A little exposition on the the title

So what is this reading of the bones I propose?

Judy Finch Fortune Telling Seal Bone

In an actual “reading the bones”—also known as “sortilege, cleromancy”--we cast “lots”—take objects and throw them, allow randomness and whimsy into a process of choosing to look, seeking a glimpse, a guidepost, a sign of the times. Most of us are more familiar with the careful layout of the Tarot cards or the "pulling" and placing of Rune stones.  The stones are probably most closing related reading the bones.  Also, perhaps the reading of tea leaves left in foretelling patterns on porcelain cup.

In reading bones, the seer takes bones (usually those of a chicken or other small animal), throws them to the ground and looks for patterns. Like any divination, there is a system, something developed over time and handed down, so the past and the insights of the past matter. Experience matters. The seeker agrees to believe, to take in the seer’s “reading” as something useful. I particularly like the image of reading the bones (though I’ve not participated in such a divination before) because bones are so visceral—all that’s left of some sentient being—the inner “solid” architecture revealed, deconstructed and then, in a charged (and temporary!) moment, reconstructed into a pattern meant to foretell, hint at, reveal what is not evident, what is hidden.

I purposely choose this imagery/metaphor to push a bit against the scientism of most academic pursuits. To traipse back to the shaman’s highly qualitative den and cast metaphoric anecdotal bones in order to “see” is definitely an exercise in belief and invites charges of superstition and illogic. Given that, I have a deep respect for science, for the exercise of inquiry, the search for sound epistemologies and ontology. I also have an abiding suspicion of any human Truth claims—including those of science--that insist that they are based on epistemologies that transcend the human generators of those claims.

By acknowledging a mystical metaphor as my guide for this writing I do not wish to eschew reference to sound science. However, my endeavor is not to contribute to the scientific investigation of learning behaviors—it is instead an effort to contribute a unique refraction through which we may scrutinize not only those sciences that guide our educational efforts but also through which we may scrutinize our reactions/actions to those sciences. Because it's my work, I can't help but offer the refraction of Early Childhood as a unique perspective on the educational endeavor. I posit that we have been gazing through this refraction unconsciously, without recognition of the lens as being a lens, and therefore accepting distortions (or corrections) as the true representation of the object of our gaze.  I suspect that "babies," the women who birth them, the folks who care for them and our consideration of this realm, live in an place of consideration where, if we are not parsing our understanding through the stetha- and micro-scope, we feel we are in the territory of reading the bones--somewhere dim, chancy, worried and wishful.

Because I could not stop for beauty

Because I could not stop for beauty
She kindly stopped for me....

I am referencing Emily Dickinson's:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility...

The phrase keeps singing through my mind: Because I could not stop for Beauty, she kindly stopped for me. Why?  Because, the other day, like so many other days, I felt that I did not have the time for art, more specifically to take up my father's invitation to attend a stunning performance of Wendall Berry's words performed chorally and musically by talented local musicians and artists. Because I have now lived long enough to know that even an over-full day benefits from art (and also, for goodness sakes, he's my Dad), I did accept his gracious invitation.

The event was stunning. I wonder if the performers could feel us--the quietly riveted audeience. We were reluctant to clap between pieces. I think we sometimes were collectively holding our breath.  This was because we were enraptured--caught up, waiting for the next movement. Clapping felt intrusive, a bit gauche. As alto wind, drum hollows, vocal symphonics wove together, there was a leaning in the room--like sunflowers following the sun;  endings--attenuated and beautiful-- called more for a reverent bow.

But this is not a review. Instead I want to note how we sometimes don't stop for beauty.  Recently, I spent several hours composing a rather clumsy Powerpoint slide show for my students that incorporates imagery, charts and music. I wanted to engage them emotionally...with something other than text and discussion. I ache to do this. One might partially explain this by noting that I am a poet, an artist, and thus some art is my preferred language. But also, I believe and there is some evidence to support this belief that art is  key to education. (Dewey,Eisner, Sameshima, Clark, Pinar, Pink, Pillow)

This is why I keep a picture of Galinda and her bowl on my desk.  How can one apply language to Galinda's (performance art) walk--leaving the fragile mark of blood, the tracing lines of power, abuse and memory?  In some ways talking/writing about it is simply inadequate.  There are layers of knowledge, of wondering, of grief and hope and outrage, hope against hope reaching that can only be explored through witnessing and experiencing her art. I can write a treatise on it and that can be lovely.  I can write a poem and that would be lovelier. (I'am heartened to know she is a poet, too.) By this I mean, it would leave more space for the engagement with what perhaps cannot be languaged. Because art engaing with art allows for a differenct space.  Art, I propose is metaphor and metaphor gives us some space.

This direct apprehension in important.  Giving it space and responding then, in kind. Perhaps we cannot teach this apprehension/engagement nor write it, even.  But can we, as a part of human education--what my colleague Antonio Garcia terms a pedagogy of humanity--can we perhaps make it available? And then, in dialogue, in an atmosphere of collective care--what understandings might emerge?

‘Quién puede borrar las huellas?’ Who Can Remove the Traces by Regina José Galindo.

"A woman in a black dress walks barefoot through the streets of Guatemala carrying a gray basin filled with human blood. She wets her feet with it so she can leave a trail of bloody footprints behind her. Her destination is the Constitutional Court building to the National Palace. This piece is a powerful statement about the role of art in showing human-rights abuses and government atrocities. The footprints represent the hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered by the Army during the long years of war. This is a vigorous protest against the presidential candidacy of Guatemala's former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt. During the first five days of the Venice Biennale, Guatemalan artist and poet Galindo crawled inside the cube and whipped herself 256 times - once for each woman systematically murdered in Guatemala from January 2005 until the day of the performance." from VideoArtWorld.com description
I can barely stand to write about this image.

Ms. Galindo's art, here, is gone. Gone. Gone. Gone Beyond. Gone Way Beyond.

This performance is over. This art will never fade until what it points to, ends. So it is Gone. And so this is only a capturing of a moment from her performance. I did get to view an installation of Galindo's work in a small gallery in Oxford, UK. Watching the video stilled me. In a dark empty room with a few other quiet people, I was finally and gratefully...stilled.

The performance is over but the traces to which she is drawing our attention--those traces (from government building to government building) they are upon us. For eons. They are karmic and inescapable. I admire the howl of her work. And in this case (and most of her work) she is utterly silent in the howl. The eye of the storm.

Some of her work is extraordinarily brutal: I cannot hardly bear even the still images. But she is so honest and brave that they are not sensational--they are wrenching and real and insisting that we not look away from that which we are, like it or not. If someone, somewhere is enduring what she depicts (and as an artist she depicts both metaphorically and literally)--then we are implicated. I am implicated.

I am grateful to Galindo for enabling me not only to be implicated in those scenarios but in her scenarios, as well. For in her insisting we acknowledge her, see her--she allows us in: We, too, dip our feet in the blood and walk silently through the political streets. We too, bravely endure the stares of the populace, the police, the indifferent, the offended, the hungry sympathetic, the powerful, the powerless. The powerless. They are indeed the most powerful. For it is the energy of the transferals of power that leave the trace. And the trace is upon a flesh beneath our flesh. Some might call it soul. (But, using that term vernacularally, that doesn't work for me.)

As both a scholar in the academy and a student of Buddhism (not in the academy) I am wary of terminologies. One must be precise. Precision is elusive.

So, for this post I will avoid wrestling with the notion of where the trace is left but note that I will discuss later that I am heartened by how Mari Ruti is Reinventing the Soul in such a way that I may academically reference this elusive "flesh beneath the flesh". For this post, I want to say simply "Look." Now remember.

The traces are not removed by a "who" but instead by a "how." And that is what I am interested in. Stay tuned.

http://www.videoartworld.com/beta/video_177.html
To see a clip of this work.