Hmmmm. Putting one's best face forward...just at the threshold. To be pre-liminal. Speaking before one has actually crossed the threshold, come in the door, taken a seat, made oneself comfortable with cool drink in hand...essentially then, asking to enter, even after one has entered. I imagine myself @knocking at the door of academia.
Hello? May I enter here? I will even preface my entry with an explanation of the goods I carry to the this party. Let's see. I have brought a gaggle of theorists, a herd of MOO characters, a flock of compositionists, a covey of teacherly types, a bevy of technorhetoricians. This bottle here, this here bottle, is the best vintage writing I could rustle up for this occasion (the other stores were closed). Oh, but I did bring these appetizers of bon mots and apothegms for all to nibble on as the discussion wanders about. I even brought a hand-made gift or two to guide people on their way.Yet. In order to even knock at the door, I had to have partaken for quite some time. And this foreword, this pre-logue, is an after-logue, indeed a culmination of many years of studying, reading, writing, thinking; many years of teaching and learning. What does it then mean to offer a post-logue as a pre-logue, a looking back over the long haul? Impossible to indicate all the voices I have heard, agreeing or dissenting. Impossible to show where I have been; the bread crumbs I left on the academic trail have long since blown away or have long since been served up in some other salad. Yet I must put my best face forward.
To start...and to finish...my pre and post.Far more gets left out than goes in. This distresses me. The deadline is here, and all the many voices I wanted to share are cut, left on the shelf for another day, another conversation, another re-viewing. Just as I sat to write this pre/postface, we experienced a power outtage that took out all the western states, my computer and server included. Cut off from my work, cut off from further tinkering with this hypertext, I was left with my notes of things to do: the books with wonderful insights I never got to weave into this project: the essays and articles read long ago, still waiting to join the rest. And I knew. I knew that here the project stops. For now. For today only. And that, and only that, lets me finish, lets me go on. Provisionally. Conditionally, for the now of it.
This thesis/ graduate project/ hypertext is named and understood as a "culminating experience." And I have problems with that. Perhaps that is the case with my university program: my work here is done, but the idea that I have reached the highest level is beyond my grasp as this text only scratches the surface of experience and possibility. This textual-standing-on-the-threshold puts me outside the pale of the academy, asking permission to enter a world in which I have lived, worked, studied, taught, and played for years. Rites of passage are strange creatures. Temporal demarcations, while necessary (you WERE there, now you are HERE), are strange bedfellows of our institutional makings.
This then, above all, is the reason I chose hypertext. This now-I-am-done, yet-I-am- standing-on-the-threshold is done. For now. Yet tomorrow, I can come again, re-work what I have, or add those voices left out. Now others can add their voices, statement and counter-statement, to this place, this piece, this work and play of experimental conversation. Now others, should they so choose, can join those of us who see MOOs as exciting online opportunities to continue the discussion, to enact our theories and pedagogies in ways not possible before, here and onMOO.
Come join us in the conversation.
(You finish reading.)
You can look at the room again, or choose @quit to leave RoxMOO.