My Grandfather help me get started with stamp collecting when I was about seven or eight. Each stamp was a tiny piece of information about its country of origin, like secret messages from foreign lands. They intrigued me; I wanted to know more. I began to read maps and travel books and wished I could have pen pals from all around the world. I see the pieces falling from the box as the scraps of information I gathered about different countries and their cultures. The multi-colored ball is my understanding of the world-- as each piece comes to the whole my understanding becomes more thorough, while also becoming broader and more nuanced and subtle at the same time.

Once the piece in in place, it may fit and it may be sent back. or another piece falls out. steadily. flux, flood, drought. Wholeness is a myth, but we're all going to be ok.

We want to own Truth. I want to know Truth. I want to understand, have understanding, complete the puzzle...but just as soon as you think you know something, really understand it...

Not knowing, AND admitting that you actually see the question marks of gaps and flaws gives rise to – through some sort of phenomenal and maybe unnatural birthing, ... that thrust of work-honesty-listening well to whatever...

Out of which comes our new selves, free falling from the rigidly predictable primary-colored existences we may have now to join and contribute in a new community, new kaleidoscopic meld...

The end-game of all that effort, a pleasing mass with blurred edges, fluid form that, we trust, will make more sense, and in any case, will surely be more appealing, more fun.

But what's really happening inside that sinister red-green-blue box? What transforming process takes place upon us to enable the Community and its continuous evolution?

Then and now, I can't help but approach all of this stuff as a folklorist, whatever that might mean. Even knowing what I know(?), the story I produced the other day leading my first CSEM class was entirely unlike my first tale about the cover picture. I'm persuaded, taken by both, and by others I've read and heard in this forum.

Luckily for me, mine is among the most undisciplined disciplines. I'm free to be promiscuous in my references and inspirations and forgetful (sometimes) about the stories I've met.

Looking forward to your revisions, re-thinkings and forays into undisciplined terrain this semester.

HST

The dappled, multi-colored globe represents the many people/experiences/viewpoints/pieces of knowledge that one encounters in life. Unlike many others in my class, I viewed the "puzzle pieces" as eminating from the sphere and being absorbed into the cube (rather than the other way around). In my interpretation, the cube represents one's own being/consciousness/sense of self, the many experiences we encounter throughout life are absorbed and categorized by us to shape who we are.
I also thought the significance of the "self" being on a post - with a base that has question marks on it, means that we think of ourselves as a stable and unchanging entity, but perhaps we are less "steady" than we think since we are constantly imbibing new information. The sphere of experience and the "outside" world is a sphere because a sphere will never stay stable if you place it down somewhere, just as the world and our experience is constantly changing.

Hope that makes sense to everyone.

- Joy : )

Take Two (aspirins?...): Understanding is ?????

The mass: all people, all possibilities -- still child-like, naïve, amorphous. Most are content to hunker down against the warm colors and soft shape, but some of us are lured away by the mountain that must be climbed.

We lock onto a path that transforms us. We molt again and again, taking on distinct form and color. We have chosen a one way ride. Innocence lost, along with the promise of all things possible? Like junkies on a new high, we float. Like junkies on an old high, we need more just to stay straight. We're hooked.

Box Mountain holds us, rattling around inside its disciplines, boundaries, constraints. No way out? Or have we gained the power to move to the challenge, the next "high"... how to think our way out and on to the next mountain.

And so the tye-dyed ball rolled on, through meadows and parks. As the ball rolled on, it grew happier, content with itself. Swirling with red and blue, green and yellow, it made it's way down the road. Suddenly, it was stuck, confused. The ball was bored with itself- "Something is missing," it said, "but I am all in one piece!" Confused, it rolled onward. Suddenly, something came into view straight ahead. The ball maoved closer and closer, and this THING came more into focus. It was not a circle, but...a square! It too, had many colors. But it was different than the ball- it's edges were pointy, and it was missing a piece.
"I know," thought the ball, "I will share some of my colors." It wriggled a few pieces loose, and away they flew. The sqare was now in focus. The square seemed whole. And the ball, even though it was missing a piece, felt whole too!

[Perhaps i need help with this, but my point was that while it can be scary to be open and to share, by sharing, we will grow and figure out who we are, and others around us will do the same.]

for me, the box (colored so brightly, brightly and w/ beauty; i revel in the intensity of these primary colors) clearly represents academic "knowledge," the sort of "packaging" that shows up as disciplines like"biology" or "literary studies" or "anthropology," while the globe is the multiple pleasing richnesses of the world. but i really don't like the way this artist has figured the relationship between these two images. rather than "reading" what she's drawn, i'd prefer to re-draw the picture/re-arrange the interaction between the parts. i'd get rid of the stand and its label, put the box and the globe on the same level, let the puzzle pieces flow back and forth between them, in order to "say" that the rich multiplicity of the world is what feeds our academic "packages," but the sense those packages make of the world has the capacity for re-shaping it in turn...and on and on/round and round/back and forth it goes. (in the picture, as it's currently drawn, gravity works against that back-and-forth process)....now: WOULDN'T i just like it a LOT if, before class ends in december, each of us could not just describe (as i just have), but actually DRAW our own figure of what "understanding" looks like....
anne

An object itself, like the now famous blackboard example we used in class, is not a story. The way we see this object, its significance to our own lives, or its history of being can be shaped into a story.

Is this explanation a story? Of course not. There is no plot, no setting, no flow of interconnected events. Rather, this passage is a definition. It tries to define the word "story" which contradicts all that a story is. Rather than a definition that tells the reader what to think, a story provides a loose structure about a topic while allowing the person experiencing the story to interpret it her own way.

As the word "story" can be viewed differently by everyone, perhaps coming up with a precise definition of this word isn't as important as understanding the message of what we expeience, be it a story or not.

What is the box? It breaks apart violently. It heaves a heavy load. The sound can be heard for miles. A world breaks apart. A new world in it's birth pangs receives it. Is the box real? Some say it has always been there and always will. Others say it isn't really there at all.

When pieces fall, does a void remain? What is behind the blackness of the places where the pieces have left shattered. What is the nature of the box? Why does it cast bits of itself like bread upon the water?
The core of the planet summons it.

The original form of the picture is in an exhibit called Transformation at http://serendipstudio.org/sci_cult/bridges/transformation/metamorphosistop.html. Click through the exhibit until you get to the three doors, go in the middle one, look on the right wall.

For Sharon's story of the picture, see http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/Chem/sburgmay/understandingsbirth.swf.

Is that actually a "spoiler"? How relevant is it what Sharon says she had in mind when she painted the picture?

I think that a story is a described event or situation that involves a person's opinions or feelings. The author's ultimate goal is to evoke similar or different emotions in the reader and hopefully form a connection with the reader. In some stretch of the imagination, the reader should be able to relate to the issue discussed in the story.


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