After this long hiatus, I’m at it again. The original purpose of this blog was to work out some of the ideas that are associated with my Ph.D. dissertation. And now–the actual writing has begun. What I foresee is more entries, less formality, more kvetching, and actual draft pieces from the writing. Comments, suggestions, critiques welcome at this point. I’m at the writing every day, keeping a log, placing one word in front of the next, the “long march” has begun.
Quote of the day, from Dale Pendell’s wonderful trilogy.
If some study enlightenment, we study illusion. We seek medicine in the very poison that has seduced us. The mind, we might say, is too much with us, so let’s heap on some more.
—Pharmako Gnosis: Plant Teachers and the Poison Path
Excellent! This got to become the one of the most interesting dissertations in our corner of the galaxy at the moment – happy writing!
the trick is to keep the passion and the fire there–and not just succeed in turning it into another boring academic subject, as friend mobius said.
more kvetching please!
Hi, I am wondering whether, in your research, you encountered anybody who speaks gaol-talk. And can let you know, that, at least here in Australia, (where indigenous prison inmates are a 30% of the gaol population, but indigenous people only 3% of the citizens of the nation), the language manifesting inside prisons, is a language which was evolved via the imposition of drug abuse from criminal to criminal, (involving corrupt security guards also indubitably). I don’t think any research exists to validate my statement however, at least not here in Australia, where knowing gaol-talk is too highly prized knowledge to be letting academics into. (eg a distinct difference exists between getting “an education”, as in a criminal induction into worse criminality, and “the edumuckated” as muck rakers, as in people so finely attuned with academia that they don’t know how to communicate normally) Knowing “the lingo” as we say here in Australia, is normally how anybody ever defines what being “in” might be. However, in my overall assessment of your website, my mind unscrambled it into immediate comprehension that it is our own spirit people who are being heard by many. So I wondered if you know much about the linguistics of Aboriginal Australian lingo?? For example, that our sentence structures enable infinitely long sentences, or that every word’s function in the sentence, is defined by a suffix (not prefix, meaning we learn to listen).