to forget
Even your name
And the way that you look
When you're sleeping, dreaming of this

Way out, way out of here
Fade out, wait up ahead

Way out, way out of here
Fade out, fade up ahead

"Porcupine Tree"

Phonology

2009-07-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

اتفاقاً الان موقع خواندنش است. اگر این استاد رنگین بال آوا شناسی نبود با انبوهی تمرین برای فردا، فکر می کنی خواندن "ناظم حکمت" یا بلعیدن " گفتگوهای تنهایی" می توانست اینقدر لذتبخش باشد؟ باور کن نصف این حال را هم نداشت! اگر جزوه ی قطور و دست نخورده ی آزمون سازی از روی قفسه ی افرا رنگ التماس نمی کرد که لااقل نیم نگاهی به من بینداز، اگر این حال لج و سرکشی نبود، خیلی چیزها نبود ... هیچ وقت هیچی نبود! هیچ جز این لج دنباله دار، مثل بحثهای دنباله دار، مثل ستاره ی دنباله دار که پریروز افتاد از ارتفاع یک صدا که اتفاقاَ دنباله دار نیست!

داشتم در سربالایی راه میرفتم و تا زانو در آب بودم! راه رفتن به سختی در سر بالایی یک خواب ، در طغیانی دیگر، طغیان کردن!

برای من همه اش همین است و این همه هیچ نیست!

Burn it up

2009-07-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

Burn like fire!
You've got to intoxicate your mind!

Critical Thinking

2009-07-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've read an article by Peterson & Cox (Federal University of Mato Grosso, midwestern Brazil) about Critical pedagogy in ELT (English Language Teaching), and that's the way I found this graet Brazilian thinker!

These 2 mentioned researchers were to find out "what Brazilian English Teachers know about and think of critical pedagogy?"

Only 2 teachers (among the group of 40) acknowledged the political dimension of ELT; Brazil's economical,political, and cultural dependence on the United States; the global nature of the language; and the need to mistrust the underlying ideologies!

After reading this article, I started thinking of the reason that makes the world unwilling to talk about Frieire's ideologies!

There is no need to be an ELT student to enjoy Friere's beautiful mind; just go on and read...It's a pity to lose it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

http://mingo.info-science.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/linksrace.htm