Oranges and lemons.
Optional text.
I am unhappy in the group. There is no communication. Our learning has slowed considerably in the last weeks.
There is too much sexual innuendo. There is a lack of trust in the group. We seem to have lost our way. We are all responsible, we've all colluded.
We need to be more honest. More specific. You have also colluded in this. There seems to be less and less group security. Until the trust is restored
we will not learn. We need to enjoy these meetings and relax. It comes down to the basics of what we are trying to do.
We are all responsible.
About a month ago there was an explosion. Nothing was done to clear it up. There are two questions we would like to raise.
Who rang around but did not report the conclusions back to the group. And we got no apology for that.
And we have to look to the future. The air needs to be cleared. We all need to know where we stand, we need to renegotiate the contract we have had.
To be professional we need to dress respectably. We have had some outrageous clothing here. It detracts from the person. In counselling you need to fit
into the background of the clients you deal with. It is not possible if you dress sexually. It is like people who are counselling while on strong drugs.
It changes personality.
I think we would need a ruling from Exeter on that.
Then there is the question of the victim in all of this. It has to be their choice if that is so. Ther victim makes that choice. They have to choose that role.
That has to be considered.
What happened after the outburst. Is this a teaching group or a therapy group. We cannot have people here who need a lot of therapy.
How can we regain the trust we have lost.
This has to be sorted out this term. We have already lost several meetings because of it.
What about this meeting. People were not invited. I know I wasn't invited and I know....I can't see we have been asked to counsel anybody within the group.
We had a meeting in a pub. A small meeting.
Who is 'we' ?
Some individuals met. I did not organise it. I went and I felt I could say some of these things that need to be said. Three weeks ago we discussed this problem,
looking for ways of going forwards. Not everybody was invited because we felt a smaller number could look at the problem more easily.
I don't think that any good is done by small subgroups, and I am amazed that they should have the arrogance to report back to this group.
For members to form a mutually exclusive subgroup and then expect us to take any notice of them has smashed any trust within the group, and I am really angry
at the arrogance of the group that felt it had the right to act outside the group arbitrarily.
A number of individuals who felt most unfairly treated a month ago...
If individual members have individual problems they should sort them out. We are creating more and more division here, not working together.
The undercurrents did not start a month ago, it started - I apologise for the way I got upset - I would like to ask who's standards for clothing
we are supposed to be sticking to, and who is it that is on strong drugs.
I am, and I feel quite clear headed.
And who's standards.
All this judging by appearances. It's unbridled prejudice tonight.
I went to University, and my lecturer was a lesbian, she dressed just like a man. She was very good but she could have been said to be outrageous.
There have been sexual innuendo's. I have been guilty, and you and you and you and me. I own them, and find them extremely amusing. If that has
offended the group we will all try to stop it.
Does it happen in other groups.
If I do something wrong, as a group, please say so.
I would agree, we seem to have lost a lot of time, due not to personality clashes, but due to the self indulgence of people who have resolutely
refused to move them on. Yes, I hi-jacked the group last week in an attempt to move on, and felt that at the end of the session it was all thrown out of the window.
He is only a spokesperson, we should try not to address him personally.
I am still very unhappy, but we can leave it.
When have we counselled for one single person. I can't honestly think of any occasion. I try to leave my problems behind when I come out to these meetings.
I would say the reason for last night. He said any individual problems should be sorted out outside the group. Those of us who felt we had a problem
met to try and resolve our difficulties...
I think I mentioned I was having problems.
Because some of it was to do with me.
There is only one of you who has said anything at all to me.
Our feelings were that any feelings had been toitally disregarded afterwards.
Of the things that had happened before.
Could we please go forward. We have had two or three opportunities to address feelings. I can appreciate that it has not satisfied everybody.
We knew it would be a waste of time. So we hoped to get together to support eachother.
We felt we should re-address the issue, and working in small groups with you leading us. Our meeting was a genuine attempt to hold together our feelings.
I still don't understand.
You shouted that none of us would ever make counsellors.
The same...
I'm not asking you.
I feel we should leave it there.
We can't work now.
We are no worse than we were last week.
It was done to get us to move on.
There has always been an undercurrent. Either we spend time and resolve it, or we work.
We still have these questions and demmands.
If we are not going to get on, we will just have been bickering. I feel very unhappy about it. I am very sorry if I have made things worse.
I wanted to bring the undercurrents to the surface. I don't think we will achieve anything more. I am not going to say any more about it.
I brought undercurrents to the surface, not as calmly...
I am upset about what has been said here about drugs and dress.
I did a counselling session once to an alcoholic in a wetsuit. You have to get beyond dress.
Who's standards are we taking here?
Why can't we accept this and move on. OK individuals need attention, but this has become never ending. I appreciate people have been hurt, but it could carry on forever.
Why can't we carry on working?
You have exacted an apology from me, but nobody has apologised to me for things...
I don't feel I owe you an apology.
You wouldn't.
I don't feel I have said anything I regret.
I feel we should accept people. There are people I cannot communicate with here, but I accept that this is my problem. All the people here are ... what I cannot come to terms with here
I will be meeting in clients. It is my time to come to terms with people as they are. We must learn to accept. I think that is what we are all here for.
I agree with you.
In the interim, you can see no resolution, so we should try to move on.
As a stranger I feel intruding. There is obviously quite a bit of anger here. Passive aggression. I like activity, so I think at this point I would get you
all up and moving.
Look at the seating arrangement. A sort of them and us. Can I finish. I moved around. I thought perhaps a physical move around.
I though we all tried to do that weeks ago.
We don't need information. We don't need information. Let's leave it there.
There is a woman, and she lives on an island that is charred and blackened by her loneliness, and she spends all day and all night sitting
uncomfortably on a rock in the middle of the island. It is her rock for sitting on. She sits on her rock, the rock for sitting on.
She did not choose it. It was the first thing she sat upon. She has sat upon it ever since. Through the day and through the night she sits uncomfortably on her rock.
From time to time as she sits on her rock, she sees far away things go floating by her island. She does not own the island, she does not belong to the island,
but now it is blackened and charred by her loneliness nobody else wants it. So she sits on her rock and far away things float by and she destroys
them with her loneliness. She reaches out to them, but the power of her emptiness is greater than her humanity, and she destroys them to preserve
her blackened island. Washed on the shore of her island comes the debris of far away floating things that will never be again. As the years
go by, and she still doesn't get any older, she collects the debris and slowly makes a ship. An ugly blackened iron ship floating only because the
waves will not take it. Floating because the deep seas do not want it. The woman climbs down from her uncomfortable stone and boards
her iron ship. She could travel far from her island, but instead she journeys out, carrying with her a blackened rock to sit on.
She travels outwards destroying further and further away things that float, and always returning to her island
where the breaking waves retreat in horror. Where the breaking waves never foam white in their joy. And as she travels further and further
with her loneliness, even the staunch joyful sea dies beneath her, and the waves no longer have the strength to repel her.
One day her iron blackened ship rides across a dead sea, and then slips beneath its still surface. One final sooty scream and still sitting on her blackened rock
she slips beneath the surface.
Blackened rocks tumble from the island, falling into cleanliness through the dead water. Clean falling rocks bury her deep beneath the sea,
and seagulls land on slumbering waves giving white crests again. And more slowly than the passing eyes could see, the oceans put their death behind them
and rich green waves roll unbroken where the blackened island fell. Things that floated far away float near again.
She was crying. Well, she was crying but she was crying anyway. In the warm evening light she was crying and leaning against the walls of the house
was where she was crying. The house, the home, the tears that were falling. Joining one and one and one again but still not using the rules to do so.
Walls are rich. Walls of stone. Firm in the sunshine, sool in the summer, warm in the winter. Walls are rich. Stone or brick and the places they are
become warm by that. And here they are. Here where she is crying. Tell her the time, because times don't change, and she knows that.
It could be raining and the walls would keep her dry. It could be crying, and the walls would keep her dry. They would keep her dry.
It is the way they are. It is the why she has walls for this situation. It is where the walls are. It is how she would have them. Walls to be dry to.
One and one and one.
She was smiling. Well, she was smiling but she was smiling anyway. Open arms for the smiling. Open for the smiling. Warm to her and she will hold you.
One and one and one. Hold you the home so rich. Warm to hold you, hold you the walls. Home is to hold and to smile. To hold like the walls. Hold like the smile.
Warm to her and she will smile one and one and one. She will smile to hold you. To hold you like walls. Walls for crying.
She is the walls, not the separation they create.
I would like to be totally honest about this. I warn you so you will know. Honesty like honesty. Honesty like a warning. It is difficult and I woulod like it.
It is honest, so it must be true. Honest so it must be true. Repeated so it must be more true. Degrees of truth, but honesty is not one of them.
So I would like to be totally honest, and that is how I will have it. And that is why you will only hear it. So I would like to be honest. Honesty
is truth as I experience it. You are only you as I experience you. Truth and people edited by experience into honesty and oppression.
Remember I have good reason ho have good reason because I have other good reasons to agree with. I have pieces, and pieces of pieces.
I can fit them together as I can fit them together as I can see them only to fit together. As I can only see. I have truth because I have
pieces of truth to fit together. I have people because I have pieces of people and they fit together as I see them.
People and truth and that is how I know I have them and they are mine. So I can be honest, and know that you are wrong to hate me.
We have come to the conclusion that things are what they are, but we are not yet able to prove it, so perhaps it is not so.
Perhaps you would tell us if it is not so, and we will be able to change our conclusions so that they are not what they are.
Will that be better I think. (I mean we think, sorry could I just check that again.)
We have come to the conclusion that things are what they are, but we are not yet able to prove it, so perhaps it is not so.
Perhaps you would tell us if it is not so, and we will be able to change our conclusions so that they are not what they are.
Will that be better we think. (Yes, that is how it is how it is).
I would just like to point out the time we have spent on this, and I am sorry to have taken so long to do so, but I think it is important,
and I am sure many of you agree with me, so it is valid for me to think it is worth taking some time over because I am sure many of
you agree with me about that.
I feel that one of the dangers here is not recognising that there are dangers here. As an outsider I can say that because I am an outsider
so I didn't make this happen in the first place.
Background noise hides and things that are not things enough are lost by that. Goodbye.
.
Optional notes.
1.
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strap was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
(Attributed to Chiyono, translated by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki).
2.
The Master said, 'In his errors a man is true to type. Obsereve the errors and you will know the man.'
The Master said, 'The gentleman helps others to realise what is good in them; he does not help them to realise what is bad in them. The small man does the opposite'.
The Master said, 'It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your own lack of them'.
The Master said, 'What the gentleman seeks, he seeks within himself; what the small man seeks, he seeks in others'.
The Master said, 'The gentleman does not recommend a man non account of what he says, neither does he dismiss what is said on account of the speaker'.
(Confucius.'The Analects'. Penguin Classics.)
3.
'It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order'.
(Douglas Hofstadter).
4.
Few laymen realised how tightly compartmentalised the scientific community had become, a battleship with bulkheads sealed against leaks.
Biologists had enough to read without keeping up with the mathematics literature - for that matter, molecular biologists had enough to read
without keeping up with population biology. Physicists had better ways to spend their time than sifting through the meteorology journals. Some
mathematicians would have been excited to see Lorenz's discovery; within a decade, physicists, astronomers, and biologists were seeking something
just like it, and sometimes rediscovering it for themselves. But Lorenz was a meteorologist, and no one though to look for chaos on page 130 of
volume 20 of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
(James Gleick. 'Chaos:Making a new science.' Heinemann.)
5.
SOCRATES: Then the art of controversy is not confined to law or politics; every kind of discussion, it appears, is covered by one and the same art,
and by means of it a man can make anything appear like anything else within the limits of possible comparison, and expose an opponant when he
attempts to perform the same feat without being detected.
PHAEDRUS: What is all this leading to?
SOCRATES: We shall see, I think, if we ask the following question. Is a great or slight difference between two things the more likely to be misleading?
PHAEDRUS: A slight difference.
SOCRATES: So if you proceed by small degrees from one thing to its opposite you are more likely to escape detection than if you take big steps.
PHAEDRUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: Then a man who sets out to mislead without being misled himself must have an exact knowledge of the likeness and unlikeness between things.
PHAEDRUS: That is essential.
SOCRATES: If he does not know the true nature of any given thing, how can he discover in other things a likeness to what he does not know, and decide whether
the resemblance is small or great.
PHAEDRUS: He cannot.
SOCRATES: Now, when peoples opinions are inconsistent with fact and they are misled, plainly it is certain resemblances that are responsible for
mistakes creeping into their minds.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, that is how it happens.
SOCRATES: Is it possible then for a man to be skilled in leading the minds of his hearers by small gradations of difference in any given
instance from truth to its opposite, or to escape being misled himself, unless he is acquainted with the true nature of the thing in question?
PHAEDRUS: Quite impossible.
SOCRATES: It seems then, my friend, that the art of speaking displayed by a man who has gone hunting after opinions instead of learning the truth
will be a pretty ridiculous sort of art, in fact no art at all.
SOCRATES: The function of speech is to influence the soul. It follows that the would-be speaker must know how many types of soul there are.
The number is finite, and they account for the variety of individual characters. When these have been determined one must enumerate the
various types of speech, a finite number also. For such and such a reason a certain type of person can be easily persuaded to adopt a
certain course of action by a certain type of speech, whereas for an equally valid reason a different type cannot. When the student has an
adequate theoretical knowledge of these types, the next requisite is that his powers of observation should be keen enough to follow them up
when he comes across them in actual life; otherwise he will be no better off for all the instruction he has received in the lecture room. When he is not
only qualified to say what type of man is influenced by what type of speech, but is able also to to single out a particular individual and make
clear to himself that there he has actually before him a specific example of a type of character which he has heard described, and that
this is what he must say and this is how he must say it if he wants to influence his hearer in this particular way - when, I say, he has
grasped all this, and knows beside when to speak and when to refrain, and can distinguish when to employ and when to eschew the various
rhetorical devices of conciseness and pathos and exageration and so on that he has learnt, then and not till then can he be said to have
perfectly mastered his art. If his teaching or writing falls short in any of these respects we are entitled to reject his claim to be a
properly qualified speaker. 'So', our writer on this subject might say to us, 'here is my account of the art of speaking, Phaedrus and Socrates;
are you satisfied with it, or do you want something different?'
SOCRATES: The fact is, Phaedrus, that writing involves a similar disadvantage to painting. The productions of painting look like living
beings, but if you ask them a question they maintain a solemn silence. The same holds true of written words; you might suppose that they
understand what they are saying, but if you ask them what they mean by anything they simply return the same answer over and over again.
Besides, once a thing is committed to writing it circulates equally among those who understand the subject and those who have no business
with it; a writing cannot distinguish between suitable and unsuitable readers. And if it is ill-treated or unfairly abused it always needs its
parent to come to its rescue; it is quite incapable of defending or helping itself.
(Plato. 'Phaedrus'. Penguin Classics.)
6.
Another reason for the current concern over heavy metal contamination is the fact that scientists have discovered that such contamination exists.
(Nyle C.Brady. 'The Nature and Properties of Soils'. Macmillan.)
7.
Mencius said; 'All the ten thousand things are there in me. There is no greater joy for me than to find, on self examination, that I am true to myself.
Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence.'
Mencius said; 'The multitude can be said never to understand what they practise, to notice what they repeatedly do, or to be aware of the path they follow
all their lives.'
Mencius said; 'To try to achieve anything is like digging a well. You can dig a hole nine fathoms deep, but if you fail to reach the source of water
, it is just an abandoned well.'
('Mencius'. Penguin Classics.)
8.
No one talked about it a lot, but everyone knew what it was. It was the day you alphabetised your spices on the spice rack.
Then you dressed all the naked dolls in the house and arranged them on the bed according to size.
You talked to the plants and they fell asleep on you.
It was a condition, and it came with the territory.
(Erma Bombeck. 'The grass is always greener over the septic tank'. Methuen.)
9.
...In disturbed times, also, men whom the prince can trust will be hard to find. So such a prince cannot rely on what he has experienced in
times of tranquility, when the citizens have need of his government. When things are quiet, everyone dances attendance, everyone makes
promises, and everyone would die for him so long as death is far off. But in times of adversity, when the state has need of its citizens,
there are few to be found. And this test of loyalty is all the more dangerous since it can be made only once. Therefore the wise prince must
devise ways by which his citizens are always and in all circumstances dependent on him and his authority; and then they will always be
faithful to him.
...But since my intention is to say something that will prove of practical use to the inquirer, I have thjought it proper to represent
things as they are in real truth, rather than as they are imagined. Many have dreamed up republics and principalities which have never in truth
been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that the man who neglects what is actually done for
what should be done learns the way of self destruction rather than self preservation. The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in
every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore if a prince wants to maintain his rulehe must learn how not
to be virtuous, and to make use of this or not according to need.
So on this question of being loved or feared, I conclude that since men love as they please but fear when the prince pleases, a wise prince
should rely on what he controls, not on what he cannot control. He should only endeavour, as I said, to escape being hated.
A prince therefore need not necessarily have all the good qualities I mentioned above, but he should certainly appear to have them. I would
even go so far as to say that if he has these qualities and always behaves accordingly he will find them ruinous; if he onbly appears to
have them they will render him service.
...I am referring to flatterers, who swarm in the courts. Men are so happily absorbed in their own affairs and indulge in such self-deception
that it is difficult for them not to fall victim to this plague; and if they try to avoid doing so they risk becoming despised. This is because
the only way to safeguard yourself against flatterers is by letting people understand that you are not offended by the truth; but if
everyone can speak the truth to you then you lose respect. So a shrewd prince should adopt a middle way, choosing wise men for his government
and allowing only those the freedom to spoeak the truth to him, and then only concerning matters on which he asks their opinion, and nothing else.
(Machiavelli. 'The Prince'. Penguin Classics.)
10.
Man's adaptation to the world is largely governed by the developmentof the imagination and hence of an inner world of the psyche which is
necessarily at variance with the external world.
(Anthony Storr. 'Solitude'. Flamingo Books.)
11.
The President and the President.
And he says he is not dead.
And indeed in dying do we encourage prejudices.
He bows his head and then he is dead.
We meet reluctantly with opposition.
We hope that everyone will be satisfied with themselves.
We believe in further wishes.
(Gertrude Stein. "Three Leagues" from 'Useful Knowledge'. Station Hill.)