A Teaching Philosophy: remembering Tonto and re-educating the Lone Ranger
by Philippe Ernewein
{Prologue: roots of the mantra}
Most of the thinking that went into composing my philosophy was guided by the idea of “writing as discovery.” At times I have felt like a narrative writer squeezed into an academic box. At times I have felt like I was just trying to validate my intuition and perhaps at times I was. I hope that what comes across is ultimately seen as honest no matter how it is read.
This writing revolves around the importance of remembering. I see teachers as part of that collective team of rememberers; remembering what is important, remembering what it means to be human. Perhaps it is the act of remembering that lies at the core of being human. I’m reminded of Robert Creeley’s last stanza of Memory Gardens:
Only us then
Remember, discover,
Still can care for
The human (86).
When I was looking for a vehicle to use to explore my personal philosophy I turned to Tom Romano’s Blending Genre, Altering Style. I was really only convinced to pursue this multi-genre approach after reading Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La frontera. I was mesmerized much like the way I was when I read Victor Villanueva’s Bootstraps; I wanted to walk down the trail they carved in the wild frontier of academia.
How did Anzaldua so beautifully weave together these radically different stories? Perhaps by convincing the reader they are really part of the same cloth. It would have been much easier to compose a strictly academic piece. That was part of the difficulty: I kept getting pulled back to the traditional style of academic writing.
It was my intent to connect my personal philosophy to practical classroom applications. At times my pen took over and just said this piece belongs here. I’ve wanted to mix these ingredients for a long time: student examples next to Kerouac next to Snyder next to writing theory next to personal journals. With Romano’s theory as my wind, I set sail.
My allegiance to the lead however is fleeting: once readers have turned the page, those opening words are no longer important. Once readers are traveling your writing road, other matters loom critically ahead (Romano 41).
{Introduction: a word tacked to a wall}
There is a mantra that keeps coming back to me on sunny days, on overcast days, and in the classroom. Yes, often in the classroom. To call it a mantra might be too pretentious. It is after all just a word. While re- reading Augustine, Carl Rogers, Parker Palmer, and Plato more closely I noticed the word was frequently lurking in the text. It was present in my pre-writing for this personal philosophy. It popped up in readings I did recently that did not related to any specific class; reading done in that elusive free time. Gary Snyder uses it openly in his poetry. Jack Kerouac frequently wrote about it. This mantra even played a prominent role in Paul Gallico’s book called The Man Who Was Magic: a Fable of Innocence.
The first time I saw the word and it meant anything more than the dictionary definition was during my brief time training with a Buddhist master. That time was brief only because the pull back to the classroom was so strong, not because a lack of interest. The decision at that time did not allow for me to do both. I had taken an early sabbatical after two years teaching in a poor and under-resourced district (a parish is what they call it in Louisiana) outside of New Orleans. I knew my departure from the classroom was temporary. I needed something that was missing, something spiritual, something to depend on when all else failed.
That’s when I found G.B., a reclusive master teacher who resides in the northwestern corner of New Mexico, the center of the San Juan Basin, Chaco Canyon. Shortly after I met him he invited me to sit with him during his morning meditations. His alter of simple incense, flowers, and a picture of his spiritual guide was complimented by one word written in black ink on a white unlined half sheet of paper: Remember.
Remember. Remember what? My experience as a second language learner in America? My experience of being disengaged and bored with much of my high school education? Remember my Algebra teacher Mr. Smith’s most unhelpful words, “Try harder,” when I didn’t understand the Quadratic Equation my freshman year?
{Intentions: literary company}
It is my hope that some of this thinking and writing (same thing?) will shed more light on this mantra of remember. It has been truly a profound experience to see the idea of remember play such an important in my recent daydreaming, journaling, reading, and writing explorations. In the philosophical realm Plato stresses the importance of remembering relationships and nurturing relationship and using bonding as a vehicle for learning in the Phaedrus dialogue. In the literary circle Kerouac writes about remembering birth in order to live a fuller life. Around the warm campfire of poetry Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Robert Creeley are imploring the reader remember a sense of place in the ecosystem of life; remember the wild. Paul Gallico in his wonderful fable about a young magician is really speaking of the value of the magic of everyday life: a sunrise, a rosebush, a deer running through a mountain meadow. Remember everyday magic. Parker Palmer is begging us to remember the sacred, the spiritual in his book To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey and seek those places where the sacred and teaching intersect. Carl Rogers asks to remember our experiences and utilize them honestly in our relationships. Socrates speaks of not only knowing the self, but remembering the self. Christine De Pizan simply says remember charity. Margaret Fell, using the Scripture as her rhetorical approach, demands that we remember the word of the Lord.
I admit that there wasn’t much of a connection between seeing the word and being a teacher when the word was reintroduced to me above G.B.’s mediation shrine. Perhaps the seed was planted then. Remember. I made note of it. I mentally tucked it away. Seeing the word in that context of something spiritual, something important, something sacred definitely started my thinking about it. Why did it seem so important posted above the shrine? What elevated the word to the level of mantra? Why was it important to me?
Composing this philosophy has acted like a light source on this question. The appearance of light on the word remember has caused movement and growth; like an avocado seed, it is a big question and will need years of light and water to ever properly bear fruit. The seed has opened and produced the very beginnings of a trunk.
The primary purpose behind this writing has been to more clearly define my own philosophy of teaching. I have always followed my intuition and believed that remembering was important; the classroom is one place where this can be explored and practiced on a daily basis. The value of remembering and finding effective ways to share that memory has repeatedly surfaced in my thinking and reading around formulating this philosophy. Something I’ve always intuitively practiced and cherished has been part of the educational field for more than 2,000 years. Something I have always believed to be crucial is now even more so.
{First Connection: finding Carl Rogers}
Meeting Carl Rogers for the first time by way of an article photocopied from a 1980 December issue of College Composition and Communication in Rhetorical Theory: Teaching Writing (ENGL 6002) was illuminating to say the least. The question of remember quickly came to the surface. In Paul Bator’s article “Aristotelian and Rogerian Rhetoric” he captures Rogers’ central thesis in one succinct sentence:
If I can provide a certain type of relationship, the other person will discover within himself the capacity to use that relationship for growth, and change and personal development will occur (427).
Remembering a relationship or an experience and sharing it with a student or a class could lead to actual learning, real transformation. “Provide a certain type of relationship,” as Rogers said. This is what I did initially when I first stepped into the classroom. I valued my relationship with my students because it was all I had. The meaningful teachers for me previously had been those who provided a certain type of relationship. One in which I did not feel threatened and was willing to take steps and appropriate learning risks.
I tried to tap into the only credentials I believe I had, or really ever will have, those of experience. I secretly believed my students had visions and stories and gifts within themselves. If their experiences had even been remotely similar to my relationship with schools it was going to be mostly negative. A place where I was frequently shown what I could not do or did not know how to do. Not only had my students had negative educational experiences, but frequently so had their parents. I felt it was my job as an educator to bring those experiences out in the open, up for discussion in the classroom. I believed that if I remembered those experiences and shared them with my students in a non-threatening manner it would help created an environment which would allow for expression; only then could growth would occur. It was refreshing to read Rogers’ words, now eight years after that first classroom experience:
The actual statement of the audience’s position is critical. Since changing a person’s image of the subject depends, in part, upon reducing the present sense of threat, it requires the writer to demonstrate that the audience’s assumptions and perceptions have been understood adequately (Bator 429).
This does not mean that the teacher’s position needs to be identical to the students, but it does mean an early opportunity needs to exist for the both parties to share their view, a common remembrance of similar experiences. Since education is a common experience held by many it would seem sensible for a teacher to share his/her own educational experience with the students they are teaching.
I often did not know exactly what I was doing those first two years; from curriculum to special education protocol to management techniques, I was following my intuition most of the time. The biggest part of my philosophical foundation and perhaps the only one at that time was Teach For America’s mission statement, “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education” (Kopp ii). To borrow from Rogers, there were things I was doing and inner convictions I was practicing long before I realized them consciously (16).
{From the Source: On Becoming a Person}
Bator’s article led me to Carl Rogers’ book On Becoming a Person. In his truly confessional chapter, “This is Me,” he addresses the importance of remembering the self:
In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I were something I am not (16).
The condition of not being yourself can easily rear its ugly head in the classroom. With the many roles, duties, and responsibilities teachers have, we often forget who we are or lose focus of why we are doing what we are doing. It can sometimes be a chore to remember who you are. That is the task Rogers is suggesting we keep as a priority. Remember who we are. He continues with this train of thought and places great importance on experience. “I think of it as trusting the totality of my experience, which I have learned to suspect is wiser than my intellect” (23). The value of remembering experiences here is evident. Remembering experiences to share with my students has frequently led to some of the most memorable classroom lessons, lessons that students will often come back to months and years later to talk about: remember when you told me about riding the short bus to school? Remember when you told the class your father died when you were young? Remember when you told the class you ran cross country in high school?
I do and have tried to capture those moments into future lessons, specifically writing lessons. Capturing and crafting those memories into future lessons has also created rich classroom discussions and will often lead to the students sharing valuable and sometimes previously unshared experiences in journals, conferences, and writing pieces.
{Palmer’s Example: the importance of balance}
Remembering all by itself will not suffice. For example, just sharing what I remember about the Holocaust with my 11th grade students would not provide an adequate picture and clearly not teach them everything they need to know about Germany in World War II. Memories and stories that have been given to me by my grandparents and Holocaust survivors play an important part of the history, but do not play the only part. There needs to be a balance, a combination of the knowledge and the experience. Cicero brought this need for balance into crisp perspective in De Oratore:
To begin with, a knowledge of very many matters must be grasped, without which oratory is but an empty and ridiculous swirl of verbiage (Bizzell 291).
In other words, knowledge must be woven into an experience or story otherwise it has no place to stay; it will just blow away like a seed unable to find fertile ground. Just like a lecture or lesson will easily be forgotten if a student does not have a meaningful experience to hang it on.
Parker Palmer provides an extreme example of his learning experience about the Holocaust where he received just the knowledge component, just the facts. In essence he experienced what Cicero must have meant by “an empty ridiculous swirl of verbiage.” Teaching the lesson about that dark period of history without any heart, without any personal stories, without tapping into his experience left Palmer without having truly learned much:
I was taught the history of Nazi Germany in a way and I’ve never known how to say this that made me feel that somehow all of that murderousness had happened to another species on another planet. My teachers were not revisionists. They weren’t saying it didn’t happen. It happened. They taught the statistics and the facts and the theories behind the facts, but they presented them at such objectives arm’s length, just the facts and only the facts that it never connected with the inwardness of my life, because they inwardness of those events was never revealed to me. All objectified, all was externalized and I ended up morally and spiritually deformed as a consequence of that objectification (Appendix A).
He was not given the chance through writing or discussing to realize that this big story was also part of his story. This is the remembering component Palmer brings to his classrooms today; creating opportunities for his students to remember their own experiences and connect bigger stories to their own story.
This begins to shed light on the importance of remember. Remember the whole story, all sides. Remember the heart and mind of it.
{Ancient Connections: different classroom, same students}
In the Phaedrus dialogue Plato writes about the importance of being able to “Define everything separately; then when he has defined them, he must know how to divide them by classes until further division is impossible” (Bizzell 167). This was clearly the manner in which Palmer was taught about the Holocaust. He was treated, as Aristotle might call him, “A rational animal, capable of using logical reasoning as the basis for argument” (Bator 427). This is quite a different approach than Rogers. As Bator points out, “Rogerian strategy ‘rests on the assumption that a man holds to his beliefs about who he is and what the world is like because other beliefs threaten his identity and integrity’” (427). And this seems to be the dividing factor between the manner in which Parker Palmer was taught and the way Carl Rogers might approach the task. A split between, as Peter Senge would call it, systems thinking versus non-systems thinking (67). The systems approach would see Palmer (the student) as part of the Holocaust history; our world today is clearly still evolving and changing from the events of World War II. Even more than that, there are examples today of “little Hitlers” as Palmer calls them, forces of evil and hate that are operating in neighborhoods or business or town halls. This is an example that only furthers the need for remembrance of how our past influences the future.
Perhaps it is as simple as taking the audience (the client according to Rogers) into account, but it is more involved than that. After all, Aristotle took his audience into consideration, “The Aristotelian rhetor thus seeks to establish and control the emotions and expectations of the audience in an effort to persuade them to his own point of view” (Bator 427). Rogers of course has no interest in “generation and control of audience expectations” (Bator 427). Rogers is interested in remembering a common experience that perhaps he and his audience have shared. Above all it is important for him to “be real” (33). Rogers places great value on being genuine. There is a great amount of activity happening in this process that involves remembering. For example, Rogers states that the relationship which is helpful is characterized by an exposure of real feelings and “acceptance of this other person as a separate person with value in his own right; and by deep empathic understanding which enables me to see his private world through his eyes” (34). This involves a great deal of remembering on the part of the teacher. In a typical classroom it would be nearly impossible to achieve in the first month of school if no prior experience or communication exists with the students. After a few months of shared time, conversations, and common experiences, seeing through the students’ eyes can be achieved. “To the extent that the teacher creates such a relationship with the class, the student will become a self-initiated learner, more original, more self-disciplined, less anxious and other-directed” (Rogers 37).
In On Christian Doctrine Augustine stresses the importance of remembering previous experiences, remembering what was heard and remembering what was learned; his description seems to lay the foundation for the natural learning model. Augustine suggests that if a student was to pause and think of each rule for speaking, the student would be tongue-tied and unable to speak clearly:
For indeed even the very ones who have learned them, and express themselves fluently, think of these rules, in order to speak in accordance with them, unless the discussion be on the rules. Nay more, I believe there are scarcely any who can do both things, viz., speak well, and in order to do so, think of the rules of oratory while speaking (Bizzell 457).
This could be applied to writing also; students of writing might become apprehensive due to thinking about the rules as they try to write. Completely blocking the discovering which can occur during the act of writing. The remember component plays an almost subliminal role here. We must instinctually tap into that memory of what writing is and remember the good writing we have been exposed to and hope that in our practice we will discover something new.
Augustine continues to stress the importance and intuitive role that remembering plays in language acquisition in Book IV, “Children, for instance, would not even need the very rules of grammar, through which the purity of speech is attained, if they had the opportunity of growing up and living with men who talked correctly” (Bizzell 457). In other words if students had natural learning experiences all they would have to do is remember those experiences when they spoke. Of course learning is not that clean-cut. There are obstacles to this idea of remember. The experience is loaded with variables and individual experiences. We are not the product of one experience, but the sum of all our experiences.
{Old Meets New: Socrates and Kerouac meet on the path}
In Plato’s dialogue of Phaedrus the language of remembering is strong. Socrates in his discussion with Phaedrus during the third and final part speaks of remembering beauty:
All my discourse so far has been about the fourth kind of madness, which causes him to be regarded as mad, who, when he sees the beauty on earth, remembering the true beauty, feels his wings growing and longs to stretch them for an upward flight, but cannot do so, and, like a bird, gazes upwards and neglects the things below (Bizzell 151).
Here Socrates is specifically talking about remembering: remembering what is important, the true beauty. And where was this learned? Where was the knowledge of beauty first acquired? Before birth, during birth, with our first sensual experience? This reminds me of the metaphor of mirror and lamp Professor Vandeweghe often used in Rhetorical Theory: Teaching Writing. It would seem that the lamp here is the most useful in remembering this beauty. To allow light deep within the cellars of memory, of consciousness, of previous experience will help us discover the beauty Socrates says we will find within. It is within us and requires deep introspection to locate the source, the origin of the thought; to be able to remember it. Where do lost memories go?
This beauty has been searched for by people since pre-historic times. Jack Kerouac in his novel On the Road shares his journey of essentially trying to remember that beauty. His existential view on the matter is creatively presented at the beginning of his second cross country journey:
The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die? In the rush of events I kept thinking about this in the back of my mind (124).
Like Socrates, he is attempting to remember lost bliss, lost beauty. Kerouac keeps it in the back of his mind because he has no choice. It is an essential question. Whether we know an answer or not, our mind will keep searching, seeking, and attempting to acquire an acceptable answer. It is trying to remember something that perhaps, according to Kerouac, was once known at the birth. Maybe the mind is trying to remember something that was never known. Maybe the heart remembers what the mind forgot.
{Literary Connections: storytellers and poets}
The act of remembering something that is taught or experienced will most likely not occur if we treat the knowledge as something disconnected, something separate from the larger experience. It needs to be part of, as author Fritjof Capra calls it in his book The Web of Life, “A whole network of relationships – a context, in which information is embedded and which gives it meaning” (272). This network of relationships is what I see as a collective memory of a person’s life or a community’s shared memories. The stories and experiences that a group holds as important and valuable in order to lead a meaningful and productive life are the glue that holds this network of relationships together.
And who decides which stories and experiences are valued? Do we consult Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy at this point and take it as Scripture? Who are the stakeholders? Who are the great rememberers? Gary Snyder would say it is the poets:
Poets hold the most archaic values on earth…the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe (The Real Work 3).
I agree with Snyder, but I would add, among others to that group who hold those archaic values, teachers. As part of the collective of the rememberers with potters, writers, farmers, philosophers, and spiritual leaders, there must be a place at the table for teachers. As teachers we are constantly making decisions about what subjects to tackle, which lessons to craft, and what memories to share.
In Gallico’s The Man Who Was Magic, the main character Adam shares with his young student where the memories are held. In an exchange and setting similar to Socrates and Pheadrus’, Adam touches his young student on her forehead and says:
It’s all inside there, Jane, like a box with many compartments. Each one you can call upon for anything you want or desire. It contains the greatest magic of all. It can carry you into the past, or let you imagine the future. It can help to make you well when you’re sick and make bad things good. Everything that men or women have ever accomplished has come out of that miraculous box. When you use it properly it enables you to think of or create things that no one has ever done before, even the way to the stars (119).
That miraculous box: the mind, the soul, imagination, our memory? This is the place where the archaic values are stored. The memories of our parents, the first time we saw blood, a first kiss, a favorite recipe, the value of a relationship: the stuff that makes us human.
"Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout"
By Gary Snyder
Down valley of a smoke haze
Three days of heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
(Riprap, 1959)
{Personal Memory: moving outward physically & spiritually}
Traveling around Europe, right out of high school, eighteen years old, I moved around for a month straight. Sleeping in Youth Hostels and hopping on trains from Frankfurt to Paris to Madrid to Brussels, it was more education than my entire four years of high school combined. Money was tight, but we always made sure there was enough left for the daily entry fees at museums. My friend Bryan and I kept journals for the first time in our lives. There we collected our observations, sketches, ideas, and tried to explain things we didn’t fully understand; I remember being enraged by the food vendor outside of the Dachau concentration camp. Who could have an appetite after witnessing such absolute horror?
We also read everyday. I was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the first time. We finally settled down for a few days at my Aunt’s house in Turnhout, Belgium, the place of my birth. I slept in a cozy bed, as opposed to trains and old WWII cots, and took a long shower. While getting cleaned up, I looked in the mirror, but didn’t see myself. I just saw everything around me (excerpt from journal 4/23/02).
“In moving outward from himself, the child becomes more himself” (Teaching the Universe of Discourse 59).
{Insitu: standing in front of a classroom twelve years later}
When I take away all the textbooks, vocabulary lists, spelling rules, and standardized tests, the one thing that remains standing in my classroom is the journal. The journal is the keeper of the letters I exchange with my students on a weekly basis. The journal is the keeper of the collective memories that are created during the school year. The only time the students receive the same letter is on the first day of school. This letter explains my expectations and requirements of the journal. I adapted this idea from Nancie Atwell’s book In the Middle when I first started teaching eight years ago. The journal has evolved over time out of necessity into an individualized and organic practice; organic because it can move in many directions depending on the student’s needs. Unlike Atwell, the journal doesn’t have to be a strict reading response (i.e. teacher asks questions about a text and students answers them). If it was, according to Moffett, then it would not be real authoring, but “disguised playback” (Coming on Center 149). It can include other ideas, news, and personal concerns. This year it has become a powerful springboard for writing topics. The journal always plays the role of the bank for our memories.
In the Writing Workshop the students are encouraged to write about anything. First day, just write; this confuses some, of course, because they have often not been given the opportunity to write in such a way. There are boundaries: language about hurting self or others would draw my immediate attention and lead to a conference with the parents. It is frequently a cry for help or attention and then steps are taken to resolve that issue. During the first quarter, for example, the students are required to write a narrative which is modeled extensively in the Workshop.
Every student has a story, a collection of memories and it is here where they can capture it on paper. Their first pieces are often amazing with strong details and definite passion for the topic. Basically they select the memory they wish to hone. Remembering is the lifeline of the Workshop; the oxygen of the classroom.
I dedicate the last few days of every quarter to sharing our completed writing pieces. This is when the bar is set; students see the high expectations of true authorship, honesty and the value of remembering. For many it is often the first time they have been allowed to write about their memories. With the second quarter the boundaries of writing increase to include expository, research, technical, and a variety of letters.
“To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him” (Suzuki 31).
{The Spirit and the Classroom: the Buddha on my shoulder}
Discovering James Moffett’s theories was like finding the educational roadmap that I had intuitively been using to navigate my thinking around writing and reaching often reluctant and learning different high school students. It was like sitting with a Buddhist master and being told to breathe like this and think of a certain mantra when that is what you have been doing instinctually for years. But sitting and breathing correctly is something that anyone can do; it is the knowing why that brings depth and integrity and precision to the act.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor or sitting on a chair (preferably without touching the back of the chair), one keeps the spine erect but not stiff, releases muscles, and slows and deepens breathing. The key to meditation is a relaxed body and an alert awareness (Coming on Center 151).
For the writer this relaxed body and alert awareness can be captured in the journal. My students do not have very much opportunity during their day to get as close to meditation as they do during the twenty minutes of uninterrupted reading and writing time they are guaranteed everyday. They have told me it is one of the things they value most in the classroom. It is a time for me to also sit alone with my thoughts as well as theirs and make sense of what they are saying and thinking; what I am saying and thinking, what I am teaching and why I am teaching it.
Veils fall. Zen masters constantly compare this liberated consciousness to a perfectly still body of water that directly reflects reality, no longer distorting it with ruffles of egoistic feelings or ripplings of the social mind (Coming on Center 164).
But not everything is still, underneath the water there are thoughts swimming. Suzuki calls them mind weeds. We should be grateful for these weeds because eventually they will enrich our practice (36). Where do these weeds come from? Who planted them there? Moffett would say institutions put them there:
Individuals are in a sense “bugged” by institutions, implanted with an invisible transmitter in the form of a discursive system that structures their own nervous system so that they are in some degree participating in group thinking whether they know it or not or like it or not (Coming on Center 138).
Who bugged me? Who bugged my father? My grandfather? And why bug? Are the institutions afraid of what might happen if the students and teachers actually arrived at their own conclusions; would it challenge the status quo? Be aware of what bugs you.
A way to counter this “bugging” is to write and to write often and for yourself.
M.S. Merwin says, “Practice, practice! Put your hope in that!”(Wilhelm xii).
Belief & Technique for Modern Prose: List of Essentials
By Jack Kerouac
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Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
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Submissive to everything, open, listening
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Try never get drunk outside yr own house
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Be in love with yr life
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Something that you feel will find its own form
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Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
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Blow as deep as you want to blow
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Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
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The unspeakable visions of the individual
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No time for poetry but exactly what is