into the jungle

It was the first night. I was in a car with three three other men. We were greeted by a dark skinned, 6 foot tall behemoth. His beard hung from his face like a heavy scroll. He bent down. He peered into the car with abyss-black eyes. The first thing I noticed were the tight leather gloves cloaking his hands, ripe for a killing.

hatch

a chaos hatches inside
our hearts
somber stutters
vacant murmurs
breed in the silence
we called decay

a chaos hatches inside
our laughs
saucy giggles
mouthfuls multiply
and our eyes eclipse
an inner demon

a chaos hatches inside
our masks
adjusted idioms
scamper through
the cage of our banter

a chaos hatches inside
my heart
a gentle ghost
dances in the shot glass

tonight he stares into
primordial patterns
and
cold corpuscles
vibrate through
an old chamber
where the conscious
lie buried

PhilosopherPoet

the man in the hat

the man in the hat
rummages through our lives
his hungry hands wade into
crying milk cartons and
our frugal egg shells

this morning i leave the house
my modest motorcycle carries me
towards the gate
i brake softly
still wrapped in plastic feelings
a cloudy face jumps up and watches
like a brazen rodent who
stumbles towards stale morsels
and parched containers

the man in the hat
hopes to find enough
charred doorknobs
soft match boxes
tender cardboard
chipped picture frames
to build his rusted thoughts
and carve copper dreams
into the moldy fingerprint
of today’s wreckage

next week he will
come with another
stubborn trolley of
tainted trinkets and the
same furtive glance
that steals the
liquid pathos
painting my face

Pulling the plug on ignorance

How do you explain the internet to someone? Or even something as simple as email? It’s been so engrained in our culture and our lives, to actually step back and look at the milestones is a sobering effect.

A few weeks back I was dealing with a lady of 77 years of age, let’s call her Margret. Her family was intent on getting her an iPad. The reason being she lives in a small old age home and needs to contact her family via Skype. Obviously a few people in the family are tech-savvy, and managed to gather together enough money to buy her one. I thought it was a great token of kindness, because now not only can she Skype (i.e. call her family abroad) but also she has access to tons of applications and data at her fingertips (on the internet).

So I activated her iPad and showed her how it all worked, and while I was setting up her Apple ID, the first thing that I asked her was, “What is your email address?” She gave me a blank look. I explained that her for an account of any kind we’d need an email address to get her account going. I told her that she would be able to write letters to her family instantly, that’s the best explanation I could give without overwhelming her further.

I felt sorry for her, and the way technology frightened her. It’s really a marvelous thing once you get your head around the basics of the iPad. Due to various circumstances, she was probably given the opportunity to learn (how to operate a computer) but felt too scared and inferior, and shied away from the opportunity. Now her family had dosed her with a bucket of water by thrusting an iPad in her hands.

This leads me to two topics :

• Why are we so afraid to learn?
• Technology is the key liberator of our time.

The Fear of Learning

When we start to learn it pushes out right out of our comfort zone into the realm of ignorance. Most of the time if you want to learn…you have to be receptive and be prepared to listen. Many people hate that feeling of vulnerability, and feel insecure (sometimes evening getting angry).

One of the better qualities in a teacher is patience. This is something that has poisoned many of us against certain subjects, since we had one cantankerous and moody teacher and scowled and berated us when asking a dumb question.

Learning is also a process of stumbling.

A wise old woman, who is a homeopath put it to me in this gentle way, “I’d rather die a failure than never having tried.” Progressing in life is simply trying new things. To get better at something (i.e. more skillful), you simply have to try. you may not succeed straight away, but that’s ok. Do a little bit at a time. Once in a while we will stumble and fall. Make mistakes, maybe even injure ourselves…but then like my good friend said at least we won’t be dying a failure.

Once you’ve tried enough times, you explore on impulse.

Learning (as a teacher and pupil is a exciting and intoxicating feeling), once you’ve got the hang of the initial trying, you will goad yourself into finding new avenues. My father (who is a seasoned, and powerful educator) put it to me this way. “Learning is just about being curious.” You don’t have to be reading an entire library of books, or have ten degrees behind your name. Just get excited and your curiosity will teach you to explore and gain a deeper understanding.

Wrestling with the wires

The more I work in IT (either by myself, or by helping others), I’ve come to realize that it’s more than a skill. It’s a language and a tool, if you don’t embrace it immediately, soon it will fall away “like sand through your fingers”. If that didn’t make sense, allow me to use another example.

If you’re having a casual days with a few friends, then suddenly someone asks you “Hey let’s go to that pub I told you about?” The only catch being there are five people (including yourself), yet only two motorbikes to get you there. Now you’re stuck. Well, unless you’ve an wild caveman living in isolation…technology will always be this functional tool we require to alleviate the logistics we encounter.

Getting in a car the first few times, is darn nerve wracking. Once you’ve got the knack of it, you wonder how you managed without it. This is the dilemma I faced a while back with Margret. I had to rewind my thinking only a decade or two, so she could understand the advantages of embrace this digital beast we all face.

I’m glad that she tried, otherwise she would just be a failure, a figure, a statistic even. Perhaps embracing the depths of the unknown, and wrestling with it…will be the greatest challenge us homo sapiens face?

PhilosopherPoet