End of term

Greetings,

Thanks for your patient understanding the lack of earthshaking entries. The connections are gradually reaching warp speed. Light and change are a couple of universal constants.

Winter term ends on the 28th. We wrap up the writing course this week. The juniors face a TEM-4 (test for English Majors) on 23 April so we've incorporated aspects of this reality into their program. Writing, dictation, bi-lingual translation and listening material. How do you learn to learn?

Their final papers are in two 35 minute sections, both 251 words in length.

Part A: a narrative.
Sample ideas for their magic pens include: "You died. Then you are given a reprieve."
"You are the last person alive. You hear a knock at the door."
"When I woke up this morning I was blind."

Part B: an argument presenting both sides.
Topics include: abortion, capital punishment, a national minimum wage of 15Y per hour and stronger environmental laws.

Criteria is grammar, spelling, structure, tense, logic and crazy wisdom.

Process and product. Go with the flow. Be various. Be extraordinary.

Peace.

Amazing New Year

Greetings,

The 7.1 earthquake in late December near Taiwan affected the Journeys connection. Tremors slowed eveything down from Beijing to Australia. Six of the seven cables were severed.

It's a tenuous slow posting process and slowly regaining "normal" speed. Amazing to see the aftermath. Some teachers were freaking out when they couldn't open particular sites. Cry me a river.
May you experience joy, excellent health and marvelous adventures in 2007.

Peace.

Orhan Pamuk - Nobel Lecture

Greetings,

Here is an excerpt and link of Orhan Pamuk's lecture accepting the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature.
© 2006 THE NOBEL FOUNDATION.

"For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, own them, and make them a conscious part of our spirit and our writing...
 
"All writers who have devoted their lives to their work know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing will, in the end, take us to other, very different places. It will take us far from the table at which we have worked in sadness or in anger; it will take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world.
 
"The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write.

"I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion.

"I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it.

"I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy.

"I write to be happy."

Peace.

Orhan Pamuk