the world

Judy Diamondstone (diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu)
10 Jun 1999 00:29:09 -0000

Folks, I'm feeling very blue. So from out of the blue, here am I...

Here is where I found the space to re-imagine my selves & all the variegated
objectivities of this world when all around me felt strange, my first year
of academia, and here is where I turn now....

to feel kinship [an aside to several conference buddies: speaking positively]

I want to say : REALISM CORRUPTS!
(and absolute realism does so absolutely!)

And now I'm going to tell a story. Some stories we have on tape,
metaphorically speaking - in our heads; rich in associative value, they mean
differently every replay. I've taken quite a few of these from Bateson, this
one about his time in Palo Alto with Smithy, a schizophrenic (I have more
than one Smithy story!). This one concerns the dilemma Bateson felt when one
day Smithy turned to him and -- speaking prose to B. for the first time --
said,

"Bateson, You want me to come and live in your world. Well, I _lived_ in
your world for 16 [??] years, and I - didn't - like it!"

-- which distressed B., who then turned to his elderly German colleague
Frieda Fromm-Reichman and asked her how she would have answered, and Frieda
said [in German accent],

"Well, I once had a patient who said something just like that to me. And I
said to her, 'I never promised you a rose garden.'

That patient recovered to write the book by that name.

The point is that it is the key to recovery, to harness the imagination to
the project of planting a few rose bushes....

which reminds me of another story....

but that's for another time. thanks for virtually being there, y'all

p.s.

Does anyone know the name of Stanislavsky's student who rebelled against his
mentor's method and taught that if you want to feel, then do? -- i.e., if
you want to feel joy, then laugh!

judy

Judith Diamondstone (732) 932-7496 Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183

Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake