Punctuated Equilibrium

Punctuated Equilibrium
instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms. (Heylighen)
... or so Stephen Jay Gould observed 26 years ago. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler makes the analogy of a communist revolution as a series of locks: a slow, almost imperceptible rising of the water, until the gates open and the ship of state sails smoothly into the next lock.I'm no evolutionary biologist or Russian novelist, but I am a free climber, and last night at the rock gym I experienced a bit of puntuated equilibrium all my own: after months of hurling myself at the wall, making progress only at the rate my arms strengthened, I tuned in to what my body was doing as I contorted around those dusty bits of coloured plastic, and realized - I mean realized with my body and mind, not just as an abstract principle but as a physical reality - that the legs are what should move you up the wall, not workplace stress.The gates have opened to the next level of climbing.
posted by tokyoaaron at 4:57 PM 0 comments

Punctuated Equilibrium
instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms. (Heylighen)
... or so Stephen Jay Gould observed 26 years ago. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler makes the analogy of a communist revolution as a series of locks: a slow, almost imperceptible rising of the water, until the gates open and the ship of state sails smoothly into the next lock.I'm no evolutionary biologist or Russian novelist, but I am a free climber, and last night at the rock gym I experienced a bit of puntuated equilibrium all my own: after months of hurling myself at the wall, making progress only at the rate my arms strengthened, I tuned in to what my body was doing as I contorted around those dusty bits of coloured plastic, and realized - I mean realized with my body and mind, not just as an abstract principle but as a physical reality - that the legs are what should move you up the wall, not workplace stress.The gates have opened to the next level of climbing.
posted by tokyoaaron at 4:57 PM 0 comments

Punctuated Equilibrium
instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms. (Heylighen)
... or so Stephen Jay Gould observed 26 years ago. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler makes the analogy of a communist revolution as a series of locks: a slow, almost imperceptible rising of the water, until the gates open and the ship of state sails smoothly into the next lock.I'm no evolutionary biologist or Russian novelist, but I am a free climber, and last night at the rock gym I experienced a bit of puntuated equilibrium all my own: after months of hurling myself at the wall, making progress only at the rate my arms strengthened, I tuned in to what my body was doing as I contorted around those dusty bits of coloured plastic, and realized - I mean realized with my body and mind, not just as an abstract principle but as a physical reality - that the legs are what should move you up the wall, not workplace stress.The gates have opened to the next level of climbing.

Now, can I get my students to reach the next level of appreciating William Golding's descriptive writing in Lord of the Flies? Back to marking mid-term assignments....

Hitting the Wall

Tuesday night: out of school at the stroke of four and at the bouldering gym before the chalk dust has settled in my classroom. For an hour an d a half Jake and I lunge at brightly coloured bits of plastic bolted to the walls, following trails of chalky tape that always seem as if they're going to lead somewhere - some climber's paradise up above the chalk-covered crash pads - but so far have ended abruptly at a ceiling beam or light fixture.

It's cathrtic, after long hours of teaching to focus on something so intensely physical, to limit your persepective to the next fingerhold or toe crack. I sleep better at night. I receive compliments from co-workers on my anger management.

Now I'm back at home, tapping at this ageing keyboard and listening to the newest Nick Cave double CD, The lyre of orpheus/Abbatoir Blues, and wishing the 7-11 hadn't closed its doors last Friday - it's now a 20-minute roundtrip to the nearest beer.

Such is life in suburban Tokyo.

Slowly, slowly, I am carving out some time to write in my hectic teaching schedule. It started with catching up on emails - sorry 'bout that all - and includes a somewhat half-hearted effort to finalize my admission to the Graduate Global program for international school teachers through The College of New Jersey (looks like I'm headed back to Mallorca for another summer of study and tapas after all).As inspiration to get back into more creative and ambitious projects I've been reading The Best American Travel Essay 2004, guest edited by Pico Iyer. I enjoyed my early attempts at essays about my overseas lifestyle (see "Home Alone" at worldhum.com for what I was doing when I had the time and energy).Here's series editor Jason Wilson quoting others on travel writing in his Foreword:

In their critical study of contemporary travel writing, Tourists with Typewriters, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan cast a skeptical eye on travel writers. But when it comes to the nostalgic impulse; Holland and Huggan are slightly more generous. "Travel writing, like tourism, generrates nostalgia
for other times and places, even as it recognizes that they may have 'lost' their romantic aura. Contemporary travel writing tends to be self-conscious - self-ironic - about such losses; it is both nostalgic and, at its best, aware of the deceptiveness of nostalgia." (xii)

Pico Iyer, this year's guest editor, has famously described travel writing as akin to a love story. In his essay "Why We Travel," Iyer writes, "I remember, in fact, after my first trips to Southeast asia, more than a decade ago, how I would come back to my apartment, in New York City, and lie on my bed, kept up by
something more than jet-lag, playing back, in my memory, over and over, all that I had experienced, and paging wistfully through my photographs and reading and re-reading my diaries, as if to extract some mystery from them . Anyone witnessing this starnge scene would have drawn the right conclusion: I was in
love." (xiv)

Not sure how exactly, if at all, such sentiments will inspire my expat writings, but it's a start...