From here.

“If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me."

- Sarah Kay.

Don't stare, it's rude.

Sitting outside on my front step after a short stroll in the dark, enjoying the delicious smell of burning matches and lazy, folk-pop tunes much to the rhythm that represents this country - free, at a comfortable pace. It's hard to believe that other's worlds aren't as quiet as mine tonight. It was only yesterday that I had, in my dismay and frustration, spat fiery words into a stack of blog drafts only to be left incomplete and distracted with exceptional Q&A content. (Something I enjoy as much as I like to jab matches vertically into a hard surface to watch the burnt pieces crumble - makes me sound a little vicious, no?) One poet had it right when he wrote - "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence" (Robert Frost). Pardon that I'm not in an elaborating mood. Let's appreciate and move on. Poetry has been a lot more on my mind recently - I've always found there to be a disconnect in my ability to read a poem and comprehend as much as I would like to. Perhaps it was the broken lines or how things rhyme (appreciate what I did there?), words with too many syllables and condensation - an expression I've never been akin to, but I've found my space; slam poetry. I had come across a stray video here and there but nothing that had ever struck me, poisoned or possessed me the need to chase such a thing. But as with all things, the exception glanced straight at me and led me - Andrea Gibson's expression and talent is shattering, and shatters me with only bare minutes that manage to cry books worth of importance. I cry as though I have been drinking tears all my life - she has the ability to stir an emotional chaos in anyone who is in the presence of her poetry. Her sheer unapologetic fierceness is unfailing. And did I even mention she used to work as a preschool teacher? No words.

Swingset.

One of her milder poems but one that means so much to me.

Luggage with a Disability.

Wonderful, wonderful.

January come I will be headed to Washington where I'll be thrown insight into the big U.S's mind on education (CWU, show me what you've got!), where I'll greet opportunities to wander and explore. 6 months of clutching my plans of lust to a disproportionately minute suitcase and a wallet lacking the generosity I require. Of days spent in conversation with myself, strangers and the characters of a well chosen novel. Of days spent rushing because I am lost and terrified. Of breathing a different kind of oxygen that expands my lungs and fills my feet with the capacity to run for days. Of learning how to pronounce words I do not know and learning to taste the flavour of foreign. Of discomforting sleeps in scratchy beds and carrying my life in a suitcase threatening to cripple under pressure. And even when wheels stop rolling and handles snap, I'll still be quite pleased. Such is my euphoria.

YOU'RE fucking easy.

Easy?

You think it's easy?

Do you think understanding humans is easy? Do you think assessing all the little bits and pieces of the world and developing a way to inform a human being how to be, is easy? Do you think being in itself is easy?

I understand that at many times I use very deprofessionalising terms to speak of my chosen study - Early childhood education. I deduce it to sentences strung like soiled nappies and kitschy paraphernalia but this is in no way a representation of education, nor my interpretation of what I do or wish to do. I understand the mindset that it is "easy", that education is a natural skill - that is, to know how to learn and how to teach but in an unnatural world, I beg to question what exactly are we teaching and to who is it appropriate? What is relevant, what is optimal, what is it we want, what is it societies, communities annd families want, and what does the child want? Education is something I cannot stand people misunderstanding and demeaning. And I have surely heard a few snarky comments lately. A friend who does not understand my dedication and passion and what education is, can kindly exit. Ironic as it is, the remedy I'd recommend would be - get a little educated.

Sure, the statistics in that business unit you need to hammer through is tedious, and the reports on whatever readings you need to complete come in batches at the most inconvenient of times, but what is education in an international context? Can you even define such a thing and what structure should its content hold, what questions to be solved, what values to be believed, what wrongs to be condemned? And if you don't know, then how do you teach it? How do you even know what to try? And what happens when every single person is every single person and not all the same thing we can apply a concrete set of rules and techniques to? What happens when most days carry change so dynamic that confusion is startled for we've got no clue what is good or bad for future generations?

I don't think of my degree solely as any specific occupation (and especially not as my current position - child care centre educator). I enjoy my studies as much as I do because it is mind broadening. I am sure we all think of human sciences in a somewhat warm regard. Afterall, we're human, we like to be understood and to understand each other. So why not when we are young, when much of our learning is imperative to our later development? Babies are not empty slates. Children are not undeveloped adults. They are people of their own with minds and hearts that operate differently then gradually, similiarly because we teach them to. 

Children are able.

They used to call us workers. Nowadays, I would like to say the term is actually educators. 

We are the intervenors, we direct, not control, we embrace, not discard, we care for diversity, not inequality, we interact, not talk at. Learning isn't measured by academic tests. Your child understanding their own body by crawling is learning just as much your child learning algebra. Teaching your child affection through how you treat them is as much teaching as writing them an exam and marking it with blood red pens. It angers me that child care centres can be run as businesses but primary and above education cannot be run this way. Is the beginning of a child's life able to be trivialised, demeaned and made an economic exchange? Society thus far has answered this question in the affirmative. Who can we blame? Answer me, does it discomfort you that your young child will be treated as a tool to earn profits from? That the well being of your child isn't ensured because there is quite frankly, hardly any incentive for educators to bother (other than our own passions, love and responsibility)?

I'd like to see how any one person can tell me education is an easy discipline. It may be easy to find a job, and easy to do your job but who is doing it right? Who the fuck is doing it well? Tell me the 'right' way to be a human in simple actions and words and I'll pass it on. Something that is timeless too, let's not forget that little detail, and oh, it also has to apply to all humans regardless of their differences. 

Yeah, you try that. Tell me how it goes.

If you fail to see the complexity of education, you only express how much you are failing to see the complexity of being human, and that to me, is pretty fucking clueless.

Biological Postcards.

One of the most wondrous things I know:

Babies cry in the accent of their mother’s voices.

9 months of learning before we've even breathed with our own mouths for the first time.

Exactly.

Shrink.

"How do you teach homosexuality? Is it like French?"

The United States of Absurdity.

People think being alone is a lie. They don't believe in this kind of freedom but are used to the loss and gain of exchange. We all quietly want to fall involuntarily into a solititude that can't be disturbed by others but it doesn't happen, we're much too absorbed and attracted to the world that is not ours. We want to be frowned and smiled upon, silly danced with, the other half of a large portioned meal, and warmed by the presence of someone else's body. All those little things that zig zag back and forth between you are like flashing endorsements all carrying the same logo - 'you matter'. They think it's ludicrous yet incredible. Of what kind of esteem do we owe the man who is alone? The title of being insane or absurd. Are either bad? No, not at all. There's no healthy way to be so just carry on. So why not nights of ears filled with Tin Sparrow, browsing vintage luggage and sucking on chocolate dipped almonds? Shrug off sacks of worried eyebrows and get packing. The incessant need everyone has to chase each other like tails of their own, is becoming a little irrelevant. Too much maintenance and not enough to pay off the investments of myself isn't the best advert they could offer, yet I bought that shit anyway. Not so clever. I want out, you schmucks.

The Big Scary.

Stranger. You are my everything. The world is full of people who lean on the belly of tomorrow's rising sun. Yet it is the stranger, the outline of limbs and torso, of a mind encased with handfuls of hair, that I invest myself in. Should I blame other people's stories? But of course, I don't believe in blame. Oh those images and words spinning knots of seductive faux figures, they're as much mine as they are others. I remember someone once told me "No, the people I write about are made up..well not really, but I'm talking to no one... or no one I really know. It's just people." Just people. Are people so often constructed that we've nonchalantly crafted too many ideas of everybody and now the only decent task left to exhibit is to staple all these extra copies in a bundle for storage? It's really our physical reality that is the most incoherent, that fails us most. 

*B041 by MADEIN.

"In my whole life I never thought I'd have to clean a piece of art with a vacuum cleaner! Bring out the dyson!"