Moi, je rêve: Time against Memory

Time against memory

The scorching flesh

Under the merciless sun

The splash of waves

On the sea-chiselled pebbles

The lifeless shells

 Washed  ashore

The taste of salt

On the thirsty mouth

The time-dimmed memories

Of all bygone summers

The dazzling nothingness

Of the engulfing heat

The tier approach with images or La Casa Abbandonata

This is my 100^th post so I thought I would allow myself some frivolity by way of celebrating.

Images will yet again come in handy in this free-writing venture. This time we will look at the painting of a house in its surroundings. There is enormous potential for language production there for almost any level and age of learner.

I will not use standardised levels of knowledge as I am disinclined to label anything that defies categorisation. I will simply make some suggestions for exploiting the image in different ways in class moving from a lower to a higher level.

La Casa Abbandonata by Carlo Carra

Ø How many windows are there?

Ø How many windows can you see?

Ø Where is the house?

In a forest

On the edge of a forest

In the middle of nowhere

Ø Use some adjectives to describe it.

·       big, old

·       ruined

·       abandoned

·       solitary with big empty eyes of windows

·       decrepit

·       fallen into disrepair

Ø What is inside the house?

·       Nothing

·       I don’t know.

·       I have no clue.

·       I haven’t got the foggiest idea.

·       The remains of old furniture

·       Overgrown grass

·       Emptiness

Ø What happened to the residents of the house?

·       They moved to another place.

·       They emigrated to a more promising land.

·       They grew tired of isolation and loneliness.

·       They died off.

Ø Say something about the surroundings.

·       There are lots of trees and bushes.

·       There are tall trees and thick green-greyish foliage.

Ø Ask a question about the house.

·       When was it built?

·       Is it haunted?

·       Will it be inhabited again?

Ø You are allowed to add one item in this image. What would it be? Where would you place it?

·       A roof on top of the house.

·       A swing suspended from the bare tree in the left corner of the image.

·       A stony path leading to the house.

Ø What emotions do you experience when you look at this image?

·       sadness, discomfort, nostalgia, apprehension, fear

Ø This was the first or the last scene in a film. Write the first few lines of a character’s reminiscences of this house.

·       We left the city to live in the country for the rest of our lives.

·       When father passed away, mother could not face spending another day in the sprawling unfriendly city.

·       The house stood there with its arched windows boarded up – alluring and intimidating at the same time. How were we to rid it of its past and make it ours? How were we to efface all the remnants of its previous occupants’ lives still lingering inside and outside?

Ø You once lived in this house. What is your best or worst memory of it?

·       My brother and I raced to the top of the tree, and I always won.

·       Every morning, when I opened the window, the sunlight would stream into my room making everything bright and transparent, a minuscule wonderland.

·       The wolf was right there on the doorstep emaciated and in dire need of food and shelter, and mother’s hard-headed defence was in shreds. The wolf was taken in and nursed back to health, but when the day came to let him go, …

In my Mind's Eye

When I slip into reveries, I am lost to the world.

Anyone relates to this condition?

In my Mind’s Eye

My old mother used to say

If you can’t see the ocean

Behind those pale blue eyes

You are likely blind

And if you can’t feel the heat

In those dying embers

You’ve never been touched

By the divine

Your world is there

And you are forever

Reshaping it only

 In your mind’s eye

The liberating power of learning and teaching or Five Ways to Kill a Man

Learning in general is a personal matter as it is -- much more so learning a foreign language. Having come a long way in teaching and learning (one must continue to learn so one can remain in touch with one’s students and, more importantly with oneself), I have reached some very simple conclusions and have freed myself from the self-imposed fetters of strict planning and adherence to methodology.

Of course, one might argue that it took me a lifetime to realise what others have practised by default. This is not an effort to preempt criticism, but I do feel that delving into different approaches and assimilating them in my teaching has in fact enabled me to reach this point where liberating myself is an informed  conscious decision.

Here is a poem which I prepared and presented following my instinct though I did my bit of research beforehand.

Five Ways to Kill a Man by Edwin Brock

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him. But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see
that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

When I first read the poem, it strongly reminded me of the recipe conventions mainly in two ways:

1.   There are all those “ingredients” which one can use.

2.   If you follow the “method” in combining them, you will get the right result, which, in the given context, is to kill a man.

So I searched for some images of the “ingredients”, placed them on slides on PowerPoint – one slide per verse – and asked my students to name what they saw and think of how the images were related to each other.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rCoxwyDNxtOw9zUYDN2vcVHTj_wPan_qP8MHFUv1UJc/edit?usp=sharing

They were rather pleasantly surprised by the apparent lack of relevance, and yet they did their best to answer the question. It actually took plenty of speculation and discussion. Funnily enough, they got the “psychopath” right!

My surprise came when a student of mine saw the “recipe” structure in the poem so I presented the students with the following text and gave them time to “see” the similarities.

To make the flatbreads, tip the flour into a large bowl with 1 tsp salt and the cumin seeds. Make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and 150ml warm water. Mix together well. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for a few mins until smooth. Leave to rest in a lightly floured bowl for 15 mins. Meanwhile, mix together the yogurt and dill. Season and set aside.

All in all, it was a stimulating session for both the students and myself.