I do not consider myself to be internally organized. I organize things around me, hoping for my thinking processes to reflect my environment. I have also not gotten higher than a B on my essays, and I would like that to change, because I feel that I can do better. Essays are directly connected with organized thinking.
Everything has a pattern, and everything has a shape. A pattern is a repetition of events, a rhythm, a method. A pattern is the way you walk, your schedule, how you tie your shoes. Each person has a different pattern, and in the arts 'being good at something' is often a name for being able to broaden artistic patterns. It is the difference between only being able to do one thing and having a larger artistic vocabulary.
A shape is a whole, the design and organization of the whole, which includes the patterns used to understand it. A shape is your person, it is made up of the patterns of how you walk, how you speak, how you spend your afternoons. 'Who you are' is different for each person around you, and there ends up being a range of shapes that represent you. And that range of shapes is represented by a larger, generalized shape, enclosing the others.
Understanding patterns comes from The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. The book is narrated by an autistic man, who concentrates a lot of his time on patterns and understanding the world in terms of pattern. The shape perspective also comes from the screensaver with the shape that twists and turns around the screen. And, it comes from a New York Times article about autistic people understanding numbers with shapes. This is a similar article. I don't see numbers as shapes. But maybe I can understand language better by translating its patterns into something a little more visual, a little more organized. Abstractions and connections. I also made a bead necklace when I was entering Middle School. Different beads served as different markers to chronicle my life up to that point. The idea also comes from work in abstract expressionism: giving emotions shapes.
A shape is a whole, the design and organization of the whole, which includes the patterns used to understand it. A shape is your person, it is made up of the patterns of how you walk, how you speak, how you spend your afternoons. 'Who you are' is different for each person around you, and there ends up being a range of shapes that represent you. And that range of shapes is represented by a larger, generalized shape, enclosing the others.
Understanding patterns comes from The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon. The book is narrated by an autistic man, who concentrates a lot of his time on patterns and understanding the world in terms of pattern. The shape perspective also comes from the screensaver with the shape that twists and turns around the screen. And, it comes from a New York Times article about autistic people understanding numbers with shapes. This is a similar article. I don't see numbers as shapes. But maybe I can understand language better by translating its patterns into something a little more visual, a little more organized. Abstractions and connections. I also made a bead necklace when I was entering Middle School. Different beads served as different markers to chronicle my life up to that point. The idea also comes from work in abstract expressionism: giving emotions shapes.
I think visually, and my concepts are visual. The ciriculum of a class has a shape: it is based on the amount of time spent in different topics, the amount of detail the topics go into, the amount of the information that is understood and retained. It's not a definite shape, everything is abstract, but there are larger parts and smaller parts.
If I can understand an essay, I can break it down. I can call a sentence a line. There are different kinds of sentences. A simple sentence has a smaller, simpler shape than a more complex sentence. A short sentence, a short line. A long sentence, a long line.
But, is grading based on if your essay-shape fits within the parameters of a larger, more general shape? Is grading about how closely your shape is to the shape of the grader? How is that measured?
As a dancer, is your understanding of the world based in kinestetics? Does the person who understands relationships best see coursework in terms of relationship? Poets? Sculptors? Do other people think about how they think? How other people think? Is it important to understand? I don't think I'm crazy. I just don't know anyone else thinking like this.
No comments:
Post a Comment