(no subject)

I'm about to change my handbag book (books run out, reach an end, finish, even if one reads them only en route) so I'm going to generously give you six words from (sort of) near the beginning of my erstwhile handbag book (and just how do people manage their reading, when they don't have big handbags? this is a puzzlement). There's that Liberte Gauloise faction I like so much, and there's a church I would visit, very happily, named after that important saint, Carpel le Tunnel. Thank you, Mr Abnett. My life needed the knowledge of St Carpel le Tunnel.

I don't need a new handbag book until Wednesday, which is a shame, since I just added many stray books to my 'read in the immediate future' pile. My loungeroom still looks as if the year is ending and teaching and writing have both shattered my systems, but all the piles of books save one are now elsewhere. This means only the housework has to be done. I have my priorities right.

(no subject)

My two hours on Medieval cosmology the week before last paid off in class today. We talked about learning and about languages and about literature and about polyglottal societies and about the shapes of learning and shades of the imagination. Time after time things made sense because my students could think about how they all fitted into a world view.

I've argued for a fair while that without an understanding of how the cosmos is seen by people, creating cultures for them is a bit hollow. Today really demonstrated that, and in ways I hadn't quite realised.

The thing is, though, that I need to paradigm shift* the people in a world I've created, to deal with changes in how they perceive their cosmos. If I hadn't taught today, I might have missed some of the implications of what I'm doing in my writing and created a hollowness in my own worlds.

Teaching is such a wonderful thing!


* I know 'paradigm shift' annoys many, many people. That's precisely why I used it. I blame the heat and the humidity: they bring out Evil Gillian.