What Dutch Do on Bikes

I could write an ethnography called: What Dutch Do on Bikes

and it would include a list, like this:

eat sandwiches

drink coffee

talk on cell phones

light up

kiss

hold hands

have profound conversations

carry loads of stuff

carry loads of people

raise their kids

are pregnant

create fashion statements

grocery shop

go through a take-out

move house

walk the dog

and then there are the moments that take the cake...

like:

bike to the gym so you can get on... a bike... to work out!

or

ride quickly ahead of the person in front, cut them off, slow down, and light a cigarette to let the smoke blow back in their face.

that's gotta be my favorite.

And the winners this month go to:

The older woman biking back from the hospital, swerving wildly, smoking a joint.

And,

The man smoking a cigar while biking lazily down the center of the road, crossing a canal.

Now, what a better way to enjoy a nice bike ride?

hmmmn.....

Anarchic Academic

Gut instinct is not enough when one is crafting a project that could outline the future for research and work. I am frustrated by this. Writing, as an art form, yes, it flows easily... but when I have to put might behind my words, when I have to defend, that is a different subject entirely.

The art of academic writing is to not stand on the fence, and also not dive too deeply in. Better to define the boat you would like to catch you as you spring into the waters of academia. I think at times, I tread water, and stay on the periphery of knowing quite how to do this.

Truly, I am an anarchic academic. I did not define myself ever as having the material within myself to do this. Master's thesis, PhD outlines, the questions and queries of a mind for research. Rather, I carry that rebellious rock-star quality still, and at times it trips me up and over my own intent.

I knew I sealed my fate the day I entered a heated debate about a kid I knew who was defined as 'ADHD'. I remember the moment when I said out loud, to the whole room, in my nice and demanding way: If it takes me getting a PhD, I will do whatever I can to defend these kids!

Now I am on the path, and wondering, what did I get myself into?

How did an artist, a singer, dancer, a dreamer, end up on this trans-academic highway?

I am a reluctant academic, yet some things come easy. Analysis is in my blood... ask my family how critical I can be! But arguing, proving a point, I quickly defer and retreat, would rather be the one to support another person's meaning. How can I learn to stand on my own two feet in the arena that so often defeated me in my upbringing?

My art teacher in high school guided me through two Cambridge exams by pissing me off- daily. He said, you work better angry.

Now I need to fuel the fire of my drive in order to enter this field of academia and survive. How can I engage the flame inside and use it to push my performance to new heights?

Source

"But what is its source, this part of us that is wiser than we are?" M. Scott Peck, MD

There are things I do by gut instinct. And there are things for which I am trained. Default settings tune me to children and animals like they are mine, regardless of who and where they come from. My training is comprised of various forms of knowledge, but all tested in the fire of what is inside.

In my work with young people, my intent is to point them, always and forever, back into their core. What are their guiding forces, and what are they comprised of? Understanding is not important, but trusting and following are. Understanding will come as an afterthought of progression when one is on the path of one's highest guidance. Sometimes we must move on instinct or intuition alone, and trust in an outcome.

Ready

In the cold grey light of dawn I stir with a single line in my head:

"It is not about going to search for your destiny. It is about rising up to meet it when it comes searching for you."

This is my waking thought. The beginning of my day. Cold and grey, the Amsterdam sky is an undulating blanket of damp billow moving towards my window. The prospect of heading out on my bike to cycle the 5 miles to town seems now irrelevant, as does breakfast, or a semblance of being ready. I arrive at the classroom in a state of grace.

All I have to do is get up, and be ready for this day.

What we can't know

The parts most difficult to explain, evaluate:

why one feels what they feel- internal, external, muscular, and emotional... sometimes there are no ways to describe it.

The medical and psychological professions, the academics, they all try to put into words, diagnosis, and clear terms the completely inexpressible life-worlds of the individual. What is this, what is that? What is normal, what is not? Who goes with which group, when and how, and why? Carl Linnaeus was able to classify plants, animals, fungi, protista... but the human experience, the human be-ingness, is it so quantifiable?

We classify, we organize, we label this and that in order to have something to grasp. But the reality is, what we are grasping for is often elusive.

Let's examine pain... or, for that matter, anxiety... or restlessness...

"Although bodily sensations seem very direct and concrete to the subject, they are elusive and obscure at the same time. Pain, for example, is an indefinite experience. The subject does not fully understand his own body and, worse, he finds it extremely difficult to communicate the pain sensation to others. Pain, by definition, is a lonely sensation and what cannot be shared by others cannot be discussed or recognized by others and thus remains, in a sense, abstract, a non-experience." (1)

In class the last few days, the others have noticed what I have not been able to articulate. I am quiet, recluse in my chair, withdrawn from them though I am there. One day I stood, behind my chair, to let the blood flow back into my legs that were suffering with the need to run away.

Can I articulate for others the experience of a person of activity who is confined to a seated position for hours on end? The mind shuts down, but only after prolonged dissonance with the body. The legs can go into pain. I clench my legs in efforts to avoid distraction, to settle my unease... and cut off my circulation. The stomach tightens. The breathing lightens. I search for a door, a way out, if the situation becomes too difficult.

Movement is freedom, in mind and body. If I can move, I can breathe. I can let my thoughts flow freely. I absorb and articulate meticulously.

It is tiring to hear the dialogs of those who 'have ADHD' and get media attention... 'oh, I get sooo distracted', 'yes, it's like this'... I am glad they can raise their voice, but do they really bring attention to the actual experience, or do they confirm the stereotypes and the classification schemes of it?

If I could take you into an anxious experience for me in the classroom, it would be based on feeling- you would experience bodily sensations and with that, mental images. These would not be so easily defined, and the closest experience would be that of art.

Rather than definitions of 'anxiety' or 'adhd' I'd like to just explore an idea: those who need and enjoy a great deal of activity, and those who don't.

Activity- mental, physical, emotional... it is movement, dynamic, elastic, plastic... it is awareness of heartbeat, breath, body and its dialog of "notice me, use me, make me live"

I notice a dread, a thread of pressure in people, when confronted with 'active' others. It is a glaring reflection of inactivity, passivity. And the interpretations of activity are wide-spread and sometimes demeaning: they can't sit still, something is wrong with them, that woman does not rest, that man is too busy.

When I am confined to a chair, sitting, stalemate for hours, I can tell you that my activity suffers. This is like pain inside me. Can you imagine for one minute as if you were a bird, ready to fly towards the sunset, and as you were taking off, wings outstretched, someone superglued your feet to a heavy wooden seat... in a room, with walls and a ceiling.

This is what it feels like, daily, for those people we want to classify into 'anxiety' or 'ADHD'... maybe there could be other terminology: 'trapped activity', 'confined body', 'physical dissonance'.

I am realizing that I can no longer be silent about my own experience of 'education' if I am to articulate and argue for a thesis on the construction of diagnoses around our kids. I am one of them. I still experience the debilitating trapped-ness of classroom dynamics, or situations of confinement. There is a reason I work with young people the way I do- to see themselves for what they are, and who... in a context of a world that may not understand them.

It is easier to theorize though- to make it always about the other. To say: oh, this experience belongs over there- in that grouping...

It is harder to say: here is my experience, and while it fits your criteria for this category, and that... it does not define me, who and what I am. This is a much scarier confrontation, and not just for the personal implications...

If I can say: "here I am, with this experience..."

someone else can say: "quantified as..."

and we'll still be stuck with the inexpressible expressed.

(1) Whyte, S. R., S. van der Geest & A. Hardon

2002 Social lives of medicines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (p. 45)